No Rapture, and Fear of 666?

Series: SOME SAY THE WORLD WILL END IN FIRE

Hi.  I’m Yolanda Ramírez, “YoYo Rez,” and I’d like to welcome you to week 3 of my four-week lecture series on approaching the Book of Revelation.

These lectures don’t actually study the book of Revelation in a formal manner.  Instead, I’ve been discussing various approaches the Body of Christ has taken to help them embrace the message of the book.

This week is Lecture III: NO RAPTURE, AND FEAR OF 666

During this talk, you’ll hear about a number of things you disagree with.  Some of them, I disagree with.  That’s part of what happens when we weigh all sides of a complex issue – we consider many things, we develop our wisdom from a variety of viewpoints and counselors, and then, when we’ve weighed them all, we embrace what seems right to us, those things that we feel are of God.  It’s fun to think about different theories and perspectives and hypotheses and ideas, but in the end there is one goal – to set our minds on the things of Christ and His things above.  Philippians 4:8 instructs us with these words from Paul: “Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.”

To discern those things, we have to separate a lot of wheat from a lot of chaff.  That’s what maturing in Christ is all about.  So guide us, Holy Spirit, as we do that.

And away we go ...

PART A: SEARCHING FOR DUCKIES

Some of you know that I work as a governess, a live-in teacher and companion to a young girl, the daughter of an East Coast U.S. family.  The little girl I have charge over ... the most wonderful child I’ve ever met ... plays a game with me outside on cloudy days.  The game is “Find the Ducky.”  We each take turns spotting duck-shaped collections of clouds.  Whoever finds the most ducky-shaped clouds, wins … and trust me, as the game goes on, we can find the shapes of duckies anywhere and everywhere.  There we are, the innocent little schoolgirl and her older postgraduate companion, each of us able to look at random sky patterns and spot the ducks of our dreams.

And that, my friends, is a parable of how we as a modern church sometimes read the Revelation of John.

The Revelation is a book written in mysterious symbols and breathtaking visions of both glory and horror.  Almost nothing in it is literally what it says it is – the heads of dragons are hills of a city, the horns on a beast’s head are sometimes kings, sometimes symbols of power; a woman riding a beast is Rome, but then the beast she’s riding is suddenly Rome, too.  Without a clear sense of how to approach the text, the Revelation is pretty much Symbol Soup.

That’s both a good thing and a bad thing.  It’s good because we know that if we find the right keys to interpret it, the visions will make perfect sense.  After all, the book is called “Revelation” – things revealed, unveiled, made clearer.  It isn’t called “The Utterly Incomprehensible Symbol Soup of John.”

But yes, the thick symbolism of Revelation is also a negative.  That’s because we humans are pattern-seeking creatures.  When we see a row of dots, our brain wants to connect them with a line.  When we see interesting burn patterns on a piece of toast, we can sometimes make out the face of Our Lady of Guadalupe.  When we go to the store and ring up a bill of $47.65, and then on the way home see a license plate that ends with the numbers *4765* … the marvelous, wondrous brains the Lord designed for us make us WANT there to be a connection.

When I say to you, “Look, there’s a cloud that looks like a ducky,” you will look up and see the ducky.

And when I point to a passage of Scripture and say, “Look, here you will see a reference to the New World Order and the secret Illuminati behind it”  -- by golly, when you look at that Scripture, you’ll see it, plain as day.

Let me show you a non-Revelation example of that principle at work.  I’m going to post a passage for you, a pretty well known passage about the Rapture.  When I post it below, I want you to pinpoint the parts of the passage that indicate the Rapture is taking place.  It’s not a hard test, you’ll see the verses easily.  From Matthew chapter 24 –

“For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.  Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.  Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.”

See?  It told you it was easy.  The Rapture is there in the discussion of people being left behind, others being taken.  We spotted that ducky, no problem.  It was obvious.

Here’s what would have made it a lot less obvious: If we hadn’t been taught that that verse is about the Rapture.

Suppose, for example, a favorite pastor or preacher had taught us that the passage refers to the Romans sweeping through Judea, finally putting down the Jewish rebellions – grabbing people from the fields and enslaving them, leaving others dead in the field.  What if that pastor had taught us that the warning was about the fall of Jerusalem, and advice from Jesus to the Jews of his day that if they are on their roof when the invasion came, not to go back inside to get their stuff – flee to the hills, all of them!  If they stayed in the fields or slept away the time in bed, they’d become one of the enslaved or one of the dead, whose bodies were left in the fields where the eagles would gather to scavenge their flesh.

