How long have people believed in the rapture

Research Topics. Home Research Topics. Read More Share this link:. Facts are more important than ever. Looking ahead to , Americans are pessimistic about many aspects of life in U.

Are you a Faith and Flag Conservative? Progressive Left? Or somewhere in between? Judgmental Christians are easy targets for ridicule and disdain, and, to be sure, Christians have perpetuated some of the worst and silliest ideas about the end of the world. For many Christians, spreading the word about the Rapture is an act born of genuine concern.

In the film, young Patty Jo Myers wakes up one day to find her family gone along with millions of other people, and has to live through the Tribulation, a time period referred to in Daniel 7, during which war, famine, and other plagues ravage the Earth and kill most of those who remain.

Run by Thomas Ice and Tim LaHaye the latter of Left Behindfame , the Pre-Trib Research Center acts as a clearinghouse for Biblical prophecy scholars to share their work on the Rapture and their interpretation that the church will be raptured before the Tribulation.

Hundreds of Christian groups have tried to use the Bible to predict when the world will end, using a hardly clear-cut combination of events mentioned in the apocalyptic Book of Revelation.

Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister who was influential in the construction of the Salem Witch Trials, announced that the world would end in Just kidding! Unhappy with , he soon moved the date up to ; when that year came and went, Mather suggested the world would end in While a large earthquake did shake Boston that year, the only thing that quickly came to an end was Mather, who died in February Mather is part of a centuries-long tradition of Christians who have made these bold predictions.

Thomas Ice of the Pre-Trib Research Center distinguishes between the Rapture believers being carried up to heaven and the Second Coming of Christ Christ coming down to Earth, which will happen seven years after the Rapture.

The Biblical writers speak of the rapture as being a blessed hope Titus ; a purifying hope 1 John ; a comforting hope 1 Thess. We at Faith Baptist Bible College and Theological Seminary are united in our conviction that the Scriptures teach that the rapture will occur before the Tribulation. We concur with our doctrinal statement on that glorious event:.

We believe that Jesus Christ will return to the atmosphere of this earth; that the dead in Christ will rise first, then believers who are still living will be caught up together with them to greet the Lord in the air and to ever be with the Lord; that the rapture is the next event on the revealed calendar and that no prophecy need be fulfilled before it occurs.

Our doctrinal stand coincides exactly with that of our fellowship. Article XIX of the Doctrinal Statement of the GARBC reads in part: We believe in the premillennial return of Christ, an event which can occur at any moment … and all shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air before the seven years of the Tribulation. Let us briefly note the promise of return John 14 , the picture of His return 1 Thess. If believers must endure the judgments of the Tribulation, they would meet Him in the air at the second advent and immediately return with Him to earth.

In 1 Thess. Wherefore comfort one another with these words, 1 Thess. Were believers destined to endure the Tribulation, Paul should have said, Wherefore scare ye one another with these words.

Instead, he assures the Thessalonians again, as he has done earlier, that God has not appointed them unto the wrath of the Tribulation but unto salvation 1 Thess. Romans Perhaps the best proof text for the pre-tribulational rapture position is found in Revelation Because thou has kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.

It should be noted that the church is not promised protection in or during the hour of trial, but protection out of it ek. The Tribulation saints are not promised exemption from suffering Rev. Leon J.

Wood, former Dean of Grand Rapids Baptist Seminary, succinctly concludes: A person is either in a period of time or out of it. The Bible and Future Events, p.