The Armageddon Code

MANY MODERN-DAY BIBLE experts embrace a so-called “doctrine of imminence”—a paradigm in which they believe that Jesus could return “at any moment in history” to Rapture Christians, according to prophecy expert Joel Rosenberg.¹

Citing this doctrine, Rosenberg said, “The church is really called to live as though the coming of Christ—for us, to take us—could happen at any moment.”²

Many pre-Tribulation theorists believe that the next event in God’s prophetic timeline will likely be the Rapture—an event in which Christ will return in the clouds to snatch up Christians before the Tribulation begins, thus sparing believers from the anticipated chaos that will follow. Numerous Bible prophecy experts interviewed for this book, such as Mark Hitchcock, Ed Hindson, Jeff Kinley, and Joel Rosenberg, among others, said that they believe the Rapture will likely be the next eschatological event to unfold.

“The next event on God’s prophetic calendar is the Rapture . . . it’s the catching away of believers in Jesus Christ,” Hitchcock explained. “The dead will be raised and their spirits will be reunited with their bodies, and those who are alive and remain will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air.”³

Rosenberg shared that viewpoint, but offered a caveat about the potential dangers surrounding drafting and advancing definitive end-times timelines: “They can be tough” and can run the risk of being inaccurate.⁴

“The danger is that a person’s going to think, ‘Well, that’s exactly the way it has to be,’ rather than the way we think it’s going to be, based on as much as we can understand from Old and New Testament prophecies,” Rosenberg cautioned.⁵

He and others are careful in how they craft and market their end-times theories; these prophecy experts have painstakingly thought through each paradigm, dissecting and trusting Scripture to guide their interpretive journey. While their theological opponents—who have also looked to the Bible with equal respect and discernment—reject the notion of a pre-Tribulation Rapture, Rosenberg and others believe that not only will the mass exodus unfold, but also that it will end up being a “world-changing event”⁶ with monumental impact.

“My end-times scenario starts with the Rapture, which ends this church age that we live in now,” Hitchcock told me. “After that, in some point of time the Tribulation period will begin. This Antichrist figure—or world leader—will begin to emerge.”⁷

Hindson, who explained that the church age began at Pentecost and corroborated Hitchcock’s belief that it will end with the Rapture, also agreed with Rosenberg that uncertainty abounds when it comes to specific prophetic timelines.

As for the Rapture and emergence of the Antichrist, pre-Tribulationists believe that it will come at an unexpected time during which the world will be looking for someone to usher in peace and stability, with the chaos and confusion that is brought by the Rapture helping to further set the stage for what’s to follow.

As stated, among the underpinnings of pre-Tribulation theology is the idea that God will spare believers from a seven-year Tribulation period by snatching them up to heaven. Many see this concept being spoken about in 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17, when Paul writes that the dead will rise first and that living Christians “shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

Hitchcock said that anyone questioning the existence of the Rapture is mistaken, citing the original Greek for the portion of Scripture that says that people will be “caught up” and explaining that the word—harpazo—means “to be snatched or seized.”⁸

Bible expert Ron Rhodes also pointed to 1 Thessalonians 1:9–10 and 1 Thessalonians 5:9, which he said highlight a promise that God will deliver the church from the Tribulation, including His coming wrath. The former proclaims that Jesus “delivered us from the wrath to come,” with the latter reading, “For God has not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ.” It is the collective reading of these verses that has many Bible experts advancing the notion of a Rapture that precludes Christians from facing the Tribulation period.

Revelation 16, of course, recounts a situation in which God’s wrath will be poured out on the earth. (It’s a scenario that is presented throughout Revelation with mentions of the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls.) Revelation 16:1–4, which focuses on the bowls, provides a partial overview of the wrath:

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the bowls of the wrath of God on the earth.” The first went and poured out his bowl on the earth, and foul and grievous sores came on the men who had the mark of the beast and those who worshipped his image. The second angel poured out his bowl on the sea. It became like the blood of a dead man, and every living creature in the sea died. The third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.

As for the concept of believers being “caught up,” Hitchcock said that the concept of a Rapture that consists of Christians meeting God in the air shouldn’t be problematic or controversial, but did say that there’s a legitimate battle over the timing of the Rapture, as not everyone believes that it will precede the Tribulation.

“To say you don’t believe in the Rapture is denying what Scripture says,” Hitchcock said. “What you can deny is the timing of it.”⁹

Rhodes echoed that sentiment, saying that, in his mind, the debate isn’t over whether one should believe in a Rapture that consists of Christians being caught up, but instead it’s appropriate to question when it will happen.

“Most Christians will believe in some form of a Rapture,” Rhodes said.¹⁰ Hindson also affirms that there will be a “dramatic removal of the church at some point” based on his reading of 1 Thessalonians 4.¹¹

Despite fierce debate over whether Jesus will return to rescue Christians before the Tribulation begins or before His second coming, few theologians I spoke with felt that acceptance or rejection of the Rapture is a “salvation issue,” per se.

That said, for pre-Tribulationists the Rapture’s placement in the eschatological timeline is anything but benign; it is part of a grander narrative that encompasses their assumptions about the order of end-times events and, eventually, the conclusion of the world, as we know it.

Even among pre-Tribulationists there are questions about the placement of other end-times events. For instance, if and when believers are raptured, when does the Tribulation period, complete with its great troubles, begin? How long is it until the Antichrist rises to power?

“Believers are always left with the sense of the imminent coming of Christ as a real potential, but after the Rapture I would envision that the time of tribulation would begin very quickly,” Hindson said.¹²

He differentiated the Rapture from the Second Coming by specifically noting that 1 Thessalonians 4 references Jesus coming in the clouds and Christians being “caught up in the air to meet Him”—language that he said seems different from the concept of the Second Coming, also known as Christ’s return. “The return is when the believers return with Him to the earth at the battle of Armageddon and establish His kingdom on earth literally,” Hindson said.¹³

Given the complexity of the Rapture debate, it’s essential to note that the disagreement does not end with the battle over the Rapture, with additional bickering continuing to rage over what follows the Tribulation.

We’ll tackle that in subsequent chapters, but, for now, here’s how Hitchcock recaps what he believes will happen after this period of struggle: “[Jesus is] going to set up His kingdom on the Earth, one-thousand-year reign,” he explained. “And eventually that thousand-year reign will give way to the eternal kingdom of God.”¹⁴

Hindson described the current dynamic—the time in which we live—as a “spiritual kingdom” in which “Jesus rules from heaven in the hearts of believers,” and said that he believes that there won’t be a literal, theocratic kingdom until Christ’s return.¹⁵

Jesus’s second coming is one of the cornerstone beliefs that almost every Christian on the planet embraces, regardless of his or her stance on the time sequence or reality of the Rapture.

Throughout the ages the question has consistently been: When will Jesus return for the Second Coming? The answer—at least based on the Bible—is that no one but the Lord Himself knows, but that a return is indeed impending.

This is the sentiment that Rosenberg invoked in pointing back to the doctrine of imminence to highlight his belief that the Rapture can unfold at any moment. As for the Second Coming, though, he believes that it won’t happen until after a seven-year Tribulation period, which follows the Rapture.

“Jesus’s second coming to establish His kingdom on earth, to reign from Jerusalem, to defeat evil—that’s known as the Second Coming. That can’t happen at any moment,” he said. “That can only happen after seven years of what is commonly referred to by Christians as the Tribulation, the seven worst years of evil and natural disasters and war and famine in the history of mankind.”¹⁶

So, in theory, Rosenberg said that the Second Coming is always at least seven years away at any given moment—that is, until the Rapture unfolds, at which point many Bible scholars believe that the seven-year countdown will likely begin.

It’s important to go back for a moment to pre-Tribulationists’ belief that the Rapture is most likely the next event on the prophetic timetable. Rosenberg said that he believes this is likely the case, though he isn’t dogmatic about it.

“The doctrine of imminence doesn’t say that no other prophetic event will happen before the Rapture,” he explained. “It just says that no other prophetic event absolutely must happen before the Rapture.”¹⁷

That’s an important distinction, Rosenberg argued, explaining that the reemergence of Israel precluded the Rapture, though some Bible scholars would have never expected that the Jews would return to their homeland in the centuries leading up to 1948.

“We now have seen the rebirth of the state of Israel and the ingathering of the Jewish people, and it’s all happened prior to the Rapture,” Rosenberg said. “We also see Matthew 24 coming to pass—wars, rumors of wars, false messiahs, natural disasters, apostasy in the church.”¹⁸

Here, Rosenberg was speaking about Jesus’s words in Matthew 24, in which Christ spoke about the destruction of the temple as well as the coming signs of the end times. Verses 4 through 8 read:

Jesus answered them, “Take heed that no one deceives you. For many will come in My name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and will deceive many. You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled. For all these things must happen, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines, epidemics, and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.”

Rosenberg said that a series of things are happening now that he believes were prophesied in that section of Scripture, and yet the Rapture still hasn’t unfolded, corroborating his view that other events could unfold before the Rapture.

Mirroring Rosenberg’s views on Israel, others, like Kinley, have also noted that prophecy is filled with mystery and that the answers and clues often emerge slowly and over a long period of time.

The Wake the Bride author wrote, “Virtually no one could have envisioned the rebirth of Israel, and the return of the Jews worldwide to the land God had previously given to them” even a few hundred years ago. Yet, this is now standing out to many as a realization of prophecy.²⁰

No one knows for sure the future order of eschatological events, and it’s clear that many believers have been surprised by world events that have seemingly taken the fulfillment of prophecy in unexpected directions.

While many pre-Tribulation Rapture enthusiasts believe that the next key event will be the “taking up” of believers, there are many others who embrace a Rapture event that is situated quite differently in the prophetic time sequence. In the next chapter we’ll explore these ideas more deeply.