Posted on 11/18/2002 8:04:41 AM PST by american colleen
Afraid You’ll be Left Behind? The Rapture Trap.
In 1980, I was 13 years old, and someone had given me a copy of Hal Lindsey's mega-selling The Late Great Planet Earth to read. The Soviets were in Afghanistan, the American hostages were in Tehran, I had become fixated on the fear of nuclear war and — suddenly, thanks to Late Great, the chaos all made sense. There was no need to be afraid. This was all part of God's plan. Accept Jesus as your personal savior, and you wouldn't have to suffer through the worst of what was to come, for you would be spirited away in the Rapture. And if you didn't — well, too bad for you when the Antichrist comes knocking.
The premillenial Rapture is the belief, held by many Protestant Christians, that believers will, "in the twinkling of an eye," be taken body and soul into heaven to meet Jesus Christ — this, just as the world is on the brink of seven years of unprecedented suffering and strife, preceding the Second Coming and the end of history. If you think the end of the world is upon us, it's easy to see why believing you won't have to suffer the worst of it would be calming. On the other hand, you might exchange one set of fears for another. When I was in Late Great's grip, I would wake up every morning in a mild state of panic, wondering if the Rapture had happened while you were sleeping, and I'd been … left behind!
I don't believe in the premillenial Rapture anymore, but it's easy to see why so many people want to. For Christians and others whose religious beliefs predict an apocalyptic final act (even Islam and the New Age have their own versions), these days are unusually anxious. It isn't difficult to find in today's headlines — wars, rumors of wars, natural disasters, plagues, religious strife and technology run amok — evidence for the belief that history is quickening toward some sort of climax.
No wonder, then, that the same sensational theological teachings that excited believers in the 1970s and earlier are more popular than ever. The Left Behind fiction series, whose title refers to those who weren't raptured before the Apocalypse, may well be the best-selling Christian books of all time, not counting the Bible.
Given the amount of popular publicity given to the Rapture and its attendant doctrines, it may surprise (and disappoint) many Christians to learn that this set of beliefs, generally called "dispensationalism," is not explicitly taught by the Bible, nor has ever been widely held by Christians.
In fact, neither Roman Catholicism nor Eastern Orthodoxy, which together include most of the world's Christians who live now and who have ever lived, profess dispensationalist eschatology (which means the study of the End Times). The Rapture is also alien to the historical Protestant confessions (as this story from a Baptist newspaper makes clear). Martin Luther had never heard of such a thing, nor had John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, or any other Protestant divine until a pair of 19th-century British small-sect pastors developed the notion apparently independent of each other. One of the men, John Nelson Darby, traveled widely in North America between 1859 and 1874, where his dispensationalist teachings spread like wildfire. (For a more detailed explanation of this theology from a dispensationalist viewpoint, go here and here)
Given world events, particularly in the Middle East and Europe, the dispensationalist fire continues to roar among Christians, who understandably want to know if today's headlines can be explained and tomorrow's headlines can be predicted from ancient Scripture. Unfortunately, many Christians are under the impression that dispensationalist teaching — on Christianity's theological fringe, historically speaking — is the first and last word on the matter. Most Catholic priests, as well as their mainline Protestant counterparts, downplay or ignore their congregations' natural — and sociologically predictable — interest in the End Times, leaving lay believers open to instruction by those who, however misguided, take it seriously. That's why Paul Thigpen, a Yale-trained religious historian and Catholic convert, wrote The Rapture Trap.
"I began to see so many Catholics taken in by this Left Behind stuff, because they've had no religious instruction in eschatology," Thigpen tells NRO. "In so many parishes the homilies are like, 'Love your neighbor, be nice.' If priests never get around to talking about who Jesus is, there's no way they're ever going to get around to talking about the Second Coming."
Though he writes from a Catholic perspective, Thigpen, an ex-Pentecostal and former editor of Charisma magazine, takes care to demonstrate in the book how none of the leaders of the Reformation believed in the Rapture. He says the "historical myopia" of American culture leaves people vulnerable to those who can exploit ignorance of the past with convincing presentations of vivid theologies. Besides, America has always been fertile ground for apocalyptic religion.
"In the early days, the Puritans thought the Kingdom of God would start in North America, in their colony," Thigpen says. "We have several large denominations in America, such as the Jehovah's Witnesses, who owe their existence to millennial fervor."
Eschatalogically-focused expressions of faith have swelled in popularity during times of social distress and dislocation, such as after the Civil War, and during the period of rapid industrialization and immigration. There was another great surge of it following World War II, says Thigpen, and again in the 1970s, as a reaction to countercultural upheaval. The dispensationalist apologetic The Late Great Planet Earth was the best-selling nonfiction book of the decade, and though he has never apologized for his erroneous predictions in that book, author Hal Lindsey continues to be considered by many an authority on Biblical prophecy. Being a dispensationalist evangelist means never having to say you're sorry.
