Why Hope for the Rapture?

About six months after my conversion, I began attending Bible studies and church services at Calvary Chapel of Costa Mesa during the Jesus Movement. Every pastor I heard preach, from Chuck Smith to Don McClure, talked about the Rapture. Christians are to be caught up into the air and forever be with the Lord.

There was so much emphasis on the Rapture that a leader taught a chorus to the tune of the Wells Fargo Wagon song in the “Music Man” musical.

Oh the Rapture’s a comin’ and it’s gonna take me home

I know where I’m going to be

Oh the Rapture’s a comin’ and it’s gonna take me home

I know who I’m going to see.

There was a lot of “last days” fervor in the 1970’s  and 1980’s. Every time some major world event took place, there were ten more books on how these events were signs of the coming Rapture. Why such an emphasis on the Rapture? On being caught up into the air toe meet the Lord? It was because there were going to be seven years of tribulation and Christians wouldn’t want to experience it. There’s a lot I can say about this, but suffice it to say that I have problems with that reasoning.

Early Christians Did not Escape Persecution

The first three centuries of the Christian church were marked by horrendous persecutions. Christians were sewn into animal skins and thrown into the arena to be attacked by wild animals or thrown into a river to drown.

About the time Peter and Paul were killed because of their faith in Jesus, the Roman Emperor Nero started a fire in Rome. Perhaps he wanted to build a better city. However, in order to shift suspicions away that he had started it, he blamed the Christians.

At that time, Christians were a tiny minority, noteworthy mostly because they stopped worshiping the traditional gods and goddesses like Zeus, Apollo, Athena, Artemis, and Xena (just kidding).

The first believers in Jesus would not have been popular. Nero tied them to poles, poured pitch on them, and lit them to give light to his gardens at night. They experienced terrible persecution.

Although the book of Revelation has a promise from Jesus to keep the church of Philadelphia from a period of persecution, that was not the normal experience of early Christian.

We have accounts of two faithful women, Perpetua and Felicitas, who were thrown to wild animals in the arena in the third century.https://www.gotquestions.org/Perpetua-and-Felicity.html They did not die, and later were sent to the arena to face gladiators. Perpetua’s story is particularly poignant because she had a baby while in prison. She was executed shortly after that. Felicitas, a slave, was pregnant when she was martyred.

As can be seen in Paul’s letters to Ephesus and Colossae, many early Christians were slaves. Indeed, one out of every three to four persons was a slave. This was not based on raced. You could become a slave if your land was invaded and you were captured. Or, you sold yourself into slavery to pay off a debt.

The early Christians knew all about suffering for their faith in Jesus. The book of Revelation seems to focus on giving them strength to endure because in the end, God will vindicate and exalt them.

Persecution of the Current Church

While Christians in North America mostly don’t face serious persecution, other believers around the world, from Nigeria to Iran to Vietnam, experience brutal persecutions. In the case of Nigeria, it is not state-sponsored, but the government of Nigeria is perfectly happy for it to occur. Otherwise, they would stop it.

It’s more of a historical accident that Christians in the West at least today do not face harsh persecution. Therefore, wanting the Rapture in order to escape the Great Tribulation completely ignores the majority of believers who are in the Two-Thirds world.

So, if our motivation should not be to escape the Great Tribulation, what should it be? I want Jesus to return. Every time someone sincerely says the Lord’s Prayer, it’s a request for God to bring an end to the way that things are, to send Jesus back to earth to establish God’s kingdom: “May Your Kingdom come and Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

I should acknowledge that I no longer believe in any sort of Rapture. (This made my ex-fiancee none too happy, since she held to the Calvary Chapel teaching.) Paul says that believers will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air and so be with the Lord (1 Thess 4:13-17), However, it does not say where we will all go. It doesn’t say we will go to heaven. In fact, you can’t find a verse in the Bible that says that God’s people will go to heaven at death or the Second Coming.

However, even if you are hoping for the Rapture, the rest of this post is still relevant for you.

