On the Heels of the Rapture
Is His Blood Enough?
Two Disciples
Two men walked closest to Jesus. They shared the same Lord, the same calling, and the same salvation — yet they carried themselves in wildly different postures.
Peter was always proving something. He swore he’d never deny Christ, then denied him three times before dawn. He rebuked Jesus for speaking of the cross, drew his sword when Jesus was surrendering, and jumped out of boats on impulse. He pressed ahead of God’s pace, then collapsed behind it, perpetually zealous and erratic, desperate to demonstrate his love.
John called himself “the one whom Jesus loved.” This wasn’t arrogance; it was orientation. He leaned back against Christ’s chest at the Last Supper and stood at the foot of the cross when the others had fled. He outran Peter to the empty tomb, then waited at the entrance rather than barging in. John didn’t need to prove anything because he had already settled something.
Both were saved, and both were used mightily. Christ built His church on Peter, called him the rock, and handed him the keys of the kingdom. John leaned on Jesus and received the Revelation. Neither role was lesser. But they walked different roads to the same destination and bore different fruit along the way.
Peter was crucified upside down.
John was boiled in oil and survived. He was exiled to Patmos, where he received the Revelation, and there is no recorded death for him. Then there is that strange exchange at the end of John’s Gospel: Peter, freshly restored but still comparing himself, asks Jesus what will happen to John. Jesus answers, “If I want him to remain until I come, what is it to you? You follow me.”
Two legs of the same body, two postures toward the same grace.
The Divide Runs Deeper
This same fault line runs through how Christians think about the end.
Scroll through enough online theology and you’ll encounter a confident claim: the rapture was invented by John Nelson Darby in the 1830s. According to this view, it’s a recent doctrine with no basis in scripture, a fabrication that captured American evangelicalism through the Scofield Reference Bible and Left Behind novels.
The word “rapture” doesn’t appear in English Bibles, and this much is true. The term comes from the Latin rapiemur in the Vulgate’s translation of 1 Thessalonians 4:17, which renders the Greek harpazō: to seize, snatch away, catch up.
But the absence of an English word is not the absence of a concept. And the age of a doctrine’s systematization doesn’t determine its truth — scripture does. Many doctrines weren’t formally articulated until centuries after the apostles, including the Trinity and the canon itself, without being “invented.” The question isn’t when Darby wrote; the question is whether the pattern exists in scripture.
And here’s what interests me: the debate isn’t really about timelines. It’s about posture.
Those who reject the rapture — who position themselves to endure the tribulation, to go through the fire and prove their faithfulness — are taking Peter’s road. They stand with sword drawn, ready to fight, ready to suffer, ready to demonstrate their love through endurance.
Those who receive the rapture aren’t claiming superior knowledge or an escape from all hardship. They’re taking John’s posture, leaning back into love, trusting the pattern God established, and believing that the Bridegroom doesn’t send His Bride through wrath He already bore on her behalf.
The salvation is the same, but the fruit is different.
So before we examine the texts, we need to sit with this question: Which posture are you taking — and why?
This isn’t written to persuade Peter to put down his sword, but to remind John that he was never asked to pick it up.
The Real Question: What Is the Tribulation?
Before asking whether or when the rapture occurs, we need to ask what the tribulation actually is.
Is it Satan’s rampage against humanity, or is it God’s judgment poured out on a Christ-rejecting world?
Consider the source of each plague: the seals are opened by the Lamb Himself, the trumpets are sounded by angels from the throne, and the bowls are explicitly called the wrath of God. This is the Day of the Lord that the prophets spoke of, a time of divine intervention and divine judgment originating from heaven itself.
This distinction matters because everything hinges on it.
If the tribulation is God’s wrath, then we should ask: what is God’s pattern when His judgment falls? Does He protect His people through the wrath, or does He remove them before it?
A Cord of Three Strands
Scripture answers this question three times before Sinai — before the Law was given — and a cord of three strands is not easily broken.
Noah
Noah was raised above the waters before judgment fell on the earth. The very waters that destroyed the world lifted the ark to safety. The pattern is rescue, then destruction. Noah didn’t tread water for forty days while protected by an invisible bubble; he was removed from the sphere of judgment entirely.