Why should any of this matter? As I wrote this past summer, apocalyptic beliefs dictate the behavior of many true believers. American dispensationalists were early non-Jewish supporters of Zionism, believing that the ingathering of diaspora Jews to their Biblical homeland was a necessary precursor for the return of Christ. Though many Evangelicals and other Christians support Israel today for other reasons, no small number of them do so because their end-times belief mandates it. Thigpen is not so much worried that Rapture-expecting Christians will blow up Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock to hasten Armageddon as he is concerned about the spiritual harm that may result from acceptance of dispensationalist beliefs.
"When times look tough and threatening, perhaps people find a comfort in believing in the Rapture, that God will help them escape events before they become too bad," Thigpen says. "Ideas have consequences. One, the Rapture doctrine ignores the redemptive power of suffering, which is a powerful Christian theme. Two, the Bible also shows that God chastises His people as well as their enemies; believers share in suffering as well. Three, if people wrongly believe Christians won't be around for the persecution that Scripture tells us will precede the Second Coming, they won't prepare themselves spiritually or otherwise."
Just because Catholicism doesn't teach the Rapture or focus on end-times prophecy doesn't mean the Catholic world has escaped popular apocalypticism. The particularly Catholic version comes as a mania for apocalypse-centered apparitions and private revelations claimed by contemporary visionaries. The Rapture Trap writes of the spiritual danger of uncritically accepting such claims, and offers discernment guidelines drawn from Catholicism's conservative tradition.
"What we're dealing with are people who are scared and confused by what's going on in the world today, and who aren't getting the information they need to separate what's real from what's vain and even harmful speculation," Thigpen says. "As Christians, we believe Jesus is coming back, and we have to be ready for that to happen at any moment. But this game of 'plug the headline into the Scripture verse,' or into the latest message from a supposed apparition, is a losing proposition."
Hal Lindsey's entire system is wrong.
As a nun taught me, "The only way out is 'through'."
The dispensationalist apologetic The Late Great Planet Earth was the best-selling nonfiction book of the decade, and though he has never apologized for his erroneous predictions in that book, author Hal Lindsey continues to be considered by many an authority on Biblical prophecy. Being a dispensationalist evangelist means never having to say you're sorry.
So true in many ways and in many areas outside of eschatology.
What you say?!? There is no "get out of jail free" card?
You don't believe in 1 Thes 4:13-17, or don't believe in pre-trib post-trib rapture theories, or you don't believe in the writings of the Lindsay, LaHaye, etc, crowd?
There are distinctions, most are unscriptural traps.
Someone should have told Peter and Paul and James and Thomas and early church marytrs there would be a rapture to save them from their time of tribulation..
Agreed. Christ himself promised we would have tribulation in our lives.
Someone should have told Peter and Paul and James and Thomas and early church marytrs there would be a rapture to save them from their time of tribulation..
1 Thes 4:14,16 teaches that those marytrs are only asleep in Christ and will "rise" 1st. Neither will we be saved from tribulation, but I believe we [in Christ] will be saved from God's wrath.
1 Thes 4:17 teaches that those of us [in Christ] yet alive or not yet martyred when the events of 1 Thes 4:16,17 happen will be "caught up" 2nd.
That "catching up" in the Latin Vulgate is 'rapiere' which has been Anglicanized to "rapture".
When it happens and where it fits in the sequence of events in Revelation and Daniel's 70th week, is a subject of much flawed debate, which flaws have often been exposed as the traps they are. And again Christ told us no one but the Father knows when the 2nd coming will be, nor when the "rapture" happens. So date prognostication is also a trap.
However, scripture none the less records and prophecies a "catching up" of those alive in Christ will happen. I believe God's whole word is true and self-consistent, though I don't yet fully understand how. I have studied it at length, and the "pre-Wrath" explanation (rapture around or between the 6th and 7th Seals) is, so far, the best fit, though an imperfect fit.
But if these are the endtimes, then we are to stand firm in our faith and not depend on some "fire escape" to bail us out before our faith is truly tested.
1 Thess. 5:9-11 For God hath not appointed us to wrath but to otain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with him. Wherefore comfort yourselves together, and edify one another even as also ye do.
1 Cor 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for th trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raesed incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
This is not the last trupet of Rev. 11:15 but the last trumpet of 1 Thess. It is so designated because it signals the end of the present age.
Becky
Need I tell you that this particular nun had an exceptionally well behaved classroom?
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