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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Rapture?
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Gramps49
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# 16378
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Posted
Dispensationalists like to take these two verses from Matthew 24: 36-44 and develop a whole heresy around them
quote:
40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. 42 Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.
However, in Jesus' day it was not so much about someone being taken up into paradise, it was about being left in the field or at the mill. During the Roman Occupation it was not a good thing for a man to be taken from the field, or-especially-a woman to be seized at the mill.
How we get things turned around!
But I am curious, where the source of this saying may have come from.
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rolyn
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# 16840
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Posted
This passage sometimes comes across as randomness. A rapture that follows a scatter gun approach, not like the ordered selection of the Sheep and Goats model.
But then thinking about it, taking one from each pair going about various activities could be like God taking a cross-section from a community.
This is a long shot it but I'm left wondering if the Rapture model may have had it's origins in the way the Ancient World selected slaves. Careful not to decimate a population so as to ensure a future supply and variety of a human resource.
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Change is the only certainty of existence
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
No, the rapture model takes it's basic idea from 1 Thessalonians 4:
quote:
The Coming of the Lord
13 But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters,[g] about those who have died,[h] so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14 For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died.[i] 15 For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.[j] 16 For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord for ever. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
and 1 Corinthians 15
quote:
51 Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die,[m] but we will all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed.
And also from the Book of Revelation which, if one interprets the book in a similar manner to, say, Isaiah, and sees the immediate application and a predictive application, one can interpret the letters to the 7 churches as being predictive of the church age. After describing the final church John then shifts the attention to the countless redeemed saints in Heaven - the raptured church - whilst the world suffers the outpoured judgments of God. The next time the church appears in Revelation is at the triumph of Christ as he returns accompanied by the saints, and descends to the earth as King of kings.
One final idea is that just as Noah and his family were rescued from the earth, inside the ark, before the judgment came, so the church will be taken before the tribulation comes with the opening of the seals and the bowls being poured out, etc.
The reference in the OP to someone being taken whilst the other is left is to what Jesus said in the context of the events in the last days 'as in the days of Noah.'
Well, in the days of Noah, the family were taken (into the ark) whilst the rest of the population were let behind and drowned.
Possibly, we can also look to the fact that the plagues of Egypt, like the judgments in Revelation, are persuasive, not penal, and therefore like the Israelites, the church will be spared whilst God deals with the world in a similar way to how he dealt with the Egyptians.
The plagues of Revelation are designed to turn people to Christ - and many will be saved - in the way that the Plagues of Egypt were designed to persuade Pharaoh to let the Israelites leave.
[ 28. November 2016, 13:27: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Do you subscribe to the view that the Church is raptured prior to the Tribulation, or half way through it?
And what (if any) possibilities of salvation are there for anyone after the Rapture in your view?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
I believe it's a pre-trib rapture.
Yes, there is the availability of conversion - there is the text that speaks of those who have come out of great tribulation.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
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Brenda Clough
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# 18061
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Posted
If you recall in May 2011, some loon was insisting that the world was going to end that month. There was some mild excitement generated by this forecast which as you might expect has completely died down. However at the time there were a ton of non-Christians who were confused and even alarmed by our foofaraw, and I wrote a blog post summarizing the broad lines of End Times theology for their benefit.
I forget what theologian it was who argued that it is never of benefit to discuss End Times. It nearly always leads to bad theology, is never (as Jesus himself points out) successful forecasting, and reliably inspires derision in unbelievers.
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Science fiction and fantasy writer with a Patreon page
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
Of course, believing in and expecting the rapture does not require or encourage date-fixing or unhelpful predictions.
In fact, pre-trib rapture actually prevents that because it is the next prophetic event and there are no signs given to when it might take place. Any of the events predicted that surround the second coming actually take place after the rapture and so cannot be predicted before that event.
All in all, we are simply required to look up, be ready and ensure that we are not left behi
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I believe it's a pre-trib rapture.
I think you'll be struggling with bits of Daniel then, specifically 9:27 which suggests the Abomination of Desolation doesn't get set up until half-way through the tribulation. Who has been looking after the sacrifice and offerings until then? quote:
Yes, there is the availability of conversion - there is the text that speaks of those who have come out of great tribulation.
Then on what basis are they saved? Remember, in your scheme of things Christ has already come back for his Church, which as far as I can see means for the entire body of believers.
And why, in 1 Cor 15, say, is this third category of believers neither dead in Christ or changed in a twinkling of an eye, not mentioned by Paul?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I believe it's a pre-trib rapture.
I think you'll be struggling with bits of Daniel then, specifically 9:27 which suggests the Abomination of Desolation doesn't get set up until half-way through the tribulation. Who has been looking after the sacrifice and offerings until then? quote:
Yes, there is the availability of conversion - there is the text that speaks of those who have come out of great tribulation.
Then on what basis are they saved? Remember, in your scheme of things Christ has already come back for his Church, which as far as I can see means for the entire body of believers.
And why, in 1 Cor 15, say, is this third category of believers neither dead in Christ or changed in a twinkling of an eye, not mentioned by Paul?
1) Why would the A of D need to be in place before the rapture?
The antichrist comes to power at the beginning of the 7 years, then makes peace with and around Israel.
If the rapture is at the start of that 7 years, then the 'trouble' starts 3 and a half years in, when the antichrist sets up the image and reneges on the peace accord with Israel.
That will make the last 3 and half years a terrible time until the return of Christ; a period when the seals are opened, etc, etc.
