Paul on Whether There Will Be a ‘Gap’ between the Rapture and the Day of the Lord’s Wrath
Dr. Alan Kurschner talked about the apostle Paul's teaching of the temporal relationship between the rapture and the beginning of the day of the Lord’s wrath and its implications. Prewrath eschatology teaches that the rapture and the onset of the day of the Lord’s wrath will happen back-to-back on the very same day. The day Christ returns, arriving on the clouds to resurrect and rapture his people, will be the very same day that his eschatological judgments begin to unleash on the world for an undetermined length of time. To be sure, the day of the Lord will not all happen in a single day, only its inception occurs on the day the rapture happens. God’s purpose is to deliver his people and then initiate his wrath on the same day. This same-day, two-fold event contains significant implications for the pretribulational notion of “imminence,” the belief that Jesus can return at “any moment.” Since Scripture teaches that prophesied events will happen before the day of the Lord—the celestial disturbance (Joel 2:30–31), Elijah’s coming (Mal 4:5), the apostasy and revelation of the Antichrist (2 Thess 2:1–4)—then by necessity they will take place before the rapture. Consequently, the pretribulational teaching of imminence is rendered invalid. The majority of pretribulationists believe the day the rapture happens will be the same day, or the next day, the day of the Lord’s wrath begins (albeit, they wrongly place it as the beginning of the seven-year period). So, this biblical reality of events happening before the day of the Lord becomes problematic for their theological system. Some pretribulational teachers, accordingly, recognize this salient implication that contradicts their eschatological theological system. But rather than move away from their position and embrace the prewrath interpretation, they feel the need to continue to defend pretribulationism. Their attempt to resolve this problem, then, is to posit a “gap” of time—days, weeks, or months—between the rapture and the day of the Lord’s wrath. This schema then allows for the prophesied events mentioned above to occur during this “gap” before the day of the Lord but after the rapture. Thus, the pretribulationist aims to “protect” their teaching of imminence by using this interval argument. We would expect the apostle Paul to be consistent with Jesus on this point, since Paul draws so much of his eschatology from Jesus’ teaching. And sure enough, we shall see that Paul also taught the same day that Jesus returns in the clouds the righteous will be delivered and the punishment for the wicked will begin. We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, because your faith flourishes more and more and the love of each one of you all for one another is ever greater. As a result we ourselves boast about you in the churches of God for your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions you are enduring. This is evidence of God’s righteous judgment, to make you worthy of the kingdom of God, for which in fact you are suffering. For it is right for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to you who are being afflicted to give rest together with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels. With flaming fire he will mete out punishment on those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will undergo the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his strength, when he comes to be glorified among his saints and admired on that day among all who have believed—and you did in fact believe our testimony. (2 Thess 1:3–10 emphasis mine) In 2 Thessalonians 1:7, Paul instructs that the church will experience affliction right up to the initial day of the revelation of Christ: and to you who are being afflicted to give rest together with us when the Lord Jesus is rev...