The Christian “belief in the
‘rapture’ of believers at the time of Jesus’ return to Earth is rooted in a
particular form of biblical interpretation that emerged in the 19th
century. Known as dispensational pre-millennialism, it is especially popular
among American evangelicals.”[1]
This biblical interpretation is based on the following from one of Paul’s
letters to a church:
“For the Lord himself shall
descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the
trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive
and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the
Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”[2]
Presumably the “trump of God”
in the King James version of the Bible is distinct from Trump as God, for that
eventuality would raise a myriad of questions and difficulties, and at least
two difficulties pertain to the verse and, moreover, to dispensational
pre-millennialism as a Christian doctrine. That it was constructed only
recently by Christian standards raises the question of why the idea did not
dawn on Christians closer to Paul’s time. That Paul does not represent himself
in his letters as having met Jesus prior to the Resurrection and Paul’s use of
mythological/Revelations language, such as “with the voice of the archangel,”
also provide support for not taking the passage literally. After his
resurrection in the Gospels, Jesus does not have the voice of an archangel.
With Paul’s passage viewed figuratively or symbolically, rather than
empirically and literally, the underlying religious meaning would of
course remain unperturbed: keeping the faith is of value and thus in holding on
to one’s distinctly religious (and Christian) faith, this strength will be
vindicated even if no signs of this emerge during a person’s life. In other
words, faith in vindication is part of having a religious faith, which is not
limited our experience. The Resurrection itself can be construed as vindication
with a capital V, regardless of whether Jesus rose from the dead empirically and
thus as a historical event. In fact, a historical account or claim is extrinsic
to religious narrative even though the sui generis genre can legitimately
make selective use of, and even alter, historical reports to make theological
points. The writers of the Gospels would have considered this perfectly legitimate,
given that they were writing faith narratives and not history books. Making
this distinction is vital, I submit, to obviating the risk that one’s
theological interpretations lead to supporting unethical state-actors on the
world stage, such as Israel, which as of 2025 was serially committing genocidal
and perhaps even holocaust crimes against humanity in Gaza. In short, the
theological belief that supporting Israel will result in the Second Coming happening
sooner than otherwise can be understood to be an unethical stance based on a
category mistake. American Evangelical Christians may have been unwittingly
enabling another Hitler for the sake of the salvation of Christians, while the
Vatican stood by merely making statements rather than acting to help the innocent
Palestinians, whether with food and medicine, or in actually going to Gaza’s
southern border (or joining the flotilla) to protest as Gandhi would have done.
The full essay is at "On the Ethics of Dispensational Pre-Millennialism."
2. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (KJV)
