Three Views on the Rapture by Craig A. Blaising & Alan Hultberg & Douglas Moo

Author:Craig A. Blaising & Alan Hultberg & Douglas Moo [Blaising, Craig & Hultberg, Alan & Moo, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan Academic
Published: 2019-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

A PRETRIBULATION RESPONSE

CRAIG BLAISING

Let me begin by expressing my appreciation to Alan Hultberg for doing double duty in this volume. Not only has he presented an argument for the prewrath position, but he has served as editor as well. He has been fair and gracious in both tasks, and it is a delight to interact with him in this work.

The argument that Hultberg presents for the prewrath rapture is clearly stated, resting, as he says, on “two major theses,” which, he argues, rule out both pre and posttribulational views. His essay is structured as an exposition of these two theses with a conclusion at the end. My response will follow the order that he has set forth.

Hultberg spends the majority of his essay developing his first thesis, which posits that the church will enter the second half of the tribulation. The argument here is aimed first of all against pretribulationism, the point being that if biblical descriptions portray the church as being present in the tribulation, then it could not have been raptured prior to the tribulation. On this basis, the argument then suggests a location for the rapture. Since the church enters the second half of the tribulation, the rapture presumably must take place sometime after the midpoint of the tribulation period.

However, the presence of the church in the tribulation does not logically preclude a pretribulational rapture. Pretribulationists have always acknowledged that biblical descriptions of the tribulation show believing Jews and Gentiles to be present. This is consistent with the countertheme of repentance and grace found in day of the Lord passages along with the major theme of wrath and judgment. It is certainly true that a majority of pretribulationists, being also classical or revised dispensationalists, have argued that these tribulational Jewish and Gentile believers do not belong to the church. Progressive dispensationalists, on the other hand, do not make this claim, and the argument I have presented for pretribulationalism is not dependent on it. A pretribulational rapture rests upon its logical relationship to the onset of the day of the Lord, understood synthetically in relation to Daniel’s time of the end. Consequently, I find the ecclesial status of these tribulational believers to be irrelevant to the timing of the rapture.

The fact that Hultberg thinks it is a relevant factor — one that precludes a rapture preceding the presence of such a group — raises a problem for his own view. For he himself identifies the 144,000 in Revelation 7 and 14 as a group of Jewish believers who will be present on earth between the supposed prewrath rapture and the end of the tribulation. If he is truly a progressive dispensationalist, as he claims, then he would acknowledge that these believers also are part of the body of Christ, the church. But if the church is present on earth right before the end of the tribulation, how could there have been a prewrath rapture before this? However, if the presence of the church at the end of the

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