In the mid-1990s, in the course of entering the Catholic Church, my wife and I met many Catholics who were fans of the mega-selling Left Behind novels. One Catholic woman described how the books were helping her “understand the Book of Revelation.” I told her that we had left behind that particular form of Fundamentalist and Evangelical theology precisely because it was so consistently inaccurate about both Scripture and current events. Further, it was quite anti-Catholic. “But,” she insisted, “it’s all based in the Bible!”
Explaining premillennial dispensationalism—or “Rapture theology”—takes an entire book. But in light of recent events in the Middle East, we can touch here on one key question: “What is the relationship of the ‘Rapture’ to the Jews and Israel?” Further, do Protestants believe that the Jews must return to Israel in order for the Rapture to take place?
It’s important to understand that premillennial dispensationalism is quite new, fairly convoluted and fragmented, and rejected by a wide range of Protestants. It was John Nelson Darby (1800-1882), an ex-Church of Ireland priest and a leader in the Plymouth Brethren movement, who established the foundational premise of the belief system: God has two people—the Church and the Jews—and whereas the former is “properly heavenly in its calling and relationship with Christ,” the latter still await the “literal” fulfillment of Old Testament promises of an earthly kingdom centered on Jerusalem and a rebuilt Temple.
This radical distinction between Israel and the Church shapes and informs the entire dispensationalist understanding of Scripture. Evangelical historian Timothy Weber, in Living in the Shadow of the Second Coming: American Premillennialism 1875-1925 (Oxford University Press, 1979), explained that Darby “claimed that the doctrine [of the secret Rapture] virtually jumped out of the pages of Scripture once he accepted and consistently maintained the distinction between Israel and the church.”
Or, as noted dispensationalist theologian John F. Walvoord (1910-2002) put it, “it is not too much to say that the Rapture question is determined more by ecclesiology than eschatology.” This means that nearly all prophecies found in Scripture have yet to be fulfilled; it also means that most of what Jesus taught was for the Jews only, not for Christians. As Darby and his followers taught, Jesus offered a newly restored, earthly Davidic kingdom to the Jewish people but was flatly rejected.
And so Jesus had to go to a back-up plan and establish the Church, which is a “parenthetical” insert into history. Salvation history has been detoured into the Church age (one of the seven “dispensations” of the system) until the Jewish people are ready to return to God. The prophetic clock is paused until the spiritual remnant, the Church, is removed from earth by the Rapture.
What is the Rapture? It is a secret and silent removal of Christians from earth—not to be confused with the Second Coming, which is later, loud, and very public. This belief is based in part on a poor interpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:
For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Ironically, the word “Rapture” is taken from the Vulgate, as St. Jerome translated the Greek word harpazo (“caught up”) into the Latin word rapiemur.
Back to Israel. On May 14, 1948, the State of Israel was established. This event, for dispensationalists, was the event of the century. As one dispensationalist author excitedly wrote shortly afterward, “there isn’t the slightest doubt that the emergence of the Nation Israel among the family of nations is the greatest piece of prophetic news that we have had in the twentieth century.”
The relationship between American dispensationalism and the nation of Israel is complicated; sometimes odd; and filled with political, historical, and theological ramifications. The historian Paul Boyer, in When Time Shall Be No More: Prophecy Belief in Modern American Culture (Harvard University Press, 1998), gave this summary:
What writers have had to say on these subjects has influenced millions of Americans’ perceptions of events in the Middle East––and of their Jewish fellow citizens. In the premillennial system the Jews enjoy a privileged niche. But they also face future horrors worse than anything yet encountered in millennia of suffering and persecution.
Many Christians, throughout the centuries, have believed that the Jews would either be restored to the Promised Land or would finally recognize Christ as the true Messiah. And the Catechism of the Catholic Church, quoting extensively from Romans 11, states,
The glorious Messiah’s coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by “all Israel,” for “a hardening has come upon part of Israel” in their “unbelief” toward Jesus. . . . The “full inclusion” of the Jews in the Messiah’s salvation, in the wake of “the full number of the Gentiles,” will enable the People of God to achieve “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ,” in which “God may be all in all” (674).
Whereas the Catholic Church is silent about how this might take place, dispensationalists have formed detailed and elaborate scenarios about Israel in the “Last Days.” Catholic teaching emphasizes the future reality of repentance and spiritual renewal on the part of “all Israel” but says nothing about the necessity of Israel returning to the Promised Land.
In direct contrast, dispensationalism has always insisted that God’s “earthly people” must return to Palestine before the prophetic clock could restart. Numerous dispensationalist prophetic conferences in North America, from the late 1800s into the 1900s, focused upon the return of the Jews to Palestine, with leaders and groups actively seeking to aid the rebirth of the nation of Israel.
In fact, the door of dispensationalist eschatology hinges upon Israel’s role and restoration as a nation. Weber provides an excellent summary of the dispensational end time scenario involving Israel:
At the end of the age, God would again make Israel the center of his concern. Daniel’s seventieth week would begin, leading up to the coming of Messiah and the setting up of the long-promised kingdom. . . . After the partial re-gathering of the Jews in Palestine and the re-establishment of the state of Israel would come the ill-fated pact with the Antichrist, betrayal at his hands, immense suffering for those Jews who accepted Jesus as Messiah before his coming, and the final invasion by hordes of Gentile armies. . . . When the Gentile powers had the Jews close to total annihilation, Jesus Christ would return to earth, slaughter Antichrist’s armies, and finally establish the kingdom that he had originally offered to the Jews at his first advent. After witnessing his majestic display of power, the Jews would acknowledge Messiah Jesus and once again bask in the blessings of God.
As Weber observes, for dispensationalists, “the entire redemptive plan of God hinged on the restoration of the Jews. Without a restored Jewish state in Palestine, God’s cosmic program would not succeed.”
To come full circle, this entire belief system is predicated on the beliefs that Jesus offered an earthly kingdom to the Jews but was rejected; that he then established the Church as a “plan B”; and that a secret “Rapture” event will evacuate all Christians from the earth, followed by a seven-year-long Tribulation and the Second Coming. Then a Davidic kingdom will be established, based in Jerusalem, lasting a thousand years, and finally, the eschaton will arrive.
The dispensationalist belief in two people of God—Christians and Jews—is contrary to Catholic teaching and to mainline Protestant belief. Again, it didn’t exist until two centuries ago. And Catholics (and most Protestants) believe that Jesus was indeed accepted by many Jews: the Virgin Mary, Peter, the apostles, and many others. Further, Jesus Christ fulfills the Old Testament through his life, death, passion, and resurrection (he is, for instance, the true and everlasting Temple): “The Old Testament prepares for the New and the New Testament fulfills the Old” (CCC 140). Darby’s foundational premises were innovative and completely heterodox.
The idea that Christians and the Church will escape the final tribulation via the Rapture is very attractive. But Catholic teaching is that “the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers” (CCC 675). And so Rapture myths endure, perhaps until the end.