How many times in recent times has the Rapture been predicted?

Answer 1

A:

John Nelson Darby, a British evangelical preacher and founder of the Plymouth Brethren, first predicted the Rapture in 1830 when he invented the Rapture theology. In 2011, Harold Campling predicted the Rapture in April of that year, then in October of the same year. There have been various other predictions over the nearly two hundred years between those two events.

Barbara R. Rossing (The Rapture Exposed) says that according to one critic, the Rapture has its origins with a young girl's vision. In 1830, in Port Glasgow, Scotland, fifteen-year-old Margaret MacDonald attended a healing service. There, she was said to have seen a vision of a two-stage return of Jesus Christ. The story of her vision was adopted and amplified by Darby.

The belief that Jesus will come again was not new, and Christians have always taught that Jesus will return to earth and that believers should live in anticipation of his second coming. Darby's new teaching was that Christ would return twice, first in secret to "Rapture" his church out of the world and up to heaven, then a second time after seven years of global tribulation for non-believers, to establish a Jerusalem-based kingdom on earth. .

It is one thing to predict the Rapture, it is an entirely different thing to demonstrate that it will ever happen. There is no good reason to believe there will ever be a Rapture or that the church and its members will be taken bodily up into heaven. John Nelson Darby has sunk into obscurity, apart from his followers in the Plymouth Brethren, and Harold Campling has admitted failure, so these predictions should no longer be taken seriously.