THE RAPTURE QUESTION In the nineteenth century, teaching concerning the rapture of the church began to be widely disseminated. This raised such questions as whether the second coming of Christ involves several stages, the relation of those stages to the Tribulation period, and the distinctiveness of the church from Israel in God’s program. Thus, one of the prominent eschatological questions of this century is the question of the time of the rapture, and the ramifications of the answer to that question