2)On what basis are they saved? On the same basis that the saints of Hebrews 11 were saved - on the righteousness ascribed to them under the covenant with Israel and the work of Christ that underpins the old covenant in retrospect.
3) Paul doesn't mention them in that passage, but he does speak about all Israel being saved - and they are not saved by grace but by covenant.
[ 28. November 2016, 15:06: Message edited by: Mudfrog ]
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 8237 | From: North Yorkshire, UK | Registered: Jul 2004
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
they are not saved by grace but by covenant.
What is the difference, please?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Stetson
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# 9597
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Posted
Mudfrog wrote:
quote:
No, the rapture model takes it's basic idea from 1 Thessalonians 4:
Is this meant as a rebuttal to the idea that Matthew 24 36 - 44 is the template for Rapture theology? Because I've heard that passage cited numerous times by pre-mil thinkers.
Hal Lindsey via Al Hartley
[ 28. November 2016, 15:36: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Hal Lindsey via Al Hartley
![[Eek!]](eek.gif) From that link it would appear that a primary qualification for being raptured is being supremely well-endowed...
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Stetson
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# 9597
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Hal Lindsey via Al Hartley
From that link it would appear that a primary qualification for being raptured is being supremely well-endowed...
Well, Al Hartley did a lot of cheesecake and pin-up stuff before he went Christian, so I guess that continued to be an influence after his Road To Damascus.
(link possibly NSFW)
One thing I recall about his Christian Archie Comics is that the girls were always shown in one-pieces, as opposed to the secular comics, which didn't shy away from putting them in bikinis.
[ 28. November 2016, 16:23: Message edited by: Stetson ]
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I have the power...Lucifer is lord!
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Stetson:
Mudfrog wrote:
quote:
No, the rapture model takes it's basic idea from 1 Thessalonians 4:
Is this meant as a rebuttal to the idea that Matthew 24 36 - 44 is the template for Rapture theology? Because I've heard that passage cited numerous times by pre-mil thinkers.
Hal Lindsey via Al Hartley
Well, yes, of course you have. I'm not saying that the Matthew passage is not useful to rapture theology, but it's not the only one; and the word rapture comes from the Thessalonians passage.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
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Sarah G
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# 11669
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Posted
I think there's a large clue as to what's going on earlier in the chapter (24:1-3), and at 26:1
Full quote
The topic under discussion is the destruction of the Temple. Jesus has been asked when it's going to happen, so he answers the question, and says some more things that will happen around that time.
No-one's asked him about the end of the world. So either he's gone on a very long monologue answering a question no-one's asked about a completely different topic, or he's still talking about the events of AD 70 (which would be near topical news when Matthew wrote it).
Until 26:1, Matthew indicates no change of subject matter.
What Jesus has done is to use a mixture of OT quotation, and a genre of picture language common to the time, to predict the events of AD70. He was talking much like an OT prophet.
The “One will be taken...” thing probably refers to the 100,000 slaves Vespasian took to fund the campaign. Making the Jewish massacre self-funding was, for the Romans, a political statement along the lines of 'Mexico will pay for the Wall'.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
I'm not saying that the Matthew passage is not useful to rapture theology, but it's not the only one; and the word rapture comes from the Thessalonians passage.
It's not in it, though.
I would still like to know what the difference between being "saved under covenant" and "saved under grace" might be.
I am also curious to know why you apparently espouse a theory that doesn't seem to have been adopted by anyone in the early church. So far as I can tell, the idea of a pre-tribulation rapture is one that has entered evangelical Christianity via, in ascending historical order, the Scofield Bible, JN Darby, Edward Irving, and the eighteenth-century Jesuit monk called Lacunza who first came up with the idea.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Gamaliel
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# 812
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Posted
I've seen dispensationalists try to make a case that belief in a pre-tribulation rapture was held by various Church Fathers, perhaps quoting them as selectively as they quote scripture.
I can see where the pre-millenialists get it from, but to my mind it begs more questions than it resolves and leads to fruitless speculation.
The thing I don't understand is why they feel the need to interpret the messages to the Seven Churches of Revelation in some kind of predictive sense - seven ages of the church and such like. I see no warrant for that in the text itself.
Why should those passages be projected to some unspecified future date? Why can't they simply be exhortations or rebukes to churches at that particular time, albeit expressed in hyperbolic or apocalyptic language?
What would be the point of conveying a message to Sardis or Laodicea if its relevance wasn't contemporary but referred to something hundreds of years in the future?
There's nothing in the text or context to suggest that we should look for some future fulfilment of the Letters to the Churches in Revelation as we might with the prophecies of Isaiah. Whichever of the two or three Isaiahs we attribute them to.
These days I see little point in speculating about eschatology - nor the freewill/predestination issue come to that.
I really don't see what there is to be gained from it.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
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Mudfrog
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# 8116
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Posted
Gamaliel, you could say everything you have said about the predictive element in Revelation about the predictive element in Isaiah.
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"The point of having an open mind, like having an open mouth, is to close it on something solid."
G.K. Chesterton
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Mudfrog:
Gamaliel, you could say everything you have said about the predictive element in Revelation about the predictive element in Isaiah.
And if Gamaliel won't say it, I will.
Prophecy isn't about predicting things. Not primarily, not even necessarily.
