Posttrib Rapture, Deception, and the Lost Truth: How Christianity Changed, Where New Religions Miss the Mark, and Why Knowing God Still Matters

Power and fear went hand in hand through the Medieval period. Most people only knew about Christianity through stained glass stories and church chants (in Latin, of course). Regular people couldn’t read the Bible for themselves, and church leaders liked it that way. They controlled what got taught, who got punished, and who was blessed—often mixing up truth with their own opinions or even political goals.

Deception wasn’t just a side effect. It was baked in. From popes to priests, leaders added traditions, legends, and rules that created confusion and hid what God really said. But even with all that, sometimes these shadows protected the truth from outright destruction in a world that had plenty of violence and greed. Still, you can’t follow God’s will or live under His Blessing without knowing Him personally, not just following church rules.

Out of this mess, new religions spun off from Christianity in all directions. Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and even movements connected to Islam claimed new revelations but missed the central truth of who God (Yahweh) is. Some tried to fill the gap left by the Medieval church’s control, but their answers only led to more confusion. For a deep dive on how Mormon teaching stacks up with Christian basics, check out Mormonism vs Christianity: an overview.

Augustine, who helped shape “replacement theology,” taught that the church replaced Israel in God’s plan, but this idea twisted the original promises and set the stage for all kinds of wrong turns. Later, doctrines about the rapture got tangled up, with some teachers blending the Second Coming and “pretrib” rapture into something very different from what the Bible actually says. If you want a detailed timeline and plain language on the rapture debate, including the posttrib view, you’ll find our article Embracing the Rapture: Biblical Truths for Today Acts 8:39 helpful.

The whole confusion of Medieval and Reformation times shows just how quickly truth can get lost when people stop seeking God for themselves. If you want to know the difference between missing the mark and actually knowing God, it all comes back to going straight to Him—and looking beyond the noise.

Christianity During the Medieval and Reformation Times: Truth Versus Deception

Christianity didn’t just “get lost” in the Middle Ages. For centuries, church leaders worked hard to keep ordinary people from fully understanding the Bible. Most common people, folks, knew about Jesus only through stained glass, church rituals they barely understood, and the occasional warning from the pulpit. If you wanted truth, your only option was to trust the clergy—or break their rules.

What does this have to do with posttrib beliefs? A lot. The confusion about what the Bible really says (about the rapture, about God’s character, about salvation) all traces back to how the truth was held back and how religious systems protected their power.

Power and Control: The Church’s Hold Over Spiritual Truth

The Roman Catholic Church put itself at the center of both spiritual life and daily politics during the medieval period. The Pope wasn’t just a spiritual leader, but a kingmaker, judge, and sometimes even a military commander. Most important, the Bible itself was locked up—written and read in Latin, a language known only to scholars and clergy.

Let’s get into what this actually meant:

• Bible in Latin: Everyday people didn’t speak Latin. They spoke a local language (like Old English, German, or French). If you wanted to hear Scripture, you needed a priest to read it—and interpret it—for you. That’s like someone handing you a contract you can’t read, then telling you “just trust me” about the terms.
• Chained Bibles (literally): Actual Bibles were so rare and valuable that they were chained to pulpits to prevent theft. But they were also out of reach in a more important way: you needed church approval even to look at one.
• Traditions Over Scripture: With knowledge out of reach, it didn’t take long for new traditions, legends, and rules to pile up. Some had no Biblical backing at all. When people can’t check the source, mistakes (and outright lies) become church law. That’s how doctrines about purgatory, selling indulgences, and worshipping saints became mainstream—even though they aren’t in the Bible.

This mix of spiritual power and information control let the church enforce its rules—sometimes with violence. Famous events like the Inquisition showed just how far leaders would go to stop anyone from challenging “approved” truth. The system protected its own power, even when that meant covering up what the Bible actually said. For a deep dive into how these systems impacted Catholic identity and whether Catholicism represents Biblical Christianity, see Are Catholics Christians?.