You see how it works?  The word for that is “priming.”  If I “prime” you to see that Scripture one way, as a vague reference to the Rapture, you will easily see how it fits what I claimed.  If I prime you to see it another way, as a description of the effects of a Roman invasion, then that second way is what you’ll see.

Those of us who are mature in Christ aren't easily fooled by fancy footwork around the Scriptures.  But even if we are mature, we still have an issue to face: What if, when we were still babes in Christ, we were primed to read things in only one way?  What if that first impression wasn't the whole story?  Our first impressions are seriously stubborn … once we see a thing a certain way, our wonderful, pattern-building brains will cling to that way of seeing it.

So what are we supposed to do?  How are we to know which way to approach the slippery ideas of Scripture when it comes to the end times and the symbolism it’s always draped in?

Part B: KNOWING THE ROAD WE WALK

This is a good time for me to emphasize a point I’ve tried to make every week: None of the passages of Scripture we’re discussing have to do with salvation.  Some parts of Scripture can be tricky, requiring more study and deeper investigation.  However, the portions that deal with the most important fact of the universe – our salvation through faith in the saving power of the blood of Christ – are crystal clear, and the stuff of childlike faith.  Above all else, and despite anything I spout tonight, that Truth of Salvation is the overriding fact of our faith.

That said – getting saved is not the end of the line for a believer.  Growing in discipleship means making manifest the fruit of the Spirit and the love that is our God … love from our hearts, from our souls, from our strength ... and (out of order here to make my point) from our minds.  We are called to manifest God through our thinking, and studying, and learning.  In fact, whole sections of our sacred Scriptures are called the “Wisdom Books” – manifestations of the principle that intelligence and learning start with fear of the Lord, and grow on from there.  We are to use our brains.

Last week I outlined 4 possible approaches to understanding the Revelation.   All of them come from the beliefs of orthodox, born-again believers.  They could be classified as:

• FUTURISM: The belief that everything in Revelation has yet to happen, and will take place in a single era in the church’s future.
• HISTORICISM: The belief that the events symbolized in Revelation cover the entire span of history from after Jesus’ ascension until the last days.
• PRETERISM: The belief that nearly all of Revelation was fulfilled at the fall of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, and the end of the Old Covenant.
• IDEALISM: The belief that Revelation is symbolic for every age and era in the church, continuously fulfilled until the final generation and coming.

 If you were discipled in your walk to think like a Preterist, you will have a hard time seeing the sense of the Futurist approach.  If you were schooled as a Historicist, the Idealism approach will strike you as wishy-washy and too “fluffy” to satisfy you.  Remember how I opened – if you expect to see ducky clouds, you won’t easily see horsey clouds; it will be ducks, all the way down.  But let’s take a few moments to open our minds and consider our favorite clouds from a different perspective – because each of these approaches has specific strengths, as well as weaknesses.

Part C: FUTURISM

Good news out of the United Kingdom – a new baby has been born, the first Prince of Cambridge in hundreds of years!  You might have seen it mentioned on television.

But even better – within 24 hours of his birth, I had already found the first YouTube video discussing that this new bundle of British joy is a serious candidate for being the Antichrist.  I also found another site that played with the mathematics of the day and hour of his birth to tie him to the number 666.  In other words -- before this child even had a name or a Wikipedia page, he’d been assigned a title and a number to make him a part of End Time prophecy.

Welcome … to the wonderful world of radical Futurism. J

I said last week that “Futurism” is currently the most popular way to approach the Revelation of John.  Its appeal began to rise in the U.S. in the 1820s, overcoming several hundred years during which “Historicism” was the preferred way to understand the End Times.

The appeal of approaching Revelation from a Futurist mindset is so obvious that it almost doesn’t need stating: Obviously, Christ has not come back yet, so the fulfillment of End Times prophecies MUST be in the future.  We’re not living in a Millennial Kingdom seated in Jerusalem.  The moon has not darkened and the sun has not gone out, stars have not fallen from the sky.  We Christians do not yet rule the planet, and our warrior Christ has not revealed Himself to take control of the nations.  Since this troubled world can’t be fixed by human power, we require the apocalyptic destruction of all nations and civilizations … although we ourselves will be spared that tribulation, caught up in clouds with Christ to avoid the worst Tribulation ever and the utter punishment of all bad people, in those ways graphically detailed in our book of Revelation.

