I Thessalonians 4:13-18
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For 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. 17 After 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. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Yesterday was supposed to be the end of the world.
Harold Camping is an individual who announced this several months ago. He’s been wrong before, back in 1994. Now he has, as one of our church members said yesterday, “two strikes.”
I heard about this a few months ago, but didn’t pay much attention to it. We’ve all heard this before. But this one received a lot of attention.
There were plenty of jokes and good humor.
When this was mentioned on the news on Saturday morning and that it would happen at 6 pm, I turned to my wife and said, “can we have an early dinner.”
One brilliant entrepreneur has come up with a new business that will pick up your pet within 24 hours after the Rapture – guaranteed! They will take care of them and make sure they are well cared for. So far 250 people have singed up. At $135 per contract, this man has racked in well over $30,000. And I love this part – this man has developed a NO-money back contract.
Now in case you aren’t sure what the Rapture is – it refers to the belief that when Christ returns he will physically remove all the Christians from the earth, leaving those who are damned to suffer 7 years of tribulation and trial.
Where does this come from?
It comes from our New Testament lesson for this morning – St. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians.
“For 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. After 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.”
Now for those who think this clearly teaches the Rapture is going to happen, think again. No one ever heard of this doctrine until the middle of the 19th Century.
The Rapture is a doctrine that was first suggested by someone in the group – Plymouth Brethren.[1] The belief was first introduced to the US in 1860 – at about the time the Civil War was starting here in this nation.
In the span of Christian History – 2,000 years, this is a short, short period of time.
And yet, it has become part of our pop-theology. Even people who are not Christian know about this.
It has become so ingrained in our culture, that most Christians assume that all Christians preach and believe the Rapture will happen.
It might surprise you to learn that most Christian organizations do not believe in the Rapture.
They all believe in the Second Coming of Christ, but NOT in the Rapture.
The Rapture is not mentioned in the Apostles’ Creed, or the Nicene Creed, or in any of the statements of faith of the Presbyterian Church’s Book of Confessions.
The Rapture was not taught by any of the theologians of the Reformation. John Calvin, Martin Luther, John Knox.
The Rapture was not mentioned by any of the early church fathers.
Some people believe this is in the Bible, others do not.
Like many things we struggle with – homosexuality, sexual ethics, abortion -- we find in the Bible what we WANT the Bible to say. And all too often we ignore what the Bible actually says.
Have you ever wondered how it was that so many of the Jews missed the first coming of Christ? They waited for the Messiah to arrive, and when He came, they missed it – and they rejected the Messiah. How could they do that? Because they saw in the Bible what they expected to find – and they failed to really go to the Bible with an open mind to discover what God’s Word actually said.
And modern Christians are now doing this with the second coming of Christ. We have embraced what we think is in the Bible without actually listening to what the Bible actually says.
The Rapture is part of something called “dispensational premillennialism theology, which teaches that Christ’s second coming is made up of specific and predictable events and periods.
First there is the first second coming in which there is the Rapture – or the physical removal of Christians from the earth, then 7 years of tribulation when things get really bad, then the second of two second comings of Christ.
There are some problems with this doctrine – the first is that not all theologians accept it. In fact, most biblical theologians reject it.
So --- what does the Bible really teach? We’re not interested in what we expect to find there, but what is it we will really find there?
- There will be a resurrection from the dead
One thing we find in the Bible is that we will someday be resurrected from the dead.
A few years ago, and Episcopal bishop wrote a book. It was a bit controversial because it challenged the view that many Christians have about death. We have come to accept the belief that after we die our souls go to heaven, and that’s it for the rest of eternity. But Jesus taught that at some point in the future we would be resurrected, physically resurrected, from the dead.
It shocked many Christians who believed that when we die we go to heaven and that’s it. They had no clue that there would be an eventual return to our bodies.
I asked one of my church members about that. This was in a church that used the Apostles’ Creed every single Sunday, so I asked her what it meant to her when she stood up and said “I believe in the resurrection from the dead and the life everlasting?”
She said she never really listened to the Apostles Creed, she just repeated those words because I told everyone to stand up and recite it.
No – those words mean something.
Something important.
But when people read the Bible and think it speaks of the Rapture, what the Bible actually teaches is the resurrection that is to come.
Let’s take another look at Thessalonians
13 Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. 14 For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15 According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16 For 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. 17 After 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. 18 Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Now some people read that part that says, “caught up together with them in the clouds,” and they say – that’s the rapture. But until relatively recently, that was always interpreted as a reference to the resurrection of the dead, and the fact that those who are still alive when Christ returns will also be changed for all eternity.
Our future resurrection is taught throughout Scripture.
