Rapture Ready?

For the past few months I have been thinking about the issue of 'end times' and the theology that goes along with it. In some senses it is the first time I've engaged with these issues since I began (and gave up) reading the Left Behind series when I was a teenager. In the past I've shied away from this area because it is so intimidating intellectually, because of the unnecessary division it causes and because by nature I am much more of a 'here and now' kind of a guy rather than someone who spends lots of time thinking about what may or may not happen in the future.

However a combination of our trip to Israel and various conversations in its aftermath, my theology course and a request from Student Cell to study Revelation has piqued my interest and I have tentatively begun dipping my toe in this controversial water. At this point I would like to say I am still learning, I don't want to come across as dogmatic, and I certainly don't have all the answers, but there are some aspects of the way people deal with this subject that I find difficult to say the least.

Most of all I struggle with an obsessive focus on the 'rapture' and people trying to figure out when Jesus will return by reading contemporary events into the apocalypic predictions of Revelation. Let me qualify both those statements by explaining what I mean. One of the most popular strains of Christian thought in the US at the moment (prompted and strengthened by the ubiquitous Left Behind series) is that of the rapture, a moment when Jesus returns in secret and all the believers disappear, leaving behind crashed planes, motorway pileups and a momentarily baffled global population. What is supposed to happen next is 7 years of persecution for the church, known as the tribulation, and the rise of the anti-Christ before Jesus returns visibly and reigns on earth for 1000 years. In other words Jesus will return invisibly for his saints and then visibly with his saints.

For me the problem with this is, I see nothing in Scripture about a silent return of Jesus, and yet so many people believe it because of what they have read in the tomes of LaHaye and Jenkins. If you type the word 'rapture' into bible gateway you will find it does not appear in the TNIV, NIV, NKJV or ASV. I realise this is not a full-proof argument against the idea of a Left Behind style rapture, as the word Trinity isn't mentioned in the Bible either, and yet all Christians hold to the truth of that doctrine. However, it is something I think will surprise a lot of people, and means the evidence for a secret return of Jesus and rapture has to be explicit in other ways. I cannot see that it is.

The passage most frequently used to justify a two-stage rapture is 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17

"¹⁵According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. ¹⁶For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. ¹⁷After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever."

Nowhere in that passage do I see a two-stage return of Jesus. The Lord comes down, the dead rise first, and then all other believers join Him too, and we shall be with Him forever. Job done. In one stage. If this really is the best evidence for a 2 stage rapture then it is pretty weak. The strongest argument against this theory are the words of Jesus himself, in Matthew 24:30-31

^"30"At that time the sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky, and all the nations of the earth will mourn. They will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of the sky, with power and great glory. ³¹And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other."

What I do see written about in the Bible, both in the Old and New Testament, is a triumphant return of Jesus that everyone will see and everyone will understand immediately. The reason all of this matters is because a two-stage rapture leads to much bad theology. Stephen Sizer sums it up well in his book Zion's Christian Soldiers, when he says "It is the reason many Christians don't seem to care about climate change or preserving diminishing supplies of natural resources. They are similarly not worried about the nation debt, nuclear war, or world poverty because they hope to be raptured to heaven and avoid suffering the consequences of a coming global holocaust. Like a sinking ship, the world is doomed. Therefore there is no point in preserving the world or getting involved in humanitarian work."Scary as it sounds I have come across this attitude in Christians in Swansea, and it upsets me. It is so diametrically opposed to the commandment 'love your neighbour' that I fail to see how anyone claiming to be a follower of Jesus can, in all conscience, adopt it as their own attitude.

Sadly the craziness doesn't stop there. Whilst looking into all of this I came across a worryingly popular website called Rapture Ready and when I looked it up my jaw hit the floor. It's main purpose is to calculate how close we are to the rapture using 'the rapture index' which takes over 40 signs from scripture, puts them into 4 overall headings and then gives them a score based on frequency, intensity or significance at any given moment. It then totals them up and tells you how likely the rapture is (FYI anything over 150 means 'fasten your seatbelts'!)

The biggest problem with this kind of theology/crystal ball gazing is that it goes directly against the teaching of Jesus and the apostles in the Bible. In Matthew 24: 36, 42-44

³⁶"No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father... ⁴²"Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. ⁴³But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. ⁴⁴So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. "

That seems pretty clear- no one knows, so stay alert and keep serving Jesus because he could be back at any time. Also check out 2 Peter 3:4,10 for further confirmation of this.

A lesser problem is that it makes the church (and by association Jesus) look silly when people make wild 'definite' predictions about the end of the world that do not come true. For example in his 1970 book The Late Great Planet Earth (which sold millions of copies) Hal Lindsey claims that Russia was the power destined to bring about Armageddon by attacking Israel. Seems possible in the midst of the Cold War, but by the time he writes The Oracle Commentaries in 2006 the Soviet Union had collapsed and his force for Armageddon conveniently morphs into a Russian-Syrian-Iranian Axis. It is clearly nonsense and we should not engage with this kind of self-serving prediction, that depends entirely on who the US is most aggravated with at any given time. Worst of all this kind of thing diverts our attention away from serving God into endlessly speculating about something the Bible makes clear we can never know.

The lessons I've taken away from this are twofold, firstly when faced with any kind of Christian teaching, however popular, investigate what the Bible has to say about it for yourself, rather than just assuming what you have been told is correct. Secondly live every day 100% for Jesus, every moment as if He were about to return and don't miss out on living for Him here and now because you are so concerned about when he might return.