So, the strengths of the approach are obvious, but the weaknesses should be kept in mind.

For one thing, modern Futurist thinking all focuses on the concept of a Rapture … a grabbing away of the people of God so that they will not experience tribulation over a seven-year period.   While such a “catching away” is mentioned in other passages of Scripture, it isn’t found in the Revelation.  Even if you’re hunting for it in the text, it’s rather hard to see, and it depends on some fancy footwork by the person who insists there’s a Rapture there.  When various commentators try to show the Rapture in the text of the Revelation, you can really get the feeling you’re being shown cloud duckies.

Meanwhile, most of the other Scriptures referencing a Rapture talk about it as the moment all death ends, the twinkling-of-an-eye change of the living and dead into spiritual bodies in Christ.  It’s difficult, in these other Scriptures, to see any distinction between what we call the Rapture and what Christ calls his final coming and the defeat of death.  When Paul talks about it, the moment of translation seems to be the last moment of human time, not the first day in a Tribulation that kills a whole lot more people even after death has been defeated.

Another major hurdle to the Futurist approach is the very first line of the Revelation – the verse that insists that the things described in the book must soon [quickly, immediately, shortly] come to pass.

Soon.  Quickly.  Immediately.  Shortly.

Of our four approaches to Revelation, Futurism is the only one that struggles with the meaning of that verse.  Enemies of our faith latch on to that word, "soon," and mock our hopes, reminding us that almost two thousand years of waiting can hardly be considered “soon.”

WARNING: Remember that I am presenting both sides, strengths and weaknesses.  If you just felt the urge to begin assembling counter-arguments, I applaud you, because you are loving the Lord with your whole mind.  But I also urge you to continue focusing, even if this is new territory for you.  Truth will remain true, and it will wait for us to get there. Continue with me as we weigh the strengths and weaknesses of each approach.  END OF WARNING.

I’ll give one final consideration about Futurism.  I’ll ask, “What fruit does this mindset bear?”  In other words, how does this way of interpretation manifest itself in the church of Christ?  Is the fruit good, or bad?

Clearly, there is very good fruit to come from a Futurist mindset.  This approach keeps us focused on Christ, and maintains our hope in His final victory, yet to come.  It keeps us ready and keeps us ever mindful that we should live as if the end will come unexpectedly, a thief in the night.  We are urged to share the Gospel, never knowing how much time we have left to reveal the Lord to others.

But Futurism also has its down side, which I've already hinted at.  If misapplied, Futurism can foster a paranoid, suspicious mentality, the exact opposite of Christ’s admonition that when we see signs of the end, not to worry.  Within Christianity, "Apocalypse Obsession" is simply a reflection of the secular, worldly "Paranoid Conspiracy Theory" obsession – the worries of the world dressed up in Bible verses, and unable to distinguish a Mayan Calendar and a quatrain of Nostradamus from the Holy Spirit-inspired words of the Gospels and of John.  I myself have heard preachers in the virtual world community of Second Life speaking of how a Planet X, called Nibiru, is going to slam into us on December 21, 2012 (oops)  and start the Tribulation under the New World Order.  That’s Babylonian mythology, mixed with Mayan mythology, mixed with Biblical prophecy, mixed with contemporary American mythology.  I’m a girl who loves her Symbol Soup, but that’s too many calories even for me.

In some cases, the paranoia can grow one level more, into what I call Pop Paranoia.  Here’s my “Bigwordism” of the week:

"Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia."

It’s the technical term for “fear of the number 666.”  When I was very little, Ronald and Nancy Reagan moved to a post-presidential residence in Bel Air, California at 666 St. Cloud Road.  Before moving in, they had the town change the house number to 668, precisely because they knew what kind of grief they'd be in for if they didn't.  No, not grief from living under a cursed number; grief from the evangelical community, and derision from the culture at large.  It was already bad enough that the president had 666 tied to his name from birth (Ronald, 6 letters, Wilson, 6 letters, Reagan, 6 letters).  They didn’t want to compound the issue by actually living in the Home of the Beast right there in California, the State of Sin.

