Stacie Grahn Posted on 04/19/2023 5:59:00 AM PDT by Cronos
When a pandemic caused shutdowns across the globe in March 2020, Stacie Grahn thought it was the literal end of the world. Stacie Grahn
“I thought: ‘This is it. We’re all in our homes. Is this when we’re all going to disappear?’” Grahn said in a phone call from British Columbia. “With the vaccine, I thought: ‘Is this how they’re going to separate us? Is this going to be the mark of the beast we have to take?’”
For those like Grahn who are taught the rapture can happen at any second, the End Times are more than fodder for apocalyptic fiction. Fear-saturated stories about the saved being transported to heaven while the world faces havoc and hellfire can generate lifelong panic, paranoia and anxiety, reorienting people’s lives around what’s to come instead of what is.
These religious beliefs have societal implications, too. Why care about the refugee crisis or climate change if the world is doomed?
Belief in the Second Coming of Christ is as old as the church, but the concept of the rapture is a relatively recent early 19th-century phenomenon, most often embraced in evangelical or fundamentalist circles.
In the late 20th century, it was reinforced through popular media, including Hal Lindsay’s 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth, which interpreted world events as signs of the end times, as well as the 1972 thriller A Thief in the Night and, in the 1990s, Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ wildly popular Left Behind series.
But, as Grahn could tell you, these ideas aren’t relics of the past. Grahn’s grandmother first introduced her to the rapture at a young age via videos of End Times ministries and preachers like JD Farag. Anything her grandmother planned was with an asterisk.
“We can plan that, but the Lord could be coming back,” Grahn recalled her grandmother saying.
Unlike Grahn, Nikki G, 46, came to view the rapture as gospel later in life. In 2010, she uprooted her life to join the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Mo. As a survivor of several high-control religious groups. she asked to go by her first name due to safety concerns.
Nikki was attracted by the fervency of the group, which has been hosting 24/7 worship and prayer since 1999 and has a distinct End Times flavor.
“We believe that the church will go through the Great Tribulation with great power and victory and will only be raptured at the end of the Great Tribulation. No one can know with certainty the timing of the Lord’s return,” the organization’s website says.
As a result of the apocalyptic messaging she heard in these groups, Nikki said she rejected materialism, began canning food and strategized survival tactics. But prepping to survive until the rapture took a toll on Nikki.
“It’s very dehumanizing,” Nikki said. “You’re not present. You’re always in the future. You are disassociated from your body, your nervous system and yourself, and ultimately you become the theology. … I was no longer Nikki, when I was in all of that.”
She experienced nightmares, flashbacks and insomnia years after leaving.
Therapist Mark Gregory Karris said, while there’s little research on rapture-related trauma, anecdotal evidence suggests people can experience anxiety, fear and disrupted life plans because of such teachings. He said it especially is true among those who emphasize the immediacy of the rapture, the torment of those left behind and the need to be good enough to win God’s approval. Some who ingest these beliefs see future plans as futile, even faithless.
That was the case for Diana Frazier, 39, who grew up in an Assemblies of God church in Poulsbo, Wash.
“I remember sobbing multiple times as a little kid, thinking I will never get to get married, I will never get to have children. There’s no point in having any kind of dream for my future because I’ll be in heaven,” she said. “And then I would have guilt and shame, even as a little kid, because I’d know I was supposed to be happy about that.”
As a teen, Frazier participated in a youth group-sponsored hell house, a riff on haunted houses that portrayed sinful scenarios—like drunken car crashes and an abortion clinic—that led to hell.
Afterward, participants were invited to say the “sinner’s prayer.” Inundated with images of the terror she’d face if she wasn’t chosen by God, Frazier constantly was vigilant, ready to respond to disaster. But there was a cost.
“Humans aren’t meant to survive like that. Walking around with a fire extinguisher going all the time when there’s no fire is exhausting.”
