The Rapture: When Will It Take Place? Part 4a: Amillennialism

The Rapture: When Will It Take Place? Part 4a: Amillennialism
Wednesday, August 6, 2025 by Dr. James W. Walraven

Categories: Contemporary issues / Scripture discussion / The church / Thought for Today

Amillennialism. If there is a view that has dominated throughout church history it is amillennialism. From the sub-apostolic church through the end of the eighteenth century, it was the view. Even down to today, versions of it are held by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Calvinist Reformed and Presbyteria churches, Lutherans, Anglicans, and others: almost everyone except for most evangelicals and many charismatics.

Dispensationalists cry “foul” when it comes to amillennialism, as the view does not hold to a literal millennium (we will look at that weakness a bit later).

But, much to the surprise of those, myself included, who have spent their lives mostly in dispensational evangelical or charismatic churches, there are a number of biblical passages that lend support to amillennialism.

First, there is 1 Thessalonians 4:13–18, that we have recently looked at. To requote it:

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18 (ESV): But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

Amillennialists take the Thessalonians passage to mean exactly what it says. There is no secret rapture as so many of the dispensationalists insist. As for timing, the Rapture takes place at Christ's return.

Amillennialism is closely linked to Covenant theology, the biblical belief that there are only two covenants.

Jeremiah 31:31–34 (ESV): “Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the LORD. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”

What is promised? A new covenant, a covenant amillennialists see fulfilled in the church. Amillennialists state that there are only two real covenants, not multiple dispensations. Considering the above passage, amillennialism has a valid point.

Mark 13:26–27 (ESV): “And then they will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven.” When are the elect gathered? At Christ’s return, and everyone sees it.

Also, Jesus’s parable about the wheat and tares, Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43 also points in that direction. The wicked are gathered first, then the righteous.

Yet again, we see Scriptures that may best be interpreted from the amillennial position rather than the dispensational viewpoint when it comes to the Rapture.

But things are nowhere near that simple. As we will see, starting in the next post, amillennialism also contains many scriptural problems.

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