That might be a cute example of Pop Paranoia, but what the Reagans were up against was anything but cute.  Too many evangelicals of a Futurist ideology respond to triple sixes with a level of paranoia that brings derision on the believing community.  Maybe I’m guilty of it, too.  I always notice when my grocery bill comes to $66.66 … or $166.62 … or $60.66.  I always wonder if I should drive a little bit farther when I’ve parked with the odometer ending with sixty-six point six miles.  Never mind that none of those really equals 666, literally.  And never mind that the number 666 in the Revelation is not itself literal but a code for the name of a man.  I invite you to laugh at me, because I am a creature of my culture, whose head says seeing a grouping of sixes means nothing, but whose heart always wonders.

I’m glad I’ve never been issued a credit card that ends with the digits 0666 – because the rational part of me only goes so far.

Part D: PRETERISM

A believer who approaches the Revelation with a Preterist interpretation doesn’t worry about the number 666.  He looks at it and says, “Ah, look at that, the code for Nero Caesar when you transliterate his name to Hebrew and apply the ancient counting system to it.”

The Preterist doesn’t wonder when the events of Revelation are going to happen.  He believes that Revelation already told him the time table – right there in Revelation 17, where John writes that the 7-headed beast is 7 hills (the seven hills east of the River Tiber, upon which Rome was built), and which John says are also seven kings – five already fallen (Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero), one who now is (Vespasian, after a bunch of chaos following Nero’s death), and one that has not yet come (Domitian, who outdid even Nero in his persecution of the followers of Christ).

That’s what the word “preterist” means – past.  If you studied Spanish or French in school, you might remember the preterit verb conjugation, the form used for an event that began and ended completely in the past.

For the Preterist, John is obviously saying that all of this was going on right in his own time, while he was writing – the seven-headed beast was political Rome, not some future Roman Catholic Papacy, and the Whore of Babylon riding upon that very beast also had to be existing at that time, since she was on that very beast.  To the mind of the Preterist, it's a little arrogant of modern Christians to presume that the Revelation was written for modern times, ripped from our own headlines.  Every symbol can be traced to an event in John’s own time, and the Day of the Lord came when Jerusalem fell to the forces of Rome in 70 A.D., ending Israel's exclusive claim to the eternal covenant with the Lord.  The Day of the Lord, says the Preterist, was the "End of the Age" from the viewpoint of the nation of Israel – a hugely significant act in the history of the faith, which will only be surpassed by the "End of the World," of the cosmos, when Christ finally comes to end death.

First let me deal with the strengths of this approach.

It clearly handles the “things that must happen soon” issue.  For the Preterist, the bulk of Revelation deals with the world at the time John was writing, and predicts exactly what happened with the fall of Jerusalem and the end of Israel as a nation.  The Preterist approach also helps us make sense of some of Jesus’ assurances that “this generation” he was addressing would not pass away until everything He said about the end of the age (not the end of the world) came to pass.  In Futurism, that statement by Jesus has to be played with to make it work, reinterpreting what the word “this” means – a trick that is way too painful a reminder of President Clinton changing the meaning of what “is”  is, and not helpful once you realize that in other places Jesus says that there were those listening to him who would “not taste death” until the end of the age came.

Still, Preterism has some obvious problems.  It’s most glaring issue is that it suggests multiple stages to the coming of Christ – one at the end of the age (of Israel), and another at the end of the world, when death is defeated.  If you press a Preterist on this point, he’ll likely say it’s obvious that there were two different events being considered by those writing down prophecy … but, frankly, I suspect it’s only obvious to them because they’ve decided what ducks they were looking for in that particular bank of clouds.

More important, at least in my opinion, is that a Preterist has to spiritualize some parts of “end of the age” prophecy to make it all work for him.  For example, consider Matthew 24 when it speaks of the Son of Man coming in clouds of glory in judgment over his enemies, being seen by all the tribes of the Earth.  (I continue to refer to Matthew 24 because it’s a favorite of both Futurists and Preterists in their explanations of why their side of the discussion is better).   Here, a Preterist will use Scripture to interpret Scripture, pointing out that “God coming on the clouds” is not a literal phrase in the Old Testament, and should not be considered so here – in the Hebrew scriptures, it always referred to God passing judgment on an enemy of Israel.  Likewise, the idea that he is seen by “all the tribes of the Earth” is no more literal than when Augustus Caesar, according to Luke, decreed that “all the world” should be taxed.  "The Son of Man coming in the clouds and seen by all the tribes of the Earth" is, for the Preterist, a way of saying “many shall see this horrible event happen to Jerusalem,” if read properly.

