Page 65 - The Rapture Question by John F. Walvoord

The Rapture Question: Revised and Enlarged Edition
ment with only three of the references relating to religious
departure. In eleven of the instances the word depart is a good
translation. As English indicated in a note, a number of an­
cient versions such as Tyndale’s, the Covcrdale Bible, the
version by Cranmer, the Geneva Bible, and Bcza’s transla­
tion, all from the sixteenth century, render the term “depart­
ing.”7 He therefore suggested the possibility of rendering
2 Thessalonians 2:3 to the effect that the departure must
“come first,” i.e., the rapture of the church must occur before
the man of sin is revealed. If this translation be admitted, it
would constitute an explicit statement that the rapture of the
church occurs before the Tribulation.
The nature of the Tribulation as revealed in Scripture
constitutes an important argument supporting the teaching
that the church will not go through the Tribulation. It has
been shown that a literal interpretation of the Tribulation
does not produce any evidence that the church will be in this
period. Important passages, such as Deuteronomy 4:29-30;
Jeremiah 30:4-11; Daniel 9:24-27; 12:1; Matthew 24:15-31;
1 Thessalonians 1:9-10; 5:4-9; Revelation 4-18 do not indicate
that the church will be in the tribulation period. It has been
shown that the purpose of the Tribulation is to purge and
judge Israel and to punish and destroy Gentile power. In
neither aspect is the church the object of the events of the
period. In addition to these general arguments, the Scriptures
also indicate that the believer in this present age will be kept
from the time of wrath (1 Thess. 1:9-10; 5:4-10; 2 Peter 2:6-9;
Rev. 3:10). Taken as a whole, the study of the Tribulation as
revealed in Scripture does not afford any support to a post-
tribulational translation of the saints.

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