Frazier paused her education after receiving her associate degree, in part because she thought Jesus would arrive at any time. Even when she had doubts, the risk of leaving her church community felt too high. She’d be forsaking her friends, her family and, later, as a parent, potentially jeopardizing her kids’ salvation.
“I’d be literally losing everything, for what? To go to college? Get a career?” she asked.
“Left Behind” movie poster, photo courtesy of Stoney Lake Entertainment.
April Sochia, 41, grew up in a Baptist community in the Adirondack Mountains of New York state and began to fear the rapture after reading the Left Behind series in college.
“I felt great pressure to force my kids to say the sinner’s prayer, because it was their ticket to heaven,” she said. “If the rapture happened, they had to say the sinner’s prayer, but it had to be genuine enough so they wouldn’t get left behind.”
According to Nikki, who now works as a certified trauma recovery coach, it’s common for people who believe in the rapture to evaluate and judge themselves constantly, seeking to be right with God so they won’t be judged harshly in the end times.
Andrew Pledger, 23, was part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement as a child in Walkertown, N.C., when his 4-H Club took a field trip to a local farm. Before the farm tour started, Pledger went to the bathroom. When he came out, no one was there.
“I remember just dread and fear going throughout all of me,” he said. “I couldn’t hear anyone’s voices, they were just gone. I remember running around the yard screaming and yelling for my mother … those five minutes of that fear and rapture anxiety, it was a lot.”
Though Pledger no longer believes in the rapture, his body remembers. Just over a month ago, a plane flew low over his current home in Greenville, S.C., and the sound—so familiar in the rapture genre—shocked him into fight or flight mode.
“It’s so frustrating, the cognitive dissonance of, I don’t believe in the rapture anymore, but I experienced that,” he told RNS.
Therapist Karris said much like people experience phantom limbs, people can experience “phantom ideas” even after rejecting the idea of the rapture.
“That’s why it lasts so long, because we’re talking about it being in the tracks of the nervous system,” he said.
Of course, belief in the rapture doesn’t always translate into trauma. For some, the promise of being chosen by God and escaping the world’s troubles is profoundly reassuring.
Still, the fact that some experience severe consequences shouldn’t be downplayed, Karris asserted.
Tina Pippin, a professor of religion at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Ga., said the rapture isn’t strictly biblical. It’s a concept that’s “read back” into New Testament passages, which get “sort of appropriated or misappropriated,” Pippin said, in Scriptures like 1 Thessalonians 4, which says that those who are “alive and are left” will “meet the Lord in the air.”
With 39 percent of American adults believing humanity is living in the end times, Pippin said, it’s important to assess the far-reaching implications of apocalyptic beliefs.
“The rapture is not just a theological position, it’s also a political one, and I think a really dangerous one,” said Pippin, who criticized those who ignore or even welcome global tragedies as precursors to Jesus’ return.
As awareness around rapture anxiety grows, many who’ve been impacted by rapture teachings are reassessing their beliefs and finding physical, emotional and spiritual healing.
During the height of the pandemic, Frazier stepped away from her church community. She still believes humans are “all divinely connected” and hopes to return to school to become a therapist.
For Grahn, the rapture panic she felt during the pandemic was the beginning of her faith unravelling. She no longer believes in the rapture and holds space for religious trauma survivors on social media through her @apostacie accounts.
Her grandmother is still awaiting a heavenly ascent.
“I wouldn’t bring it up with my grandma. … They believe, as much as we know Christmas is on Dec. 25 every year, they believe it will happen at any moment,” said Grahn. “To them, it’s heaven or hell. They’re not going to give that up or take that chance.”
Good point.
It was interesting that demons thought He came too early, before the time appointed. (Mathew 8:29)
As in, after Satan’s allotted 6,000 years, and not after 4,000, when He did arrive.
And these last 2,000 years have been allotted to Satan too, with that premise.
