The modern evangelical idea of the “rapture” was invented by some Scottish pastor in the late 18th/early 19th century (I forgot his name at the moment)
Before him no major church whether catholic, protestant or orthodox had anything even close to this idea.
The sad thing is this rapture stuff really picked up in the 60’s and 70’s, and people who really bought into this idea were so obsessed it would happen soon that now you see them in older age suffering from a semi-schizo state because they cannot let go of the idea that they might have been wrong about this idea and they cannot allow themselves to admit they were swindled
I imagine some of those people fear that they did not discern “the signs of the times” properly, which means that God didn’t enlighten them, which means they might not be “saved.”
The whole dispensationalist system is unfortunate. It tends to reduce the Bible to a book of secret codes one must decipher.
the idea of an early ‘rapture’ tickles the ears of those that are afraid of walking through life when the real downturn comes. They are, however, “thinking” in their own power, as opposed to the Power of the Holy Spirit. As God will never leave us or forsake us, AND, we are the salt and light; it is the ultimate purpose of ours to spread the Gospel to a lost and dying world. Why, once asks, would God remove us JUST when the getting gets bad, and ditch the lost and dying? The answer of course is, that He wouldn’t. When the darkness envelops us, those of us that believe will shine brighter and brighter.
Very similar to the Cult of Global warming and Evolution!