Dr. David Reagan: The Reality of the Rapture

Is the rapture fact or fiction? In this powerful discussion, Dr. David Reagan joins Gary Stearman to answer the most common questions about the rapture, address frequent objections, and explain why the Blessed Hope is central to biblical prophecy.

Topics covered include:

• What the Bible really says about the rapture (1 Thessalonians 4, Titus 2:13, Daniel 12, Revelation 11)
• Common objections: “The word isn’t in the Bible,” “It’s too new to be true,” and the Margaret MacDonald claim
• Why Satan attacks the doctrine of the rapture
• The difference between the rapture and the Second Coming
• What glorified bodies will be like (1 Corinthians 15)
• The hope and comfort believers have in Christ’s promise

Dr. Reagan also shares insights from his book The Rapture: Fact or Fiction and resources like Living on Borrowed Time and Jesus Is Coming Soon.

The rapture is not too good to be true—it is the Blessed Hope for all who believe in Jesus Christ. Are you ready?

Learn more and find resources: https://prophecywatchers.com

#Rapture #BibleProphecy #BlessedHope #EndTimes

The Reality of the Rapture

Gary: The rapture of the Church—have we talked about it too much? Well, here to discuss the rapture and the question I just asked is Dr. David Reagan. Dave, it is a pleasure to have you back again.

Dr. David Reagan: Thank you, Gary. I’m glad to be here, and I appreciate the opportunity—particularly to talk about this new book I’ve just written. I’ve heard people say, “Forget the rapture. Let’s talk about the important things. Everybody’s talked the rapture to death. They’ve said everything possible to say—let’s not talk about it anymore.”
But you’ve got a book here called The Rapture: Fact or Fiction, which I think is a gem because, point by point—you’ve even numbered the points—you go right through the subject and talk about the reality of it.

Gary: Why write this book?

Dr. Reagan: The first half of the book addresses the most frequent questions. The second half tackles the most frequent attacks, controversies, and arguments people raise against the rapture. The reason I wrote it is that about a year ago I was going through my library. I have a whole section on the rapture, and I noticed those books fell into two categories:

1. Highly theological—beyond the grasp of the average Christian (wonderful books by scholars like Ed Hindson and others), or
2. Down-to-earth and understandable—but so long and detailed (300–400 pages) that you couldn’t see the trees for the forest.

So I decided to write a book under 100 pages that would cover the rapture. I almost made it—104 pages—but that includes research notes and opening pages, so I basically came in under 100. It was hard to do! The book is designed to cover every aspect of the rapture for someone who knows nothing or very little, and it also serves as an outline for those who know a lot and want to teach it.

When I speak on the rapture, the first thing I do is define it. People might think, “Do you think we’re illiterate?” But I receive letters every day from people asking, “What is the rapture?” There’s a lot of ignorance out there. I remember my own background—you and I are about the same age. I grew up in the late ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, before Christian television, before Christian radio, and before Christian bookstores. It was possible to keep a person theologically isolated.

I grew up in a Christian sect that never talked about Bible prophecy. We were amillennial to the core. They gave one sermon a year on prophecy, and it was: “There is not one verse in the Bible that even implies Jesus will ever put His feet on this earth again.” I heard that over and over. Church was our life—we didn’t have TV. We went Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Vacation Bible School, crusades—I was in church all the time. And yet I was 30 years old before I ever even heard the word “rapture.” If you’d asked me then, “What is the rapture, David?” I would have said, “The sensation you feel when your girlfriend kisses you.” I had no idea what it was.

I was walking down the street when a guy handed me a brochure—you’ve probably seen it—illustrated with cars crashing, planes hitting buildings, Jesus in the clouds, and people going up. I thought, “What is this?” I figured it must be from a cult, but the back said it was from the First Baptist Church in my city. So I read it, then started reading what the Bible had to say. That was my introduction to the rapture of the Church. Ever since, I’ve had a zeal to convince people the rapture is for real and that the arguments against it are superficial and invalid.

Gary: You used the term “for real,” and I think you hit something. I’ve talked to many who believe in the rapture but say, “It just seems too good to be true. Can it possibly be true?”

Dr. Reagan: It is a wonderful act of God’s grace. One of the Lord’s promises is that we will never suffer the wrath of God, and the Tribulation from beginning to end is a pouring out of the wrath of God. That’s one reason I believe in a pre-Tribulation rapture—it’s most likely to occur before the Tribulation begins—because God promises that. It gives us hope, and Satan does not want anyone (believer or unbeliever) to have hope. He’s coming against the rapture today with tremendous hostility—books, videos, magazine articles attacking it, calling it nonsense. I believe Satan inspires this because he doesn’t want us to have hope, especially as the world grows increasingly dark. But the rapture gives tremendous hope. In Titus 2:13 it’s called the “Blessed Hope” (Titus 2:13).

Gary: The most common objection I hear is: “The word ‘rapture’ isn’t even in the Bible.”

Dr. Reagan: First, the word is in the Bible—specifically, in the Latin Vulgate, which was the primary Bible of Western civilization for 1,200 years. In 1 Thessalonians (the Vulgate), the word rapiemur appears—a declension of rapio, from which we get “rapture.” In English translations we see “caught up,” “snatched away,” “taken up,” but “rapture” is a perfectly biblical term. A word doesn’t have to be in English to be biblical; the Bible was written in Hebrew and Greek. In Greek, the word is harpazō—“caught up, snatched away.”

Second, a concept can be biblical even if the exact word doesn’t appear in our English Bibles. “Bible,” “atheism,” “monotheism,” “Shekinah glory,” “age of accountability,” and even “Trinity” don’t appear as words in Scripture, yet they describe biblical truths. So “the word isn’t in the Bible” is a superficial argument.

Gary: Another common claim is: “It’s too new to be true,” often tied to John Nelson Darby in 1827.

Dr. Reagan: They say, “How can a doctrine be valid if the Church didn’t know about it for 1,800 years?” But the concept isn’t new. Two important books make this clear. One is by Dr. William Watson, Dispensationalism Before Darby (2015), a Christian historian. The other, from 1994 by Harvard University Press, is by a secular historian. Both show the rapture—distinct from the Second Coming—was discussed long before Darby. As early as the 1600s and throughout the 1700s, writers talked about a rapture separate from the Second Coming. By the late 1700s, Baptists in England, some Anglicans, and some Scottish Presbyterians held this view. Darby systematized and popularized it through extensive writing, preaching, and worldwide tours.

Also remember: when Martin Luther proclaimed salvation by grace through faith, the Vatican’s chief argument at the Diet of Worms was, “Too new to be true.” They also said, “None of the popes or Church Fathers taught this.” Luther replied, “John, Peter, Paul, and the Lord Jesus taught it.” “Too new to be true” isn’t a biblical test.

The Bible itself says much end-times prophecy won’t be understood until the time comes (see Daniel’s experience). Daniel wrote end-time prophecies but didn’t understand them. In Daniel 12, he’s told it’s not for him to understand then—it would be understood later. Today we grasp prophecies we didn’t before because of historical developments and modern technology. In 1909, C. I. Scofield published the Scofield Study Bible. On Ezekiel 38–39 he wrote, “I don’t understand it, but I believe it,” noting Russia would invade Israel. In 1909, Israel didn’t exist and Russia was an Orthodox nation. Today, events make that scenario plausible. Likewise, Revelation 11 speaks of two witnesses whose bodies lie in Jerusalem and “the whole world” looks on; that wasn’t technically feasible until global satellite television emerged in the mid-1960s.

Another reason for later development: in the Middle Ages, common people didn’t have Bibles. They were hand-copied, unaffordable, and even if you could buy one, most people were illiterate. Serious lay Bible study had to await the printing press (c. 1440s), vernacular translations (Tyndale into English, Luther into German), and the Reformation to loosen Rome’s grip. Dissenters were often burned at the stake—writings included—so we don’t even know all that was taught then. Widespread lay study really began in the late 1600s–early 1700s, when people compared Church teaching with Scripture. The Church had adopted amillennialism around A.D. 400 (Augustine’s City of God), spiritualizing prophecies. But people noticed first-coming prophecies were fulfilled literally; shouldn’t second-coming prophecies also be literal? If so, amillennialism is wrong.

Gary: In your book The Rapture: Fact or Fiction you walk through numbered questions people actually ask. Before I turn you loose again—by the way, John Nelson Darby died in 1878, the very year eleven Jews came from Siberia to Israel and founded the little city of Petah Tikva. In my opinion, that’s no coincidence.

Dr. Reagan: Interesting indeed. Like many in his era, Darby was certain God would regather the Jews to Israel—people laughed at that. In the 1600s, some who wrote that were even imprisoned by European governments steeped in antisemitism. Yet it came true.

Gary: Someone watching may say, “I love this, but my church doesn’t teach it. Why not?”

Dr. Reagan: First, Bible prophecy generally isn’t taught in seminaries today—very few in the U.S. do. A course on Isaiah might focus on whether there was one Isaiah or multiple authors, then spiritualize everything about Israel, saying, “He’s really talking about the Church.”
In my own church in McKinney, Texas, the associate pastor’s wife decided to teach Zechariah to the women. She ordered a highly recommended study guide. Her husband looked at it and said, “You can’t use this.” The guide literally said, “If you want to understand Zechariah, every time you read ‘Zion,’ read ‘Church’; every time you read ‘Israel,’ read ‘Church’; every time you read ‘children of Israel,’ read ‘church members.’” That’s replacement theology.
Even the King James Version translators were influenced by it—chapter headings in some Old Testament sections say “God warns the Church,” though the text mentions only Israel.

Second, many pastors don’t teach prophecy because they weren’t taught it and don’t feel confident. I respect that—better to avoid than to mishandle. Others fear it’s divisive or that it will scare people. Don Perkins (a dear friend, a full-time Bible prophecy evangelist from San Diego) grew up in southern Louisiana where, every year, his pastor preached: “We will never study Revelation in this church, because if you read it, you’ll go insane and end up in an asylum.”