When that’s done, Satan’s done for 1,000. But only loosed for a little season, then done completely.
Nice thought that Christ came early to sow a seed and restore a garden.
But left to go to heaven.
And left the garden to the Church. But thanks to scripture, we know the serpent was in the garden at the start, and was allowed in the restored garden with the Church.
Maybe that’s why it’s about 2,000 demon possessed swine that had the 6,000 Legion enter them..
To prophecy what was going to happen in the last 2,000 years before His return.
A Church Age full of doctrines of demons.
Amen 🙏🏻!!!!
Wait, I didn’t mean to post that.
Many People today and many People on FR are wearing blinders to the events of the World and which was predicted in the New Testament 2000 years ago. So many today are blind and deaf and embrace false ideology.
Not directly to your point ... my older brother, who led me to the Lord, pointed out that Satan is not all knowing. He doesn’t know when Christ will return and so has a whole line up of anti-Christs at bat, on deck and warming up.
The time I’d waste on all the books listed above would be better spent in studying the Bible.
Knowing God is patient and desires that none should perish.
But that is not what happened -- and I ask you to cross-verify what I write below. I'll give links, but ask you to also cross-check what I write
The first Jewish-Roman War (66 to 73 AD) and the destruction of Jerusalem
The city was destroyed but outside Jerusalem, the rest of Judaea wasn't that hit and Jews still lived there -There were two OTHER Jewish-Roman wars. Now come on, if there weren't Jews or even the majority of Jews in Judea, how would that happen?
refer to The ancient Jews from Alexander to Muhammad by Seth Schwartz
Schiffman, Lawrence (1991). "Revolt and Restoration," in From Text to Tradition.
The Kitos war from 115 to 117
Lukuas was one of the leaders of Jewish rebels during the Kitos War, also known as the Second Jewish War, in the 2nd century AD. The narrative of the revolt under Lukuas is told by Eusebius of Caesarea, Michael Syrus, Bar Hebraeus and Cassius DioAnd finally - the third Jewish-Roman war, the Bar Kokbha revolt (132 to 136 AD) -- when the Jews set up a 2.5 year state - a renewed Kingdom of IsraelEusebius of Caesarea ascribes him the title of "King", leading many later scholars to believe he attempted to assume the title of "King of the Jews" during his political career
from Eusebius, History of the church 4.2.1-5
The Jews gathered under the leadership of Julian in a city called Lydda - 15 miles southeast of presetn-day Tel-AvivChapter 2. The Calamities of the Jews during Trajan's Reign.
1. The teaching and the Church of our Saviour flourished greatly and made progress from day to day; but the calamities of the Jews increased, and they underwent a constant succession of evils. In the eighteenth year of Trajan's reign there was another disturbance of the Jews, through which a great multitude of them perished.
2. For in Alexandria and in the rest of Egypt, and also in Cyrene, as if incited by some terrible and factious spirit, they rushed into seditious measures against their fellow-inhabitants, the Greeks. The insurrection increased greatly, and in the following year, while Lupus was governor of all Egypt, it developed into a war of no mean magnitude.
3. In the first attack it happened that they were victorious over the Greeks, who fled to Alexandria and imprisoned and slew the Jews that were in the city. But the Jews of Cyrene, although deprived of their aid, continued to plunder the land of Egypt and to devastate its districts, under the leadership of Lucuas. Against them the emperor sent Marcius Turbo with a foot and naval force and also with a force of cavalry.
4. He carried on the war against them for a long time and fought many battles, and slew many thousands of Jews, not only of those of Cyrene, but also of those who dwelt in Egypt and had come to the assistance of their king Lucuas.
5. But the emperor, fearing that the Jews in Mesopotamia would also make an attack upon the inhabitants of that country, commanded Lucius Quintus to clear the province of them. And he having marched against them slew a great multitude of those that dwelt there; and in consequence of his success he was made governor of Judea by the emperor. These events are recorded also in these very words by the Greek historians that have written accounts of those times.