You can probably already see the problem with that.  A clever talker can dance around nearly any line in Scripture, turning it into a figurative saying when the literal meaning is too inconvenient.  I’m not saying the Preterist is absolutely wrong to interpret some texts in a spiritual or metaphorical way … but I am saying that it’s a tricky affair, and that there need to be much more reliable rules of interpretation if we’re going to take that approach to the Scriptures.  Simply pointing to another Scripture ... in another context, written hundreds of years and hundreds of miles away ... smacks of rationalizing more than it does of sound, reliable interpretation of the Word.

What is the fruit of Preterism?  Since it isn’t as popular as Futurism these days, it’s tougher to point at any widespread outcome to using it as an approach.  Still, we’re bright people, so we can consider where it might lead, should it become the favored approach some time in the future.

First the good fruit.  By its very nature, evangelical Preterism is optimistic.  The world doesn’t need to become utterly horrible and fall into abject evil before the coming of Christ, and the church can work to fulfill, literally, the prophecy of both Isaiah and Habakkuk, which see a future where “of the increase of His government and of peace, there shall be no end.”  As a Preterist spreads the gospel, the peace that it brings will actually overcome the world.  Sharing the Gospel isn’t a matter of rushing in to snatch people from the hell fires of impending catastrophe; it is, instead, the act of filling all of creation with the Gospel of peace, offering stewardship to the souls of men and bringing responsible stewardship to the creation itself.

This approach is a pleasant contrast to a recurring radical Futurist attitude that protecting the environment is wasted effort … "cut it down, burn it up, use it while you’ve got it, because it will all be destroyed soon at Christ’s return."  Some evangelical Futurists even use apocalyptic imagery to demonize environmental efforts, calling them “The Green Dragon.”  If you think I’m exaggerating, do a Google search after the lecture on “Why Pastor Mark Driscoll says he drives an SUV.”  Pay special attention to comments by his fans.

But like all the approaches we'll consider, Preterism has potential negative fruit, too.  With no sense of urgency and no press of time, a Preterist’s approach to sharing the gospel might be a lot more laid back than the Kingdom requires.  After all, if there’s no expectation of a sudden, secret Rapture of the church, then why would there be a rush to get out there and win the lost?  A Preterist risks an attitude of laziness, a way-too-mellow approach to preaching the Good News … and, because of that lack of urgency, a Preterist may fail to carry the message to all who need it, due to a false sense of security.

(Similar dangers have been mentioned in connection to extreme Calvinists – if everyone to be saved is elected from before the foundation of the world, then what urgency is there to preach the Gospel?  Those who will be saved … will be saved, without human effort.  Preaching is just us, going through the motions.)

So, FUTURISM – a daily, expectant focus on Christ as the center of each moment, carrying the risk of falling into paranoia about every world event.

And PRETERISM – an optimistic view of the ever-increasing peace and authority of the Lord on the Earth, carrying the risk of lazy surrender and a loss of urgency.

I’ve tried to present both the “up” sides and the “down” sides of each mindset.  Still, I didn’t even scratch the surface of the very loud, very not-friendly debates the two sides can have with each other over the jots, tittles, dust, and details of their arguments.  If you’ve researched the viewpoints for yourself, you already know how vehement each camp can get – extreme futurists view Preterists as forces of Satan, deluding believers into false security in the face of immediate supernatural danger, while extremist Preterists view Futurists as shallow, uneducated, readers of the Word who do no study and who arrogantly see themselves written into every End Time prophecy.

Mind you, most us in the Body of Christ are thoughtful non-extremists when it comes to matters not tied directly to salvation by faith in the sacrifice of Christ.  But just a heads up if you investigate this study further: the Internet is a scary medium of very loud extremists on either side.

Test your sources, and test the spirit of their testimonies.

CONCLUSION

“Hey, YoYo!” I hear someone thinking, “you skipped two of the approaches, Historicism and Idealism!”  Indeed I did, because I like to contrast those two on their own. They get their own, final week next Thursday.  Historicism is the meat and potatoes of Reformation theologians; Idealism is the stuff of mystics and their allegories.  For that reason, I like to square them off against each other as if they were as different as day and night, as different as up and down, as different as men and women.  The final lecture of this series, therefore, is: “The Revelation: Hard-headed Boys vs. Fuzzy-minded Girls.”  I hope you can make it for the finale!

Marana Tha,

Cosmic Parx