I think when we see Christ in things Isaiah says, it's because Isaiah is talking about things that reveal certain deep patterns (so to speak) the way myths speak of such patterns. Christians can look into the Hebrew Scriptures and find templates into which Christ fits, and that's one way of comparing this new event to the known patterns of God's interaction with the world.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
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Jamat
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# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
I've seen dispensationalists try to make a case that belief in a pre-tribulation rapture was held by various Church Fathers, perhaps quoting them as selectively as they quote scripture.
I can see where the pre-millenialists get it from, but to my mind it begs more questions than it resolves and leads to fruitless speculation.
The thing I don't understand is why they feel the need to interpret the messages to the Seven Churches of Revelation in some kind of predictive sense - seven ages of the church and such like. I see no warrant for that in the text itself.
Why should those passages be projected to some unspecified future date? Why can't they simply be exhortations or rebukes to churches at that particular time, albeit expressed in hyperbolic or apocalyptic language?
What would be the point of conveying a message to Sardis or Laodicea if its relevance wasn't contemporary but referred to something hundreds of years in the future?
There's nothing in the text or context to suggest that we should look for some future fulfilment of the Letters to the Churches in Revelation as we might with the prophecies of Isaiah. Whichever of the two or three Isaiahs we attribute them to.
These days I see little point in speculating about eschatology - nor the freewill/predestination issue come to that.
I really don't see what there is to be gained from it.
Gamaliel can you state that you know that Paul and the apostles along with first century writers did NOT believe in an imminent apocalypse preceded by a rapture of the church?
If so enlighten please. My understanding is that they did until Origen began the allegorising and that later, Augustine of Hippo made that thinking and platonic thinking into a kind of 'church is Israel now' theology that Catholicism holds to this day.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
can you state that you know that Paul and the apostles along with first century writers did NOT believe in an imminent apocalypse preceded by a rapture of the church?
As far as the rapture goes, it's an argument from silence, because the Bible mentions no such thing. To paint a picture of the pre-tribulation rapture as described by Mudfrog involves cobbling together various bits of Scripture to fit with a timeline similarly cobbled together from other bits of Scripture.
And if the first Christians did believe in an imminent apocalypse they were wrong, weren't they? 2,000 years on and it still hasn't happened. They might have been correct that it could have been imminent, but the fact is that it patently wasn't.
There is a tension throughout the NT of a sense of Christ's (potentially) imminent return and the sense of a certain number of eschatological events having to happen first, a tension that is pretty much impossible to resolve.
Either we accept this as a paradox and seek to "live in the light of his coming" whilst, along with Luther, planting our apple tree today even if the end of the world is heralded for tomorrow.
Or we attempt, as dispensationalism does, to cram all the pieces of the jigsaw into a framework of human invention.
The trouble with the latter is that you end up creating more problems than you solve - such as having people saved after the return of Christ for his own, having them saved under differing regimes (both "under the covenant" AND "under grace", whatever that means), and centuries' worth of attempting to match current events to biblical prophecy in a way that is demonstrably mistaken. The collateral damage of such an approach is simply far too high - and a sure sign that it's wrong.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
can you state that you know that Paul and the apostles along with first century writers did NOT believe in an imminent apocalypse preceded by a rapture of the church?
As far as the rapture goes, it's an argument from silence, because the Bible mentions no such thing.
I take it that is a no.
BTW there are plenty of places the concept of 'rapture' is found in the sense of snatching away unexpectedly. The word hapazeo' is pretty common. How out of interest do you read 1 thes 4:17..caught up to meet him in the air.." Another eg is in Acts when Phillip was "caught up".
Also the concept of imminence is not necessarily about timing. It seems to mean the idea of the next thing to happen. One can thus say the rapture has been imminent for 2 millennia. I.e. There is nothing to stop it occurring in the sense of stuff having to happen first.
As for dispensationalists putting square pegs in round holes, ISTM that any system is guilty of this and dispensationalism is the least guilty. It has bad press from date setting of course, but you don't have to set dates to see the way it harmonises scripture. Jesus' two comings for instance make sense if in the next dispensation he returns as a Davidic king.
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
there are plenty of places the concept of 'rapture' is found in the sense of snatching away unexpectedly. The word hapazeo' is pretty common. How out of interest do you read 1 thes 4:17..caught up to meet him in the air.."
I read it that at the end of everything we will be with the Lord. I'm not literalistic enough to assume we are required to meet him mid-air (and where do we go then? Back down to earth??).
Where I part company with dispensationalists is in the idea that this "meeting in the air" leaves a separate group of people behind on earth, i.e. is a distinct event in time from the eschaton.
As others have pointed out, one can just as easily read Matthew as believers being left behind and those "taken" as being judged. There is no sense of "meeting the Lord in the air" in the Matthew passage, at all.
quote:
you don't have to set dates to see the way it harmonises scripture.
Wait, Scripture needs harmonising?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
there are plenty of places the concept of 'rapture' is found in the sense of snatching away unexpectedly. The word hapazeo' is pretty common. How out of interest do you read 1 thes 4:17..caught up to meet him in the air.."
I read it that at the end of everything we will be with the Lord. I'm not literalistic enough to assume we are required to meet him mid-air?
Well then, you are not reading what is there but what you want to be there. IOW eisigesis right?
The story goes BTW that there is a mid air reconciliation of the living with the dead saints, the church then goes to heaven for the marriage supper of the lamb, Earth is consigned to Satanic forces of Antichrist for a set time possibly 7 years, possibly 3 and one half.
