Dispensationalism and Doomsday

Question from Brian (not the previous Brian):
I am studying Bible at a christian university but am tired of a strictly christian perspective (many of my friends at home are atheists and i enjoy discussing theology with them). As i study more deeply i realize that much of Modern christian theology doesn’t match up with older theology and even the Bible itself but i specifically want to talk of the rapture and similar eschatology.

To begin with I can find no historical evidence of a “rapture” before John Darby described it. In fact it seems more in line with the oldest texts that heaven quite literally descends and there is no longer a distinction between heaven and earth. In this time the “Kingdom of Heaven” is where the dead are resurrected from the hadean realm and judged. Those who were judged to be righteous in life get to stay and those whe are judged unrighteous are sent to gehenna (hades and gehenna (a constantly burning trash heap outside jerusalem) are important distinctions in the original texts). Being sent or taken away is seen as punishment throughout the old testament i don’t think God would suddenly change his mind about that.

Well thats what i think, rip it to shreds please.

Answer by SmartLX:
I’d like to know how you interpret the end of 1 Thessalonians 4 if not as a literal description of the future Rapture. Sure, “raptured” might be one of several different translations (“caught up” is another) but they all seem to mean roughly the same thing. I think it was laid out for Darby pretty clearly. So what did they think it meant before Darby came along? Or did they just not give it the emphasis it now has? Meanwhile, those who aren’t raptured probably end up in Hell, which is close enough to the Old Testament idea of being sent away.

Details aside, God will supposedly extract His chosen few one way or another. This event, and more generally Judgement Day, is useful to Christians and non-Christians alike. Christians can use the threat of approaching endtimes to proselytise and recruit in an atmosphere of urgency, like the frantic folks at the eBible Fellowship are doing right now. Non-Christians can simply wait until after the appointed date to point out the futility and lack of predictive power of Christian prophecies, as no doubt they will after May 21 when the Fellowship is trying to explain why not one of their number was raptured (and, after October 21, why the world hasn’t ended). The 2011 dates join a long and dubiously distinguished line of specific endtime prophecies by people who saw the short-term benefits of displaying apparently concrete information about the fate of us all.

I’m 30, and this isn’t my first rodeo. I vaguely remember an end date that whizzed by when I was in high school, and another during university. What worries me isn’t the possibility that one of them will turn out to be accurate, but the near-certainty that each time people are being exploited. The Millennium was the worst in recent times; in Uganda, hundreds of members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God were massacred by the failed prophets who had taken all their worldly goods in the months leading up to New Year’s Eve.

There’s a big one coming up next year: the date in December 2012 sourced from the Mayan calendar and reverse engineered to match every bit of religious or new-age Doomsday math anyone had lying around. I’m frankly terrified of two things. Firstly, even more people than the Millennium victims will likely be exploited and even ruined or killed thanks to the massive, worldwide, decades-long hype suggesting that they’re about to die. Secondly, some disappointed fanatics may even see fit to engineer apocalypses for themselves and those around them shortly after the fateless date.

My one consolation is that after 2012 there are really no further doomsdays similarly embedded in the public consciousness. We can all give it a rest for a while.

Rapture in 2011!…?

“The thing about apocalyptic cults is that they portray the apocalypse in such a way that everything works out all right if they’ve got all the chips at crunch time.”

Question from M:
G’day!

After hearing your most recent podcast, I was inspired to inquire further about the Rapture that has been announced for May 21, 2011. I contacted the EBible Fellowship about their decree and asked the following:

“I was just wondering, if you are indeed certain that the world is coming to an end soon, would you have a problem with signing a contract that all your belongings be turned over someone else on that day. Surely, you won’t need any money or a home or furniture, or anything else for that matter, once you are raptured up to heaven. A few good beneficiaries that I would like to suggest for your possesions to be given to are: The Center for Inquiry, The James Randi Education Foundation, The Public Braodcasting Station or The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.

God’s Law is absolute, and as such it would be an admission of lack of faith to have any doubts about this apocolyptic proclamation. Please do not insult God’s intellegence by hedging your bet. To keep ones earthly belongings in the off-chance that God may be wrong is the height of arrogance. The only possitive course of action would be to accept the end as a fact, and leave all possible resourses to those who chose to ignore God’s word in hope that they will then be better able to find the truth that is God in the time they will have left after the rapture and before the entire world ends. To deny the deniers an opportunity to repent and see the light would be, at best, unchristian.

Thank you for your concern on this highly important matter.”

I have been told for meny decades that God is the source of morality and that Christians are thus moral, so I don’t see any reason why they should object to my proposal. The only thing left to do now is sit back and wait for those bank accounts, property titles and other such stuff to get signed over. They wouldn’t be lying about the whole Rapture thing, surely.

Right?

Answer by SmartLX:
The thing about apocalyptic cults is that they portray the apocalypse in such a way that everything works out all right if they’ve got all the chips at crunch time.

Particularly in Christian eschatology (endtime mythology), the end of the world isn’t a quick process; there’s the Tribulation to get through, where the world goes almost literally to Hell before Jesus shows up (again). That’s what the Left Behind books are all about, and there are over a dozen of those so there’s a fair bit of chronological space to squeeze them all in. While it’s happening, the righteous will do what they can to help those who need or deserve it, but for that they need money.

Point is, there’s always a reason why they aren’t giving away their own resources other than that the world isn’t really ending. Whether the reason they give is a real reason or not, just keep in mind that doomsday cultists, whatever they may be, are not necessarily stupid. They have probably thought of the obvious questions people are going to ask them, especially questions which challenge their right to their own stuff.