The Jewish Version of the Rapture
A Messianic Jewish Perspective on a Popular Christian Teaching
I tell you, in that night there will be two in one bed. One will be taken and the other left. There will be two women grinding together. One will be taken and the other left. (Luke 17:34–35)
Many devout Christians look forward to an aspect of the messianic advent popularly called “the rapture.” They believe that before Jesus returns, he will make a brief visit to earth to snatch away true Christians, instantaneously transporting them to heaven. At the time of their rapture, believers will undergo a transformation, shedding their mortal state to put on the immortal state of the righteous resurrected. They will not, however, precede the dead in Christ. The dead among the followers of Christ will be revivified first, resurrected into immortal bodies and simultaneously transported into the air to meet Christ. The Christians who remain alive until his arrival will follow closely behind. With all these ascending hosts in tow, Christ will return to heaven.
In popular depictions of the event, unmanned cars careen off the road. Those left behind are baffled at the disappearance of thousands of people. Jesus, the “thief in the night,” pulls the greatest heist in history, stealing away a significant portion of the earth’s population.
In some versions of the theory, the raptured and resurrected remain in heaven forever afterward. In “pre-tribulation” eschatological systems, they remain in heaven for seven years to wait out the seven-year “great tribulation” that is to precede the second (or third) coming of Christ. While they wait in heaven, God pours out his judgment upon the human beings who remain on the earth. Unfortunately, Jewish people who did not become Christians prior to the rapture are left to contend with the tribulation and the antics of the antichrist.
At the conclusion of the seven-year tribulation, the raptured and resurrected return with Christ to the earth and fight the battle of Armageddon. This version of the rapture theory supposes a second coming of Christ followed shortly by a third coming.
The teachers who talk about a coming rapture disagree on the specific details. Those who call themselves “pre-tribulation” more or less endorse the above-described scenario, but the equally vocal “post-tribulation” camp believes that the rapture will not happen until after the seven years of tribulation. Some suggest other versions, including a compromise “mid-tribulation” theory. In any case, all these camps believe there will undoubtedly be a rapture.
Rapiemu - 'carried off..'
Whence comes this idea? Only a narrow band of Christianity believes in the rapture—mostly dispensationalist Evangelicals. The notion of Christians being whisked away at the coming of Christ is foreign to most of traditional Christianity. Those who eschew the idea of the rapture are quick to point out that the rapture is mentioned neither in the book of Revelation nor in any other place in the Bible. They say, “The rapture is not in the Bible.” That’s not quite accurate. The word rapture derives from the Latin rapiemu, meaning “carried off” or “caught up.” It appeared in the fifth-century Latin Vulgate translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17:
The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up [rapiemu] together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words. (1 Thessalonians 4:16–18)
Dispensationalists often cite other texts to prove the coming rapture of the saints: 1 Corinthians 15:51–52, Philippians 3:20–21, and Matthew 24:40–41. On closer examination, however, none of these passages supports the idea of a heavenly air-lift evacuation from the planet.
We Shall All Be Changed
First-century Jewish eschatology held that the dead will be raised when the Messiah comes. Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians confirm that expectation with a clear view of the resurrection. The “dead in Christ” will rise at the sound of the trumpet of the Messiah. Those believers who remain alive waiting on Christ’s coming will undergo a parallel transformation into imperishable bodies. But Paul failed to mention the rapture. He did not say anything about anyone being caught up into the air:
Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. (1 Corinthians 15:51–52)
Citizenship in Heaven
Another Pauline text dispensationalists employ to support the rapture theory appears in Philippians 3. It confirms the conviction that the coming of the Messiah will initiate a transformation from the mortal state to the immortal state, but it says nothing about anyone being raptured to heaven:
Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. (Philippians 3:20–21)
The statement “our citizenship is in heaven” does not refer literally to going to heaven any more than Paul’s Roman citizenship required him literally to go to Rome. (It didn’t.) Instead, heaven is the seat of authority issuing the credentials of citizenship just as Rome extended its citizenship across its entire empire.
Left Behind
A third text rapture teachers often cite inspired Christian songwriter Larry Norman’s 1969 hit “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” the 1972 movie A Thief in the Night, and the popular 1990s Left Behind books and motion pictures. On the strength of so much Christian media, the interpretation of this text has become ensconced in Evangelical Christian culture:
Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left. (Matthew 24:40–41)
These words are interpreted to mean that when Jesus comes to rapture the saints, the one left working in the field will be left behind because he is not a Christian. The one left grinding at the mill will be left behind for the same reason. However, the full context of this passage, especially when compared with its parallel in Luke 17, points to a completely different interpretation.
A Thief in the Night (1972) launched a series of Christian films depicting a dispensationalist and pre-millenial view of the last days including a pre-tribulation rapture of the church intended to inspire evangelism. In A Thief in the Night, a woman (Patty Dunning) has a religious awakening after discovering that her husband and millions more have vanished overnight.
