Rapture Theology

I must admit, I enjoy a good theological debate. However, I find most Christians would rather endure the pillory or the rack than engage in a good Biblical discussion. I believe people fall into several categories concerning this issue:

1. There are those that think it's a waste of time and divisive. 
2. There are those that feel they are uninformed and have nothing to add.
3. There are those couldn't care less.

No Biblical debates please!

That being said, I will push forward anyway. 

About a week ago I put up a Twitter poll where I asked people the following: "Do you believe in any form of Rapture theology?" I had 1033 kind souls chime in and the results were as follows:

74% voted Yes, they believe in Rapture theology

21% voted No

5% voted that they thought this was song sung by Blondie. (God bless them!)

So as you can plainly see, a vast majority of the people polled believe in some sort of rapture doctrine. Now for full disclosure, I do not believe in the Rapture. Now at this point you may be tempted to pelt me with rocks and verbal rebukes...but please hear me out! 

My first contention, which I will deal with in this post, involves the Rapture theology not being taught in the first 1800 years of church history. It wasn't until 1830 that John Darby formulated this theory. In his own words he said: "it literally jumped out of the pages of the Bible." And while this is all fine and good, we must ask: "is it really possible that all of the church fathers up until 1830 missed this little gem?" 

Church fathers like: Augustine, Athanasius, Ireneaus, Basil, Tertullian, Origen,Cyril, John Chrysotom, Justin Martyr, Jerome, or Hilary. 

Is it also possible that the theologians of the middle ages: Aquinas, Anselm, Abelard, Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli missed it too?

Lastly, is it possible that more modern theologians like Barth, Bonhoeffer, Bulgmann, Moltmann, Tillich, and N.T Wright missed it also?

Now it's your turn...