0 Raptures (Really?)
We are continuing our series on
Numbers in the book of Revelation. I
have a feeling that the number we are looking at this Sunday is perhaps the
most surprising number. That number
being 0…as in 0 raptures. Make no
mistake I believe in the glorious and triumphant return of Jesus Christ to
claim his people and make all things new…but I do not believe that there is
enough evidence in the Bible of a rapture of Christians out of this earth when
Christ does return. Now with that said,
I have brothers and sisters in Christ, I have friends who believe the
rapture. So what I am sharing with you
this morning is what I believe is the best way to understand this from a
biblical perspective. However, I do not
think my colleagues in ministry and friends are unstudied or unbiblical or less
of a Christian because they disagree with me…I just think they are wrong…that’s
all...and they think I’m wrong. And if
you can’t respectfully disagree about something…if you can’t agree to disagree
and still love the person and appreciate them, then you need to take a deep
long look at your heart and your capacity to love someone. We can disagree on this and still be all
about Jesus Christ and his kingdom on this earth.
I grew up in the Methodist church
and I do not remember hearing teaching and preaching on the end times and on
the rapture and on the tribulation. It’s
just not a big deal in the Methodist church.
Were any of you raised in the Baptist church? In most Baptist churches end times is a big
deal and it’s preached and taught and talked about. I was surprised when I got to seminary and
discovered that end times theology is a big deal to people.
So let me just back up a little bit
share with you the predominant views of how the end of the world is going to
happen. What I’m going to show is three
main views of people who believe in the rapture. Here’s a chart: Pic.
Now to understand the
chart you have to know what the tribulation is.
In the book of Revelation the tribulation period is thought to be a
period of seven years where God unleashes hell on earth to judge those who are
not Christians. During this seven years
75% of the people on earth are destroyed.
This is the four horseman and the beasts and plagues and moon turning
blood red and the sun being blotted out type of stuff. The people who take this stuff literally
believe this time to be the tribulation and the rapture will happen either
before during or after the tribulation.
The most common view is this first
one in the chart…where Christians are raptured to heaven then there is seven
years of tribulation, then Christ will come again and there will be 1,000 years
where Christ reigns on earth to get those who are still living for that amount
of time to believe in him (this is called the millennium).
Then there’s midtribulation where
the rapture happens in the middle of the tribulation period, then there’s also
postribulation which says the rapture happens after the tribulation
period.
This can get really confusing so
don’t worry about memorizing this chart.
I’m just sharing this with you so that you know that even among people
who believe in the rapture there are different understandings of exactly how
it’s all going to go down. Let me back
up and give you some history about where the idea of the rapture came from then
we will dig into the Bible itself.
In the mid 1800’s a british born pastor
by the name of John Nelson Darby discovered a new way to understand the Bible
called Dispensationalism. Within this new way of understanding the
Bible Darby also saw a literal rapture and a literal period of tribulation and
literal millennium of Christ reigning on earth.
He was the first one to see this in the Bible. So for the first one thousand 800 and fourty
years of the church existing on earth there was no writings or discovery or
theology or belief about a rapture from the Bible. So all the people that studied and taught and
preached the Bible (up until John Nelson Darby) did not see this idea of a
rapture in the Bible. None of the early
church Fathers who have been so influential in the theology that we believe
today, not one of them taught or wrote about a rapture. The idea that there is a rapture is only about
170 years old, compared that to theology that’s over 1800 years old…that fact
alone should make us at least skeptical of rapture theology. Because when it comes to what we believe
about the Bible, new is not always better.
So how did it become so popular?
Rapture theology became popular in the
United States first through a pastor named C.I. Scofield. Some of you may have a Scofield study Bible
which taught dispensational theology and within that system taught the
rapture. Then Charles Ryrie came out
with a study bible that was also supportive of rapture theology. In 1969 Hal Lindsay wrote a book called The Late Great Planet Earth…some of you
may remember that. Then in most recent
times through writers Tim Lahaye and Jerry Jenkins we see this theology in the
Left Behind Series which many of you have read the books or seen the movies. And they are actually in process of making
the movies again with Nicholas Cage. The
Left Behind series is Christian fiction…please do me a favor as someone who
takes the bible seriously and do not base your beliefs on Christian fiction. If you read the Bible and come to the
conclusion of a rapture that’s fine, but don’t use this popular Christian
fiction as your basis.