The Reformation: Rediscovering the Scriptures

Change began with a tool nobody saw coming: the printing press. Suddenly, ideas moved faster than armies. Reformers like Martin Luther didn’t invent complaints about the church, but they spread them like wildfire. Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door, calling out abuses and demanding a return to Biblical truth.

Here’s what really shook up the system:

• Bible Translation: Reformers worked to translate the Bible into local languages. Now, regular people could read Scripture for themselves and see where the official teaching didn’t line up.
• Printing Revolution: Books became cheaper, Bibles became more common, and ideas got into the hands of people who had never questioned church authority before.
• Birth of New Denominations: It didn’t take long for all this new access to spin off into new movements—some seeking truth, some just making new rules. Lutherans, Reformed, Anabaptists, and, over time, even more radical offshoots (think Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses) claimed new revelations or special knowledge. This splintering challenged the old deception but also created fresh confusion.

The Reformation did more than just shake up medieval power. It set up a culture where people demanded to see the Bible for themselves, which helped revive other beliefs—like the posttrib view, where the rapture happens after tribulation, not before. For more on Reformation-era struggles and the long fight to keep truth free in the face of evil, see our article Overview of the Reformation.

Not every new movement got it right. Most of the newer groups that started from Christianity (like Mormonism, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others) took their search for meaning in a direction that missed the heart of who God is, twisting the story further from its original Source.

So, when you run into strange new doctrines, odd traditions, or a priest or pastor who claims to have a secret shortcut, remember—God always wanted people to know Him directly. The truth gets lost not just through ignorance, but through systems set up to make sure only a chosen few ever have full access. Just like in the days when pretrib teaching got overshadowed by complicated schemes, the way back starts with asking: What does the Bible actually say, and who’s the One inviting me to know Him?

From Hidden Truth to New Religions: How Christianity Fragmented

When truth went underground in the Middle Ages, it didn’t disappear. It went quiet, locked up in Latin Bibles and guarded by church powers who thought their way was the only way. People hungered for real answers, but with the source out of reach, most were left guessing. All that bottled-up need for meaning didn’t just vanish. Instead, it bubbled up later as a flood of new groups, each claiming a fresh way to God—many of them twisting old stories or inventing brand new ones to fit spiritual gaps no one else would fill.

The Birth of New Religions and Their Missed Understanding of God

The confusion that began when truth was hidden kept growing. As barriers went up between God and everyday folks, all sorts of splinter groups tried to fill the space, but missed the center: a living, direct relationship with Yahweh Himself. Let’s break down how different movements coming out of Christian roots handled God, and why missing the point about who He is leaves their followers in the dark about ‘The Blessing.’

Mormonism (LDS Church)
Mormons hold to extra scriptures like the Book of Mormon and see God as one of many exalted beings. Instead of the eternal, unchanging Yahweh of the Bible, their view presents a god who was once a man and changed over time. This misses the mark because it replaces direct knowledge of God with layers of extra requirements and new rules that keep real relationship at arm’s length. For more, see this helpful What Sets Mormonism Apart From Christianity?.

Jehovah’s Witnesses
Jehovah’s Witnesses changed key ideas about Jesus and the end times. They teach Jesus is a created being, not God in the flesh, and only their group will be saved. The idea of personal relationship with Yahweh is replaced with strict hierarchy and constant rule-keeping. The real promise—God’s direct guidance for those under His blessing—gets swapped for Watchtower authority, leaving many stranded.

Seventh-day Adventists
Seventh-day Adventists started out of disappointment over failed predictions about Jesus’ return. Their founder, Ellen White, claimed prophetic authority, giving rise to new teachings about the Sabbath, dietary laws, and prophecy. While some stick close to Biblical basics, these extra rules and prophecies can muddy the real heart of faith: trusting God directly, not through someone else’s visions. Some offshoots, like the Branch Davidians, pushed these ideas to extremes, showing how far people will go when left searching for truth (see this documentation in PDF on various Adventist offshoots).

Christian Science
Christian Science rewrites almost everything about God, Jesus, and reality itself. It treats evil and suffering as illusions and puts human thought at the center. There’s no personal God giving direction, just “divine principle.” This sidestep turns faith into self-help, skipping right past the real blessing that comes from hearing God for yourself.