During this time Israel is refined by judgement again and the gospel is entrusted to the 144k who are Jewish evangelists. They preach Christ but the cost of accepting him at this time is often beheading since Christians will be unable to take the mark of Antichrist.
At a climactic moment at the end of that time,(7years or final 3 and a half of the 7 which isDaniel' s final week or '7') called in scripture the day of the Lord or the time of Jacob's trouble, the repentant Jewish remnant will acknowledge Jesus as their Messiah and he will return to save them, defeat the forces of Antichrist, set up the kingdom or millennial reign of Christ which will be a political hands on peaceful government on Earth for 1000 years, after which Satan will be released to lead a final rebellion which is allowed to test human hearts, which, after it is defeated ends the current Biblical metanarrative having fulfilled all prophecy.
Mudfrog may have some appendix to this scenario.
[ 29. November 2016, 07:33: Message edited by: Jamat ]
Posts: 3228 | From: New Zealand | Registered: Jul 2006
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
you are not reading what is there but what you want to be there. IOW eisigesis right?
To my mind I am reading the hard-to-understand parts of Scripture in the light of the easy-to-understand parts, and not the other way around. The idea of us being with the Lord at his return is all over Scripture. The detailed scenario you have outlined, not so much, and it creates a whole host of problems with easier-to-understand parts. quote:
The story goes BTW that there is a mid air reconciliation of the living with the dead saints, the church then goes to heaven for the marriage supper of the lamb, Earth is consigned to Satanic forces of Antichrist for a set time possibly 7 years, possibly 3 and one half.
The story does no such thing. This train of events is arrived at by cutting and pasting bits from 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, Revelation, and Daniel, and leaving lots of other bits out.
If this were to represent the way thing are going to pan out, why on earth is there no prophetic passage setting out this train of events as you have? Or to repeat my question, why does Scripture "need" "harmonising" as above?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Yes, Eutychus is spot-on.
The idea if everything being lively until nasty old Origen allegorised everything and we ended up with the Catholic Church is an over-simplification and derives from a similar tendency to want to harmonise history into some kind of neat template in the same way as dispensationalists try to do with scripture. It's a kind of join-the-dots, cut-and-paste the proof text theology.
@Mudfrog, yes, you could apply the same kind of criteria about prophecy to Isaiah - and generally I would. However, there does seem to be a kind of forecasting element in Isaiah that we don't necessarily find in the Letter to the Churches in Revelation.
I_m comfortable with the idea of the early Church 'Christianising' passages from Isaiah and applying them to Christ. That's clearly how their hermeneutic worked - often quite clumsily it has to be said given some examples in the Gospels.
I'm still conservative enough to admit of some kind of future fulfilment of prophetic passages, alongside a contemporary and short or mid-term application but I can't for the life of me see why we have to adopt some kind of detailed end-time schema based on making imaginative leaps from the Letters to the Seven Churches.
That's an eisegetical leap too far.
As for meeting Christ in the air, that strikes me as an echo of the Ascension and however we understand it, I can live with the Mystery in that and other instances.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
e story does no such thing. This train of events is arrived at by cutting and pasting bits from 1 Thessalonians, 1 Corinthians, Revelation, and Daniel, and leaving lots of other bits out.
If this were to represent the way thing are going to pan out, why on earth is there no prophetic passage setting out this train of events as you have? Or to repeat my question, why does Scripture "need" "harmonising" as above?
Look, it makes perfect sense of Isaiah 11, Daniel 9, Zechariah 11,12 Matt24 and Thessalonians. If you want to say it is a cut paste job, you have to deal with the same cut paste job Jesus himself did and Paul did.
Scripture needs harmonising because as you well know it is not a linear narrative. If it is analogous to a jig saw, then the first step is to say the puzzle is valid; it coheres so then you start figuring it out. If you say it's not really a puzzle, it doesn't have to cohere, then you cannot say it is God's revelation can you? At best you come up with the solution that some of it is but then you need to figure out which parts are. If you do this you lose the compass. You have to start with an axiom outside it so then we get all the God is a genocidal maniac arguments because you have to start with human preconceptions.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Look, it makes perfect sense of Isaiah 11, Daniel 9, Zechariah 11,12 Matt24 and Thessalonians.
But only at the expense of making the picture more, not less complicated.
To me, one of the red flags indicating dispensationalism is wrong is that it requires so much extra-biblical explanation. As far as I can see that runs wholly counter to the promise of the New Covenant. quote:
If you want to say it is a cut paste job, you have to deal with the same cut paste job Jesus himself did and Paul did.
Well oddly enough, I don't believe myself to have the same authority to cut and paste in the way the writers of Scripture did. quote:
Scripture needs harmonising because as you well know it is not a linear narrative.
1) Why should its non-linearity require harmonisation?
2) So why are you so insistent on reading Revelation, in particular, linearly?
(I think it makes a whole load more sense to read Revelation as a number of successive scenes often portraying the same thing from a different angle. So, for instance, the 144,000 (and which numbers in Revelation do you take literally, and why?) do not 'precede' the great crowd from every nation, tribe, and tongue. They are the same group, i.e. all believers. John first "hears" their number, then "sees" the crowd)
quote:
If it is analogous to a jig saw, then the first step is to say the puzzle is valid; it coheres so then you start figuring it out.
If we could figure it out, we'd be God. quote:
If you say it's not really a puzzle, it doesn't have to cohere, then you cannot say it is God's revelation can you?
