Page 175 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture in the Gospels
the truth about the church as the body of Christ has not yet
been introduced, as this is not mentioned until Matthew
16:18. Further, the doctrine of the Rapture has not been intro­
duced either, and the disciples were unaware of the truth of
the translation of the saints at the end of the church age.
Accordingly, the truth presented in Matthew 13 deals with the
whole period between the First and the Second Advents.
Because some of the parables of Matthew 13 deal with the
judgments and separation of the wicked from the righteous at
die end of the age, some posttribulationists seize on this as a
reference to the rapture of the church. Alexander Reese made
a major issue of Matthew 13 and dedicated an entire chapter
to its discussion. In particular, he referred to the parable of the
wheat and the “tares” (KJV), or “weeds.” In Matthew 13:30,
our Lord interpreted the parable in these words: “‘At that
time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie
them in bundles to be burned, then gather the wheat and
bring it into my barn.’” Reese believed that the order is im­
portant and refuted the concept of a pretribulational Rapture.
He wrote: “But if anything was lacking to refute Darbyists’
explanation of the parable, it is found in their treatment of the
burning of the tares. The wording of the parable, ‘Gather ye
together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn
them: but gather the wheat into my barn’ (v. 30), and the
words of the Lord’s interpretation (vv. 41-3), that the profes­
sors are gathered for judgment at the same crisis as the trans­
figuration of the righteous, naturally cause great embarrass­
ment to men who separated them by several years.”2
What Reese overlooked, of course, is the problem of this
verse to posttribulationism if it is indeed a revelation of the
order of events. According to posttribulationists, the order
described in Revelation 19 is that Christ comes back first to
rapture the church and then deals in judgment with the
world. Posttribulationism also requires the Rapture to take
place before the judgment, which is contradicted in the par-
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