Last week, a bunch of right-wing Christians were hoping they’d finally get to see the Rapture they think their god promised his followers. It didn’t happen. But don’t worry! They are guaranteed not to learn a thing from this latest in a long, long, long, longlonglong line of disappointments. For those who really want to see it happen, Rapture beliefs just hit the sweet spot of conspiracy theories, dysfunctional authoritarian behavior, and unwarranted self-importance.
How you know someone’s done time in fundagelicalism
Not long ago and out of the blue, I asked my husband if he knew when Israel became a state. He had no idea. “When, then?” he asked.
“In 1948,” I replied without any hesitation.
I’m not an expert in geopolitics or anything like that. If you asked me when any other country’s statehood began, I would likely not know. I just used to be Pentecostal back in the 1980s and 1990s. And the one year that every single Pentecostal knew back then was that one.
We knew because the year 1948 represented the beginning of a very important countdown. Forget the Doomsday Clock. The folks who invented it had no idea what was really important. We knew that our very god had sent numerous prophecies to his followers to tell them that once Israel became a state, the Endtimes would begin within that generation—and that, in turn, meant that the Rapture would happen before the end of that generation.
(Fundamentalists back then—and evangelicals now—tend to reckon a generation as being 40 years long. In the Bible it varies a bit, but 40 years is the norm in that group. That’s why prophets back then marked 1988 early on as the latest possible year for the Rapture.)
Most serious Pentecostals loved Endtimes prophecies. Many of them collected books, newspaper and magazine clippings, and endless diagrams spiraling out in every direction—like this one:
With these pre-internet tools, they sought to fix a specific date on the Rapture. Fundamentalists deal in certainties; they don’t like vagueness. Even if the certainty isn’t quite that certain, they will latch onto it with all their might and declare it so.
Thus, a Rapture that will happen at some point in the future doesn’t push their thrill buttons. A Rapture that will definitely for-certain absolutely positively happen on September 23, 2023, though? Oh, that’ll do it. If they get hyped up enough about it, they might even sell their homes and hit the road evangelizing for that prediction.
A basic Rapture primer
In Christianese, the Rapture is a big part of right-wing Christians’ end-of-the-world (or Endtimes) beliefs. For the most part, we refer here to evangelicalism. In years past, Rapture beliefs belonged to fundamentalists alone. When evangelicals merged with them around the 1990s, they absorbed that belief as well.
(Oh sure, I’ve run across some swivel-eyed, extremist Catholics who appear to hold this belief as well. But it’s definitely not an official Catholic teaching.)
Rapture believers think that at some near-future moment, Jesus will whisk them up into the sky to join him in Heaven. Seriously, that’s it. They think he’ll magically fly them to Heaven. But not all Christians. Only the best, most fervent, most obedient Christians get to be Raptured.
However, evangelicals remain divided on exactly where along the Endtimes timeline the Rapture will occur. They all agree that it’ll occur alongside a horrific seven-year-long persecution they call the Tribulation. That part’s a for-sure completely-settled question.
But some of them are pre-Trib, meaning they think the Rapture will occur before the Tribulation. Others are mid-Trib (halfway through the seven years) or even post-Trib (all the way after it). I can tell you that post-Trib Rapture believers tend to think the others are all weaklings who couldn’t possibly hack seven years of Tribulation.
The Rapture has captured wackadoodle Christians’ imaginations since the 1830s. That’s when preacher John Nelson Darby invented the idea.
(Hilariously, Rapture believers often try very, very hard to make their belief sound like it was always part of Christianity. It absolutely wasn’t. Remember, the Catholic Church didn’t teach it, and they were Christianity for most of the religion’s life.)
For pre- or mid-Trib Rapture believers, the worst fate in the world is being left behind. That means the Rapture came and went without them. All the very best Christians got whisked up to Heaven, but they didn’t make the cut. Now they get to deal with whatever amount of Tribulation is left.
The latest Rapture scare just came and went. Do you know where your fundagelicals are?
On August 6th, YouTuber FollowGod4 uploaded a four-hour-long video to predict a September 17, 2023 Rapture date.
For the most part, the uploaded fixates on Revelation 12.
“NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THIS,” another YouTuber gushed inaccurately on August 21, 2023. He wondered if he’d discovered “the great sign of Revelation 12” to predict a September 2023 Rapture.
Ten days later, another YouTuber talked about “the Revelation 12 sign reborn: Don’t look up!”
Other social media were buzzing about this date as well. A whole lot of people on Quora were asking about it, with one saying they felt “terrified” about it. It looks like they, too, fixated on Revelation 12. TikTok was filled with posts talking about it, with at least a few talking about that same book of the Bible.
Of course, some Christians chose to hedge their bets. One guy on Medium wrote a post about the Rapture, but ended by making plans for future posts just in case the Rapture didn’t happen.
The dates offered ranged from September 17-23, 2023. So by now, we are well past any predictions. They have all failed. Everyone making a prediction has been proven definitively wrong. As excited as they all got, as certain as they sounded as they offered their totes-for-realzies explanations of the utterly forgotten-by-time Book of Revelation which nobody had ever read or thought about before now, they were all wrong.
Oopsiedoodleboodle!
And this is far from the first time Rapture predictions have been wrong. Heck, this isn’t even the first Rapture prediction that hinged upon the Jewish Feast of Trumpets.
Rapture, Rapture everywhere, and not a single empty pile of clothes to be found
I wish I could tell all those titillated and frightened believers that there’ve been tons of Christian predictions of the end of the world. Just in the 19th century and early 20th century, we’ve had these failures:
1843-1844: The Great Disappointment. This one was such a huge disappointment that it spawned an entire flavor of Christianity called the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.
1844-1862, 1865, 1867, 1873, 1881: Various prophecies that also failed.
1914-1925: Another series of failed predictions that were so disappointing that they spawned another entire flavor of Christianity called the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
After WWII, a number of evangelical leaders emerged to offer Endtimes predictions. From Herbert W. Armstrong to Pat Robertson, from Hal Lindsey to Jack Chick, from Edgar Whisenant to Elizabeth Clare Prophet, from even Harold Camping to John Hagee, they all use the same basic strategy:
- Shoehorn modern headlines into verses from the Book of Revelation.
- Make a grand prediction that somehow ties into Judaism. Extra points if you can get it all into diagram form.
- Leave town with the money before the marks realize they’ve been had.
- If anybody dares to bring up the failed prophecy (unlikely, but hey, it might happen), choose one or more strategy from this list: Insist you really were 100% accurate; blame Jesus for wanting to give humanity more time to repent; quote that Bible verse about nobody really knowing the day or the hour; deflect by focusing on the questioner’s eternal fate.
- Start over with new headlines. Count on the marks to have completely forgotten the previous false prediction. (Here’s one guy who’s been making and updating predictions since 2014. I found him by accident a while ago and have kept tabs on him since.)
Edgar Whisenant’s predictions whipped young Pentecostals into a thick froth in the 1980s. That’s when I joined up, and why. Legions of teenagers and college students joined around the same time I did, for that same reason. We were terrified that the world was ending.
Older Pentecostals apparently welcomed the end of the world. They only felt more and more entitled every year to their promised big whooshing sky zoomfest. But we younger folks hadn’t done much of anything with our lives yet. Somehow, we were just as scared shitless of missing out on adulthood as we were of being left behind.
To be evangelical is to have terrible long-term memory about certain things
Nobody, not even the elderly pastor of that church, bothered to tell us younger folks that there’d already been lots of failed predictions about the Endtimes. We also didn’t really have a consumer internet yet to tell us anything useful. No print media discussed those previous failures, either.
Today’s Christians have it a lot easier. Sure, lots of hucksters on the internet today want to trick them out of their attention and money. But there, Christians can also easily learn about previous false predictions.
If only they’d do that.
This September 2023 prediction hinged on an obscure bit of astronomy. False prophets tied that bit of astronomy into Revelation 12’s dazzling tale of a dragon, a star-woman and her child, and an angelic war in Heaven. (As near as I can suss out, that chapter discusses events that had already happened: Mary’s birthing of Jesus, Michael’s war against Satan, etc.)
