Rapture

The Orthodox teaching is that Jesus Christ will return at an unknown time and in a way we are not able to fully understand, to judge the living and the dead.

We do not speculate any further about how and when this will take place. Our main concern is to be always ready, spiritually, for the event, but to avoid making efforts to understand the details of it. We do not use the word “rapture” in our theology of the last things (eschatology).

The Creed of the Church, which is included in every Divine Liturgy and in many of the other services of the Orthodox Church gives the basic answer to the question: “…and He (Jesus Christ) shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead… I look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the age to come.”

The Orthodox Church does not use the word “rapture,” but its basic meaning is not contrary to Orthodox belief. In the words of the new Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology, the “rapture,” is “the expected event when the Lord Jesus will return to raise the blessed dead and believers who are still alive will be ‘changed’ (1 Corinthians 15:51f), be ‘caught up’ with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord'” (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).

Since we are specifically told by Christ that “No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father (Mark 13:33) we do not speculate about its time or its nature in the Orthodox Church. What we affirm is that on the basis of Holy Scripture and the living tradition of the Church, we expect that Christ will return one day. When it will take place, precisely what its nature will be, what it means to be “changed,” and a host of other questions are beyond our knowledge since there has not been any revelation on these topics. Our teaching, therefore, rejects curious and unfounded efforts to peer into the future and to sketch out some kind of end-time plans.

We do not even use the non-scriptural word “rapture” when we do talk about the end-times. Not so among many Protestants. Great controversies occur among some fundamentalist and Evangelical Protestants on this topic and there are all kinds of so-called “Dispensationalist” theories which use certain obscure phrases of the book of Revelation to form Millenarianist teachings which purport to describe in detail what will happen at the end of the world, when Christ returns.

Some of these hold that prior to the coming of Christ for the Last Judgment, He will return secretly in order to grant the “rapture” to His “elect.” Needless to say these views are only by the greatest stretch of the imagination supported by the Scriptures, and not at all found in the ongoing Holy Tradition of the Church.

What is in the tradition, however, is the call for Christians to be ready for the Lord’s return. It is in the daily prayers, pre- and post-communion prayers, Holy Week services, and embodied in the Divine Liturgy. We seek to follow Jesus’ words “Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come … keep watch if he comes suddenly, do not let him find you sleeping. What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!”” (Mark 13:32-37 NIV).