The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation

A leading New Testament scholar exposes the myth of “The Rapture” and restores the Book of Revelation’s true message of God’s love

“Lucid and passionate.” —Harper’s

The idea of “The Rapture”—the return of Christ at the end of times to rescue and deliver born-again Christians off the earth—is an extremely popular interpretation of the biblical book of Revelation. This dramatic understanding of the end-times has inspired recent doomsday prophecies and infiltrated popular media, as exemplified by the wildly successful Left Behind franchise.

In The Rapture Exposed, New Testament scholar Barbara Rossing argues that this script for the world’s future is nothing more than a disingenuous distortion of the Bible, based on a psychology of fear. The truth is that Revelation offers a vision of God’s healing love for the world. The Rapture Exposed reclaims Christianity from fundamentalists’ destructive reading of the biblical story and back into God’s beloved community.

Barbara R. Rossing teaches New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. She holds a doctorate from Harvard University Divinity School and a Masters of Divinity degree from Yale University Divinity School. An ordained minister in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, she lives in Chicago.