That depends on whether you think God's revelation is designed predominantly to tell us everything, or to get us asking the right questions in life. quote:
You have to start with an axiom outside it (...) you have to start with human preconceptions.
What is dispensationalism but a set of human preconceptions based on the axiom that there is a definitive way of "rightly dividing the word of truth" so that it all fits into the scheme?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
As I understand it....
1) Up till the 19th C there were two views of the future - Simply that Jesus would return in judgement to usher in the final new heaven and new earth, and a less popular view that there would somehow be a literal 1000-year earthly 'Millennium' after that return and before final judgement. A variant view believed in a future blissful millennium but before the Second Advent.
Crucially none of these views believed in a 'pre-tribulation Rapture' - that view only arose in the early 19thC.
2) The trail of the pre-tribulation Rapture idea goes back to a Church of Scotland minister called Edward Irving. In a church mostly preaching a 'post-millennial' Second Coming - and therefore with little urgency or excitement about it - Irving recovered the idea of preaching an imminent Second Coming and excited people with the thought of constant readiness for the event. He also caught onto the idea of a post-Second-Coming Millennial Kingdom.
3) As a result of Irving's preaching there was a great interest in prophecy and 'Prophetic Conferences' were held all over the UK (and beyond?). But as biblical prophecy was studied, they found a problem - much prophecy could be interpreted as already fulfilled, while other portions apparently belonged in the Millennium. But they increasingly found prophecies that had not been fulfilled but seemed to belong before the judgement and the Millennium. Where could those prophecies belong in a scheme that was very insistent that Jesus' return might be literally 'any second now'??
4) at this point, they could have followed the pattern suggested by the I Thess passage - i.e, that with some prophecy yet to be fulfilled, they might, as it were, pull back from 'Red Alert' to Amber Alert', remaining prepared but aware that there did seem to be unfulfilled prophecies yet to happen. Unfortunately it seems they weren't willing to give up on the excitement of believing in an imminent 'any-second-now' return.
5) It was at this point that the pre-tribulation Rapture idea was thought up, by the Brethren leader John Nelson Darby with, it seems, hints from a 'prophet' in the 'charismatic' wing of Irving's followers.
Essentially the prophecies that were causing difficulty would no longer need to be fulfilled before Jesus returned, because that wouldn't quite be 'The End'. If Jesus returned to rapture his church and preserve them from the Tribulation, then these other prophecies could be fulfilled during the Tribulation period, before Jesus 'returned again' with the Church to bring judgement and usher in the Millennium. This view quickly caught on among the prophetic students and was boosted by the Schofield Bible whose notes effectively guided readers to that interpretation.
6) In early versions of this view the return of Israel, and a mass conversion of Jews to Christianity, would of course be 'post-Rapture' and indeed a response to it. This particular interpretation was - well at least significantly modified by the events of 1948.
I'll be back later to follow this up in its application to this thread.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
The supreme irony, of course, is that dispensationalists engage in allegorisation to a similar extent - if not more so - than some of those they believe themselves to be 'correcting' ...
So, for instance, what is the dispensationalist 'take' on the Letters to the Seven Churches if it isn't an elaborate allegorisation projecting trends and tendencies into a far-off future that would have been of little or no relevance to the people who made up the congregations of those churches at the time?
It always used to strike me as odd as how those who went in for a futurist interpretation of the Seven Churches always categorised this current 'dispensation' as the Laodicean age.
On what grounds?
Why couldn't we be in the 'Ephesian age' or the 'Smyrnan age' of the church, the 'Pergamon age' or the 'Thyatiran age' or the 'Sardis Age' the 'Philadelphian age' ...
What possible means or yardstick do we have to determine which 'age' we are supposed to be in other than some kind of extra-biblical framework of interpretation?
Sure, I know there are ironies on the other side too. I've long thought it odd that the Orthodox are so vehemently opposed to anyone using Revelation in a predictive sense yet they happily mine the Book of Revelations for proof-texts as to how we are to worship ... with incense, robes and so on. Not that I'm opposed to any of that - I quite like it - but then neither would I use texts from Revelation to suggest that this is how things should be done ...
All that said, I do find the whole fundamentalist dispensationalist thing to be shot through with discrepancies, contradictions and resort to overly personal and subjective flights of fancy in order to make the pieces of the jigsaw fit.
The scriptures aren't a jigsaw, they are more like a kaleidoscope or a mosaic, a tapestry - and yes, parts of the picture are as yet blurred.
How could it be otherwise? We are dealing with eternal truths here, not an A-Z map of our local town.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
The bit you are missing is that Irving apparently got his ideas from Manuel de Lacunza y Diaz who under the pseudonym Rabbi Juan Josafat Ben Ezra wrote La Venida del Mesias en Gloria y Majestad ('The coming of the Messiah in glory and majesty') in 1790. The abridged 3-volume version (!) was published in 1821, translated by Irving in 1826 and released in a further abridged version in 1833.
As I type this out I can't help but be struck by how recent all this is as a doctrine.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I think that is broadly how the eschatological schema or model we are discussing developed, Steve Langton.
However, a belief in the conversion of the Jews before the return of Christ or contiguous with it in some way had been current for centuries - it's one of the reasons Cromwell admitted the Jews back into England during the Commonwealth period of course. The idea was that they would be exposed to the Gospel and converted, thereby hastening the return of Christ.
You've got an allusion to it in Andrew Marvell's poem, 'To His Coy Mistress' too, of course.
