Unraveling the Rapture Myth is an article I found by Michael W. Petty. Earlier this week I wrote about eshatophobia. This article is a nice supplement to it. He concludes his article with the following:
What we do not find in Revelation is Christians longing to be freed from creation into some completely spiritual place of peace and purity. Such a longing is simply a Gnostic fantasy. It is not that we will be raptured out of the world but that God will redeem the world. Revelation concludes not with raptured souls winging their way to heaven but with the descent of the Creator into his creation so that “the home of God is among mortals” (21:3). Echoing and fulfilling Exodus 40:34-38, the world becomes God’s tabernacle.
The doctrine of the Rapture is wrong not simply because it has found expression in some popular books, but because it is fundamentally mistaken about the nature of the Christian life and the nature of creation. Revelation’s promise to us is not that we will be removed from the world of suffering and tribulation but that God will bring us and creation through suffering and tribulation to resurrection, just as he brought his Son through them to new life.
All of us who teach in the Church need to be reminded that a corrupt eschatology leads inevitably to a corrupt gospel. Good theology really does matter for the life of the Church.
