The Rapture: Where Did It Come From, and Will It Really Happen?

On Tuesday 23 September 2025, thousands of people around the world watched the sky. A South African pastor had announced that Jesus would come for His people over that day and the next, timed to the Feast of Trumpets. On TikTok, some believers said they had quit their jobs or sold their belongings. The sun set on the 24th. Nothing happened.

It was not the first time, and it will not be the last. Behind every one of these dates sits a teaching that millions of Christians have grown up with and rarely question: the rapture. In this article we will look at what the teaching actually says, where it came from, how it spread around the world, and what the Scriptures themselves say. My prayer is not that you simply take my word for it, but that you open your Bible, weigh the evidence, and discern for yourself.

What is "the rapture"?

In most churches today, "the rapture" means something very specific. The teaching (known as the pre-tribulation rapture) says that:

• Jesus will come secretly and suddenly, unseen by the world, and take true believers up to heaven in an instant;
• those left behind will then go through seven years of tribulation under the Antichrist;
• only after that will Jesus return a second time, visibly, in power and glory.

In other words, the Lord's return is split into two separate events, years apart.

The word "rapture" itself is not in the English Bible. It comes from the Latin rapiemur, used in 1 Thessalonians 4:17 for "we shall be caught up". So let us be clear and fair from the start: the catching up of believers to meet the Lord is in Scripture. The real question is the timing and the secrecy. Is there a hidden coming before the tribulation, followed later by a visible one? Or is there one glorious appearing at the end? That two-stage idea is what we are tracing.

Port Glasgow, 1830: a young woman's vision

For about eighteen hundred years, the Church read of one return of Christ: visible, loud and final. Then, in the spring of 1830, something happened in the small Scottish shipbuilding town of Port Glasgow.

Margaret MacDonald, a girl of about fifteen, lay seriously ill at home. Scotland was in the middle of a season of revival. Reports of healings, tongues and prophecy were spreading, much of it connected to the circle of the London preacher Edward Irving. During this time Margaret described a vision of the Lord's coming. In her account, the coming would be seen and known only by those filled with the Spirit, while others would not perceive it. She described believers being taken up to meet the Lord.

News of the Port Glasgow manifestations travelled fast. Visitors came from London to investigate, and an account appeared in Irving's prophecy journal, The Morning Watch, in December 1830. Among those who visited the west of Scotland that year was a young Anglo-Irish clergyman named John Nelson Darby.

An honest note on the debate

Historians argue about how much Margaret's vision shaped what followed. The author Dave MacPherson spent decades arguing that it was the seed of the pre-tribulation rapture. Darby's defenders reply that he had begun forming his views before 1830, that he called the Scottish manifestations a deception, and that Margaret's own words spoke of the Church passing through a "fiery trial", which sounds more like a rapture after tribulation than before it. Her account was not printed until 1840, and later editions left out some of those lines.

What both sides agree on is the timing: the teaching as it is preached today took shape in the British Isles around 1830, among the same small circles of prophecy students. Before that, no major church taught a secret coming of Christ separate from His visible return.

How the idea took off

From a sickroom in Port Glasgow, the teaching travelled across the world in less than a century. Here is how.

• 1830–1831 – Edward Irving and The Morning Watch. Irving's followers began writing about a taking-away of faithful believers before the great tribulation.
• 1831–1833 – The Powerscourt conferences. At Lady Powerscourt's estate in Ireland, Darby set out his new system, including the pre-tribulation rapture. He went on to lead the Plymouth Brethren and became known as the father of dispensationalism.
• 1860s–1870s – America. Darby made several preaching tours of North America. His ideas were taken up at Bible conferences, such as those at Niagara, and by influential teachers.
• 1909 – The Scofield Reference Bible. Cyrus Scofield placed Darby's system in the footnotes of a study Bible. For millions of readers, the notes sat on the same page as the Word of God, and the rapture began to feel like Scripture itself.
• 1970 – The Late Great Planet Earth. Hal Lindsey's book became the best-selling non-fiction title of its decade, with around 28 million copies sold by 1990.
• 1995–2007 – Left Behind. Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins's novels, which open with millions vanishing from the earth, sold tens of millions more copies and became films.