The point is that the whole pre-tribulation thing is so mid-19th century ...
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif) ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
It developed out of concerns about the end of the world hastened by the turmoil of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars and the unrest and revolutions of mid-19th century Europe - 1848 and all that.
Add fervid revivalism and popular religious movements to the mix and you've got a recipe for eschatological speculation that has continued in more conservative forms of Christianity to the present day - and it's solely restricted to fundamentalist forms of Protestant evangelicalism either.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
As I type this out I can't help but be struck by how recent all this is as a doctrine.
Nor how 'recent' of vintage the groups are that tend to espouse this sort of thing. The Plymouth Brethren, they emerged at the same time. The various holiness and revivalist groups that coalesced - as far as they have - into the various independent evangelical groups we find across the English-speaking world (and among those other cultures they've evangelised) ... again, recent vintage (although they all draw on older influences too, of course).
It might be objected that simply because something is of recent vintage it doesn't mean it is 'wrong' - but the alarm bells do ring with me when marginal positions are adopted as mainstream within certain groups.
Although, in Mudfrog's case I suspect his pre-tribulation style dispensationalism isn't particularly common across the Salvation Army as a whole.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
I have no problem with the prospect of a mass conversion of the Jews. Romans 9-11 certainly holds out some hope for that, as do all those OT prophecies.
Where I start climbing the walls is when I read supposedly biblical details of how this is going to happen and in which dispensation of salvation, and when excitable non-Hebrew-speaking congregations start singing songs in Hebrew and blowing shofars with a sort of super-spiritual sheen on their faces.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Gamaliel:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
As I type this out I can't help but be struck by how recent all this is as a doctrine.
Nor how 'recent' of vintage the groups are that tend to espouse this sort of thing. The Plymouth Brethren, they emerged at the same time.
As you say, this seems to have been due to a conjunction of historical circumstances. The Adventists and JWs also date from around the same time and have similar eschatologies.
As someone raised in the Brethren, attending an Adventist service is like going into an ecclesiastical Uncanny Valley.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
I can imagine.
I've never been to an Adventist services but there's a tiny group of Adventists here who left their 'regular' churches and set up a congregation following the visit of some itinerant evangelist who 'explained' the scriptures to them.
The guy I know from there is a lovely bloke and something of an autodidact. I don't wish to be rude but I've noticed a tendency with autodidacts of whatever stripe to slide off into all manner of whacky or fringe ideas - I've seen this with people who've slid over to the extra-Parliamentary Left or to the political right.
Alongside his Adventism he takes an overly literal approach to eschatology - Angela Merkel is the latest candidate for setting up some kind of super-dooper Endtimes European Union - as well as flakey ideas about medical issues.
My wife shouldn't be on chemotherapy, of course, that's all a big con designed to line the pockets of the pharmaceutical companies, she would be better advised to come off chemo and go onto a vegetable only diet as that is the sure-fire way to cure cancer ...
![[Roll Eyes]](rolleyes.gif) ![[Help]](graemlins/help.gif)
Ok, I recognise that we shouldn't tar all more 'mainstream' dispensationalists / pre-millenialists with the same brush but I'm afraid I've got it down as part of the same kind of continuum ...
It's all very well Jamat saying that what has discredited the movement/tendency to some extent is the propensity to fix dates and add too much detail - but I'd suggest that this is inherent within such a system. It's where it leads.
I'm sorry, I've got it down on my list of quack-theologies. I'm not doubting the overall orthodoxy (small o) of dispensationalist groups but it does veer into whacko-jacko territory and there are uncomfortable similarities with JW-ness and the loopier fringe of Adventism.
That doesn't mean that I think that all the individuals involved are whacko-jacko - no, far from it - but as a schema and system I think it's fundamentally flawed. Fundamentally being the operative word.
It is a fundamentalist trait as well as a system that trumpets out of its own fundament.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Moo
Ship's tough old bird
# 107
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus
I think it makes a whole load more sense to read Revelation as a number of successive scenes often portraying the same thing from a different angle. So, for instance, the 144,000 (and which numbers in Revelation do you take literally, and why?) do not 'precede' the great crowd from every nation, tribe, and tongue. They are the same group, i.e. all believers. John first "hears" their number, then "sees" the crowd.
I have heard Revelation described as a series of descriptions of an extremely large picture with many elements. There is no chronology in the picture; it all exists at once. However, the descriptions of the different elements must come one after another.
Moo
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Kerygmania host
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See you later, alligator.
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Indeed, and one can understand the reluctance of some of the Eastern Churches to accept Revelation into the canon of the NT, given the propensity of people to read all sorts of things into it.
I'm glad it's in, but it ought to come with a health-warning.
This is an area where, paradoxically, some of the independent evangelical groups have retained elements of small o Orthodoxy - perhaps better than some mainline churches - and yet are susceptible to idiosyncratic and eccentric interpretations.
It extends into some sectors of evangelicalism within the historic Churches too - my loveable but dotty evangelical Anglican mother-in-law being a case in point. She was/is susceptible to any fruitcake flavour end-time/revivalist fantasy from the Israel and the End times lobby.
I'm sorry, but it's the theological equivalent of quack cures and alternative therapies. They can do some good and make us feel a bit better but ultimately they're placebos.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
Ok so let's say that on the one hand, you have a literal reading that attempts to synthesise the scriptures with regard to the eshaton because it wants to grasp what God's plan in history is and reconcile it with faith in Christ as saviour and his identification with God.
