Questions About the Rapture

[Drich]

That's what I was getting at. I assume ALL Christians believe in the resurrection (it's definitional), but when I asked "do you believe in the rapture" surely you knew that simple resurrection wasn't what I had in mind. Most denominations don't refer to resurrection as the rapture. And some that do mean the final resurrection. What I'm asking about is pre-trib rapture.

I'm assume you are in the pre-trib camp?

I'm in the IDK camp. There is scripture to support Pre- Mid and Post trib..I believe in the rapture, but as to how or when I don't need to know. I like the Idea of a pre/Mid trib Because I don't want to be made to endure a "This Is The End"/movie. eitherway it will not change what I do. I will not teach one over another. i will simply lay out what the bible does say and maybe explain why people think the way they do.

I like to think I would be pleasently suprized eitherway. Unless I was to be considered one of the 'reminant.' who's job it is to bring the last of the fold home. (Which doesn't look too good given my choice of ministry. )

Now there's an answer that makes some sense, though I'm glad you put prophet in quotes because I wouldn't call Martin Luther or Calvin prophets. Nor do the churches they created look back to their teachings as the definitive word on how to interpret scripture.

Indeed. They are men like the rest. God gave them great revelations into his word, but those who follow them have changed and augumented to fill answers to questions they did not orginally answer. turning a good teachers work into the 'holy words of a prophet.'

The point of the protestant movement was to use the Bible as the primary source of knowledge and to remove the requirements of priestly intervention.

:Thumbsup:

The exception being the Anglicans of course. Europe has lots of protestants who have no prophets. But if you substitute tradition for prophet we maybe getting somewhere.

Blindly following Tradition is worse than following a 'phrophet.'
At least with those who seek the truth and follow a 'phrophet' the bible can sometimes be used to talk sense into them. Those who seek to follow tradition are only looking to recreat the faith of their fathers. To do so is not what God outlines in the NT.

---

In the U.S. christianity is not tied to any one prophet/pope/doctrine. Which means we are free to go where ever the bible leads.

Which is why, given the the bible is so clear, all US Christians end up with the exact same beliefs. Oh wait....

Allow me to finish your statement.

Oh, wait....
Christianity is unlike any other religion in that their isn't meant to be a single core doctrine (exact same beliefs) outside the gospel.

[professor]

I grew up in Catholicism which rejects both the Millennium reign of Christ and the Catching Away of believers.
An ideal deception is to use Christian words while redefining them.
The more steeped In tradition they are- the more unbiblical they are.
When I went to churches which taught the bible, they also (whenever it would be) taught the Rapture.

[The Grand Nudger]

(Which doesn't look too good given my choice of ministry. )

-or your talents regarding the same.....

[Jenny A]

[quote='Jenny A' pid='760924' dateline='1412007082']

Now there's an answer that makes some sense, though I'm glad you put prophet in quotes because I wouldn't call Martin Luther or Calvin prophets. Nor do the churches they created look back to their teachings as the definitive word on how to interpret scripture.

Indeed. They are men like the rest. God gave them great revelations into his word, but those who follow them have changed and augumented to fill answers to questions they did not orginally answer. turning a good teachers work into the 'holy words of a prophet.'

Before we get too cozy here. I meant that they are not prophets AND their followers do not treat them as such. Lutherans have reached different conclusions about what the Bible means. So have other sects. The point being that the Bible is hardly an easily interpreted or even all that coherent a set of documents.

[Drich]

Indeed. They are men like the rest. God gave them great revelations into his word, but those who follow them have changed and augumented to fill answers to questions they did not orginally answer. turning a good teachers work into the 'holy words of a prophet.'

Before we get too cozy here. I meant that they are not prophets AND their followers do not treat them as such. Lutherans have reached different conclusions about what the Bible means. So have other sects. The point being that the Bible is hardly an easily interpreted or even all that coherent a set of documents.

Indeed they are not prophets, (as the OT understanding of the word goes) and if you ask no one would ever admit to worship them as prophets. However if you take the literal defination of the word prophet and match it to the various doctrines and religious musts, one must believe and follow to be apart of a given denomination. You can identify what is actually happening in a given expression of their various Christian faiths.

[mr350]

Rapture was not theology even discussed in the churches I grew-up in although one of those Churches was Presbyterian and some branches of the Presbyterians were the first to accept it.   It's only been with the political rise Evangelical Christians and the Left Behind books that I heard about it at all.   Since then I've seen it predicted and the date come and go a few times.

