Questions About the Rapture

[Randy Carson]

Rapture was not theology even discussed in the churches I grew-up in although one of those Churches was Presbyterian and some branches of the Presbyterians were the first to accept it.   It's only been with the political rise Evangelical Christians and the Left Behind books that I heard about it at all.   Since then I've seen it predicted and the date come and go a few times.

So I've been doing some poking around.  As church doctrines go, it's a pretty new idea. Pre-20th Century references to it are extremely thin on the ground.  It appears to be at best an 18th Century idea that didn't become anything approaching popular until the 19th.  It's now as mainstream as it's ever been.

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The oldest arguable rapture discussion in church literature is from 1590.   by Francisco Ribera, a Catholic Jesuit, who taught "futurism" which the  idea that most of Revelation is about the future.  But most scholars don't think he was talking about anything like modern ideas about The Rapture.

The first discussion of Rapture in anything like it's modern premillennialism garb, was preached by the 17th-century American Puritan father and son Increase and Cotton Mather.  Contemparies Philip Doddridge  and John Gill agreed.

In 1788 Philadelphian Baptist Morgan Edwards wrote an essay espousing the concept of a pre-tribulation rapture.A Jesuit priest (writing as Juan Josafat Ben Ezra), wrote La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad (The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty) which was published in 1811, 10 years after his death. In 1827 it was translated into English.  Another Catholic priest Emmanuel Lacunza in followed in 1821.  

Dr. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, an English theologian and biblical scholar, wrote a pamphlet in 1866 citing the concept of the rapture in the works of John Darby back to Edward Irving.  Edward Irving taught a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. According to Irving, “There are three gatherings: – First, of the first-fruits of the harvest, the wise virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth; next, the abundant harvest gathered afterwards by God; and lastly, the assembling of the wicked for punishment.”

John Nelson Darby popularized the pre-tribulation rapture in 1827. William Eugene Blackstone's book Jesus is Coming (1878) and the Scofield Reference Bible (1909 and 1919,revised in 1967) also helped popularize the idea.

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 See The Rapture: A Popular but False Doctrine by Cecil Maranville  and Wikipedia Rapture

So my question for Christians are:

1)  Do you believe in the Rapture?

2)  If so, how do you support it Biblicaly?

3)  Why is this such a relatively recent idea?

[Edit]  Thank to Beccs one more question:

4) Why is it primarily a U.S. Christian doctrine only?

Jenny-

I have posted several times on the errors of the rapture which was promulgated by Nelson Darby and spread largely in the US by a note in the Scofield reference bible.

I know we Christians all look kinda the same to you from the outside, but there's a REASON why the Catholic Church was the first, is the biggest, is the most stable and is the least swayed by silliness like this...because it is the Church Jesus promised to build and to remain with forever.

After all, He only promised to build ONE Church in Mt. 16:18-19, and not one of the thousands of Protestant denominations that began to appear a mere 500 years ago or less can make a legitimate claim to being that Church.