The Rapture in Matthew 24

“The one shall be taken, and the other left.”

It is hard for most of us to read these words from Matthew 24:40–41 without thinking of the rapture. In the Olivet Discourse (a lesson that Jesus delivered from the Mount of Olives during the week before His crucifixion), our Lord gives us a vivid picture: there are two people in a bed; there are two people working in a field—and then there is one in the bed, one in the field. Two people have entirely disappeared. The shocking description fits our expectation of believers being “caught up together . . . in the clouds.” If these verses do speak of the rapture, then the surrounding context suggests events that might be signs of that blessed hope.

Despite this seemingly straightforward connection, I contend that we should avoid reading these verses as a reference to the rapture. Before turning to the exegesis of the relevant sections of Matthew 24–25, Mark 13, and Luke 21, we will first consider two overarching interpretive principles.

PROGRESSIVE REVELATION WITHIN THE NEW TESTAMENT

All Christians believe that God reveals His eternal plan in greater detail as history unfolds. This conviction is particularly central to dispensational theology. Dispensationalists insist that Paul means it when he says that the church is God’s mystery “which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Eph. 3:5).