The emergence of rapture theology to an early 19th-century Chilean Jesuit named Manuel Lacunza who proposed a theory that those who receive the Eucharist often will be taken up early at the end of the world and be spared the final 45 days of terrible judgments visited on the rest of the world.
Rome condemned his writing as doctrinally unsound, Thigpen said, but it was translated into English by the Rev. Edward Irving of the Church of Scotland, one of the earliest Protestant preachers of the secret rapture, who was excommunicated from his own church for teaching that Christ’s human nature was sinful
Rapture theology relies on an interpretation of the passage in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians where he says that when Christ comes a second time “the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”
The word “rapture” comes from the Latin verb “rapere,” which was used in St. Jerome’s Latin translation of that passage to express the notion of the just being “caught up” with the Lord.
But as Donahue and the author of another article, theologian Paul Thigpen, pointed out, rapture theology ends up teaching about a third coming of Christ – first in his birth in Bethlehem, second in his secret coming to snatch away the just before the tribulations of the end time, and third at the end of the world to reign in glory
A seven-year tribulation between the ‘rapture’ and the return of Christ is not biblical. Scripture teaches that Christ will come after a period of tribulation and that all believers will at that time be taken up to heaven to be with him,"
Rev. John Nelson Darby, leader of a small English sect who traveled to the United States and Canada seven times between 1859 and 1874 to spread his teachings about the secret rapture, becoming the chief historical influence behind rapture teaching in North America. his view of the rapture was then picked up by another gentleman, who taught the view in the footnotes of his Reference Bible. The Scofield Reference Bible was widely used in England and America, and many Protestants simply accepted what its footnotes said. Thus it was that the pre-tribulational view of the rapture – the belief that the rapture will occur before the tribulation – became very popular very quickly… even though no one had heard of it during the previous 1800 years.
Before that time, all Christians – Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant –
believed that the event known today as the “rapture” would take place right before the Second Coming. It was believed that this event would actually end a long period of persecution
catholic.com/library/Rapture.asp
The Rapture Trap Paul Thigpen
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