The Dispensational Futurists have distorted the meaning of the word rapture. Rapture was never used to mean a future event of being caught up to meet the Lord at His return. Rapture is the emotion one feels when God reveals Himself in a very personal manner.

It carries the meaning of being personal to the individual experiencing an ecstatic experience. The Bible is full of these experiences. They start with the phrases “I saw,” “I heard,” “the Word of the Lord came to me,” “the Lord spoke to me,” etc.

When the Futurists created “The Rapture,” after the ecstatic utterances of Margaret MacDonald, in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1830. Later Revs. John Darby, Edward Irving, and John Pusey created the hermeneutics of Dispensationalism to explain these visions. An adherent of this new view, C. I. Scofield, put them into the notes of his famous Bible.

Their new rules for interpreting scripture depend on an irrational, literal interpretation. They will interpret the most bizarre passages of symbolic literature in The Revelation as literal. Their interpretations have little or no regard for the standard hermeneutic rule of comparing Scripture with Scripture. The prophets of the Old Testament used the same symbols as those in The Revelation. Since most Old Testament prophecies are fulfilled, one can look up all the passages and examine what that symbol represented. See Also: The Sun, Moon, and Stars.

Rather than doing the hard work of finding and complareing these proecies the Futurist have created an “out come based theology” format; decide what the end is and tweak the interpretation to support that view. This often leaves the average church member confused and, perhaps over excited about a sensational extravagant future that is clearly improbable.