When Yeshua returns, he will come to usher in a day of judgment. He likened that day of judgment to Noah’s flood (Matthew 24:37–39). While Noah was busy building the ark, the people of his generation carried on with the routine affairs of life. Yeshua told his disciples that, just as in Noah’s day, the generation of the Day of the LORD will ignore the warnings leading up to the big event. When catastrophe strikes the earth, life will be going on as usual. Just as the flood came and took people away in judgment, the “taking away” in Matthew 24:40–41 refers to people being taken in judgment.
If this meaning is unclear in Matthew 24, Yeshua made it explicitly clear in a parallel passage in Luke 17 in which those “taken away” correspond to those who drowned in Noah’s flood (Luke 17:27), to those who perished under the fire and sulfur in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Luke 17:29), and to Lot’s wife, who turned into a pillar of salt (Luke 17:32).
Wherever it is that those who are “taken” go, we don’t want to go there. Yeshua’s disciples inquired, “Where [will they be taken], Lord?” (Luke 17:37). He replied, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” Better to be “left behind” than to become food for vultures. The corpses of those “taken away” will be food for the birds, much as those who perished in the flood became food for the carrion-eating birds, like the raven that Noah released from the ark. When Messiah comes, the wicked will be slain and left as food for birds, too (Ezekiel 39:17–19).
This macabre prophecy is echoed in Revelation 19:17–18, which speaks of the birds assembling “for the great supper of God” so that they can feast on the corpses of those Messiah will defeat at the time of his appearing. “All the birds were gorged with their flesh” (Revelation 19:21). Those “left behind” will be the righteous who survive the Day of the LORD. They can be compared to Noah and his seven family members who survived the flood. As Peter said, “The Lord knows how to rescue the godly” (2 Peter 2:9).
The Rapture in the Torah
Having examined the proof texts used to support the rapture theory, we can see that the premise—believers being caught up in the air with Jesus— hangs upon only one Pauline text: 1 Thessalonians 4:16–18. Just one passage constitutes thin evidence for an idea that so radically alters the established expectations of Jewish eschatology.
Why would Paul introduce something so significant as the rapture when Moses, the prophets, and Yeshua had not mentioned it?
The apostles were not innovators. One rarely, if ever, finds ideas in the New Testament that exist wholly outside conventional Jewish thought. When Yeshua or the apostles taught a concept contrary to conventional first-century Jewish norms (such as the controversial concepts of healing on the Sabbath or the inclusion of Gentiles in the kingdom), they supported the innovation with lots of argumentation and ample testimony from the Torah and the Hebrew Scriptures. More often, the apostolic writers simply endorsed the existing Jewish worldview, speaking with the same symbolic language and eschatological expectations of their contemporaries with little to no contradistinction.
How is it possible that Paul would introduce something so novel and significant as the rapture when Moses, the prophets, and Yeshua himself had not mentioned it? Could the Master have passed over something of such incredible magnitude without so much as a single “as it is written”?
Critics of the rapture theory gladly point this out, and they are fond of reminding everyone that the rapture has enjoyed consideration only for about the last century or so. It first found traction in the teachings of the dispensationalist John Nelson Darby, who taught near the end of the nineteenth century.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Hal Lindsey’s end-times bestsellers rocketed belief in the rapture into the American Evangelical consciousness with titles like The Late Great Planet Earth, The Rapture, and Vanished into Thin Air. Combined with its portrayal in popular Christian media, the rapture became a standard expectation of Evangelical eschatology. As a result, it has had a considerable influence on Messianic Jewish eschatology. Can this expectation be reconciled with a traditional Jewish perspective? Is there really a coming rapture?
Messiah and the Ingathering
Near the end of Deuteronomy, the Torah delivers a terrifying litany of curses that culminate in the destruction of the nation and the exile of the Jewish people. Moses declared, “The LORD will scatter you among all peoples, from one end of the earth to the other” (Deuteronomy 28:64). God promised to regather his scattered people from that exile:
If your outcasts are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the LORD your God will gather you, and from there he will take you. (Deuteronomy 30:4)
In the first century, Jews expected the Messiah to be the agent of that ingathering.
For example, Targum Pseudo-Yonatan (an early Aramaic paraphrase of the Torah for synagogue use) projects the ingathering as a component of the coming of Messiah:
Though you may be dispersed unto the ends of the heavens, from there will the Word of the Lord gather you together by the hand of Elijah the great priest, and from there will He bring you by the hand of King Messiah. (Targum Pseudo-Yonatan on Deuteronomy 30:4)
Ever since the days of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Roman exiles, the people of Israel—the Jewish people— have remained scattered around the globe. Moses and the prophets promised that one day God would collect his elect and chosen people from the four corners of the earth and bring them back to their ancient homeland.
Jewish liturgy petitions God for the ingathering of the exiles three times every day:
Blast the great shofar [“trumpet”] for our freedom. Lift a banner to gather our exiles, and quickly gather us together from the four corners of the earth to our land. Blessed are You, O LORD, who gathers the outcasts of his people Israel. (Shmoneh Esrei 10)
The Talmud says, “The day of the ingathering of the exiles is as important as the day when heaven and earth were created.” The prophets all testify regarding this great return to the land. For example, the LORD said through Isaiah that he would “assemble the banished of Israel, and gather the dispersed of Judah from the four corners of the earth” (Isaiah 11:12). He declared through Jeremiah, “I will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the countries where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold” (Jeremiah 23:3).
