[CS-FSLUG] TD: AWESOME and accurate!!

[Fred A. Miller]

The Rapture
 
By Anthony M. Coniaris

As I was driving one day I encountered a bumper sticker admonishing me: 
"WARNING! In the event of Rapture, this car will be driverless."

The strange belief in the Rapture teaches that some day (sooner rather than 
later), without warning, born-again Christians will begin to float up from 
the freeway, abandoned vehicles careening wildly. There will be airliners in 
the sky suddenly with no one at the controls! Presumably, God is removing 
these favored ones from earth to spare them the tribulation of the 
Anti-Christ which the rest of us will have to endure.

Unfortunately the Rapture has been promoted widely by the Left Behind series 
of books that have sold over 70 million copies.

The Rapture represents a radical misinterpretation of Scripture. I remember 
watching "Sixty Minutes" a year ago and was appalled to hear the announcer 
say that "the Rapture is an unmistakenly Christian doctrine". It is NOT! It 
is a serious distortion of Scripture. It is astonishing that a belief so 
contrary to Scripture and the tradition of the Church could be propagated by 
so-called "Christians".

According to the Bible, Orthodox Christians, Catholics and most Protestant 
mainline churches, the true Rapture will not be secret; it will be the great 
and very visible Second Coming of Jesus at the end of the world. That is the 
one and only "Rapture". It will not be a separate, secret event but one that 
every eye shall see (1 Thess. 4:16-17).

The word "rapture" is not found in Scripture but hearkens to 1 Thess. 4:17 
where St. Paul says that when the Lord comes again "we who are alive shall be 
caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." This "being caught up 
in the clouds"--arpagisometha in Greek--is translated by some as "raptured". 
The word itself is not found in Christian theology.

The notion of a rapture in which Christ comes unseen to take believers away 
secretly, and only later comes back again for everyone else publicly--this 
whole teaching is quite novel. It was almost unheard of until John Nelson 
Darby formulated it in the 1800s as part of a new approach to the Bible, 
sometimes called "dispensationalism".

The purpose of the "Rapture" is to protect the elect from the tribulations of 
the end times. Yet Jesus said nothing about sparing anyone from tribulation. 
In fact, He said, "In the world you have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I 
have overcome the world." Nowhere did Jesus ever say that He would return 
secretly to rapture the elect. Rather, He promised to be with His elect in 
all tribulations. "Lo, I am with you always. I will never leave you or 
forsake you." He even had something good to say about being persecuted: 
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is 
the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. 5:10).

Those who espouse the Rapture claim that Matthew 24:40-41 refers clearly to 
the rapture of the just, "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." The entire passage, however, refers to 
Christ's second coming where He will judge the living and the dead and 
separate the just from the unjust.

Darby taught as dogma that when the Scriptures reveal that the Lord will reign 
on earth for a thousand years (Rev. 20:4), this figure is to be taken 
literally, rather than as a symbol for eternity. The Council of Ephesus in 
A.D. 431 condemned as heresy this teaching which is called chialiasmos 
(millenianism or 1000 years). In fact, the Seven Ecumenical Councils (325-787 
A.D.) in which the essential truths of the Christian faith were defined never 
mention a rapture. Yet evangelical Christians and Pentecostals keep using 
obscure passages of the book of Revelation which purport to give a detailed 
timetable of what will happen at the end of the world, despite the fact that 
Jesus Himself warned that no man knows either the day or the hour when the 
Son of Man shall return.

A major problem with the Rapture is that it ends up teaching not two but three 
comings of Jesus--first His birth in Bethlehem; second, His secret coming to 
snatch away (rapture) the "born-again"; and third, His coming at the end of 
the world to judge the living and the dead and to reign in glory. Yet only 
two not three comings of Christ are mentioned in the Bible. We have the 
clearest definition of this in the Nicene Creed when we confess that "the 
Lord Jesus Christ will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. 
His Kingdom will have no end. I expect the resurrection of the dead. And the 
life of the ages to come." There is no mention of a "Rapture".

As already stated, most Christians--Orthodox, Catholics and Protestants--do 
not believe in the Rapture. In fact, one Protestant pastor, John L. Gray, 
summarized magnificently what most Christians believe about the Rapture when 
he wrote these remarkable words:

Though many believe and teach this "Pre-Tribulation Rapture" theory, they 
erroneously do so, because neither Jesus, Paul, Peter, John, nor any of the 
other writers of the Bible taught this. Nor did the early church fathers, nor 
any others for many hundreds of years. Did you know that NONE of this was 
ever taught prior to 1812, and that all forms of Pre-Tribulation Rapture 
teaching were developed since that date? If I were to preach something, or 
believe something, supposedly from the Bible, but cannot find that ANYONE 
ELSE before 1812 ever believed it or taught it, I would seriously question 
that it is based on the Bible.

Thus the Rapture is foreign to the Bible and to the living tradition of the 
Church. It is what we call a heresy, a false teaching. False teachings, such 
as this, happen when people--like John Darby--believe that they have the 
right to interpret the Scriptures individually apart from the Living Body of 
Christ--the Church--where the Spirit of Truth abides and leads us to all 
truth.

I can think of no better words to conclude than those of Jesus when He speaks 
of the one and only "Rapture", the Second Coming:

But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the 
Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch and pray, for you do not know when 
the time is. It is like a man going to a far country, who left his house and 
gave authority to his servants, and to each hiswork, and commanded the 
doorkeeper to watch. Watch therefore, for you do not know when the master of 
the house is coming—in the evening, at midnight, at the crowing of the 
rooster, or in the morning—lest, coming suddenly, he find you sleeping. And 
what I say to you, I say to all: Watch!

-- 
Planet Earth - a subsidiary of Microsoft. We have no bugs in 
our software, Never! We do have undocumented added 
features, that you will find amusing, at no added cost 
to you, at this time.