Pre-Tribulation Rapture

The pre-tribulation rapture theory teaches two things: that there shall be a Great Tribulation just before the Second Coming of Jesus; and that the church shall be raptured (taken out of the world) just before that tribulation, or mid way through the tribulation. Some believe that the “overcoming saints” shall be raptured, but less victorious believers shall be purified in the tribulation.

This pre-trib’ theory also holds that there are two different resurrections of the body. The church shall be resurrected (raptured) first, before the return of Christ and the wicked dead shall be raised up second, after the millennial reign of Christ in Jerusalem. This means that there is a 1,000 year gap between the bodily resurrection of the church and the bodily resurrection of the wicked.

Here are two theories that the early church fathers did not believe. First, the early fathers did not believe in two separate bodily resurrections, one before and one after a 1,000 year reign of Jesus in Jerusalem. Second, the pre-tribulation rapture is not mentioned by any church father and is not mentioned anywhere in church history, until the year 1830.

The idea of two separate resurrections with a long gap of years between them appears in Babylonian teaching and then in Persian Zoroastrian chiliasm, but not in Christian teaching until Montanism and then inconsistently in Justin Martyr in the 2nd Century.

This “pre-tribulation rapture” teaching did not occur in church history until 1830. Edward Irving translated a document into English, which was first written by a Franciscan Priest named Francisco Ribera (1537-1591). This document proclaimed the millennial theory, that Jesus was coming to reign for a 1,000 years in Jerusalem. Irving and John Darby then began to teach this in the UK.

Also, a young girl in Scotland associated with Irving’s ministry, named Margaret McDonald, gave a “tongues and interpretation” saying that the rapture of the church would occur before the Great Tribulation, after which Christ would come to reign in Jerusalem.

From 1830 John Darby began to popularize the teaching. Darby was Cessationist and claimed that he found this teaching in Bible study and did not get it from the Scotland manifestation. However, the pre-tribulation rapture doctrine is not mentioned in scripture once. There is not one scripture passage that we can turn to that directly teaches this.