Dear Rev. Jamison,
The Rapture was very much in the news leading up to May 21. If you are still here to answer my question about it, I suppose you did not get to go? Seriously though, what is The Rapture all about, and does Unity believe it will happen some day?
The rapture is all about Paul, the founder of Christianity. Paul got a bit carried away in one of his letters to his church in Thessalonica. That letter was selected for inclusion in the New Testament by the committee that put the Bible together. It is called 1st Thessalonians, and in chapter four, Paul encourages his followers with the thought that Jesus would return in their life time. How can that be, if the Bible is alleged to be infallible, you might wonder; but that would be a question you did not ask, so I digress. Paul describes the return of Jesus, to occur during their lifetime, this way, in verses 16 through 17: "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." Well, fine, but it did not happen then, and it did not happen on May 21, 2011, and it did not happen the innumerable other times someone in serious need of Jesus to return predicted the day of his return. The Gospel writers "covered" for Paul decades after Paul's letter was in circulation. They had Jesus say, "But of that day and hour no one knows," as in the first gospel written, Mark, chapter 13. verse 12. In other words, don't worry about it. The sick fantasy of a select few being raptured away while the huge bulk of humanity suffers torment for 1,000 years is only a day dream of people like Harold Camping, the latest Rapture charlatan.
Return to Ask Your Unity Minister for more questions.
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