Today, many believers assume the rapture has always been the faith of the Church. In truth, it is younger than the railway.

What does the Bible actually say?

Read these passages slowly, in your own Bible, and ask: does this describe a secret coming, or a visible one? Does it come before the tribulation, or after?

"Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened … and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect."
— Matthew 24:29–31 (KJV)

"For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air."
— 1 Thessalonians 4:16–17

"In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump."
— 1 Corinthians 15:52

"Now we beseech you, brethren, by the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by our gathering together unto him … that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed."
— 2 Thessalonians 2:1–3

"Behold, he cometh with clouds; and every eye shall see him."
— Revelation 1:7

Notice a few things. The gathering in Matthew 24 comes after the tribulation. The catching up in 1 Thessalonians comes with a shout, a voice and a trumpet, which is hardly secret. Paul places it at the last trumpet. And in 2 Thessalonians he ties "our gathering together unto him" to a day that will not come until the man of sin has been revealed.

What about "one shall be taken, and the other left" (Matthew 24:40)? Read the verses just before it. Jesus compares His coming to the days of Noah, when the flood "took them all away". In that picture, those taken were swept away in judgement, and Noah was the one left safe. In the parable of the wheat and the tares, the tares are gathered out first (Matthew 13:30). And Jesus prayed for His disciples, "not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil" (John 17:15).

To be fair to the other side

Pre-tribulation teachers point to 1 Thessalonians 5:9 ("God hath not appointed us to wrath"), Revelation 3:10 ("I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation"), and the fact that the word "church" does not appear in Revelation 4–18. These are worth reading too. The question to ask is whether being kept from wrath means being removed from the earth, or being protected through it, as Israel was protected in Goshen while the plagues fell on Egypt.

The Bereans "searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so" (Acts 17:11). We are called to do the same.

A long line of wrong dates

Because the rapture is taught as something that could happen "any moment", it has drawn people into date-setting again and again. Every single date has failed.

• 1843–1844 – William Miller. The Baptist preacher predicted Christ would return by March 1844, then settled on 22 October 1844. When the day passed, his followers called it "the Great Disappointment".
• 1988 – Edgar Whisenant. A former NASA engineer, he published 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988, naming the Feast of Trumpets in September. Millions of copies were distributed. When it failed, he moved the date to 3 October, then to 1989, and later again.
• 1994 and 2011 – Harold Camping. The radio broadcaster first pointed to 1994. Then billboards around the world announced 21 May 2011 as Judgement Day. When that passed, he moved it to 21 October 2011.
• 2025 – "RaptureTok". Pastor Joshua Mhlakela said Jesus had shown him in a vision that the rapture would take place on 23–24 September 2025. The prediction went viral, and some people sold belongings or left work.

Lives were turned upside down, savings were spent, and the name of the Lord was mocked in the newspapers each time. Yet Jesus had already settled the matter:

"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only."
— Matthew 24:36

"It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power."
— Acts 1:7

Anyone who names the day or the hour is claiming to know what Jesus said only the Father knows.

So, will the rapture happen?

Here is what Scripture promises beyond doubt: Jesus is coming back. The angels at His ascension said He would "so come in like manner as ye have seen him go into heaven" (Acts 1:11): bodily, visibly and in the clouds. The dead in Christ will rise, and those alive will be caught up to meet Him. That hope is sure.

What you must decide, with your Bible open and in prayer, is whether that catching up is a secret event seven years before His return, an idea that cannot be found in any church's teaching before around 1830, or part of His one glorious appearing "after the tribulation of those days".

As you weigh it, ask yourself:

1. Can I show this teaching from Scripture alone, without a study-Bible note, a chart or a novel?
2. Do the passages I am reading describe a quiet coming or a loud one?
3. Where does Jesus Himself place the gathering of His elect: before the tribulation or after it?
4. If I am wrong about being taken out first, am I ready to stand firm through hard times?

That last question matters most. Whichever way you land, Jesus gave the same instruction: "Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come" (Matthew 24:42). Our calling is not to calculate. It is to be ready, rooted in the Word and alert in prayer.

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Search the Scriptures, pray for wisdom, and keep watching. He is coming. Of that, we can be sure.