Is Luke Chapter 17 verses 34-36 referring to the rapture or Christ's Second Coming?

A:

These verses refer to the Second Coming of Jesus, which the author of Mark's Gospel thought would occur within the lifetimes of those to whom Jesus spoke, but Luke's Gospel was written too late for that generation, and so says that no one can know when Jesus will return. Jesus' return was to be accompanied by terible calamities, the sun and moon darkened and the stars falling down to earth. Compare that to John Nelson Darby's concept of the Rapture of the Church, when Jesus returns in secret to 'rapture' the church and its people bodily up to heaven.

Darby, a British evangelical preacher and founder of the Plymouth Brethren, invented the Rapture theology back in 1830. The belief that Jesus will come again was not new, as we see in Mark's Gospel. Darby's new teaching was that Christ would return twice, first in secret to "Rapture" his church out of the world and up to heaven, then a second time after seven years of global tribulation for non-believers, to establish a Jerusalem-based kingdom on earth. Whether or not Christians should still wait in eager anticipation of the Second Coming, the Rapture was only ever an idea from the imagination of a nineteenth-century preacher, so it will certainly never really happen.

The Second Coming. The key to unlocking verses 34-36 is found in verse 26, "And as it was in the days of Noe (Noah), so shall it be also in the days of the Son of Man." Hank Hanegraaff (The Apocalypse Code) notes that Jesus' use of the Flood illustration makes it clear that the unrighteous are taking in judgment while the righteous are left behind. The force of this argument is such that even Tim LaHay (a dispensationalist much like John Nelson Darby) acknowledges that Luke 17:34-36 "is not a reference to the Rapture" and that the "taken" are unbelievers experiencing judgment not raptured saints."