Islam
While Islam isn’t technically a Christian offshoot, its roots reach back to the same histories. It takes familiar names and events (Jesus, Abraham, Moses) but recasts them under a different picture of God—a distant, unknowable master, not a Father who desires relationship. The Quran corrects what it sees as corrupted Christian teachings, but loses the living connection central to Biblical faith. Instead of leading people to know God personally, it sets out a new list of rules to follow.

When access to the real truth about God gets blocked, these new religions are born out of need—but they’re built on sand. Each group claims to reveal more about the Divine, but, by dodging or twisting the basic character of Yahweh, they short-circuit the direct line God wants all people to have. They become systems of “try harder” or “know our secrets” instead of “know Me.”

And as history shows, when the truth is hidden long enough, even good intentions can spiral into confusion. That’s the real story of why posttrib believers need to keep circling back to the Bible: only God Himself gives The Blessing, and you can’t follow His will if you’re stuck chasing shadows.

The Influence of Augustine and Replacement Theology

The world of posttrib beliefs is full of twists, and a lot of those can be traced right back to a handful of early church leaders. When we talk about “replacement theology” – that idea where the Church supposedly takes the place of Israel in God’s plan – it’s kind of like swapping the recipe in the middle of baking and expecting the cake to come out right.

Augustine was the main chef behind this switch. The changes he and others made still ripple through modern teachings, especially when it comes to God’s promises, the nature of blessing, and how people expect the end times (including the rapture) to play out.

Key Figures and the Spread of Doctrinal Error

If you want to know why things got muddled, you have to look at who stirred the pot. Augustine of Hippo, living from 354-430 AD, was the theologian who lit the fuse for replacement theology in his massive work, The City of God. He wasn’t alone, but he was the most influential voice. You get the sense reading Augustine that he genuinely wanted to unify the church and answer Roman critics, but sometimes even sincere teachers can wander off the map.

Augustine’s Motivations:

• Context of Chaos: Rome was falling apart. People were asking if Christianity had failed. Augustine wanted to show that God’s plan wasn’t about one nation but a spiritual “City of God.”
• Desire for Unity: With so many splinter groups in early Christianity, Augustine tried to draw big lines that set the Church apart as God’s true people.
• Allegorical Reading: He read both Israel’s destiny and prophecies as symbolic of the church, not a promise to a real nation. That’s like reading a letter addressed to someone else and assuming it’s all for you.

Other Influencers:

• Origen: Before Augustine, Origen developed allegorical Bible interpretation, saying nearly everything had a hidden, spiritual meaning.
• Church Councils: Various church councils and writers picked up Augustine’s ideas, baking them into mainstream belief for centuries.

Here’s how all this shaped what came next:

• Promised Blessings Got Spiritualized: God’s blessings for Israel were seen as belonging only to the Church. The direct and future promises to Israel were spiritualized and the idea of The Blessing lost its root in real relationship or expectation.
• End Times Confusion: Augustine taught that the Millennium was happening spiritually right now. This blurred any expectation of a literal return or pretribulation hope. Suddenly, everything about the rapture, tribulation, and Second Coming was up in the air.
• Justifying Power and Control: If the Church was now “Israel,” then church leaders could claim Biblical authority and enforce new rules.

Rapture Teachings: From Pretrib to Posttrib

The whole idea of the rapture might sound simple—Jesus returns, His people are gathered, the story wraps up. But for most of church history, it’s been far from simple. Mixed messages, church politics, and desperate attempts to control truth have turned the rapture into a puzzle with missing pieces.

Where did folks start to confuse Jesus’ second coming with “the rapture,” and how did this lead to such different views? It all traces back to who taught what, and why people were so eager for either quick escape or holding out through trouble. Buckle up, because this confusion did more than mess with end times charts—it changed how believers saw God and The Blessing that comes from really knowing Him.

