Week 8

Darby, Scofield, and the Rapture

By Trish Tipton

If you've come again searching, let's search together. This one has been on my heart for a long time. Last time we asked who Abraham's children are, and what country he was looking toward. This week I want to look at another way the drift happened, this time in teaching rather than in money. How did so many of us come to expect that the church would be taken out before trouble, and what did Jesus actually say?

I've heard it preached for years that Christians will be taken out of the world before the hard times come, that we'll be "caught up" and spared the tribulation. It's in sermons, books, and movies. I took it on trust for a long time, the way I used to take other things on trust. Then I started asking where that teaching came from, and whether the church always believed it.

What I found is that a lot of modern teaching on the end times, and on keeping Israel and the church on separate tracks, comes from a system called dispensationalism. It is only a couple hundred years old. A man named John Nelson Darby developed it, and the Scofield Reference Bible spread it through its margin notes. Dispensationalism divides history into dispensations, or periods, and draws a sharp line between the tribe of Israel and the body of Christ. We sat last week with Paul's words that they are not all Israel who are descended from Israel, and that those who belong to Christ are Abraham's descendants by faith. I don't want to walk through all of that again. As I read him, Paul tears that wall down.

Here's the history, as plainly as I can tell it.

John Nelson Darby lived from 1800 to 1882. He was an Anglo-Irish clergyman and an early leader of the Plymouth Brethren. In the 1800s he developed the system now called dispensationalism (Ligonier). Dispensational teaching about the end times includes a pre-tribulation rapture, where Christ removes the church from the earth before a seven-year tribulation. Historians trace the distinctives of this view to Darby's writings in the 1800s (Ligonier).

Cyrus I. Scofield lived from 1843 to 1921. He published the Scofield Reference Bible through Oxford University Press in 1909, and revised it in 1917. Its notes explained the Bible through that dispensational system, and it sold more than two million copies by the end of World War II (Wikipedia, citing published histories). Through Bible conferences, Bible schools, and those notes, the ideas spread widely among American churches in the 1900s (Ligonier).

So "a couple hundred years old" is about right. That does not make a teaching false all by itself. It does mean it was not what every generation of Christians always held, and it is fair to check it against Jesus' own words. We have already seen how a church custom can spread until it feels like it has always been there. Teaching can travel the same way. A note in the margin, a conference, a school, a book that enough people trust, and soon a recent idea starts to sound like the only way anyone ever read the passage.

The passage most often used for the rapture is this one:

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 (NASB 2020)

¹⁶For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷Then we who are alive, who remain, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord.

Believers "caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." The way I read it, that is coming. I do not doubt that Jesus will return and gather His people. That hope is precious to me. The question is when, and whether He promised we would be taken out before the tribulation, or promised to gather us after it. Those are not the same promise, and only one of them can be what He actually said.

Here's how Jesus described His coming and the gathering of His people:

Matthew 24:29-31 (NASB 2020)

²⁹“But immediately after the tribulation of those days THE SUN WILL BE DARKENED, AND THE MOON WILL NOT GIVE ITS LIGHT, AND THE STARS WILL FALL from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. ³⁰And then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the SON OF MAN COMING ON THE CLOUDS OF THE SKY with power and great glory. ³¹And He will send forth His angels with A GREAT TRUMPET BLAST, and THEY WILL GATHER TOGETHER His elect from the four winds, from one end of the sky to the other.

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days." Then the sign of the Son of Man, then the trumpet, and then the gathering of "His elect." When I put this next to 1 Thessalonians 4, I see the same trumpet and the same gathering, and Jesus places it after the tribulation, not before.

There's another passage that often gets used to keep Israel on a separate track from the church:

Romans 11:26-27 (NASB 2020)

²⁶and so all Israel will be saved; just as it is written: “THE DELIVERER WILL COME FROM ZION, HE WILL REMOVE UNGODLINESS FROM JACOB.” ²⁷“THIS IS MY COVENANT WITH THEM, WHEN I TAKE AWAY THEIR SINS.”