Lot
Lot was removed from Sodom before fire fell. Note the angel’s words in Genesis 19:22: “I cannot do anything until you arrive there.” God restrained His own judgment until the righteous were extracted. The fire could not fall while Lot remained within the city.
Israel at the Red Sea
Israel was brought through the waters before those same waters fell upon Pharaoh and his armies. The Israelites didn’t endure the judgment; they passed through and out, stood on the far shore, and watched it fall on their enemies.
These three examples operate at three different scales — global, city, and national — yet they reveal the same pattern, and it’s worth stating plainly: before God’s judgment arrives, rescue takes place. First the righteous are removed, then the wrath falls. Not protection during judgment, but extraction before it. The sequence matters. God doesn’t ask His people to weather what He’s about to pour out; He moves them out of the way entirely.
This is the difference between Peter’s posture and John’s posture once again. If both had been in Sodom that night, Peter might have insisted on staying, fireproof suit on, ready to witness through the flames. John would have taken the angel’s hand and walked out without looking back.
The New Testament Fulfillment
The Old Testament establishes the pattern, and the New Testament reveals the event.
Paul’s Teaching
In 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, Paul describes the sequence: the Lord descends with a shout, the voice of the archangel, and the trump of God. The dead in Christ rise first, and then those who are alive and remain are caught up (harpazō) together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.
In 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, he adds further detail: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump.” The dead are raised incorruptible, and the living are transformed.
Paul explicitly describes believers who don’t die but are caught up while still alive. This isn’t the Second Coming where Christ returns to earth with His saints to establish His kingdom; this is a snatching away to meet Him in the air, a distinct event with a distinct purpose.
John’s Vision
Revelation 12:1-5 is prophecy, not history, and this point deserves emphasis. The book of Revelation opens by declaring its purpose: to show “things which must shortly come to pass.” The entire vision concerns future events. John is not writing a historical retrospective or a symbolic retelling of past events; he is recording what will happen, not what has already happened.
So why would John suddenly insert a historical account of Christ’s birth and ascension into the middle of his prophetic vision? If Revelation is about the future, why would chapter 12 be about the past?
He wouldn’t do this, and he didn’t.
Consider the literary structure. Revelation 12:1 and 12:3 explicitly introduce both elements as “great signs” (σημεῖον μέγα) appearing in heaven: “A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman...” and “Then another sign appeared in heaven: a great red dragon...” Every time John uses this phrase throughout Revelation, it refers to future events — the seven angels with the seven plagues in Revelation 15:1, for example. There is no precedent anywhere in the book for John to say “a great sign appeared in heaven” and mean “here is a symbolic recap of something that happened sixty years ago.” If the woman and the dragon are future signs, the child’s catching away must belong to the same prophetic sequence.
Now look closely at verse 5, where there are two references to the child and two different Greek words employed.
“She bore a male child” — υἱὸν ἄρσεν (huion arsen). This is masculine, and it refers to Christ, born of Israel.
“Her child was caught up to God and His throne” — τὸ τέκνον (to teknon). This is neuter, a gender-neutral term.
Why would John switch terms in the middle of a single verse? If he meant Jesus in both cases, the shift is awkward at best, and John wrote in careful, precise Greek. But if the second reference is the Church — male and female together as one body in Christ — then the neuter form makes both grammatical and theological sense.
Consider also the verb itself: Jesus was never harpazō’d. His ascension was triumphant, unhurried, and deliberate. He was lifted up and received into glory without any threat, rescue, or urgency. There was no snatching.
The word harpazō implies seizure from danger, like a child grabbed from oncoming traffic. That description does not fit Christ’s ascension in any way. But the Church caught up before the dragon’s fury? That fits precisely.
Revelation 12:5 shows the male child (Christ) born, and then the neuter child (the Church, His body) caught up to the throne — and this happens before the woman flees into the wilderness and before the tribulation unfolds.
To summarize the case that Revelation 12 is future prophecy, not historical flashback:
John frames the entire book as “things which must shortly come to pass” (1:1, 1:3, 22:6), and the woman and dragon are both introduced as “great signs appearing in heaven” — language he uses exclusively for future events. Inserting a sixty-year-old historical recap into this prophetic sequence contradicts everything about how John structures his vision.
The verb harpazō implies urgent seizure from danger. Christ’s ascension in Acts 1 was triumphant and unhurried, not a snatching. The language doesn’t fit.
