BITR: The Rapture

I used to go to a church where every now and then the pastor would preach on the end times. He would get up behind the pulpit and go through the prophecies, proclaiming that the signs of this age are all pointing to the return of Jesus Christ. Every time he preached this sermon he would say, “And I believe you and I are living in the end times." He actually believed that this generation is going to be called up to meet Jesus in the air, and that death is something that we won't be experiencing. We have our tickets to ride on the "good old gospel ship" so to speak.

I am very hesitant to get into end times theology. I am not a fan of the topic. In fact, I am almost apathetic towards it. I have read most of the Left Behind books, and heard the basic messages preached about the rapture, the tribulation, the millennial reign of Christ, the anti-Christ, etc. Still, I have lots of reasonable doubts about the subject. This is not because I don’t have faith or anything, but because the foundation that this kind of theology is built on is shaky at best. And if it is taken too far, it can be downright destructive.

For centuries, there have been groups of Christians who believed that their generation would see the end times and the return of Christ. The idea of the rapture has only been around for about 200 years, and it came about because of the dream of a little girl. Most Christians in the world don’t even believe in the rapture. This belief is held almost exclusively to conservative Christians in North America. It is also a belief that is never really appropriately addressed in scripture. At best, we get small glimpses or hints. But what some Bible prophecy theologians do is come back through the text, string together a few separate Bible verses from separate parts of the New Testament and then say, “See? This means that the rapture is going to happen.”

I think it’s worth noting that when God gave us the text that we use to interpret the last days, he purposely gave us an extremely confusing, extremely vague and hard-to-understand bit of information. Exiled to the isle of Patmos, John the Revelator had a dream and then wrote down what he saw. And in that dream he tells us about beasts with certain numbers of horns, bowls of God’s wrath being poured out, angels wiping out a third of the world’s population – all kinds of elaborate imagery that indicates lots of woe and upheaval. Even when Jesus told his disciples about his return, he wasn’t very specific about it.

But what some people try to do is go through the text, make a chart, and say “This is how God is going to wrap things up.” I don’t think it is possible to figure this out, and I don’t know if God is even interested in telling us how. I think that at some point we just have to come to a place where we say we don’t know what God is going to do but we still trust him. I have heard that many theologians believe Revelations speaks of events happening in the first century after Jesus’ death and resurrection. In 70 AD, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed. Christians were also under heavy persecution, and Revelations was a book that spoke about those events, but also offered a great hope to those who were enduring them. Although I don’t really know a whole lot about this view, it would make sense in light of the circumstances of that time.

One issue I have with modern end times theology is that it can influence a person to be apathetic towards the present needs of the world. It can cause a believer to do absolutely nothing to try to make the world a better place, since he/she believes that the world is just spiraling down until Jesus comes back anyways. It can also give a person a reason to want war in the Middle East, since that will lead to the return of Christ and the battle of Armageddon. Sometimes I wonder it these kinds of people should be allowed to vote.

I once read an old preachers’ adage quoted by David Chagall, the host of a Bible prophecy show called The Last Hour: “We Christians are placed here not to clean up the dirty old fishpond of the world but to fish people out of it." I don’t think that this is what Jesus was saying when he taught us to care for the poor and love our enemies. In fact, Jesus even said that the kingdom of God is at hand. The kingdom of God is now. Not in the next life when the church is raptured and we are all reigning with Christ, but now.

Another drawback to this kind of thinking is obvious in what’s going on with the current election. A lady I work with got all bent out of shape the other day because she heard on the news that Barack Obama said something about uniting the nations. Of course, we all know that that’s what the anti-Christ is going to do, right? And we also know that the anti-Christ is going to be a good speaker. Barack Obama is a good speaker. Therefore, he must be the anti-Christ. The way I see it, if your faith causes you to go against a person who wants to bring peace and unity, then you might want to take another look at your faith. Jesus himself said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.”

One more problem with this kind of theology is that it promotes the tendency for Christians to scare other people into becoming a Christian. I don’t believe in this kind of evangelism at all. The Bible says there is no fear in love. To try to use fear to bring someone into a relationship with Christ would be like using fear to get a person to marry you or be your friend. It just doesn’t work that way. We all know that relationships built on fear are not good relationships at all.

I personally really like the book of Revelations. I think it’s a beautiful book. For almost the entire book John gives you all kinds of images of woe and upheaval, destruction, battles, and horned beasts. It’s pretty downright frightening at times, and very mysterious. But at the end you get a beautiful image of a new heaven and a new earth, and a voice out of heaven saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

I am not going to pretend like I know what God has in store for us. I have no earthly idea what is going to happen or how it will take place. But the Bible does tell me that I was created to be in a relationship with God and that somewhere along the line that relationship got broken. Now I live in a world where I am separated from God, living in shame, and outside of the love that I need in order to live. And one day I’m going to die. My hope is in Jesus. And because he gave himself, God no longer sees my sin but he sees his son. No matter what I do, I will always be loved by God. Books like Revelations give me hope that when all is said and done, I will be with God. And that is exactly where I’m supposed to be.