This view is historically recent in that no one has created a summary of prophetic events like this beforehand that interprets scripture in this way. However this view is based on what the Bible writers have put in print and claimed to be truth believed by them but subsequently lost in history after the decline into corruption,legalism and formalism that occurred in the dark ages.
The Irving movement and Darby was a rediscovery of ancient truth built upon by people like Robert Anderson and others.
What do you have on the other hand? It seems to be a distillation of the once dynamic and life changing message of the apostles into a kind of social liberalism, a hand waving message that says Come on guys let's just love everyone that is without the transformative power to facilitate that message. It comes down to human politics that faith is in. The scriptures are either flawed or incomprehensible so humanity has to save itself and the planet. That's where it seems to me the liberal church is currently. Add in evolution and God is irrelevant. We are chemical political historical accidents.
[ 29. November 2016, 13:30: Message edited by: Jamat ]
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
This view is historically recent in that no one has created a summary of prophetic events like this beforehand that interprets scripture in this way.
Which is precisely why it is suspect. quote:
However this view is based on what the Bible writers have put in print and claimed to be truth believed by them but subsequently lost in history after the decline into corruption,legalism and formalism that occurred in the dark ages.
This not only contradicts your previous sentence, it is a total assumption. If there was something "in print" (sic) you would not have to admit it was historically recent.
quote:
The Irving movement and Darby was a rediscovery of ancient truth built upon by people like Robert Anderson and others.
The specific idea we're discussing here, that of a pre-tribulation rapture of the saints leaving the rest behind, is not a rediscovery of ancient truth. It's an entirely innovative hermeneutic that first appeared in the late 18th century.
quote:
What do you have on the other hand? (...) The scriptures are either flawed or incomprehensible
Dispensationalism is an interpretive system that sets itself up as the only way of "rightly dividing the word of truth". In other words, the claim of Scripture being essentially incomprehensible as they stand is one made by dispensationalism: without its specific system they are not comprehensible; they require the interpretive system to be adopted.
As I say, this is not only sectarian, it also runs counter to the essential promise of the New Covenant which says that God's people will no longer need others to instruct them but will have the Spirit dwelling in their hearts.
Meanwhile the NT has plenty to say about false apostles and those that needlessly complicate the Good News, and the outcomes of their teaching. Consider, for instance, the patently clear 1 Tim 1:3-7: quote:
I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach any different doctrine, and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training that is known by faith.
But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. Some people have deviated from these and turned to meaningless talk, desiring to be teachers of the law, without understanding either what they are saying or the things about which they make assertions. (...)
I'm on the lookout for "love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith". If that is your definition of "social liberalism" that says "Come on guys let's just love everyone" perhaps you should consider removing 1 Timothy from your personal canon... quote:
That's where it seems to me the liberal church is currently. Add in evolution and God is irrelevant.
Without whipping the various Dead Horses raised here, it seems clear to me that there is plenty of theological room between dispensationalism and godless liberalism however defined.
The creeds affirm, and continue to affirm, that Christ will come again in glory and that will do me fine.
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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goperryrevs
Shipmtae
# 13504
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
BTW there are plenty of places the concept of 'rapture' is found in the sense of snatching away unexpectedly.
In the passage that sparked this thread...
quote:
For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left.
...the comparison is made to the days of the flood, and specifically comments that it was the unrighteous that were taken away by the flood. Noah and his family were the ones who remained.
So, if this passage has anything to do with people being magicked away, it won't be the good old god-fearing folk that spontaneously disappear, it'd be the baddies!
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
can you state that you know that Paul and the apostles along with first century writers did NOT believe in an imminent apocalypse preceded by a rapture of the church?
As far as the rapture goes, it's an argument from silence, because the Bible mentions no such thing.
I take it that is a no.
If they did believe it, they did a pretty poor job of communicating it. The rapture is a recent invention that has little to support it in scripture, tradition or reason.
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"Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole." - David Lynch
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Stetson
Shipmate
# 9597
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Posted
Gamaliel wrote:
quote:
She was/is susceptible to any fruitcake flavour end-time/revivalist fantasy from the Israel and the End times lobby.
You haven't really lived until you've had an immediate loved-one tell you that, when the demons are terrorizing the Earth prior to the Return Of Christ, don't be surprised if she can't let you into the house, because there'll be no way of knowing if you're really who you say you are, or a demon in disguise.
Interestinglly, this relative's preoccupation with end-times safety procedures didn't last for much more than a few weeks, as the whole eschatological trip was quickly abandoned. I suppose that might be par for the course with that sorta thing.
And FWIW, that version of end-times schlockery was Roman Catholic in its orientation. The RC version of that sorta thing tends to be pretty strong in the Marian cults, but nowhere else.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
Ok so let's say that on the one hand, you have a literal reading that attempts to synthesise the scriptures with regard to the eshaton because it wants to grasp what God's plan in history is and reconcile it with faith in Christ as saviour and his identification with God.
Also, to my mind dispensationalism doesn't do that because it opens up all sorts of hard-to-understand alternatives to the Gospel message of "faith in Christ as saviour".
Not least because it requires you to contrive a basis on which those left behind after believers have been raptured to be with their Lord can be saved, and engage in another variety of hand-waving about various dispensations being saved "by grace" and "by covenant", as Mudfrog puts it (and has yet to explain).
What is all this if not a needless complication of the Gospel?