The Greek shifts from masculine (huion arsen) to neuter (to teknon) mid-verse. If John meant Jesus in both cases, the shift is inexplicable. If the second reference is the Church — male and female as one body — the neuter makes sense.
The sequence places the catching away before the woman flees into the wilderness for 1,260 days and before the dragon is cast down to persecute the rest of her offspring — exactly where a pre-tribulation rapture would occur.
Paul teaches the event in his epistles, and John sees it in his vision. They describe the same reality from different angles.
But What About Daniel? The Furnace?
A fair objection rises here: Daniel in the lions’ den and Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire. Didn’t God preserve them through judgment rather than removing them from it?
Yes, He did. And this is the key distinction.
Those examples are post-Sinai, occurring under the Mosaic covenant after Israel received the Law. Their pattern is different: preservation through trial, not extraction before it.
Consider what changed at Sinai. Before that mountain, Israel had no Law. They were a people set apart under the Abrahamic covenant, living under grace rather than statute, receiving God’s unilateral rescue — lifted above the waters, pulled out of Sodom, brought through the sea. At Sinai, they received the Law and entered a bilateral covenant with terms, conditions, blessings, and curses. The pattern shifted because the covenant required faithfulness to be demonstrated through trial.
The Church is not under Sinai. We are grafted into the Abrahamic promise, which predates the Law. We’re back under the grace pattern — extraction before wrath, not endurance through it.
This distinction aligns perfectly with the tribulation being called “the time of Jacob’s trouble.” The tribulation is Israel’s tribulation, the time of the 144,000, the two witnesses, and the remnant being refined. They go through it, they endure, and they emerge.
But the Church is not Israel, and the Bride is not under the Law. We are under grace, living in the full application of the finished work.
The Church follows the pre-Sinai pattern — the pattern from before the Law — exemplified by Noah, Lot, and the Red Sea crossing. Israel in the tribulation follows the post-Sinai pattern — under the Law — exemplified by Daniel and the three in the furnace.
Two groups with two patterns, and both are thoroughly biblical, each true to God’s character as revealed to each group in their respective covenants.
The Theological Problem
But we don’t have to take my word for it. Let’s sit in the alternative position and trace out what it implies.
Suppose there is no rapture, or suppose it happens mid-tribulation or at the end. Suppose the Church goes through God’s wrath.
What does that say about the cross?
Christ bore God’s wrath in our place. “It is finished.” There is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus. The debt is paid, and the cup was drunk to the dregs.
So why would the blood-bought Bride stand under the same judgment being poured out on those who rejected Christ? What purpose would that serve?
The tribulation isn’t sanctification, and it isn’t refinement. It isn’t the normal suffering that produces character and perseverance. It is wrath — God’s direct judgment on a Christ-rejecting world — and that is an entirely different category.
Consider the Bride imagery that scripture uses throughout. What bridegroom says, “I love you. I’ve paid the price for you. You’re mine. But before the wedding feast, I’m leaving you here to be ravaged by the dragon and the antichrist”?
That is not the character of God revealed in scripture. He didn’t send Noah through the flood with gills, and He didn’t leave Lot in Sodom with a protective shield. He removed them, because wrath was never meant for them.
To place the Church in the tribulation is to suggest that the finished work isn’t fully finished, that something remains to be proved, that God’s Bride needs roughing up before the feast.
But this leads somewhere more troubling. If Christ’s work on the cross wasn’t complete, then what business did a righteous God have in raising Him from the dead? The resurrection is God’s receipt — His declaration that the payment was accepted in full. An unfinished sacrifice stays in the ground. Which begs the question: are we really saved, or has the Church deluded herself for the past 2000 years?
This isn’t just an eschatological disagreement. It’s a gospel-level question: was the cross enough, or wasn’t it?
The logic cascades from there. If you believe God will subject you to wrath, you believe the finished work isn’t finished. If the work isn’t finished, the resurrection was premature. If the resurrection was premature, justification is provisional. And if justification is provisional, you are not standing in grace — you are standing on probation, braced for what Christ supposedly already bore.
Reaching for the Ark
Here we should pause and ask: who benefits from the suggestion that Christ’s work isn’t quite complete? Who has an interest in convincing believers that something more is required?