So I've been doing some poking around.  As church doctrines go, it's a pretty new idea. Pre-20th Century references to it are extremely thin on the ground.  It appears to be at best an 18th Century idea that didn't become anything approaching popular until the 19th.  It's now as mainstream as it's ever been.

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The oldest arguable rapture discussion in church literature is from 1590.   by Francisco Ribera, a Catholic Jesuit, who taught "futurism" which the  idea that most of Revelation is about the future.  But most scholars don't think he was talking about anything like modern ideas about The Rapture.

The first discussion of Rapture in anything like it's modern premillennialism garb, was preached by the 17th-century American Puritan father and son Increase and Cotton Mather.  Contemparies Philip Doddridge  and John Gill agreed.

In 1788 Philadelphian Baptist Morgan Edwards wrote an essay espousing the concept of a pre-tribulation rapture.A Jesuit priest (writing as Juan Josafat Ben Ezra), wrote La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad (The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty) which was published in 1811, 10 years after his death. In 1827 it was translated into English.  Another Catholic priest Emmanuel Lacunza in followed in 1821.  

Dr. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, an English theologian and biblical scholar, wrote a pamphlet in 1866 citing the concept of the rapture in the works of John Darby back to Edward Irving.  Edward Irving taught a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. According to Irving, “There are three gatherings: – First, of the first-fruits of the harvest, the wise virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth; next, the abundant harvest gathered afterwards by God; and lastly, the assembling of the wicked for punishment.”

John Nelson Darby popularized the pre-tribulation rapture in 1827. William Eugene Blackstone's book Jesus is Coming (1878) and the Scofield Reference Bible (1909 and 1919,revised in 1967) also helped popularize the idea.

---

 See The Rapture: A Popular but False Doctrine by Cecil Maranville  and Wikipedia Rapture

So my question for Christians are:

1)  Do you believe in the Rapture?

2)  If so, how do you support it Biblicaly?

3)  Why is this such a relatively recent idea?

[Edit]  Thank to Beccs one more question:

4) Why is it primarily a U.S. Christian doctrine only?

1. NO

2. The bible is full of lies about pre-perceived creation

3. The rapture is a mythical imagined event stirring out of the human intellect to conceive that there will be another cataclysm inevitably. Its not recent. It has its origins in ancient Sumer, Egypt, Greece, among others in slightly differing forms.

4. Because 25% of US citizens think the sun revolves around the earth, and that its 6000 years old.

[Randy Carson]

Rapture was not theology even discussed in the churches I grew-up in although one of those Churches was Presbyterian and some branches of the Presbyterians were the first to accept it.   It's only been with the political rise Evangelical Christians and the Left Behind books that I heard about it at all.   Since then I've seen it predicted and the date come and go a few times.

So I've been doing some poking around.  As church doctrines go, it's a pretty new idea. Pre-20th Century references to it are extremely thin on the ground.  It appears to be at best an 18th Century idea that didn't become anything approaching popular until the 19th.  It's now as mainstream as it's ever been.

---

The oldest arguable rapture discussion in church literature is from 1590.   by Francisco Ribera, a Catholic Jesuit, who taught "futurism" which the  idea that most of Revelation is about the future.  But most scholars don't think he was talking about anything like modern ideas about The Rapture.

The first discussion of Rapture in anything like it's modern premillennialism garb, was preached by the 17th-century American Puritan father and son Increase and Cotton Mather.  Contemparies Philip Doddridge  and John Gill agreed.

In 1788 Philadelphian Baptist Morgan Edwards wrote an essay espousing the concept of a pre-tribulation rapture.A Jesuit priest (writing as Juan Josafat Ben Ezra), wrote La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad (The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty) which was published in 1811, 10 years after his death. In 1827 it was translated into English.  Another Catholic priest Emmanuel Lacunza in followed in 1821.  

Dr. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, an English theologian and biblical scholar, wrote a pamphlet in 1866 citing the concept of the rapture in the works of John Darby back to Edward Irving.  Edward Irving taught a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. According to Irving, “There are three gatherings: – First, of the first-fruits of the harvest, the wise virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth; next, the abundant harvest gathered afterwards by God; and lastly, the assembling of the wicked for punishment.”

