Page 12 - Watchman- What of the Night

In answer to the question then, ―Does the New Testament teach a rapture?‖ we

must emphatically answer ―Yes.‖ But the divine composer played the strain with the
lightest possible touch. So did all the scholars, commentators, preachers and writers
th
through all the ages, until the fourth decade of the 19 century, Mr. John Nelson
Darby and his associates pulled out all the stops and played it in a deafening

fortissimo, with improvised variations. It has been the widespread fashion to play the
number, molto e con brio, ever since, to the staggering confusion of God‘s saints in
many climes.
There are only two portions of the New Testament where the rapture of living

saints is undeniably referred to: first in the classic passage I Thess. 4:13-17, and the
other in I Cor. 15:51-52. In both of these cases the subject of the transformation and
rapture of those comparatively few surviving saints, is but an obligato accompaniment
of the mighty fact of the resurrection of the multitude of saints who have been asleep.

The Greek word translated ―remain‖ in I Thess. 4:15 and 17 is the present passive
participle ―perileipomenoi‖ and only occurs in these two instances in the New
Testament, and means unmistakably the ―left-overs‖, ―the survivors‖—―we the living
ones, the surviving ones‖ The undeniable implication is that they will be a blessed,

though feeble folk, the survivors of a great debacle that has transferred many of their
companions and contemporaries to the class of the ―dead in Christ.‖
But even this oft-quoted passage has not the rapture as its main subject of
discussion. It is written to comfort and assure the living saints in Thessalonica

concerning the future felicity and participation in the earthly reign of Christ, of those
beloved ones already deceased, and to show that they will be raised up, and
transported heavenward to meet Christ at the time of His parousia, which was
generally understood by them to be the time of His coming to reign. The fact of the

transformation and translation of the yet-living saints is declared as an accompanying
circumstance, but our attention is not focused upon it, and it is in no sense the central
topic of discussion.
I Cor. 15 is the great chapter on the resurrection. The indispensable importance

of belief in the rising again of the saints is set forth as a necessary corollary to the
glorious resurrection of Christ. Resurrection is both the basis and object of the
believer‘s anticipation.
The ―mystery‖ of verse 51 and thereafter is the supernatural transition from bodies

of corruptible mortality to bodies of incorruptible immortality, whether or not physical
death has occurred upon those bodies. The fact that there will be a sudden alteration
of those yet living, at that moment, is incontrovertibly declared: ―We shall not all
sleep, but we shall all be changed.‖ The translation is not here asserted; it is not even

suggested except as we have vividly in mind the scene of I Thess. 4:13-17. In both

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