Paul said in Phil 1:23, that he would prefer to depart and be with Christ. That sounds good to me, but I don’t know where that is. There is a delay https://ntwrightpage.com/2019/04/09/hope-deferred-against-the-dogma-of-delay/ The vision many of us learned about heaven is based more on medieval artwork than the Bible. The final destiny of God’s people is to be on a new earth. See Revelation 21.

I definitely believe that Jesus will return. Passages like 2 Thessalonians 1, Revelation 19-21, Matthew 24, and other passages clearly indicate that Jesus will return.  

Then, Why Pray for the Second Coming?

‘My desire is not to avoid persecution, per se, though I won’t be surprised if and when it comes. There are many reasons that I do want the second coming.

Jesus will deal with evil. In 2 Thess 1:6-10, Paul talks about what we should expect to happen when Jesus returns.

6 For it just for God to pay back trouble to those who trouble you,

7 “and to give relief to you who are afflicted with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his mighty angels,

 ⁸ in flaming fire giving out retribution to those who do not know God and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus and to those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus,

 ⁹ who will experience the penalty of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power,

 ¹⁰ when he comes to be glorified in his saints on that day, and marveled at among all who have believed on that day–for our testimony to you was believed.

 (2 Thess. 1:6-10)

Here’s what that means to me and why I most want Jesus to return soon:

Jesus will Execute Justice and Set Things Right

• An end to sexual abuse of all sorts, not least pastors who sexually abuse babies, minors, especially girls, and adult women. That a male pastor would do such a thing is utterly despicable.

What will such a pastor say when he stands before God and is called to account for how he lived? There may be elders at a given church who are okay with this because the pastor is a good preacher or brings in lots of donations, but that won’t matter to God.

• An equal judgment might fall upon other church leaders who knew about these crimes—they are not just indiscretions, but crimes—and do nothing about them, or even attack the victim.

This judgment, of course, will apply to those who are not pastors as well, like a U.S. president who boasted about being able to sexually abuse women.

• All corrupt politicians will be destroyed. Since God’s people are to be kings and priests, or a kingdom of priests, we won’t need politicians.

• God will make things right. Those  20,000 children who die of starvation daily will not perish when Jesus is in charge. There won’t be poor who live in miserable conditions, while there are rich people who live in extreme luxury.

• Crime will be stopped. No one will be tortured or thrown into prison unjustly. There won’t be a North Korean or Iranian or Russian or USA government. God will reign through his righteous people“For he must reign until all his enemies are put under his feet” (1 Cor 15:25).
• There won’t be any sexual trafficking.

• There won’t be murders, rapes, or other evil deeds done.

• There won’t be any pornography.

• No females will need to be prostitutes in order to eat.

• Environmental pollution will end.

These are reasons that I want the second coming to happen, and it cannot be soon enough. However, I’ve no idea when it will take place.

From Montanus in the second century through televangelists and cults today, every time someone predicts a date for the second coming, it does not happen. One cult, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, has repeatedly set dates, e.g., 1914, 1918, 1974, etc. and the Second Coming did not occur, which makes them false prophets.

Jesus told his disciples that no one, including he himself, knows when the end will come. If Jesus doesn’t know, isn’t it rather arrogant for someone to say that he or she knows????

These are things I really want.

There is one more thing that I look forward to:

I am looking forward to a new body, Paul says that our perishable bodies will be replaced with an imperishable body. The Bible never says that we have immortal souls, but it does promise an imperishable body. With that, you won’t get up in the morning and have back pain because your discs are worn out. I’ll be able to run again, because my knees will be in good condition. No more trips to pharmacies.

It will be wonderful to have a body that won’t wear out, and I think, will be healthy. All the eye problems I have will be gone. I trust that my first vision with new eyes will be Jesus.

These are the reasons I pray regularly “May your kingdom come and your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” I don’t expect to be treated better than the Christians of the first few centuries of the church.

I don’t expect to be taken away, but to meet Jesus in the air and return with him to a renewed earth. We have much to hope for. Christian hope is not like hoping “I’ll get an offer for a job interview today.” Biblical hope is assurance of what will happen because God, who is Truth, said so.

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