There is only one agent invested in that lie, and it is the Accuser. But we need to be clear about what’s at stake. The Accuser cannot steal salvation from those who are in Christ — that is settled, sealed, finished. What he can do is convince believers to position themselves for unnecessary hardship, to add their effort to the finished work, to doubt the sufficiency of grace.
The fruit of that doubt isn’t damnation. It’s a harder road.
This is Peter’s error magnified. Peter said “I will never deny you,” trusting his own faithfulness rather than Christ’s keeping power. Peter drew his sword, adding his effort to God’s plan. Peter walked on water until he looked at the waves, losing his footing the moment he shifted his focus from Jesus to his circumstances. Peter was saved — completely, permanently saved — but he took the harder road to get there.
Scripture illustrates the danger of this instinct vividly. Uzzah reached out to steady the ark when it stumbled, and he died instantly (2 Samuel 6:6-7). His name means “strength,” and human strength tried to steady God’s presence with human effort. It cost him everything. The ark was never in danger, and God didn’t need Uzzah’s help. But that instinct to add his effort to God’s work proved fatal.
The New Testament makes this explicit: the old covenant and the new do not mix. Works-righteousness and faith-righteousness are incompatible systems. Blend them and both become ineffective. You cannot supplement grace, and you cannot improve upon “it is finished.”
To position yourself for the tribulation — to say “I’ll endure God’s wrath and prove my faithfulness” — is to reach out and steady the ark. It won’t cost you your salvation. But it may cost you the rest that was always available.
Ten Virgins
The parable haunts this conversation.
Ten virgins waited for the bridegroom, and all ten expected him. All ten had lamps, but only five brought oil. When the bridegroom came at midnight, five entered the wedding feast while five found the door shut.
“I do not know you.”
Here is the question the text demands we answer: who are the two groups?
This parable isn’t sorting the saved from the lost. It’s sorting those who enter the wedding when the Bridegroom comes from those who will come to Him later — through fire rather than feast.
The standard reading says all ten represent the visible Church — some true believers, some nominal. But this creates problems that don’t resolve easily.
Start with the lamps. In Psalm 119:105, scripture is “a lamp to my feet.” The lamp is the Word. All ten virgins have lamps, which means all ten have scripture. This isn’t a distinction between those who read the Bible and those who don’t.
Now consider the oil. Without oil, the lamp doesn’t burn. The scriptures remain dark, words on a page that don’t illuminate. The oil is the New Testament — the revelation of Christ, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that makes the Old Testament burn with meaning. Without Matthew through Revelation, Genesis through Malachi remains unlit.
Who has the lamp but not the oil? Israel. They hold the scriptures. They have the prophecies, the promises, the Law, the Psalms. But they read Moses with a veil over their eyes (2 Corinthians 3:14-15). The oil is missing. The lamp doesn’t burn.
Who has both lamp and oil? The Church. The same Old Testament scriptures, now illuminated by the New. The Spirit reveals Christ on every page. The lamp burns.
Ask the simpler question: who was waiting for the Messiah? Historically, two groups — Israel and the Church. There is no third option. Five and five. Two peoples, equal in expectation, divided by oil.
Now the details resolve.
“Go buy oil” — this isn’t a nonsensical midnight shopping trip. The signs preceding Christ’s return give a visible window. “As you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:25). The wise already have their oil. The foolish see the same signs and scramble to acquire the New Testament understanding they rejected. They rush to receive the revelation of Christ, to finally read what they set aside. But you cannot compress centuries of rejection into desperate hours.
“I do not know you” — this phrase appears in Matthew 7:23 for those who prophesied and cast out demons in Jesus’ name, then left Him. Not strangers, but people who were close and walked away. Israel fits precisely. They followed the God who promised Messiah but never entered relationship with Messiah Himself. This isn’t final damnation. It’s covenant distance. They haven’t entered into that intimacy yet. But they will.
The shut door — the door to the feast is shut, not the door to salvation. Israel endures the tribulation, is refined, and emerges as the remnant. They finally look on Him whom they pierced and mourn. They are saved, but they missed the wedding.
Two groups. Both saved by grace in the end. But one already has the oil — the New Testament received, Christ recognized, the finished work embraced. The other must go out and buy it, must discover through fire what was always available, must finally read what they had set aside. One enters when He comes. One takes the longer road to the same grace.