Through the Prophet Ezekiel, the LORD said, “I will gather you from the peoples and assemble you out of the countries where you have been scattered, and I will give you the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 11:17).
The Great Trumpet Blast
Isaiah connected the ingathering of the exiles and their return to the land of Israel with the sounding of a trumpet:
In that day a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were lost in the land of Assyria and those who were driven out to the land of Egypt will come and worship the LORD on the holy mountain at Jerusalem. (Isaiah 27:13)
Ezekiel connected the ingathering of the exiles with the coming of the Messiah in a passage that speaks of God returning the Jewish people to their land and appointing a Davidic king over the nation. Notice how the prophet used the name “David” as a title for Messiah:
Behold, I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land … And one king shall be king over them all … My servant David shall be king over them. (Ezekiel 37:21–24)
Based on these and many other similar prophecies, Jewish eschatology firmly links the ingathering of the exiles with the trumpet of Messiah, the coming of Messiah, and the final redemption. The Messiah will gather up all the scattered children of Israel from the four corners of the earth and return them to the promised land.
Yeshua invoked all these messianic expectations and directly alluded to the above prophecies when he said that the Son of Man would “send forth His angels with a great trumpet blast, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other” (Matthew 24:31 NASB). His “elect” are not “the Christians,” as replacement theology assumes, but the chosen people: the people of Israel.
The Resurrection and the Ingathering
Ezekiel also linked the ingathering with the resurrection of the dead. At the conclusion of Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of the dry bones, the LORD explained to the exiles of Israel, “I will open your graves and raise you from [the nations], O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel” (Ezekiel 37:12). That’s why Jewish eschatology associates the sound of the great trumpet that will herald the ingathering of Israel and the coming of Messiah with the resurrection of the dead.
The trumpet of Messiah will summon the exiles and wake the dead. All these traditional elements of Jewish expectation connect perfectly to Paul’s words in both 1 Thessalonians 4:16–18 and 1 Corinthians 15:51–52. In other words, the so-called rapture, the resurrection, the ingathering of Israel, the coming of the Messiah, and the trumpet of the LORD are all aspects of the same event: the Day of the LORD.
Paul looked forward to the day when the Messiah would return to gather his elect from the four corners of the earth. When he spoke of that day in his epistles, he did not feel it necessary to provide proof texts. The ingathering of the exiles was a well-established point of Jewish doctrine so often repeated in the Torah and the Prophets that proof texts were unnecessary.
Paul’s Assumption
When Paul mentioned those events, he assumed his readers would know he was speaking of the ingathering. His readers probably did, but Gentile Christians living eighteen hundred years later did not. Their expositors were left trying to fill in the blanks. They assumed that Paul was speaking about Christians taken to heaven by Christ. Instead, Paul was speaking about Jews being taken to Jerusalem by Messiah.
Paul narrowed the full scope of the ingathering event to Messianic Jews when he said that those “in Christ” are the ones to be raised and caught up. Did Paul intend to exclude non- Yeshua-believing Jews? He remained silent about their participation in the messianic ingathering.
What about the Gentile disciples from the nations? Are they to be “left behind” when the Messiah comes to gather in the exiles of Israel? Not according to Paul. The redeemed in Messiah are privileged as fellow heirs with Israel; as such, they will share in her great exodus. They will be gathered with Israel into the kingdom:
The Sovereign LORD declares— he who gathers the exiles of Israel: “I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered.” (Isaiah 56:8 NIV) In that day they “will come from east and west and recline at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 8:11).
Carried on the Clouds
Rapture teachers explain that Christians will be raptured to heaven. Those who anticipate beaming directly to heavenly Paradise should revise their trip itinerary. According to the prophets, the destination of the ones raptured is not heaven; it is the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem. Moses said, “The LORD your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed” (Deuteronomy 30:5). The LORD declared,
I will take the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone, and will gather them from all around, and bring them to their own land. (Ezekiel 37:21)
The preeminent Torah commentator Rashi lent weight to the idea of a “catching away” when he spoke of God picking up each exile in his hands at the time of the ingathering:
Great is the day of the ingathering of the exiles, and it will come about with much difficulty, as if God himself will be obliged to take hold of each person with his hands, each one from his place, like the matter which is spoken of [in Isaiah], “and you will be gathered up one by one, O sons of Israel. It will come about also in that day that a great trumpet will be blown, and those who were … scattered … will come.” (Rashi on Deuteronomy 30:3, quoting Isaiah 27:12–13)
Isaiah asked, “Who are these that fly like a cloud, and like doves to their windows?” (Isaiah 60:8). The rabbis explained the phrase “fly like a cloud” to mean that the exiles will be transported on the clouds to the land of Israel: “The clouds will carry them to Jerusalem” (Yalkut Shimoni).
This seems to fit well with Paul’s assertion that “we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
In that case, disciples of Yeshua can anticipate being transported along with the exiles of Israel to the holy city of Jerusalem for a grand celebration. We will all be carried up to Jerusalem for the great coronation of the King, and so, as Paul said, “we will always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).
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