Waiting and waiting…
The earth moved. And with it, the 110 year old spire and bell tower of the Christchurch Cathedral collapsed into a pile of rubble. But the earthquake that hit New Zealand on February 22nd was only the latest in a long line of disasters, natural and manmade, that have made news headlines in recent years. Somewhere between the earthquakes, the volcanoes erupting, and the social and political strife running rampart in Africa and the Middle East, many Christians are left wondering “is this it? Is the rapture approaching?”
Photo: Nathan Tedrow
A quick glance through the book of Revelation will reveal that earthquakes and civil unrest are easily associated with the end times, and many people are on the lookout for signs of the coming apocalypse. Mars’ Hill asked part-time Religious Studies professor Ivan De Silva to put his Master of Divinity and Master of Theology to use to help make sense of recent events and the end times in general.
A great many Christians have accepted the idea that they will be raptured, which is to say that Christ will take them to heaven before the end of time as we know it occurs. The popularity and acceptance of this idea owes a great deal to the Left Behind, book series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. However, in response to the rapture theory De Silva stated “I can categorically say that the Bible does not teach any such thing.”
De Silva pointed out that the word “rapture” does not appear anywhere in the Bible, and said that the theory comes from verses like 2 Peter 3:10, which leads people to believe the earth will be destroyed in fire, and 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, which talks about the resurrection of the dead.
In response to the 2 Peter verse, which says “The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare,” De Silva said “What Peter is talking about is not the physical destruction of the world but its cleansing and renewing… We know that this is what he is saying because he compares what is to happen in the future with what happened in the past [with] the Flood.” After the Flood, sinful life was destroyed, but the Earth, creation, and the followers of God remained. Since Peter compares the end times to the Flood, we can assume the results will be similar, and it was not the Christians who were taken away but sinners.
Similarly, some people read Matthew 24:39-41 as proof of the rapture: “and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.” However, De Silva said, “the verb that is used in Matthew 24:40 for “taken” is the verb paralambanetai [and] it’s subject is not Noah, but the man who was working in the field and the woman who
was grinding.”
De Silva also responded to the 1 Thessalonians verse: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.” (4:16-17) De Silva said “Paul is borrowing… apocalyptic imagery… The point is not a literal rising to the clouds but a way of describing the vindication that the church will receive when Christ returns. To take this literally to mean Christians will physically rise up is to make nonsense of the metaphor and to completely misread the genre of apocalyptic [literature].”
Furthermore, De Silva points out, when the Queen comes to visit Canada we do not assume she will find her own way from the airport to her hotel, but we send a delegation to meet and welcome her. “It’s the same idea,” De Silva said. “When Christ our King returns we will form the welcoming delegation that will meet him “on the way” to escort him back to his world. That is the idea Paul is trying to convey. So to think that when Christ returns Christian will suddenly be physically popping up, like helium filled balloons, to meet him some 10 or 20 or who knows how many feet up above the earth is silly.”
De Silva finds that the biggest issue with the idea of “being left behind” is that it gives the dammed a second chance; “That is, if you screwed up and refused to believe, Christ will rapture all the Christians and leave you behind. But being left behind gives you a second chance to accept Christ. This is nowhere taught in the Bible. We only have one chance at being saved. And then will come the final judgment.”
So what do we do with all of this? If we will not be raptured, should we still be looking for the end times? De Silva reminded “that the second coming of Christ will not be predictable… Neither by strange atmospheric phenomenon nor by violent events in the world. Thus I do not see the earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand, and the unrest in the Middle East as foretelling the soon return of Christ… The point Jesus is making in Matthew 24 is that the time when he returns will be fairly ordinary times. You won’t be able to predict it by what is going on
in the world.”
When asked specifically what he made of current world events, De Silva said “Not much. It is the way of the world since time began.” What De Silva encourages us to remember is that even the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are ordered by Heaven. “This means that they are under God’s control and not out of control beasts who can do as they please. Evil is not an uncontrolled power
in the earth.”
So while the disasters of the world are painful and horrific, there is no reason to see them as a sign that the end is nigh.
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