The Origins of the Rapture

The Rapture: The belief that Jesus will remove all true Christians from the Earth prior to the end of the world and establishment of his kingdom. The belief is mostly found among American Evangelicals and is part of the larger theological framework called Dispensational Premillennialism. But where did this belief come from?

Bibliography:
Daniel Hummel, The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism, 2023
Paul Richard Wilkinson, For Zion's Sake: Christian Zionism and the Role of John Nelson Darby, 2008
Candida Moss and Joel Baden, "1 Thessalonians 4.13-18 in Rabbinic Perspective," New Test. STud. 58, pp. 199-212.

00:00 Intro
3:29 Scriptural basis?
9:59 Possible hints from antiquity
15:43 John Nelson Darby to Scofield
22:19 The Rise of Prophecy Fiction
24:15 The Fall of Dispensationalism?

Select footage and images courtesy of Getty

[jdwrink]

I grew up a Southern Baptist, with this rapture ideology. I was blown away when I learned how new the idea of the rapture actually was. Evangelical Christianity is about as much of a new religious movement, distant from historical Christianity, as Mormonism.

[forrestredd]

As a Christian, with an insane dad who obviously never read the bible he claimed to quote, the rapture was a source of trauma for me all the way up until the point that I actually read the bible and saw that it wasn't in there. My understanding of Christianity changed SO MUCH when I read it myself and stopped letting other people tell me what it was about. But I will NEVER forget the amount of fear in my heart when my dad was saying the rapture was right around the corner any time anything in the world happened.

[kid]

Honest to god the rapture basically is what caused so much religious trauma for every person I knew growing up. I knew people who contemplated suicide, thought about putting down pets so that the pets wouldn't starve without them, or just have trauma from being forced to live in an apocalyptic family making them extreme nihilists. Why care about anything if the world is going to delete itself at any second? Why make friends outside of your religion if you know they are going to suffer after you leave? much trauma...

[revcc]

My father always called the rapture his retirement plan. His belief that he would be raptured before death led to bad financial decisions. This is an dangerous aspect of rapture thinking that is seldom talked about.

[markkozlowski]

As a somewhat elderly person, I remember "The Late Great Planet Earth", by Hal Lindsey, which was the bestselling paperback book of the 1970's. Mr. Lindsey predicted that the Rapture would take place before 2000. And, having moved the goalposts, he is still asserting in 2023 that the Rapture is just around the corner!

[KeivanHH]

Growing up in Italy, you are exposed almost exclusively to Catholic beliefs. So I always find fascinating the number of doctrines (sometimes cults) that have been originated in the US, from Mormonism to those who "play" with snakes

[odio]

From a preacher I listened to years ago at the Bethlehem church, all I can say is this: don't worry about the world's end...worry about your own. It doesn't matter what happens to the world so long as you take care of yourself spiritually. You can save no one's soul, but your own.

[jetpetty]

Growing up, immersed in the matrix of the tribulation/rapture ideology, I was a very depressed kid. I fully expected to be dead by 16 or at least 17 due to the pervasive doom story.

I had a "bucket list" by age 11 and went through a profound depression when I turned 13. However, Im still alive, decades later.

Dont raise kids with a doom narrative - they will turn out nihilistic and with lifelong depression. Im much better now, but its taken years of psychological help.

[treelzebub]

I grew up in a Southern Baptist family that deeply believed in the Rapture. I definitely had a few terrified moments when I was the first one home in the afternoon, thinking my family had been taken up, which made me think deeply about my sins. I didn't know any of the history behind the belief till now. This video is so packed with interesting info, I had to watch it twice 👏🏻

[raymondcoventry]

I've learned so much about religion and humanity's experience from this channel. It's one of my favorite educational channels of all time.

[JoshSaysStuff]

I seriously can’t convey how scarring the idea of the rapture was for me as a kid. It didn’t just terrify me whenever I wasn’t aware that my parents and siblings were out of the house; it left me feeling responsible for the souls of every kid around me. The pressure it burdened me with has lingered well into adulthood, even if it no longer has to do with the rapture specifically.

[zoeye]

I remember my grandma used to say "if" and not "when I die". She said "if" for years and even though I was brought up in churches that preached the rapture, I always felt it was weird she did that. She finally started saying "when" about 5 years before she died and although I no longer believed in the rapture or much of the bible by that point, I did feel kinda bad for her that she had given up after believing since the 70s.

[nowhereman]

I hate this sort of fear mongering so much. It's genuinely traumatic for people who are raised being told that this will happen.

[Haibing]

As someone who grew up in a catholic country (help!) and studied in a religious school, I never heard of the rapture. I remember hearing it mentioned in popular American media and not knowing what they were talking about.

[hadara]

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says:
He is always convinced that it says what he means."
~George Bernard Shaw

[Snommelp]

When people start in on me with their rapture preparations and predictions, I try to gently remind them that Jesus said nobody knows when the Son of Man will return, so maybe try living the way Jesus commanded us to live instead.

[williamreely]

Left Behind is like if God picked M. Night Shyamalan to write a twist ending for the Bible.

[gatewaytobeing]

As a teenager, at a friend's youth group in the 80s, we were shown a rapture movie. I don't recall the title, but it had me terrified for decades that any moment the rapture could happen and, would I be good enough to be taken up or would I be left behind? What about my loved ones? I now see these types of beliefs as acts of terror. Child abuse even!

[st.anselmsfire]

Imagine my shock that something essential to Christian Fundamentalism has no basis in the Bible.
I grew up around a lot of Evangelicals and they don't know anything about the Bible. It's actually kind of weird. I made the terrible mistake of trying to date a girl who was a devout Evangelical back in the early 2000s. I studied the Bible to try to understand her. It... didn't go well. She was a nice girl, but her dad couldn't stand the possibility that I was either Catholic or Jewish.

[adamiotime]

As an Australian raised as a Catholic to Polish parents... My only knowledge of the rapture was from American pop culture. It feels so foreign to any religious upbringing I had.