Here’s what I’m telling you, for over
1,800 years rapture theology was not known or heard of in the Christian
church. It wasn’t taught or preached by
Catholics or Protestants, by Calvinists or Armenians. Iranaeus, Augustine, Martin Luther, John
Calvin, John Wesley…none of them were even familiar with rapture theology much
less believed it because they didn’t see it in the Bible. It wasn’t until someone came up with this new
system of reading the Bible that we see the rapture being taught. Do you know why no one saw the rapture in the
Bible until this one man saw it around 1840?…because it’s not there.
Lets get into the Word. The first text today is from Revelation 4
verse 1. This is the very next thing
that happens after the specific message to each of the seven churches in Asia
Minor. The last church to receive a
message is Laodicea and then we have this.
READ.
People who believe the rapture say that
John is representative of the church as a whole. So that when the voice John hears says “Come
up here.”…that the voice is calling the entire church to come up there and that
this is the part in the book of Revelation where the rapture takes place. So that most of the rest of the letter is
when the church, the body Christ, Christians are not present on earth and
therefore those chapters are describing the period of time called the
tribulation. So for chapters 4 through
chapter 19 in Revelation Christians are not on the earth, that’s the belief.
I believe this way of reading the book
of Revelation is isogesis at it’s
finest. Isogesis is a fancy way (every
now and then I have to throw out these big words so you know I went to
seminary) of taking an idea that we already believe and putting it in the text. I believe the Bible supports slavery…so I
take that idea and put it in the Bible and when I do that I can make a
case. I believe the Bible supports
polygamy (having more than one spouse) so I take that idea to the Bible and
make my case. I believe the rapture is
isogesis. We take that we believe the
rapture and then look for it in the Bible.
What we want to do is exegesis. Exegesis is the process of extracting the
idea already there in the text. So when
we do exegesis on Revelation 4:1 here’s what happens. We know that this is a letter to seven
churches who are undergoing sever persecution and need a message of hope. So John is writing to them (and by extension
to Christians) with this message that Jesus and those who belong to him win in
the end. John is writing the
letter. There is no indication when you
do exegesis of the text that John has more than just himself in mind when he is
taken up to heaven in this vision. This
is a vision for him…the message is for the rest of the church, but the
experience is for him to experience and then record for Christians
everywhere. There is no indication that
this is the entire church taken up to heaven.
The earliest church fathers who studied the Bible didn’t see and most
rapture theologians and scholars…the ones that take it seriously enough to do
exegesis…most of them will say that this is not a text that teaches the rapture
but that you can see the rapture in it.
So their own proponents of rapture theology take the one text in
Revelation that can be considered about the rapture and say it’s probably not
about the rapture.
This is the only evidence in the entire
book of Revelation that we have of any sort of rapture and it is suspect by it’s
own proponents. If rapture is such a big
deal to God why didn’t he make it more clear in the one book of the Bible that
is about how the world is going to end? There
are only a handful of texts that we can even say might be the rapture. That’s it.
This is not a theme that is throughout the entire Bible.
Now, lets look at the text that spells
out what people think is the rapture more than any other text. It’s 1st
Thessalonians 413-18. Read.
So it appears that when Jesus
returns he will come down from heaven with a loud command – there is not a
secret rapture – even if you believe in a rapture…it’s not going to be
secret. There’s a loud command and the
voice of the archangel and trumpets. The
Left Behind Series presents a secret rapture…even if I believed in the rapture
and used this verse I could not come to the belief that it is a secret
rapture. Do you think a loud command and
the archangels voice and the trumpets of heaven are loud…this sounds like a
public announcement.
Keep that in mind. So when Jesus returns it’s announced that he
has returned and the dead in Christ will rise first (this Christians who have
died)…this is the resurrection of beleivers that we see throughout scripture…we
know that when we are raised up that we will be raised in new life with
glorified bodies…this is the resurrection of those who believe in Christ but
have died. After that, Christians on
earth will be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the
air. “And so we will be with the Lord
forever. Therefore encourage one another
with these words.”
We are caught up in the clouds, we
meet the Lord in the air, and then we are with him forever. Where are we with him forever? It doesn’t say does it. I believe this text is talking specifically
about the resurrection of believers that we see elsewhere in
scripture…especially 1 Corinthians 15.
It’s an awesome read.
N.T.
