The Rapture

Is it unscriptural to teach a partial rapture — that only sanctified believers are to be caught up when the Lord comes? Philippians 3:11, 12, would seem to bear out this conclusion.

That teaching is a fundamental error of far-reaching consequences. That it rests upon but few texts which apparently teach it, is of course evident even to its most convinced advocates. First, in Hebrews sanctification is always positional — objective, not subjective. “Sanctified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all’ (10:10).

Second, in Philippians 3 the apostle is speaking of his past experience down to the end of the first clause of verse 12. He puts himself back into his legal and Jewish frame at verse 4, and then shows us his frame when all his painfully acquired righteousness fell in ruins on the Damascus road, and there was born in his heart the longing for:

(a) “The righteousness of God.”

(b) The acquaintanceship with Christ.

(c) The fellowship of his sufferings (as Stephen, for example).

(d) The present realization of union in His death.

(e) The share in the out-resurrection.

That Paul uses the present tense is nothing to the purpose, for it is his way. He does the same thing in Romans 7:14-20, but no one supposes that Paul, when writing Romans, was in a seventh-of-Romans experience.

The notion of a partial rapture of Christians based upon subjective sanctification or belief in the second coming, or what not, explicitly contradicts 1 Corinthians 15:22, 23 and 1 Thessalonians 4:14-18, where the subject is not inferentially before the mind of the Spirit, but directly before His mind. Furthermore, it violates that unity of the body which is one of the tremendously emphatic doctrines concerning the Church; it completely spoils grace by insinuating that any mortal could be worthy of such a boon; and it imports into theology the notion of purgatorial cleansing in the tribulation fires, of those who already are “whiter than snow’”’ in the divine sight because blood-cleansed.

Are all Christians to be caught up to meet the Lord at His coming or only those who are entirely sanctified?

There are no Christians who are not “entirely sanctified’ (Heb. 10:10): “By the which will we are sanctified, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (1 Cor. 6:11): “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.”

In the sense of sinless perfection none is “‘sanctified’’ (1 John 1:8, 10; James 2:10; 1 Tim. 1:15).

The true distinction is not as between sanctified and unsanctified Christians, but as between ‘“‘carnal’’ and “spiritual” (1 Cor. 2:15; 3:1).

But these distinctions of spirituality or sanctification have nothing to do with qualification for the first resurrection or the rapture of the Church. The promise is to all who are Christ’s (1 Cor. 15:22, 28; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17). It is faith, not attainments subsequently to faith, which makes us Christ’s (Heb. 11:5, 6).

Where is the Holy Spirit after the rapture?

The Holy Spirit in the Church goes with the Church to meet Christ in the air, but the Church, we must remember, does not contain the entire third person of the Trinity. Christ is in us, for example, by His life, but Christ is living in the plentitude of divine life and constantly imparting new life to new believers; so while the Holy Spirit does not leave the Church, He still fills all space and the world will never be left without Him. The power of the Spirit, in other words, will accompany the tribulation preaching. Without Him, regeneration on the earth would be impossible.

On what scriptural grounds can we state that the great tribulation follows and does not precede the rapture?

1. Matthew 24:37-39 predicts the failure of the dispensation of grace not only in the unpreparedness of the people, but in their utter godlessness, as in the days before the Flood — concerned only with the things of this life, with no thought or concern for God or His kingdom.

2. We know that the great tribulation follows the descent of the Lord to receive the sleeping and living saints in the air, from the order in which these events are taken up in the Scriptures, in which truth is always progressive. In 1 Thessalonians 4 we have the rapture of the saints in the first resurrection; then follows, in the fifth chapter, the “day of the Lord,” beginning in judgment. Paul tells the believers, in the fourth chapter, that this day will not overtake them, for, says he (verse 9), “God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.” This was to be their comfort (4:18; 5:11). There would be but little comfort in the thought of their having to go through the coming tribulation. Again, in Revelation 3:10, the promise to the church of Philadelphia, representing, historically, the godly remnant in this age, the promise is that they are to be kept from (not in) “‘the hour of testing which shall come upon all the world to try them that dwell upon the earth.”” Now, if they are to be kept from it, they must necessarily have been taken out of the way previous to this time of tribulation or testing.

Again, in the fourth chapter of Revelation we see the Church, represented by the “four and twenty elders” in heaven, ready to witness the judgments which are about to fall upon the earth.

These scriptures all indicate most clearly that the great tribulation follows and does not precede the first resurrection, and the rapture.