Vanished?

Although the exact word rapture isn’t in the Bible, millions of prophecy-minded Christians have nevertheless been taught that soon God’s church will disappear from planet Earth without a trace. Headlines are predicted to read: “Multitudes Missing! Chaos Sweeps Globe!”

The number-one promoter of the rapture idea has been the New York Times best-selling Left Behind series, coauthored by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. A high-speed, 12-book sequence of novels about the end times, Left Behind teaches that the return of Jesus Christ takes place in two distinct phases. First, Jesus comes invisibly to remove His church before a seven-year tribulation, during which the rest of humanity must face the antichrist. This is the rapture. At the end of those seven years, Jesus will again return visibly to deliver those who became Christians during the tribulation—after being given a