Revelation says that there will come a time when “The sea gave up the dead that were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person was judged according to what he had done.” (Rev 20)
Paul in his second letter to Timothy dealt with a concern that some denied the resurrection… “There are those who have wandered away from the truth. They say that the resurrection has already taken place, and they destroy the faith of some.” II Timothy 2:18
One of the big divisions between the Jewish leaders and Jesus was that Jesus believed that the dead would be resurrected, while many Jews (specifically the Sadduces) did not.
The belief that we will someday be resurrected is a cornerstone of the Christian faith. St. Paul said in his letter to the Corinthians, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.” (I Corinthians 15:13).
- Christ will return.
The second thing we can say that the Bible clearly teaches is that Christ will come back. There is no doubt about this.
Here pop-theology and the most academic and learned biblical scholars will agree.
Christ will return.
The Nicene Creed (A.D. 325, 381) says: “He will come again in glory to judge both the living and the dead, And his kingdom will have no end. . . . We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”
Jesus, speaking in John 14:1-4 said "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God ; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going."
After Jesus ascends into Heaven in Acts 1:11, an angel says, "Men of Galilee," they said. "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."
Proclaiming this expectation of the Second Coming is one of the reasons we celebrate the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. St Paul says in his NT letter, 1 Corinthians 11:26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
So this is one thing we believe – Christ will come back. There will be a Second Coming.
That’s good news – but the next thing we can say may not be entirely good news.
- There will be suffering from now, until the return of Christ.
The future, like the past, is full of suffering, and there will continue to be suffering until Jesus returns.
This is what gives many people problems with the belief in the Rapture. It is founded on the belief that God will protect His elect from suffering. Things will get so bad after the Rapture, that God will physically removed his people from the earth.
That is wonderful, sounds great.
But that’s not the kind of life that God gives us.
In reality, our lives are full of suffering. In fact, God calls us to be willing to suffer for our faith and for others.
Right now, in Pakistan and Iraq and elsewhere, Christians are suffering for their faith. God is not removing them from their suffering.
In the Book of Acts, St. Stephen was stoned to death. God did not intervene.
Christ himself begged God, “take this cup away” for he did not want to suffer. But he suffered and died on a cross.
Many people have difficulty accepting the Rapture, because it doesn’t fit the historic sense of how God has acted in history with the people who suffer.
Jesus told his disciples (in Matthew 16:24), “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
- The Second Coming cannot be predicted.
Another thing we can say with certainty about the Second Coming - with all respect to Harold Camping who announced a few months ago that he had calculated the date of the second coming, Christ himself said, no one knows the day or the hour.
That comes straight from the lips of Jesus Christ. What he said was, "No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Be on guard! Be alert! You do not know when that time will come." (NIV, Mark 13:32-33)
Sadly, Harold Camping was not the first, nor will he be the last person who comes along and announces that he knows the date of the second coming.
Do you want to know how Camping came up with yesterday’s date for the Rapture? I looked it up on his web page.
- The number five equals "atonement", the number ten equals "completeness", and the number seventeen equals "heaven".
- Christ is said to have hung on the cross on April 1, 33 AD. The time between April 1, 33 AD and April 1, 2011 is 1,978 years.
- If 1,978 is multiplied by 365.2422 days (the number of days in a solar, as distinct from lunar, year), the result is 722,449.
- The time between April 1 and May 21 is 51 days.
- 51 added to 722,449 is 722,500.
- (5 × 10 × 17)2 or (atonement × completeness × heaven)2 also equals 722,500.
Did you follow that?
Isn’t it a lot simpler just to believe what the Bible teaches? To believe what Jesus teaches – “no one knows the hour or the day.”
Now, we can laugh and smile at what happened yesterday.
But as silly as Camping was, he hurt people, and he hurt the cause of Christ.
Many people gave up their life savings – just gave them away. They really and sincerely believed what Camping said was true. Strangely, Camping did NOT give up his life savings. At least, that is what I’ve read.
And just as sadly, non-Christians look at what happened yesterday and lump all Christians together. They see no difference between Harold Camping and Maynard Pittendreigh. They think we are all silly.
We have to let them know there is a difference.
We have to model for the world that we trust in Christ – even when we don’t have all the details of the specific time and date for his return, we live in hope.
Can’t we as Christians proclaim – not the silly details that are wrong, but the hope that we have that saves.
Instead of letting the world listen to people like Camping, we need to let our voices be head as we tell the world about love.
And peace.
And justice.
And hope.
And truth.
Copyright Maynard Pittendreigh, 2011
All Rights Reserved
[1] The Plymouth Brethren began in Dublin around 1827 as “the brethren.” It soon spread from Ireland into Britain. Their first major assembly was held in Plymouth, a city on the coast of Devon, England – hence the name “Plymouth Brethren.”