Christians read "all Israel will be saved" in different ways, and I want to say that plainly. Paul says the Deliverer takes away their sins. I read that as salvation through Christ, the same way anyone is saved, not a separate plan running beside the gospel we already looked at. I'm not asking you to settle every debate about Romans 11 in one sitting. I am asking us not to let a note in the margin do the reading for us.

Once I saw how recent the pre-tribulation teaching is, I couldn't stop asking the harder question that comes after it. If the church isn't taken out before the hard times, what then? What if believers go through the tribulation?

Jesus never told His disciples they would escape trouble. He told them the opposite, and then He told them why they could still have peace:

John 16:33 (NASB 2020)

³³These things I have spoken to you so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation, but take courage; I have overcome the world.”

"In the world you have tribulation." Not "might." Have. And right next to it, "take courage; I have overcome the world."

When Jesus described the great tribulation, He said this:

Matthew 24:21-22 (NASB 2020)

²¹For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will again. ²²And if those days had not been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.

Notice who those days are cut short for. "For the sake of the elect." That tells me the elect are there while it's happening. He does not leave His people. He shortens the days for their sake.

The apostles taught the new believers the same thing. After Paul was stoned at Lystra and left for dead, he and Barnabas went back to strengthen the disciples:

Acts 14:22 (NASB 2020)

²²strengthening the souls of the disciples, encouraging them to continue in the faith, and saying, “It is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God.”

"It is through many tribulations that we must enter the kingdom of God." That was part of how they encouraged people, not how they scared them.

And in Revelation, John sees a great multitude in white robes and asks who they are:

Revelation 7:14 (NASB 2020)

¹⁴I said to him, “My lord, you know.” And he said to me, “These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation, and they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.

"These are the ones who come out of the great tribulation." They came out of it. They were washed in the blood of the Lamb.

I know many sincere, Bible-loving believers hold the pre-tribulation view, and I am not questioning their faith. A lot of us accepted it because it was handed to us, not because we found Jesus saying we would be spared every hard day. I don't want anyone who was taught this in good faith to feel foolish. I sat under it too. If I am wrong and the church is taken out first, I will be glad to be wrong. I would rather be ready than caught off guard. And I would rather prepare my heart for the harder road than build my faith on a promise I cannot find Jesus making.

We talked earlier about being ready in season and out of season, and about the prudent ones who kept oil in their lamps. We also talked about doing the work of Christ, rather than building salvation totals. I keep those close here. Being ready is not the same thing as collecting decisions so we can leave. Being ready is doing His work, staying awake, and taking courage because He has already overcome the world.

If we are not exempt from trouble, what would it look like to be ready without being afraid?

I would rather you not take my word for any of this. Open your Bible and read it yourself. Read 1 Thessalonians 4, and sit with the promise that we will be caught up to meet the Lord. Read Matthew 24 slowly, especially the words "immediately after the tribulation of those days," and the days cut short for the sake of the elect. Read John 16 and Acts 14, and hear both the tribulation and the courage. Read Romans 11 in its setting, not only a verse or two. Read Revelation 7, and look at the ones who come out of the great tribulation with robes washed in the blood of the Lamb. Read 2 Timothy 4, and hear again the charge to be ready in season and out of season. Look at the history too, and ask where the teaching you were handed actually came from.

If something doesn't sit right, stay with it. If a hope you have loved feels shaken, stay with that too, and take it to Jesus' own words. That's how this one started for me: a teaching I had heard all my life, and a growing sense that I needed to know whether He had promised we would be taken out before trouble, or promised to be with us through it.

History sources: Ligonier Ministries, "Dispensationalism" guide (https://learn.ligonier.org/guides/dispensationalism); "Scofield Reference Bible," Wikipedia, citing The New York Times and Oxford University Press histories (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scofield_Reference_Bible).

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