Wright is one of the most prominent New Testament scholars in the world right
now. Wright rightly states that Paul is
describing the resurrection using imagery that has been falsely
interpreted. Remember Paul was a Jew before
his conversion to Christianity. He
wasn’t just any Jew, he was a highly educated Jew. Three things about this text that Paul has in
mind.
First,
Paul echoes the story of Moses coming down the mountain with the Torah.
The trumpet sounds, a loud voice is heard, and after a long wait Moses comes to
see what’s been going on in his absence.
Second, he echoes
Daniel 7, in which “the people of the saints of the Most High” (that is, the
“one like a son of man”) are vindicated over their pagan enemy by being raised
up to sit with God in glory. This metaphor, applied to Jesus in the
Gospels, is now applied to Christians who are suffering persecution.
Third, Paul conjures up images of
an emperor visiting a colony or province. The citizens go out to meet him
in open country and then escort him into the city. Paul’s image of the
people “meeting the Lord in the air” should be read with the assumption that
the people will immediately turn around and lead the Lord back to the newly
remade world. Remember how I said it
sounds like a public announcement…just like the announcement of a king coming
to visit a city…the city officials would want everyone in the city to know about
the visit and the leaders would go out and meet the king outside the city wall
and escort that king back inside as a way to host the king and let the king
know he is welcome.
Remember, Paul is the one who
hammered on the resurrected body for a long, entire chapter in 1st
Corinthians 15 and he writes about the resurrection body over and over again in
his other letters to the churches. If
Paul intended for this to be a rapture as so many understand it wouldn’t that
same idea appear more than once in his writings. It doesn’t.
The first Christians who read this would have seen this as welcoming an
emperor into their city and I believe that idea is the idea Paul intended to
communicate.
Lets look very quickly at a parable
Jesus told. Matthew 24:36-41. READ. The reference is the story of Noah and the
flood. Another movie coming out next
year is about Noah played by Russell Crow…should be interesting. In the parable the sinners are the ones not
in the ark that Noah built and the righteous are the ones in the ark. The ones who are swept by the flood are done
so as a sign of judgment. Those in the
ark are saved. The ones in the ark are the
ones who are left behind. Get it. To be left behind in the parable that Jesus
is telling is to be saved from the judgment which in Noah’s day was a
flood. You want to be left behind
according to this parable that Jesus tells.
Here’s my final point. Rapture teaches escapism. Rapture theology teaches that Christians are
going to escape from this earth so that we don’t have to face a time of
tribulation. There’s a story of a pastor
sharing at a Christian conference about our responsibility as Christians to
make a difference in the world. To be
people who take care of the widow and orphans and who are in ministry with the
poor and are willing to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves and
just try to make this world a better place to live. A woman raised her hand and asked him: “but
if we do those things the world won’t get worse and worse and it will take
longer for Jesus to return.” See, the
hope of this world is not that things have to get worse so that Jesus can
rapture Christians out so that the tribulation can start…the hope of the world
is what we pray every Sunday…that the kingdom would come on earth as it is in
heaven. Jesus did not teach escapism…he
taught being engaged in such a way as to bring the goodness of heaven into this
broken world. And guess who is tasked with
being the hands and feet of Christ? The
body of Christ…you and me…Christians!
God’s people in the Old Testament,
the prophets, Jesus and Paul…none of them taught escapism. The idea of being in Christ is that we would
take up our cross daily for the sake of Jesus.
Jesus promised that we would face tribulation in this world…he even used
that word. Paul said to rejoice in
suffering because it leads to character building.
The overall theme of the bible does
not teach that people who belong to Christ are escapists. What it does teach over and over and over
again is that people who belong to God are endurer’s and overcomers who believe
that through Christ in us we can remain faithful in the face of the most
difficult of circumstances.
If I have taken away something that you
hold dear…if I have taken away the belief of rapture from you…I am
thankful. I also know how hard it is to
have something you have always believed and that you have held dear taken
away. And I believe it is important to replace
it with something else. Here’s what I
suggest you can replace it with: the return of Jesus to make all things new and
usher in the eternal and glorious future that is the new heavens and new earth. You don’t have to believe in the rapture to
believe in the return or Jesus.
If you still believe in the rapture
after this morning…I still love you and appreciate you and will not judge
you. This is not about whose right or
wrong, this is about being faithful to a God who loves you and who we can all
agree wins in the end. That’s the good
news we can all agree on and that matters more than exactly how the end of the
world happens. Jesus, the slain lamb of
God, wins in the end and we get to participate in the victory! Amen.
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