John Nelson Darby popularized the pre-tribulation rapture in 1827. William Eugene Blackstone's book Jesus is Coming (1878) and the Scofield Reference Bible (1909 and 1919,revised in 1967) also helped popularize the idea.

---

 See The Rapture: A Popular but False Doctrine by Cecil Maranville  and Wikipedia Rapture

So my question for Christians are:

1)  Do you believe in the Rapture?

2)  If so, how do you support it Biblicaly?

3)  Why is this such a relatively recent idea?

[Edit]  Thank to Beccs one more question:

4) Why is it primarily a U.S. Christian doctrine only?

Jenny-

I have posted several times on the errors of the rapture which was promulgated by Nelson Darby and spread largely in the US by a note in the Scofield reference bible.

I know we Christians all look kinda the same to you from the outside, but there's a REASON why the Catholic Church was the first, is the biggest, is the most stable and is the least swayed by silliness like this...because it is the Church Jesus promised to build and to remain with forever.

After all, He only promised to build ONE Church in Mt. 16:18-19, and not one of the thousands of Protestant denominations that began to appear a mere 500 years ago or less can make a legitimate claim to being that Church.

[abaris]

Oh my. Another zombie braught back to life.

[Randy Carson]

Rapture was not theology even discussed in the churches I grew-up in although one of those Churches was Presbyterian and some branches of the Presbyterians were the first to accept it.   It's only been with the political rise Evangelical Christians and the Left Behind books that I heard about it at all.   Since then I've seen it predicted and the date come and go a few times.

So I've been doing some poking around.  As church doctrines go, it's a pretty new idea. Pre-20th Century references to it are extremely thin on the ground.  It appears to be at best an 18th Century idea that didn't become anything approaching popular until the 19th.  It's now as mainstream as it's ever been.

---

The oldest arguable rapture discussion in church literature is from 1590.   by Francisco Ribera, a Catholic Jesuit, who taught "futurism" which the  idea that most of Revelation is about the future.  But most scholars don't think he was talking about anything like modern ideas about The Rapture.

The first discussion of Rapture in anything like it's modern premillennialism garb, was preached by the 17th-century American Puritan father and son Increase and Cotton Mather.  Contemparies Philip Doddridge  and John Gill agreed.

In 1788 Philadelphian Baptist Morgan Edwards wrote an essay espousing the concept of a pre-tribulation rapture.A Jesuit priest (writing as Juan Josafat Ben Ezra), wrote La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad (The Coming of the Messiah in Glory and Majesty) which was published in 1811, 10 years after his death. In 1827 it was translated into English.  Another Catholic priest Emmanuel Lacunza in followed in 1821.  

Dr. Samuel Prideaux Tregelles, an English theologian and biblical scholar, wrote a pamphlet in 1866 citing the concept of the rapture in the works of John Darby back to Edward Irving.  Edward Irving taught a two-phase return of Christ, the first phase being a secret rapture prior to the rise of the Antichrist. According to Irving, “There are three gatherings: – First, of the first-fruits of the harvest, the wise virgins who follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth; next, the abundant harvest gathered afterwards by God; and lastly, the assembling of the wicked for punishment.”

John Nelson Darby popularized the pre-tribulation rapture in 1827. William Eugene Blackstone's book Jesus is Coming (1878) and the Scofield Reference Bible (1909 and 1919,revised in 1967) also helped popularize the idea.

---

 See The Rapture: A Popular but False Doctrine by Cecil Maranville  and Wikipedia Rapture

So my question for Christians are:

1)  Do you believe in the Rapture?

2)  If so, how do you support it Biblicaly?

3)  Why is this such a relatively recent idea?

[Edit]  Thank to Beccs one more question:

4) Why is it primarily a U.S. Christian doctrine only?

Jenny-

I voted no because "the Rapture" as it is commonly referred to in this country refers to pre-tribulational departure of Christians.

However, if you intend to define "the Rapture" as the meeting of the Lord in the air AT THE SECOND COMING, then sure...all Christians have believed that would occur because scripture says so.

The real issue is whether this rapture occurs pre-trib, post-trib, or mid-trib. Catholics would tend to be post-trib amillenialists. We will be caught up to meet Jesus, but this will occur AFTER a period of great tribulation.

More here.

[abaris]

You still don't get that you're firing away at a thread zombie? Raised by some newb?