Some good words from friend and fellow soon-to-be-doctoral-student Tyler Stewart over on his blog on what I agree is a better way to read the so-called “rapture passage” of 1 Thess 4.15-17. N. T. Wright has a typically frank and “cheeky” discussion to the same effect in his highly recommended popular-level book Surprised by Hope, 123-36. As someone who grew up thinking the rapture was and is “believed everyone, always, and by all,” it was quite a surprise to discover that it is, in fact, held by very few, only in recent centuries, and quite particularly by literal-minded American evangelicals and fundamentalists. I can appreciate the arguments made in favor of it, but I think the most disappointing thing is that, I truly believe, many well-meaning Christians just assume the rapture to be a clearly taught fact of Scripture, when in reality it is anything but.