The Rapture Idea
The idea of a Rapture – the secret “taking away” of
believers before a Great Tribulation of seven years and the coming of Christ to
punish the unrighteous of the Earth – is one presented to new Christians from
the earliest days of their faith. An
unbeliever might even know about the Rapture long before he comes to the
faith. Many evangelizers will use the
idea of the Rapture as a way to till the soil where the seeds of the Gospel
message will be planted.
It’s an idea with significant “mind share,” occupying plenty
of space in the brains of believers and in the pulpits of preachers. Often even the youngest children in an
Evangelical congregation can draw a picture of what they’re told will happen in
the very near future:
- Millions of true believers disappear from the Earth ... raptured, “caught away.”
- Governments panic at first, and then make convincing excuses for the disappearances.
- An Antichrist arises and brings a false peace to the world.
- A one-world religion forms to spread faith in the Antichrist.
- People are forced to receive a mark that shows belief that Antichrist is a god.
- Millions upon millions die in horrible plagues released by angels.
- Christ and His army finally come in the clouds and utterly destroy the last of His enemies.
That’s the sequence: Rapture, Panic, False Peace, Heresy, Global
Death, Final Defeat of Enemies. Keep it
in mind.
It’s a heck of a story.
You may have even seen it on the big screen in The Omen and Left Behind or
on the small screen in the series Sleepy
Hollow or any number of Discovery Channel retellings The secular world eats up this story as much as
many Evangelicals do.
To separate faith from fiction, however, we should take a
look at the source of the Rapture idea, the Scriptures themselves.
The Rapture Scriptures
Two passages form the foundation of the Rapture idea in
modern Christianity, one in 1 Thessalonians 4 and the other in 1 Corinthians
15.
1 Thessalonians 4:15-17
“For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which
are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not precede them which are
asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend
from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of
God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain
shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air:
and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
This sequence, the sequence of Scripture, raises some issues
with the sequence we saw previously.
Christ descends with a shout, no secrets about it. A trumpet from the archangel blasts forth,
again no secret. The dead in Christ rise
up in the air, coming before anyone else.
Then the alive in Christ get caught up into the clouds with the Lord. Then they are with Him forever.
But before we draw any conclusions, let’s examine the second
major passage dealing with this same event.
1 Corinthians 15:51-57
Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall
all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for
the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall
be changed. For this corruptible must put
on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption,
and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the
saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is
thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and
the strength of sin is the law. But thanks
be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
In this sequence, more detail is added. The trump that sounds is the last trump, the
very last one. The dead raise
incorruptible. The living are changed
next. The final enemies, Death and the
Grave, are defeated decisively. Christ
and His life reign victorious forever.
According to these Scriptures, the event we call the Rapture
in our modern times is what the church has always called the Resurrection of
the Dead. It happens when the very last
trumpet sounds, and it signals the end of Christ’s and mankind’s final enemies,
Death and the Grave.
End times enthusiasts need to ask themselves: How can the
Rapture come before the plagues and wars that kill tens of millions if it is
taking place as part of the moment in salvation that closes the grave forever?
How can the Rapture be a secret snatching away of the living
when Paul clearly says it is proclaimed with a shout, with the Lord appearing
dramatically in the clouds at the blaring of the trumpet, a fanfare declaring
the arrival of the King?
How, if this moment is the moment of the “last trump,” can
there be other trumpets in a tribulation story filled with seals, bowls, and
trumps?
How can this Rapture be the moment that “Death is swallowed
up in victory” if there is still so much death to come in a Great Tribulation?
And finally: How can the current Rapture idea and the
timeline accompanying it persist once the light of Scripture shines on
it? Where did it even come from?
The Making of Myths
Since the dawn of civilization, humankind has been a
myth-mongering species. We love our tall
tales. We see the sun rise and we
conjure stories of Apollo’s chariot. We
hear thunder and we dream up Thor’s hammer.
We see foam on the ocean and we invent Izanagi no Mikoto’s divine spear
of life.
It’s often oppression that brings out the myth makers among
us. My own ancestors of Mexico are a
prime example of fable crafting: Not content with the religion offered by their
rich European overlords, they borrowed from the oppressing class’s faith to devise
a tale of a Lady of Guadalupe, dark-skinned like regional natives, who declared
herself an incarnation of the Virgin Mary and demanded a church be built to honor
her. Similarly, the oppressed and
disenfranchised Jews in the decades before Christ borrowed the term “messiah”
from their ancient faith to concoct a complex mythology of an imminent warrior
king who would conquer the oppressive Roman empire, subjecting it to Judean
control.
The word “eschatology” means “the study of end times.” As Christian believers, we aren’t immune to our
eschatology being affected by our human myth-making drive. The fact is, the more oppressed or
disenfranchised we imagine ourselves to be, the more eschatological myth-making
we’re likely to do. This, I believe, is
part of what drives the current push to reinterpret the Second Coming of our
Lord in victory and glory as a rescue tale that snatches us away from the horrors
and punishment of those who refuse to believe as we do.
As we’ve seen, the two passages at the very heart of the
Rapture idea in Scripture do not paint it as a flight from God’s wrath upon the
world. Instead, they portray it as the
final moment of Christ’s victory over sin, death, and the grave. There is no evil after that moment. There is
no more death and tribulation.
But what about that End Times model we all have seen, all
that stuff cobbled together from the Book of Revelation and Matthew 24 and
parts of Ezekiel and areas in Daniel?
Obviously, that’s far too complex a topic to be handled in a single blog
post. No matter how we may choose to
interpret those difficult and much-debated passages, one thing is clear from
the Apostle Paul’s words on the subject of “Rapture”: It is the final moment
of sin, death, and the grave. Evil has
no foothold after it. It is the day of
Resurrection, ultimate victory, the moment that the mistake of Eden is erased
and forgotten forever.
To claim that Rapture is followed by death, war, and destruction
is to call Paul a liar and to distort and disregard the Scriptures.
Worse, to believe in the modern Rapture mythology is to grant
the grave continued victory, and to give death back his sting.
I prefer to step away from the mythologies of this age, and
instead to embrace the real promises of God.
What promises? That His kingdom
is now among us (Luke 17:21). That His
kingdom and His peace will continue to grow without ceasing (Isaiah 9:7). That He reigns now from heaven as God puts all His enemies under His feet as His
footstool (Acts 2:35). That the final
enemies to be defeated will be death and the grave (1 Corinthians 15).
The Rapture is the
Second Coming. The Rapture is the Resurrection. Instead of cowering to wait to be snatched
from the evils of this world, I will stand tall, contributing to the increase
of the Kingdom through the fruit of the Spirit, and helping to make Christianity
something other than a laughable, throwaway plot for Hollywood screenwriters.
My eschatology is Victory.
Marana Tha,
Cosmic Parx