The Evolution of Rapture Doctrine and Its Impact

Medieval Christians began to believe Jesus would return for His people—clear and loud and public—right at the end of The Tribulation, that nasty season of suffering and chaos. This is what’s now called a posttrib view: the “gathering up” (or rapture) is tied directly to the visible return of Christ after hard times. You can find early echoes of this idea in Medieval Christian writings and even in the plain reading of passages like Matthew 24 and 1 Thessalonians 4, but this view replaces the truth that Jesus is talking to Jewish believers in Matthew 24 with the false doctrine that Jesus is talking to the Church.

The Tribulation is Jewish prophecy that centers around Israel. The only remnants of the Church left after the pretrib rapture will be the apostate church made up of people who never were Overcomers. Many of them will “wash their robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Revelation 7:14 They will do this by embracing their faith and leaving the apostate church during the Great Tribulation. They will then have to face “the executioner” who will be a part of Islam, which is going to be the real religion behind the apostate church.

Rewind to the 1800s in Britain. John Nelson Darby and a few others began to revive teaching the “pretrib” view of our early Church Fathers: the rapture happens quietly before Jacob’s Second Time Of Trouble starts, called The Tribulation, whisking Christians away so they avoid the worst parts of suffering. This is a complete opposite to the very public time of the Second Coming, when Jesus will return in Revelation 19 with His resurrected and raptured saints, us, to stop Armageddon and establish His 1000 year Millennial Reign on earth.

Why did this matter? Because many people teach the question of whether God’s people suffer with the world, or escape at the last minute, hits on how believers see God’s character and their own calling. Is faith about holding on through hardship—trusting God even when the world burns—or is it about being pulled out before things go bad? This isn’t just theory. It changes how you pray, how you endure, and how you spot “The Blessing” in your life.

There is a difference between having tribulation (trouble) in this world and being a part of The Tribulation, God’s preplanned time to pour out His wrath on the unbelieving world and bring Israel fully into the New Covenant.

The Bible is open about who gets caught in the tribulation storm. Israel is front and center—God shifts His focus back to the Jewish people (Jeremiah 30:7 calls this time “the time of Jacob’s trouble”). A lot of people will say this happened already during the Holocaust which lasted 7 years, but, as I learned from Perry Stone, Jacob had 2 times of trouble, not just one! At the same time, the unsaved world faces the fallout. The church, those caught up in the rapture, are not included in the judgment, shown by God’s promise in 1 Thessalonians 5:9.

There’s also a unique group—the 144,000 sealed servants. Revelation 7 describes these as 12,000 from each tribe of Israel, supernaturally protected and sent as witnesses during the chaos. Here’s a quick list of who’s present on earth:

• Israel: The primary focus (read Daniel 9 and Romans 11 for the background)
• The nations (unsaved): Face judgment head-on (Revelation 6-18)
• 144,000 Jewish witnesses: Protected remnant and witnesses (Revelation 7:4-8, Revelation 14:1-5)

No mention of the church going through this period—every clue in the text points to us being elsewhere.

If you’re interested in the details of how these views took shape and what it all means for real life, our article Embracing the Rapture: Biblical Truths for Today Acts 8:39 lays out the history and Scriptural support for a pretrib rapture.

Conclusion

Christianity’s journey through the Middle Ages and the Reformation wasn’t just about who held the microphone or who read the Bible in what language. It was a fight to keep the real history of God above the noise of tradition, fear, and power grabs. When the truth got hidden, people filled in the blanks with their own ideas, birthing dozens of religions that all missed what matters most: knowing Yahweh and listening for His direction, not just swapping one set of church rules for another.

If you want more than empty ritual or endless arguments, start by seeking God for yourself. Open your Bible, ask real questions, and push past the hand-me-down answers. The root of the pretrib perspective is just that—going straight to the source and refusing to settle for someone else’s map. The difference between confusion and “The Blessing” is personal contact with the God who created you. That’s what every generation needs, and it’s still within reach.

How would your life or faith change if you really knew God, not just the stories about Him? Keep searching, keep asking, and don’t hand over your trust too easy. Truth is never afraid of questions.

Thank you for reading. If this post challenged or encouraged you, share your thoughts or pass it along to someone on the same journey.