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Gamaliel
Shipmate
# 812
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Posted
Thing is, I am not a theological liberal. I remain pretty conservative theologically and, I hope, very Nicene-Chalcedonian in orientation.
Neither were the Fathers theologically liberal, nor the Reformers nor the 18th century revivalists and pietists connected with the Great Awakenings of that century.
And none of them espoused a pre-tribulation Rapture nor some kind of artificial dispensationalist framework to be imposed on the scriptures.
Jamat seems to be positing some kind of binary system where you either have his particular brand of conservative evangelicalism on the one hand or else mediaeval Romanism or Protestant liberalism on the other.
It's perfectly possible to hold to a high view of scriptural inspiration and to historic creedal Christianity without signing up for 19th century pop-theology about the Eschaton.
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Let us with a gladsome mind
Praise the Lord for He is kind.
http://philthebard.blogspot.com
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Baptist Trainfan
Shipmate
# 15128
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Posted
@ Gamaliel: Have you read Iain Murray's "The Puritan Hope"? I read it years ago and it makes a strong case for saying that the "classic" Reformed position on the Second Coming has nothing to do with a secret rapture and pre-millennialism. See: here.
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Steve Langton
Shipmate
# 17601
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
The bit you are missing is that Irving apparently got his ideas from Manuel de Lacunza y Diaz who under the pseudonym Rabbi Juan Josafat Ben Ezra wrote La Venida del Mesias en Gloria y Majestad ('The coming of the Messiah in glory and majesty') in 1790. The abridged 3-volume version (!) was published in 1821, translated by Irving in 1826 and released in a further abridged version in 1833.
As I type this out I can't help but be struck by how recent all this is as a doctrine.
I hadn't actually missed that, or the English guy who introduced Irving to 'Ben Ezra' - I was just trying to make the point as briefly as possible.
But note that neither Ben Ezra nor Irving included any idea of a 'pre-Tribulation Rapture' - that aspect didn't come about till Darby and those who followed him. As far as I know, there is no trace of it in any earlier exposition - and without the early 19th C developments via Darby and Co, there was no need of such an idea either.
Sorry, Jamat, while you can point to a few generally 'pre-millennial' believers before Irving and even back to early times, the idea of a pre-tribulation Rapture was not a revival of earlier ideas but
a) all new in the 19th C, and
b) founded as I say on a questionable step taken by Darby.
I've also read Murray's "Puritan Hope" book; and as a brief account of the general 'A-Millennial' interpretation, there is WJ Grier's paperback summary "The Momentous Event". And I've previously referred to William Hendriksen.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
Baptist Trainfan: Iain Murray, Andrew Walker, Os Guinness, Adrian Plass... I sometimes wonder whether our bookshelves could be indistinguishably merged.
[ 29. November 2016, 15:25: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Gamaliel: ..and none of them espoused a pre-tribulation Rapture nor some kind of artificial dispensationalist framework to be imposed on the scriptures.
I asked you before, how do you know this?
Also how can you say theological conservatism is a good thing when you seem to want to condone other viewpoints and have a bet both ways on so many issues.
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Jamat:
how do you know this?
How do you know they didn't believe in small green creatures from Alpha Centauri?
We have no idea what they believed about what they didn't write down, and projecting later beliefs onto them in an attempt to provide historical credibility for these beliefs in the absence of any evidence at all is just not, well, credible.
[ 29. November 2016, 15:37: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Jamat
Shipmate
# 11621
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Steve Langton:
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
The bit you are missing is that Irving apparently got his ideas from Manuel de Lacunza y Diaz who under the pseudonym Rabbi Juan Josafat Ben Ezra wrote La Venida del Mesias en Gloria y Majestad ('The coming of the Messiah in glory and majesty') in 1790. The abridged 3-volume version (!) was published in 1821, translated by Irving in 1826 and released in a further abridged version in 1833.
As I type this out I can't help but be struck by how recent all this is as a doctrine.
I hadn't actually missed that, or the English guy who introduced Irving to 'Ben Ezra' - I was just trying to make the point as briefly as possible.
But note that neither Ben Ezra nor Irving included any idea of a 'pre-Tribulation Rapture' - that aspect didn't come about till Darby and those who followed him. As far as I know, there is no trace of it in any earlier exposition - and without the early 19th C developments via Darby and Co, there was no need of such an idea either.
Sorry, Jamat, while you can point to a few generally 'pre-millennial' believers before Irving and even back to early times, the idea of a pre-tribulation Rapture was not a revival of earlier ideas but
a) all new in the 19th C, and
b) founded as I say on a questionable step taken by Darby.
I've also read Murray's "Puritan Hope" book; and as a brief account of the general 'A-Millennial' interpretation, there is WJ Grier's paperback summary "The Momentous Event". And I've previously referred to William Hendriksen.
Well that might be true though I do not really know, about the pre trib rapture, but the concept of rapture itself is Biblical not 18 century. You could argue Enoch was raptured in Genesis and Elijah was raptured in 2 Kings. And there is the OP reference as well as 1 thes 2 which literally promises that not all will die. You have to contradict Paul here to deny it. That is why I said that to say no to the rapture, you have to do much more interpretive mangling than dispensationalism does.
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Jamat ..in utmost longditude, where Heaven
with Earth and ocean meets, the setting sun slowly descended, and with right aspect
Against the eastern gate of Paradise. (Milton Paradise Lost Bk iv)
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