The pattern holds.
What Is It to You?
We return to Peter and John.
After the resurrection, Jesus reinstates Peter through three affirmations that mirror his three denials. “Feed my sheep.” Then Jesus speaks of how Peter will die — hands stretched out, carried where he doesn’t want to go.
Peter turns and sees John following. “Lord, what about him?”
Jesus answers: “If I want him to remain until I come, what is it to you? You follow me.”
That word — remain — echoes forward into Paul’s teaching, not as an etymological link but as a conceptual one. Both describe the same thing: believers who don’t die before Christ returns. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul describes two groups in the rapture: the dead in Christ, who rise first, and those who are “alive and remain” until the coming of the Lord, who are caught up after. Two bodies of believers. The dead and the remaining.
Peter died. He is among the dead in Christ who will rise first.
John “remains.” Jesus planted that seed Himself: “If I want him to remain until I come.” John represents those who are alive and remain.
Peter and John aren’t just two postures toward grace. They are the two groups Paul describes — the dead in Christ and those who remain. Both caught up, but in sequence. The framing that runs through this entire article isn’t merely analogy. It’s textually tied to the rapture itself.
Two paths diverging from the same Lord and the same love, leading to different roads and different fruit.
Peter was saved — gloriously, permanently saved. He was used to open the door to the Gentiles and became a pillar of the early church. And he was crucified upside down.
John was saved. He leaned on Jesus and received the Revelation. He survived boiling oil and died old, if he died at all. That strange seed Jesus planted — “remain until I come” — has echoed through centuries of interpretation.
Even in what they wrote about the end, the difference holds. Peter, in his second epistle, describes the Day of the Lord coming like a thief, the heavens passing away with a roar, the elements destroyed by fire, the earth burned up. He exhorts his readers to live holy lives while “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God.” His focus is the judgment itself and how to live in anticipation of it.
Paul and John wrote differently. Paul revealed the mystery — the catching up, the transformation, the meeting in the air. John saw the neuter child caught up to the throne before the tribulation. We cannot know what Peter received privately; we only know what he wrote. And what he wrote focuses on the fire that’s coming, not rescue before it arrives.
Peter’s pen reflects his life: prove your faithfulness, stand firm, endure. Paul and John’s writings reflect theirs: receive the mystery, trust the grace, be caught up before the wrath you were never meant to bear.
This isn’t about earning a better outcome, because salvation isn’t graded on a curve. It’s about posture. It’s about what we believe is required of us, and whether we’re adding to the finished work or resting in it.
The Invitation
The rapture is not an escape hatch for cowards, and it’s not wishful thinking dressed up in proof texts. It is the consistent pattern of a God who removes His people before His wrath falls because His wrath was never meant for them.
To reject this pattern, to position yourself for tribulation, to steel yourself to endure what Christ already endured on your behalf — that’s not faithfulness. That’s Peter energy, and it’s reaching for the ark.
You can take that road if you choose, and Peter did. He was still saved, still used, and still loved.
But John’s road is available to you as well. It’s the road of leaning back into love, trusting the Bridegroom’s heart for His Bride, and believing that “it is finished” means finished.
Genesis 3:15 speaks of the serpent bruising the heel — heel, singular, not heels. But consider: the body of Christ has two feet. Two feet means two heels. Yet scripture specifies only one heel gets struck. If both heels were bitten, the text would say so. It doesn’t. The serpent gets one heel, not both.
Walking is asymmetric — one foot leads, one foot plants. The serpent strikes motion, not stance.
And notice the mechanics: if a serpent bites your heel, you cannot crush its head with the same foot. You use the other foot to deliver the killing blow. The victory requires two legs doing different things — one absorbing the strike, one crushing the head.
Peter’s heel walked into the strike. He was sifted like wheat, rebuked for speaking Satan’s words, and crucified upside down. John overcame by the blood of the Lamb and the word of his testimony — his foot delivered the crush, not the bitten heel. Two postures, two functions, one body, one victory. Only one foot walks the path where the strike lands.
Why take the harder road when the finished work has paved an easier one?
This isn’t just eschatology. It’s an invitation to rest.
If I want him to remain until I come, what is it to you?