Is Mark 13 verses 26-27 referring to the rapture of the church?

Answer 1

A:

No. These verses refer to the Second Coming of Jesus, which the author of Mark's Gospel thought would occur within the lifetimes of those to whom Jesus spoke. Jesus' return was to be accompanied by terible calamities, the sun and moon darkened and the stars falling down to earth. Compare that to John Nelson Darby's concept of the Rapture of the Church, when Jesus returns in secret to 'rapture' the church and its people bodily up to heaven.

Darby, a British evangelical preacher and founder of the Plymouth Brethren, invented the Rapture theology back in 1830. The belief that Jesus will come again was not new, as we see in Mark's Gospel. 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. Whether or not Christians should still wait in eager anticipation of the Second Coming, the Rapture was only ever an idea from the imagination of a nineteenth-century preacher, so it will certainly never really happen.