The Greatest Reason I Oppose a Pre-Tribulational Rapture

With Left Behind in theaters I’m sure we’ll be dealing with more talk about the secret rapture of the church. I’ve expressed in the past that I abandoned that view years ago because I was no longer convinced that it is a biblical argument.

So, I guess the greatest reason I oppose a pre-tribulational rapture is because I don’t find it in the Bible. But that’s not quite what I had in mind in the title. Here is the greatest practical reason why I oppose it—or to put that another way here is where I believe the doctrine can do great harm.

A belief in a Pre-tribulational rapture lends itself to an inadequate view of Christian suffering. My friend Barry Wallace posted this on Facebook yesterday:

In China, the Christians were told, “Don’t worry, before the tribulation comes you will be translated – raptured.” Then came a terrible persecution. Millions of Christians were tortured to death. Later I heard a Bishop from China say, sadly, “We have failed.

“We should have made the people strong for persecution, rather than telling them Jesus would come first. Tell the people how to be strong in times of persecution, how to stand when the tribulation comes, – to stand and not faint.”

I feel I have a divine mandate to go and tell the people of this world that it is possible to be strong in the Lord Jesus Christ. We are in training for the tribulation, but more than sixty percent of the Body of Christ across the world has already entered into the tribulation. There is no way to escape it.

We are next.

(Excerpt from a letter written by Corrie Ten Boom in 1974)

When I was a full-on pretrib rapture guy, I remember thinking that this doctrine was great for evangelism. The message was simple: There is something really bad going to happen in the near future, but if you believe in Jesus he will rescue you from the terrible time of suffering. Repent and believe in Jesus and you won’t experience any of these terrible things.

Who wouldn’t sign up for that?

But rapture evangelism doesn’t work. The gospel is a call to come and die. Not a call to believe in Jesus so you don’t have to endure seven years of hardship.

I’m not intending to say that all those who subscribe to a pre-tribulational rapture have a terrible theology of suffering. Nor am I trying to say that everyone who believes in a rapture does so only because they do not want to suffer.

What I am attempting to say is that a pre-tribulational rapture would not challenge someone with an inadequate theology of suffering. It will not lend itself to training folks to suffer well. There is nothing in a belief in a pre-tribulational rapture that would cause someone to ask, “How are we going to endure the intense suffering and persecution that is coming our way”?

But that is a question we must ask. Because Corrie Ten Boom is likely correct—we are next.