Christ's return

[Ahanu]

I'm curious Ahanu about your reasons for attending church as a Baha'i. Are there no Baha'is in your area? What kind of church do you go to?

No, as far as I know, there are no Baha'is in my area. Sean provided me with a list on here a while back, but the closest ones are like 2 to 3 hours away. Usually the religious make-up here is majority Christian fundamentalists and a few Muslim groups here and there. Actually, I have never met a Baha'i in person. I have another friend who is considering it, though. He is still reading a book I let them borrow. The church is of the Baptist denomination. This denomination is most dominate in my area, I think. The church I grew up in was Baptist too. The reason I brought it up is because the pastor was preaching a sermon on Corinthians chapter 15 this past week and he talked about the rapture throughout 50% of the sermon. After checking it out in more detail online, I found they hold to the idea of the pretribulation, which is the Rapture that occurs before the seven year tribulation. I really, really dislike this doctrine. As Sojourner Truth would say:

“You seem to be expecting to go up to some parlor away up somewhere and when the wicked have been burnt, you are coming back to walk in triumph over their ashes. This is to be your New Jerusalem? Now I can’t see anything so nice in that, coming to a world covered in the ashes of the wicked. Besides, if the Lord comes and burns, as you say He will, I am not going away. I am going to stay here and stand the fire like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, and Jesus will walk with me through the fire and keep me from harm.”

Other protestants previous to Darby, such as John Locke, Joshua Spalding, Isaac Newton, and John Bidle never mention anything about rapture. You can get abstracts of their works from books.google.com. (Joshua Spaulding's The Devine Theory can be downloaded as a PDF, and you can see that though he's enthusiastic about the kingdom of God he never even treats a rapture idea.) Their very influential works extend from late 17th to early 19th century. Darby didn't start writing about rapture until mid 19th, so these provide a background to converse about rapture with your friend. You could point out that rapture is absent in previous Protestant literature. Physical return of Jesus, however, is a much broader discussion than Rapture, so make sure you don't get the two things crossed in conversation. Many (perhaps all) of the above protestants believed in a physical return but none discussed rapture.

Kudos!!

 

[Marsh]

The reason I brought it up is because the pastor was preaching a sermon on Corinthians chapter 15 this past week and he talked about the rapture throughout 50% of the sermon. After checking it out in more detail online, I found they hold to the idea of the pretribulation, which is the Rapture that occurs before the seven year tribulation. I really, really dislike this doctrine. [/SIZE][/FONT]

I believe in the rapture, Ahanu, but I also really dislike this depiction of it; it feels like spiritual bullying to me (if you're not one of us, you're going to be destroyed, so ha-ha-ha!). This interpretation is completely-- COMPLETELY-- inconsistent with what Jesus taught us about love and forgiveness. In the revelation about his return to Earth, John depicts Jesus as our saviour who returns with the angels and the saints to conquer the evil that will eventually envelope our world. Ambitious and bullying types will often warp this description into something that it is not: Jesus the warrior, who destroys and lays waste to the Earth and all the evil ones that are in it. God laid waste to the Earth once already, and swore that he would never do it again. When Jesus returns, he will conquer evil, not people.

The tribulation spoken of in Revelation is not God's judgement upon us, but rather the persecution of Christians (and possibly people of any religion who believe in God) by a force of great evil, directed by Satan himself. It's not God who's going to crush the world under his feet; it's Satan. I don't believe God plans to rapture away faithful people in order to get them out of the way so that he can more efficiently destroy the Earth. Rather, I believe that the rapture is a gift from Jesus to a select faithful few to keep them from the evil that mankind is going to bring upon itself.

The rapture is not a stick that Christians should be using to beat others into line with. Unfortunately, as with the case of our misguided teachings about Hell, the most ambitious among us often use it that way, turning something beautiful into something warped and awful.