The Rapture Question

My pages of The Rapture Question are scrawled in the margins with phrases like, "assumption...," "why? substantiate?" and "yes, but..." Many of Walvoord's arguments sound good until you look closely at the context, compare his interpretations to other scriptural passages, or look critically at the arguments he's making. His books are a great example of how a position can be argued on a passage-by-passage basis, but when you stand back and look at all of the passages together, a clear pattern emerges: the author has come to his conclusions only by reinterpreting and changing the clear, straightforward message of the text.

I've done extensive reading on the pretrib position and I actually find Walvoord's arguments to be among the weakest. They rely too heavily on assumption, sweeping generalizations that do not hold up under scrutiny, and the need to read between the lines.

Like other pretrib teachers, Walvoord never tackles the larger picture, which is that the Bible clearly teaches that Jesus returns once, not twice; that at His one and only return, He comes in bodily form (not spiritual form -- Acts 1:9); that the expectancy taught in scripture is not the same as an "any moment, nothing must happen first" coming; that God's wrath does not start at the beginning of the 70th Week, or even during the Great Tribulation, but later, during the Day of the Lord; and that God does put His people through intense periods of persecution and testing. Not to mention the chronological sequence of the seals, trumpets, and bowls described in Revelation, which places the return of Christ in Matt. 24:30-31 at the sixth seal, before the end of the 70th Week, not at Armageddon as Walvoord teaches.

H. L. Nigro, author of Before God's Wrath: The Bible's Answer to the Timing of the Rapture


The Rapture Leaves the Bible behind   December 8, 2003
 8 out of 14 found this review helpful

A valiant effort accompanied this deeply flawed work on "the rapture." What the book fails to delineate well are the good reasons why belief in the rapture was not accepted by most theologians in the history of Christianity. Most of what is discussed today about the rapture relies on poor exegesis rightly rejected by most Christian theologians.

For this reader, the decisive argument against the rapture is by David Currie, who believes in the Second Coming and is no liberal exegete. Read his, Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind. Currie's work is superior and is more in line with historical Christianity than this aberration mostly promoted in the United States.