13 Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope.
14 We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him.
15 According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep.
16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
17 After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
18 Therefore encourage each other with these words.

(1 Thessalonians 4:13-17)

The belief in a "rapture" for the Church, by which living Christians will be snatched away or rescued by Jesus just before a great time of trouble takes place, is a popular but by no means universal doctrine. Despite some inconclusive references to early saints of the church, it is essentially a modern era teaching, promulgated by John Nelson Darby in the mid-1800s in Britain.

Darby was a disillusioned Anglican clergyman, who rejected current practices concerning church governance and founded his own movement without ordained clergy - known widely as the "Brethren" (still operating today). Darby's work included a reworking of how he thought the church should work and a major work on interpreting the whole of the Bible in terms of a chronological plan by God centering on the pre-eminence of Israel as God's major instrument on the earth. This was known as "dispensationalism" due to Darby's division of Bible history into seven major time periods or "dispensations".

The "rapture" comes at a turning point between two of Darby's dispensations. The age of the church comes to an end and (in his view) the church needs to be removed from the earth to enable God to return His attention and favour to the nation of Israel.

"...Israel shall never enter the church...if one rejects the Israel / Church distinction, one ceases to be a dispensationalist".

Israel will then become a major nation on the earth with no interaction with the church of Jesus as God's plans reach completion through Israel alone. Israel is seen as the essential instrument of God on earth, with the church existing on a purely spiritual level. Since the completion of God's plans will take place only through Israel, and since the "earthly" Israel and the "spiritual" church can never be joined together or have anything to do with each other, ("...Israel shall never enter the church." is one of his sayings), Darby needed to find a way of removing the church before Israel could blossom and fulfil its calling. He found it in 1 Thessalonians 4:17. The word "rapture" comes from the Latin word raptus, which means "a carrying off". It also comes from the Greek verb harpazo, which means "to seize upon, spoil, snatch away or take to oneself".

This video helps to refute the concept of the rapture, mainly through biblical arguments. I will continue below with some other arguments against Darby's teaching.

Darby's misinterpretation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17 is a classic case of "eisegesis"; reading into a verse or passage your preconceptions and ideas and making a case essentially from your own ideas as you approach the text. An examination of the context of the passage (and why it is shown in full above) shows us that Paul wanted to comfort Christians who were concerned about the ultimate fate of their dead loved-ones. What has happened to them? Where are they now? Will we ever meet again...?

Besides the purely biblical arguments against Darby's "rapture", there are several other extra-biblical scenarios that disprove his basic tenet of the separation of the church and Israel:

Messianic Jews
In Darby's day, there were very very few Jews in the world who accepted Jesus as their Messiah. That the main reason for this rests with Christian anti-semitism is another subject althogether! Today, however, the number of "Jewish Christians" in the world numbers in the tens of thousands at least. And most of them are citizens of the modern state of Israel. If Darby was correct, there should be no such thing as a "Jewish Christian" since "...Israel shall never enter the church".

Aliyah and the modern state of Israel
The year of Darby's death coincided with a period of harsh persecution of Jews in the Russian empire (which then included Poland and Ukraine). The realities of this time are reflected accurately in the well-known film "Fiddler on the Roof" - based on stories by a Jewish author about what was going on around hm in the Jewish community. This persecution led to the first major influx of Jews into biblical Israel since the Roman expulsion in 135CE. Successive waves of immigration ("Aliyah" or "going up" in Hebrew) climaxed with the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. If Darby's beliefs are correct, there should be no state or nation of Israel on earth until after the "rapture" of the church. So the existence of Israel today itself refutes Darby's teachings.

So are you a Christian or a Jew?
The existence of "Messianic" Jews (Jews who believe in Jesus as their Messiah) creates a major dilemma for both gentile and Jewish believers who accept the doctrine of the rapture. If there is complete separation between the church and Israel and the church is to be snatched away from earth, will Jewish Christians be taken because they are Christians or left behind because they are Jews. If the former, then they must accept the redundancy of their historic lineage as Jews. If the latter then what price salvation through Jesus if He is going to leave you behind?! However, the reality is that Jewish believers are both proud Jews and Israelis and at the same time members of the church through Jesus' universal salvation offered to both Jew and gentile. Jewish believers accepting the rapture teaching often skate around the issue, but it is a major theological hurdle for both them and us gentile believers.

For more work on Bible verses used to support the rapture, see Rapture Bible Verses