Welcome back to All About the Rapture. Today, we’re going to talk about John 14:2-3. John 14:2-3 is one of the primary passages that pre-Tribulationists use as evidence of a pre-Tribulation rapture. Let’s get right to it.
In John 14:2-3, Jesus says to His disciples:
2. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. (NKJV)
Pre-Tribulationists claim that, in this passage, Jesus is talking about a pre-Tribulation rapture. They claim that He is saying that He is about to go back to heaven to literally build houses for us, and that He will be back someday to gather the church and take them back to heaven to live in those houses and be with Him. Pre-Tribulationists say that, in their opinion, through their study of bible prophecy, the only time that this could happen is immediately before the Tribulation Period begins. Therefore, Jesus is talking about a pre-Tribulation rapture.
But that is not what this passage is saying. This passage has nothing to do with the end times and nothing to do with the rapture. Instead, Jesus is taking about his impending death and resurrection. He is telling the disciples that He is about to die, but that in dying and being resurrected, He is creating a place for them in God.
To understand this, to understand why Jesus said what He said, we need to understand what is going on in Jesus’ life and what is about to happen to Him. This speech is given to the disciples at the Last Supper. John’s account of the Last Supper is very detailed. It begins in chapter 13 and goes through chapter 17. The Last Supper was a very important, critical time in Jesus’ life. At the Last Supper, Jesus is saying goodbye to His disciples. He knows that He is about to die and leave them. He knows that at the conclusion of the Last Supper, they will get up and go to the Garden of Gethsemane, where He will be confronted and arrested by the Jews, put on trial, and put to death. He knows that this time at the Last Supper is the last time He will be alone with His disciples before He will be put to death. He also knows that at that exact time, as He is spending His final moments with His disciples at the Last Supper, that Judas is out making the final arrangements to betray Him. At the exact time that Jesus was talking to His disciples, Judas was out conspiring with the Jewish religious leaders to capture Jesus and have Him killed.
Jesus was fully God and fully human, and here, at the Last Supper, as being fully God, He was fully aware of everything that Judas was doing and everything that was about to happen to Him. And being fully human, He was fully immersed in the human experience and experiencing the full emotional weight of knowing what was happening. And He was fully present in the moment with His disciples, of saying goodbye. And yet, despite all He was experiencing, He was so full of love for His disciples, and so concerned for their emotional and spiritual well-being, that here, in this passage of John 14:2-3, He was subtly and prophetically warning them about what was about to happen, that He was about to be put to death, but not to worry because He would be resurrected, and that through the process of dying and being resurrected, He was preparing for them a new place in God. He then reassures them, telling them that even though they don’t quite understand what He is saying, it will all make sense soon. In addition to that, He also tells them that He will soon be going back to heaven, and He gives them a new commandment that they are to love each other. He tells them that they are no longer His servants but are now His friends, tells them about the Holy Spirit and that they will soon be able to receive the Holy Spirit, and encourages them to be strong and to believe in God and in Himself. This is a very intimate, personal conversation that Jesus is having with His disciples. He is fully in the moment of saying goodbye to them and letting them know how much He loves them and that everything will be okay. And He is experiencing everything a human being would be experiencing in a moment like this. So to say that in this Last Supper conversation, that Jesus takes a moment to talk about the end times, and drop a little Easter Egg for us to find about a time in the future when He is coming to rescue the church and keep her safe during a time of great tribulation on earth, is completely wrong. Jesus is fully immersed not only in His moment of saying goodbye, but in His knowledge of everything that Judas is doing and everything that is about to happen to Him.
For the pre-Tribulation rapture interpretation of this passage to be correct, then in this moment, Jesus is not even talking to His disciples because a pre-Tribulation rapture does not apply to them. Right now, in the year 2024, His disciples have been dead for nearly 2,000 years. Christians believe that to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord, which is to say that when we die, our bodies are left behind on Earth and our spirits go back to heaven. This means that the disciples have been with Jesus in heaven for the past 2,000 years. Words of a pre-Tribulation rapture don’t apply to them. If this passage is talking about a pre-Tribulation rapture, then Jesus is simply using the moment not to speak to His disciples, but merely to speak aloud, knowing that His words will be recorded and read by Christians thousand of years in the future, and eventually by a group of Christians to whom His words will apply. And that is ridiculous! Jesus is fully immersed in the moment of knowing that He is about to be captured and killed. He is fully in the moment of expressing His love to His disciples and of saying goodbye. He knows that they have no idea what is about to happen to Him, and what a shock it will be, that it will cause them to lose faith, so He is using this time to prophetically, subtly tell them that He is about to die, but that He will be back, that is to say, He will be resurrected, so that after it happens, they will look back on His words and realize that He gave them a warning and was letting them know that it would be all be ok. Any interpretation of this passage that requires us to believe that Jesus is not talking to His disciples but, rather, taking a moment to prophetically speak to a church that will exist at least two thousand years in the future, is not the correct interpretation of this passage. This passage has nothing to do with the rapture or the end-times.
To recap, Jesus’ love of His disciples is what led Him to say what He said. He knew that He was about to leave, to die, and He wanted them to know that it was ok, that it was all part of the plan, and that everything was ok. He was letting them know that, through His death and resurrection, he was reuniting them with God, that He was creating a place for them in God, giving them access to a relationship with God that was impossible under the Law. The Law kept us apart from God, but Jesus’ death and resurrection created a place for us in God, and that is what Jesus is subtly, prophetically telling His disciples in verses 2 and 3. As the chapter goes on, and as the next few chapters continue, Jesus does also subtly, prophetically tell them that He will soon ascend to God and return to heaven, and He gives the disciples the new command that they are to love one another, and tells them that the Holy Spirit will be sent to them, and tells them a host of other things, but in verses 2 and 3, He is speaking of His impending death and resurrection.
That’s all for today. I’d like to encourage you to go to the Gospels and read each account of the Last Supper and the events that led to the Crucifixion. John’s account of the Last Supper is by far the most detailed, containing three whole chapters of dialogue, but the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke contain some additional information, as well. Also, it’s very important to understand what Jesus went through after the Last Supper, from the events in the Garden of Gethsemane through His trial and Crucifixion. I won’t tell you exactly where to start reading in each Gospel, but if you turn to the last part of each book, you can figure out where to start and where to stop. The more information you have on what Jesus was going through at the Last Supper, and what He went through afterward, the more you will be able to understand what He meant when He was talking to His disciples and told them “In My Father’s house are many mansions…”. (NKJV)
Thank you for joining me. I hope you enjoyed today’s post. See you next time!
Julie J
Scripture taken from the New King James Version. Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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