It is surprising how many people believe, that if you don’t believe this passage refers to the Rapture, that you don’t believe in the Rapture, but that is not true:

“Two will be in the field; one will be taken, and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken, and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord will come.” (Matt. 24:40-42)

Study Bibles always group the verses about Noah and the Flood with the verses about being taken; because they are connected. Noah was saved alive, but the sinners died; then Jesus gave us another illustration of the same thing, but for the future. So the context of this passage requires that it refers to people dying in the Wrath of God.

Yet, it is shocking how many people are blind to the truth of this passage. But if you do enough research, you will be forced to conclude that it is not the Rapture. Jimmy Swaggart is a stanch, pre-tribber, yet he knows this is not the Rapture. In his study Bible he said it, “does not refer to the Rapture as many believe, but rather to the terrible loss of life during the Great Tribulation.”

The best evidence of this is found in the corresponding passage in Luke 17, where two people are in one bed, and one is taken and the other left. Then the disciples asked Jesus about where the people will go:

And they said to him, “Where, Lord?” He said to them, “Where the corpse is, there the vultures will gather.” (Luke 17:37) (ESV)

So, Jesus said the people who are “taken” will be killed and will be scattered on the ground for the vultures to eat. That certainly does not sound like the Rapture to me! It takes a lot of blindness caused by false doctrine to see the Rapture in these passages!

The context of both passages is same; it is about the time of judgment upon the world, because the previous passage in Matthew was about Noah and the Flood, and in Luke the previous passage was about Lot, and how people need to flee to the mountains for protection, so they are not KILLED.

Clearly, those taken are killed, not Raptured. The reason they are taken by surprise is because they have no knowledge of the signs pointing to the global destruction, or they choose to ignore the prophets who will proclaim the warning.

The post-tribulation viewpoint has a problem with these passages, because if all the Christians go in the Rapture, and all the wicked are killed in the Wrath of God, then no one is left to repopulate the Kingdom of God. In response, a post-trib theologian said:

. . . suppose the destruction of the entire unsaved population of the earth. . . . By no means does the text authorize the supposition. On the other hand, a partial destruction would leave the remaining unsaved to populate the millennial earth. (Gundry, The Church and The Tribulation, page 137)

At no place in the Bible is there ever a hint that people who are judged as wicked, or “goats,” will survive the judgment. Though there could be a few, it is totally contrary to everything the Bible teaches in both the Old and New Testaments to suggest that the wicked will inherit the Earth. No, the Bible says the righteous will inherit the Kingdom, not the least wicked! This means, that many Christians will miss the Rapture, and will then repent and become genuinely righteous, as we see in the parable of the 10 virgins.