Getting Left Behind When the Rapture Comes

A good friend once told me of a terrifying experience that soon followed his becoming a "born-again" Christian. Late for what he thought was a Gideon ministry breakfast at a local restaurant, he opened the door to the meeting room and found no one there. "Leroy," he went on to tell me, "the first thing that came into my mind was that the rapture had come and I was left behind. I ran to the phone to call my wife, and when she answered, I didn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed."

It was by God's help alone that I avoided saying something inane in response. I only asked my friend to tell me more about what getting left behind would have meant to him. His answer then, and this was many years ago, is the same answer that I keep getting nowadays from yet another generation of the rapture-possessed.

The one thing that we don't want to happen to us in this life, their message goes, is to be caught unaware when our Lord returns on the clouds in glory to usher in the end of the world. Here is how the scenario plays out: first, those who have died in the faith will be raised from their graves to meet believers still alive on the earth; then, both groups will be lifted into the air together ("raptured") to meet Christ on their way to heaven; finally, everyone left behind will suffer horribly, as the world comes to its divinely appointed, cataclysmic end. The point of the prophesy is that we must work really hard at being a strong enough believer to be taken up, rather than left behind, by Jesus when the end-time comes.

Ever since my friend shared his terror with me, I simply have not been able to get out of my mind the words I was thinking at the time, but refrained from saying: He's got to be kidding me. Now, when people tell me how much the books of Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins mean to them --- the theme of all ten (!) is the rapture --- the same thought keeps popping into my head. I am aware that rapture talk is right there in the Bible, with a no less credible figure than St. Paul himself standing behind it. (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17) But what Paul said about the rapture back then (it has been a long time coming, hasn't it?) is not the same thing as what the don't-get-left-behind crowd says about it today.

Paul's vivid word-picture of our being raised up to meet Christ in the air was clearly intended to answer a different question than ones we now bring to it. Rather than speaking to questions like What's the second coming going to look like?, or, Who makes it through and who doesn't?, Paul is answering people who are uncertain about whether believers who have already died can share in the blessings of a second coming yet to occur. (4:15) By means of his picture, he answers this question, and no other, and he does it with a resounding YES.

Clearly, there are ominous rumblings in this part of Paul's letter. By concentrating his attention here only on the destiny of believers, dead and alive, he cannot help but suggest (a) that non-believers who have died will not be raised up at all, and (b) that non-believers who are alive at the time of the second coming will be left behind to experience the world's destruction. The trouble comes when we give more importance to the unstated implications of Paul's account than we do to the main point it conveys.

The image of "meeting the Lord in the air" does indeed suggest a process of ascending into heaven with Christ. But it also points to an encounter with Christ that comes to completion with the return of all his followers to earth with him, preparatory to his enthronement there as Lord over all. Which meaning did Paul have in mind? We cannot know for sure. What we can know is that he wanted most especially to reassure his readers that they --- and we --- shall always be with the Lord, no matter what.

Sometime after my friend told me about his panic-attack over missing the rapture, he shared with me what got him over it: knowing that God was still with him, even as God was present in that empty Gideon meeting room, and that God would continue to be with him, and with his wife, and with the world, for a long time to come. Hearing him say this made me feel just a twinge of rapture myself. Enjoying together a moment with God, we were both snatched up into His presence.