But note -- Jews were STILL there in the land of Judeaa
There were Jews in significant numbers in Israel until then
ONLY FROM 136 AD were the Jews totally kicked out - After suppressing the Bar Kochba revolt, the Romans permitted a hereditary rabbinical patriarch from the House of Hillel to represent the Jews in dealings with the Romans. The most famous of these was Judah the Prince. Jewish seminaries continued to produce scholars, of whom the most astute became members of the Sanhedrin
Ref M. Avi-Yonah, The Jews under Roman and Byzantine Rule, Jerusalem 
The main Jewish population center was now the Galilee, and there were also significant Jewish communities in Beit She'an, Caesarea, the Golan Heights, and along the edges of Judea.
So there were still Jews there in what was and is now Israel - even after the expulsion of the bulk of them in 136 AD
constituted the majority of the population of Palestine until the 4th century. ref: Edward Kessler " An introduction to Jewish-Christian relations"
While a vibrant Jewish center had continued to exist in the Galilee following the Jewish-Roman wars, its importance declined with increased persecutions. In 425 CE, after continued persecution by the Eastern Roman Empire, the Sanhedrin was disbanded on the order of Theodosius II.
In 438, The Empress Eudocia removed the ban on Jews' praying at the Temple site and the heads of the Community in Galilee issued a call "to the great and mighty people of the Jews": "Know that the end of the exile of our people has come"!
When the Arabs conquered the Levant, Moshe Gil's "A History of the Jews in Palestine" - the majority of the population was Jewish or Samaritan -- and according to Contemporary Jewry: A Survey of Social, Cultural, Economic, and Political Conditions by Cohen the Jews of Palestine numbered between 300,000 and 400,000 at the time of the Arab conquest in 638 AD - note though that James Parkes says it was 150,000
In the early Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of Palestine were dispersed among the key cities of the military districts of Jund Filastin and Jund al-Urdunn, with a number of poor Jewish villages existing in the Galilee and Judea.
After the conquest, Jewish communities began to grow and flourish. Umar allowed and encouraged Jews to settle in Jerusalem. It was first time, after almost 500 years of oppressive Christian rule, that Jews were allowed to enter and worship freely in their holy city.
Seventy Jewish families from Tiberias moved to Jerusalem in order to help strengthen the Jewish community there. Ref: Moshe Dothan; Ḥevrah la-ḥaḳirat Erets-Yiśraʼel ṿe-ʻatiḳoteha; Israel. Agaf ha-ʻatiḳot ṿeha-muzeʼonim (2000). Hammath Tiberias: Late synagogues.
In the mid-8th-century, taking advantage of the warring Islamic factions in Palestine, a Persian Jewish false messiah from Isfahan named Abu Isa Obadiah inspired and organised a group of 10,000 armed Jews who hoped to restore the Holy Land to the Jewish nation. Soon after, when Al-Mansur came to power, Abu Isa joined forces with a Persian chieftain who was also conducting a rebellion against the caliph. The rebellion was subdued by the caliph and Abu Isa fell in battle in 755 AD
I think the Jewish community began to collapse during the crusades and then utterly the entire regions population collapsed in the Mamluk-Ilkhanate and then Mamluk-Ottoman wars
But Jews were always present in the land of Israel - at no point was that land utterly bereft of the chosen people
Thank you for your response.
the social breakdown and corruption at all levels has happened many times in the past 2000 years.
And wars, etc. are better now than at any point in the past.
And Israel is not “preparing the third temple”
I do not believe that God will put the True Church through the Tribulation, will there be Saved during the Tribulation, Yes but they will almost instantly be murdered by the Anti-Christ. I personally think this AI business will play a part in the coming to power of the Anti-Christ.
