Modern rapture advocates often insist the doctrine is ancient. For instance, Southern Baptist pastor Greg Laurie recently wrote:

Some say, “Oh, the Rapture is just a modern invention, some 19th-century gimmick.” Nonsense. Yes, J.N. Darby helped popularize it in more recent times, but long before him, the early Church Fathers like Irenaeus and Cyprian wrote about believers being “snatched up” before judgment.

(Greg Laurie)

At first glance, this sounds persuasive. If great figures like Irenaeus and Cyprian taught that believers would be taken out of the world before end-times trials, then the rapture would indeed be part of the earliest Christian tradition. But a careful look at their writings reveals something very different. In fact, both men spoke of the Church facing tribulation, and when they used the language of being “caught up” or “taken away,” it was not in the sense of a pre-tribulation escape. Let us see what they actually wrote.

Irenaeus of Lyons: Context Matters

Irenaeus (c. 130–202) was a disciple of Polycarp and author of Against Heresies. He certainly discussed end-time themes: Antichrist, the resurrection, and the coming kingdom. In Against Heresies 5.29 he says:

And therefore, when in the end the Church shall be suddenly caught up from this [creation], it is said, “There shall be tribulation such as has not been since the beginning, neither shall be.” For this is the last contest of the righteous, in which, when they overcome they are crowned with incorruption.

Rapture advocates seize upon the phrase “Church shall be suddenly caught up.” But the very next line explains this happens in connection with the tribulation. Irenaeus calls it “the last contest of the righteous,” showing that believers endure tribulation before being caught up. As scholar Alan Kurschner notes, “Irenaeus places the catching up after the tribulation, not before it.”

Then, in Against Heresies 5.35, Irenaeus is even more explicit about Christians “who have suffered tribulation, as well as escaped the hands of the Wicked one.”

This is unmistakably post-tribulational: the saints have suffered tribulation under an Antichrist, and only then are they raised and caught up. Irenaeus did believe in believers being “caught up,” but he saw this as part of the visible second coming of Christ, after a time of suffering (post-tribulation) — not a secret event years earlier.

Now, as per Irenaeus’ references to Enoch and Elijah: In 5.5.1 he notes they were “translated” or “caught up” as signs that God can preserve His saints. Yet he applies these as foreshadowings of resurrection hope, not as proof of a pre-tribulation rapture. In fact, Robert H. Gundry, the renowned New Testament commentator and professor, concluded:

Irenaeus, who claims to hold that which was handed down from the apostles, was as forthright a posttribulationist as could be found in the present day.

In short: Irenaeus expected believers to endure Antichrist’s persecution before being caught up at Christ’s return. He taught no doctrine resembling the modern pre-tribulation rapture.

Cyprian of Carthage: Death as Deliverance

Cyprian (c. 200–258), bishop of Carthage, wrote during a time of plague and persecution. In Treatise 7: On the Mortality, he comforts Christians who feared death. He urged them to view dying in Christ as a blessing, since it spared them from future horrors. He wrote:

We who see that terrible things have begun, and know that still more terrible things are imminent, may regard it as the greatest advantage to depart from it as quickly as possible. … Do you not give God thanks, do you not congratulate yourself, that by an earlier departure you are taken away, and delivered from the shipwrecks and disasters that are imminent?

And again:

Let us greet the day which assigns each of us to his own home, which snatches us hence, and sets us free from the snares of the world, and restores us to paradise and the kingdom.

The wording “snatches us hence” has been taken by Greg Laurie as a rapture reference. But Cyprian is clearly speaking about individual death. He describes believers who die in plague or persecution as being “snatched” from the world to paradise. His point is pastoral: do not fear death, since God uses it to deliver His people. He even notes that virgins who die early are spared from facing the Antichrist’s threats.

This is not a corporate, end-time removal of the entire church. It is encouragement that death itself is a form of divine deliverance. As historian Brian Daley observes, “Cyprian expects the Church to undergo tribulation, but sees early death as a mercy.” Cyprian’s eschatology is one of imminent expectation — Christ could return soon — but never a two-stage coming with a rapture years before the end.

The Broader Patristic Consensus

Neither Irenaeus nor Cyprian stands alone in this, and it is disheartening that so many modern pastors neglect to read the Fathers in their full context. Instead, they often cherry-pick isolated words or phrases, stripping them from their historical meaning, and then force them into alignment with their own modern theologies. Such an approach is not only careless but profoundly unprofessional.

In fact, surveys of early Christian literature confirm that the Church Fathers were post-tribulation.

George Ladd, professor of New Testament theology and exegesis at Fuller Theological Seminary, rightly concluded:

We can find no trace of pretribulationism in the early church, and no modern pretribulationist has successfully proved that this particular doctrine was held by any of the church fathers or students of the Word before the nineteenth century.

Conclusion

Greg Laurie and others are mistaken when they claim that the Fathers taught a pre-tribulation rapture. Yes, Irenaeus and Cyprian used language of being “caught up” or “taken away,” but neither man envisioned the modern rapture doctrine. What they did emphasize was perseverance, holiness, and the hope of Christ’s coming. The early church’s message was not, “Don’t worry, you’ll escape tribulation,” but rather, “Endure faithfully through the tribulation.”

To sum up, no clear evidence exists of a pre-tribulation rapture before the 19th century. When early fathers spoke of being “caught up,” they were simply reflecting Paul’s teaching (1 Thess. 4:17) and situating it at the climactic second coming, not as an escape seven years earlier.

This was a short excerpt from my book, “Left Behind Deconstructed: Why I Left Pre-Tribulation Rapture Behind”: