Last Things: The Rapture & the Tribulation

Douglas Jacoby Podcast

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.

Order of events, popular Christianity:

• Second coming
• Rapture
• Tribulation (for unbelievers)

Order of events in New Testament:

• Tribulation (throughout our lives as believers)
• Second coming
• General resurrection + rapture
• Judgment Day
• Eternal destiny: heaven or hell

Etymology

• Rapture < Latin rapire, translating Greek harpadzomai (snatch) in 1 Thessalonians 4:17
• Tribulation < Latin tribulatio, translating Greek thlipsis (oppression, affliction)

Scriptures cited

• 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (see also 5:1-2)
• John 5:28-29
• Exodus 7-12
• Revelation 6-19
• Luke 9:52-56
• Jonah 3:10-4:5

Further

• Revelation 7:14 actually says that the righteous experience the tribulation. I.e., they are delivered through it (not from it).
• Listen to the previous podcast in this series, 2010, 2012, & the End of the World.
• See the N.T. chapter notes, e.g. those on 1 Thessalonians 4, or any other chapters in the series.
• Listen to relevant O.T. lessons, e.g. the Jonah podcast.
• From Daniel deSilva's An Introduction to the New Testament, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2018) 824n29: "... There is no place in Revelation for the 'rapture.' John calls Christians to arm themselves to die out of faithfulness to Jesus, and indeed the so-called tribulation descended on his hearers in earnest in but a few short decades. We also have to reckon with the peculiarity that Western Christians (especially from the United Kingdom and the United States), who invented the idea of a rapture, should be the only ones never to taste tribulation for their Lord. Even now sisters and brothers across the globe face marginalization, privation, and death for their testimony—but we will be spared any such tests of our faithfulness!... The common error of reading 1 Thess 4:13-18 together with Rev 4:1 in order to demonstrate a 'pretribulation rapture' is fundamentally flawed... There is no mention of resurrection in Revelation until Rev 20:4-6, which speaks of the 'first' of two resurrections, and so the resurrection of the saints in 1 Thess 4:16 cannot be prior to that and cannot refer to a 'pre-tribulation rapture.'"