The Hejnał continues the 5-part series on the Rapture, with an article by Carl Olson that first appeared in Inside Catholic. Olson presents five myths about the Rapture which Catholics should know in order to refute this false teaching.
MYTH 3: "The Rapture is a biblical and orthodox belief."
LaHaye declares, in Rapture Under Attack, that "virtually all Christians who take the Bible literally expect to be raptured before the Lord comes in power to this earth." This would have been news to Christians -- both Catholic and Protestant -- living prior to the 18th century, since the concept of a pretribulation Rapture was unheard of prior to that time. Vague notions had been considered by the Puritan preachers Increase (1639-1723) and Cotton Mather (1663-1728), and the late 18th-century Baptist minister Morgan Edwards, but it was John Nelson Darby who solidified the belief in the 1830s and placed it into a larger theological framework.
This historical background leaves the dispensationalist with two options: claim the pretribulation Rapture is biblical but went undiscovered for 1,800 years, or argue that it has been the belief of "true Christians" ever since Christ walked the earth. Ryrie, in his apologetic Dispensationalism Today (Moody, 1965), makes a case for the former by stating: "The fact that the church taught something in the first century does not make it true, and likewise if the church did not teach something until the twentieth century, it is not necessarily false." LaHaye and others argue for the latter, pointing to passages such as 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18, 1 Corinthians 15:51-53, and Matthew 24 as clear evidence for the pretribulation Rapture (those passages make several appearances, for instance, in the Left Behind novels).
1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 is especially vital to the dispensationalist: For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord.
There are three problems with claiming this passage refers to the Rapture. First, neither it nor the entire book of 1 Thessalonians mentions Christ returning two more times, or makes any reference to such a distinction. Second, dispensationalists believe the Rapture will be a secret and silent event, yet this passage describes a very loud and public event. This is all the more problematic because dispensationalists insist that they interpret Scripture "plainly" and "literally," allowing for symbolism only when such is the obvious intent of the author. Finally, dispensationalists teach that all other New Testament references to Christ coming in the clouds (Matthew 24:30 and 26:64; Mark 14:62; Revelation 1:7) refer to His Second Coming but inexplicably deny that that is the case here.
1 Corinthians 15 and its reference to "the twinkling of an eye" is often used as a proof text but is equally unconvincing. The point of the passage is that Christians will be glorified at the Second Coming, not that they’ll be secretly whisked off the planet prior to the tribulation. It describes an event that will occur at "the last trumpet" and states that "the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed" (1 Corinthians 15:52).
Yet LaHaye and Left Behind coauthor Jerry B. Jenkins, reflecting the common dispensationalist interpretation, claim in Are We Living in the End Times? (Tyndale, 1999) that Matthew 24:29-31 describes the Second Coming, which will include "a great sound of a trumpet" (Matthew 24:31). So how can 1 Corinthians 15, which speaks of "the last trumpet," refer to the Rapture when there is yet another trumpet to be sounded, several years later, at the Second Coming?
Some dispensationalists have admitted, at least in a backhanded fashion, the recent roots of the pretribulation Rapture. In an article titled "The Origin of the Pre-Trib Rapture" (Biblical Perspectives, March/April 1989), LaHaye’s colleague at the Pre-Trib Research Institute, Thomas D. Ice, writes that "a certain theological climate needed to be created before premillennialism would restore the Biblical doctrine of the pre-trib Rapture." He continues: "Sufficient development did not take place until after the French Revolution. The factor of the Rapture has been clearly known by the church all along; therefore the issue is the timing of the event. Since neither pre- nor post-tribs have a proof text for the time of the Rapture... then it is clear that this issue is the product of a deduction from one’s overall system of theology, both for pre- and post-tribbers"
In fact, the Rapture as dispensationalists conceive of it was never part of the early or medieval Church’s theology but is the modern creation of Darby less than 200 years ago.
No comments:
Post a Comment