Gary: The Book of Revelation—

Dr. Reagan: People say Revelation scares them, but it shouldn’t scare a believer. Yes, there’s judgment—but that’s for unbelievers. The fundamental message is that believers win. We will reign with Jesus when He rules the world in majesty and glory for a thousand years, and the earth will be flooded with peace, righteousness, and justice. That should encourage us.

Gary: Another objection I hear: “The rapture is too good to be true. Surely the skies won’t open in the next ten minutes, the Lord descends with a shout, the dead in Christ rise. That must be a metaphor.”

Dr. Reagan: One more common objection is the Margaret MacDonald claim. In 1981, shortly after I founded my ministry, a man asked, “How can you believe in something so silly as the rapture when it came from a demon-possessed teenage girl?” He referred to Margaret MacDonald, a Scottish girl. I looked up a 1973 book promoting that view, read it cover to cover, then read the appendix where her vision was printed. I read it ten times and never found any suggestion of a pre-Tribulation rapture. Yet the whole book was built on that assertion.

A four-hour video produced by a church in California made the same claim—showing a girl babbling incoherently in a rocking chair, saying, “This is where the pre-trib rapture came from.” At the end, the producer admits on camera, “Her vision was so convoluted we can’t say for sure that it had anything to do with the pre-Tribulation rapture.” Duh. That’s how it ends. My recommendation: throw those books away—there’s no truth to it. These are the kinds of attacks made against a scriptural doctrine. And of course Satan hates the pre-trib rapture—after it, he gets taken to the cleaners.

Gary: Let’s define the rapture, the resurrection, and the glorified body—people ask these all the time.

Dr. Reagan: The rapture is for the Church. Jesus, the Bridegroom, comes for His Bride—the Church. Old Testament saints are not included in the rapture; this is for Church-age saints. When Jesus appears in the heavens, the bodies of believers who have died will be resurrected and caught up to meet Him. It doesn’t matter if the body was cremated, eaten by worms, dissolved in the ocean—He who spoke the universe into existence will speak and those bodies will be re-created, reunited with their spirits (which have been with the Lord), and instantly glorified.

Paul describes the glorified body in 1 Corinthians 15. It’s perfected and immortal—like Jesus’ resurrection body: visible, tangible, recognizable, and capable of eating. I like to imagine we’ll be able to eat all we want and never gain an ounce! It also has special properties—Jesus is outside a room one moment and inside the next; in Jerusalem one moment and in Galilee soon after. Best of all, believers alive at the rapture will not experience death. We will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and on the way up we’ll be transformed from mortal to immortal. That’s good news.

Gary: Talk a moment about the Church—the Body of Christ.

Dr. Reagan: The Body began with the resurrection of Christ and includes all who have believed since the start of the Church Age. That’s why the rapture is intended for the Body of Christ, not Old Testament saints. God won’t overlook them—Daniel 12 indicates they’ll be resurrected at the end of the Tribulation. At Jesus’ Second Coming, Old Testament saints and Tribulation martyrs will be raised, and those who survive the Tribulation having accepted Jesus will enter the Millennium in natural bodies.

Gary: The book is The Rapture: Fact or Fiction. David Reagan has poured out his heart into a well-organized resource with numbered questions addressing what you’re probably asking. We’re offering it as part of a package—the “Reagan Rapture Package.” You’ve also produced a new DVD, Jesus Is Coming Soon. What’s in it?

Dr. Reagan: It’s a 75-minute overview of the signs of the times and how they’re converging for the first time ever. While the reestablishment of Israel is the cornerstone sign, the most important sign is convergence—they’re all lining up together. I argue we can’t know the date of the Lord’s return, but we can know we’re in the season of His return. It’s heavily illustrated with PowerPoint slides and videos.

Gary: And Living on Borrowed Time—you use that phrase often.

Dr. Reagan: That book surveys the signs: nature, society, world politics, Israel, and more—organized into categories to show they’re coming together for the first time ever. Clearly, we’re living on borrowed time.

Gary: I think Dave presents the Blessed Hope like nobody else—you saw how excited he gets. All three resources are in our online library at Prophecy Watchers TV. Click “Library,” scroll down, and you’ll find the Reagan Rapture Package: The Rapture: Fact or Fiction, Living on Borrowed Time, and the Jesus Is Coming Soon DVD—yours for a gift of $60 with free U.S. shipping at prophecywatchers.com. Just scroll to find the package.

We’ve got a little over 30 seconds—preach again!

Dr. Reagan: I wish we had more time. If anyone watching does not know the Lord Jesus Christ, I appeal to you: repent of your sins, receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and start looking forward to the rapture—it’s a promise to those who know Him. You don’t want to be left behind to face the terror of the Antichrist. Reach out now and receive Him. Jesus is coming soon. He will be the Blessed Hope to those who know Him and a holy terror to those who don’t. Amen.

Gary: I love it. I love talking to David Reagan. I’m Gary Stearman. Keep watching!

[Outro] Thanks for joining us on Prophecy Watchers. You can find us on the web at prophecywatchers.com. In the meantime, keep watching, and we’ll see you soon.