Re-Drafting My Spiritual Formation—Log #4: Watching For “The Rapture”?

My childhood took place in a Fundamentalist venue. My parents and much of our extended family believed the Bible literally. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard a preacher say, “God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!”

Unfortunately, if you took what the Bible says literally, not only did it not settle much anything, but often more questions arose than were answered. One of the areas of perpetual concern for us was “end times” doctrine.

Are we now living in the “end times”? Are world conditions falling into place to facilitate Armageddon? What is going to happen next?

Fundamentalists – and many dispensationalist evangelicals – believe that the next major eschatological event will be “the rapture”. This is the "predicted" future occurrence when Christ appears in the heavens and calls “true” believers, along with the “dead in Christ”, up, up and away from earth to be removed from the hideous things that will then take place on this planet - such as the battle of Armageddon.

Then, after a period of time with Christ somewhere in the heavens, all Christians of history would return to earth with Christ for his millennial reign – a true theocracy. Somewhere in that time line, however, would occur a great judgment where true believers would be given eternal life and non-believers would be sent away to roast forever. Not exactly comforting thoughts.

As a young boy, I can often remember waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night from a nightmare in which the sky had suddenly become brilliantly bright accompanied by incredible thunder and lightning. I expected to see Christ himself walking on the clouds and reaching out to me, but instead I would always wake up in my dark bedroom wondering what had happened and why I was soaking wet.

The imagery no doubt was from an old black and white movie called The Rapture (redone several times through the years, I think, by well-meaning film makers). This movie was somehow ok to view in church, flickeringly screened from a noisy 16mm Bell & Howell or Revere projector. But we dared not go to a theater to see really good films.

Fast forward some five decades. I still continued to wonder about “end times” and “the rapture” – especially with the likes of current evangelical TV prognosticators like Hal Lindsey, Jack Van Impe and others. Of course I wasn’t alone. Millions have swallowed the conjectures put forward by Tim La Haye and Jerry Jenkins in the Left Behind book and film series.

I’ve recently completed reading a book by Craig C. Hill, a brilliant New Testament professor at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., titled, In God’s Time. It’s the best read I’ve come across to help (me) sort out a great deal of (apparently widespread) convoluted thinking on the subject.

Tony Campolo says of the book, “At a time when popular books on the second coming are leading to confusion and a right-wing political mind-set, here is a book that is balanced and inspiring and helpful”. Eugene Petersen, author of the acclaimed paraphrase The Message concurs, saying the book provides guidance “through the verbal clutter and emotional hysteria” of end times thinking.

I’d suggest reading the book for yourself; however, you can get some preliminary info here. Obviously, I can’t do its content justice in a paragraph or two. In a nutshell, Hill suggests that if you try to understand “end times” prophesies by a literal interpretation of the Bible, you’re in a pack of trouble.

Here’s just one thing from the book that astounded me but at the same time gave me hope for a rational future. You won’t find “the rapture” in the New Testament – or in the entire Bible, for that matter.

The idea of TWO returns to earth by Christ (the first being “the rapture” and the second the millennial reign) was invented by 19th century fundamentalists because it was the only way they could make literal interpretations of scriptures fit into their kind of coherence.

A lot of the problem is that much of Biblical prophecy refers to the nation of Israel and was applicable (and probably fulfilled) during and just following the first century. But these same prophecies, if appropriated to the “church” – as do many of the aforementioned prognosticators – could be very well misapplied.

As I said earlier, you need to read the book yourself to capture its impact and perspective. Craig Hill also suggests that we as Christians might be far better served to be living every day for the Kingdom of God rather than trying to comprehend if Magog is Moscow or if Armageddon is around the corner.

Far better that we love our spouse, our neighbor or our co-worker and express it with action as refletive of Christ's love for us, than to lie awake at night waiting for the rapture or for a seven year peace treaty between Israel and the Arabs.