LOL clearly you do not know as in fact the Jews have built the 3rd Temple and all that it entails..The Dome of the Rock sits atop a active fault...and it can and will come down.
there’s no “winning” or “losing” - there are facts that the pre-tribulation rapture emerged only in the early 1800s - the same time and place as Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism Jehovah’s witnesses and Christian scientists.
And for the same reasons - a new land with people expanding westwards and merging of ideas and preachers like Darby looking for ways to increase their paying customers (think Kenneth Copeland or Dollar Creslo)
When I was in my early twenties and lived primarily stateside I believed that too.
Then I worked and lived in India, Bahrain, the UK and visited Egypt and Oman and realized that the USA has it good -- the rise of Islam in the Middle east was a massive explosion of evil - with a burst, fully half of Christians came under Islamic rule - and the ancient centers of Christianity: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Ctesiphon came all under the Muslims
so, this persecution of today is nothing compared to what has happened before
I started out pre-trib, then became mid-trib, and now I’m pan-trib
“As the STARS differ...”
.
I was wondering if The Tishbit will
Smell of Fishbait ?
.
My apologies Jonah.
But Jesus referred to "this generation" as the people listening to Him in 30 AD
Jesus prophesied that the generation who was with him in 30 AD would live to see the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem - and that happened in 69 AD
The 2nd temple Jerusalem was so utterly destroyed that Josephus said it was pure rubble with no inhabitants until Hadrian built his colonia aelia capitolina
Matthew 24 and 25 - the Olivet discourse was critical for those listening to Him then - it was Jesus' prophecy
They will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of Heeaven with power and great glory... Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away till all these things take place"Note: "this generation" - namely the ones listening to him in c 30 AD.
And Jesus was right - what He prophesied in c 30 AD happened in 69 AD with the destruction of the temple
To add emphasis, Jesus continued "Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away" 24:35
Jesus meant EXACTLY what He meant in Matthew 24.
The exact phrase "this generation" is used 20 times int he new testament. Without exception, it always refers to the people who were alive, listening to the speaker
In fact, Jesus uses this same word just a few verses before the Olivet discourse in Matt 23:36 "Verily I say unto you, All these things shall come upon this generation."
In the chapter 24, he continually uses the second person you -- He obviously meant the generation of those hearing Him
You can also take Mark 13:9 You will be beaten in synagogues -- this is emphasising the time and place as 1st century in the eastern Mediterranean
in Matt 24:17-20 he talks about fleeing - as the Christians did to Pellas in 68 ad
Cronos!
Now I see why this got posted.
Another post had hit the place before..
:)
Indeed...a pan-trib perspective will NEVER disappoint you! :-)
Tishbite is Elijah....
.
Rewrite!
We as a World are approaching the age of the days of Rome and it will come fast. Christians are being demonized now for standing in the way of the Homosexuals, Tran confused, the Child molesters...and a host of more evil lifestyles as they want to promote them as normal. Once the Church is removed then it will be unbridled deviancy that will make Rome look tame. The Church is holding back the floodgates, once it is removed then katie bar the door.
Actually they did not - and let me quote directly from them
Irenaeus:This was not about a pre tribulation rapture. The date people assumed was 1000 AD, then changed to 2000 AD.
Irenaeus in Against Heresies writted about 177 ADbook 5, chapter 28 For in as many days as this world was made, in so many thousand years shall it be concluded. And for this reason the Scripture says: Thus the heaven and the earth were finished, and all their adornment. And God brought to a conclusion upon the sixth day the works that He had made; and God rested upon the seventh day from all His works. Genesis 2:2 This is an account of the things formerly created, as also it is a prophecy of what is to come. For the day of the Lord is as a thousand years; 2 Peter 3:8 and in six days created things were completed: it is evident, therefore, that they will come to an end at the sixth thousand year.
Reily “you left out...”
Ooh, you’re correct.
And both of us kept this as Eurocentric, not even touching upon the plight of Christians in Sassanid Persia or the genocide by Tamerlane
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