John Hagee’s equally failed 2015 “Blood Moon” prophecy hinged upon obscure astronomy as well. That time, he drew upon the timing of “blood moons,” or lunar eclipses, to predict “something dramatic . . . in the Middle East.”
Man, it’s hard to be a Rapture prophet nowadays, isn’t it? Once 1988 came and went, that whole “within 40 years of Israel becoming a state” thing fell apart. These newer predictions make me burst out laughing because their creators are so obviously grasping at straws.
But the target audiences for this kind of dreck love it. They always completely forget about old, false predictions as they race ahead to the newest one. It’s like watching log-drivers dance, hopping from log to log as they all go down the river:
These false prophets must rejoice every single day that Christians will never hold them to the Bible’s standards, nor punish them the way the Bible directs.
The Rapture scares Christians rather than giving them hope
Over on Reddit, someone at r/Christianity confessed to feeling “so anxious and just worried” about this September prediction. Though overall the OP received basically (and surprisingly) excellent advice, a number of Christians cautioned them about predictions with specific dates attached:
There will be a rapture you can count on that but only for those who believe that Jesus is The Christ The Son of God. As far predicting when the rapture will happen not even Jesus knows only God The Father knows. I do know this, what’s coming for those left behind is nothing anyone has ever suffered through before. [Smilesalot49]
Do not focus on the when, focus on the what. Yes have the wrath of the Lord inside of you, but let it be the spirit that is guiding you and not the fear. Pray for discernment of what Gods purpose is for you. There is a difference in being “prepared” and fearful. [Micagh]
[Long, babbling, incoherent post regurgitating all sorts of Rapture blahblah, including a bonus anachronistic mention of Israel and 1948!] [Southern_Fox6807, and wow she got quite testy about pushback on that 1948 thing]
A similar thread ran along very similar lines. The frightened OP asks for reassurance, and tons of Christians tell them not to pay attention to any prediction with a date on it. Like that’s going to ease the OPs’ minds!
A false belief doesn’t become less false or scary if you just avoid putting a specific date on it
I doubt any good advice can help to put OP’s mind at rest. A Rapture with no concrete date attached to it is just as wackadoodle as one with. It’s still a baffling bag of WTAF spilled all over a Christian’s lap.
The Rapture’s worst problem isn’t that sometimes, some liar-for-Jesus attaches a specific date to it. It’s that it’s utterly preposterous nonsense even by the Bible’s own standards.
Here’s just one example of what I mean: Rapture believers never wonder why Jesus holds a Rapture, but then he holds the official universe-wide Judgment Day much later. What, he pre-certifies his favorites with the Rapture? Is it like they’re getting on an airplane? If they make that Rapture cut, can they stop worrying about the big Judgment Day looming for everyone else?
The Rapture’s worst problem isn’t that sometimes, some liar-for-Jesus attaches a specific date to it.
Captain Cassidy
It’s that it’s utterly preposterous nonsense even by the Bible’s own standards.
For that matter, Christians once thought that all of their dead would “sleep” until Judgment Day. Not anymore, though.
(For a few very spicy years, though, early Christians seem to have thought martyrs got a special Speed Pass into Heaven. After martyrdom, went this belief, they wouldn’t sleep in death but be instantly teleported to Heaven. Eventually, Roman authorities got tetchy about Christians’ constant demands to be martyred, and Christian leaders frantically curbed that belief.)
Here’s another: Jesus never mentions the Rapture in the Gospels. At times, a book or chapter hints at Christianity’s early apocalyptic focus, like in Mark 13. However, these glimpses portray only Jesus himself floating in the clouds (in Mark 13:26). To be sure, Jesus forgot to mention a whole lot of very important things, like slavery being bad and Germ Theory and all that. But you’d think a wild-eyed, single-minded, apocalyptic Messiah like Jesus might perhaps consider the Rapture important enough to merit some few words, hmm?
Even Christians themselves talk about how ridiculous the Rapture is as a doctrine. On CNN’s site, Jay Parini specifically criticizes Rapture believers for misinterpreting the Book of Revelation as a mystical guide to the future, rather than accepting it for what it actually is: “a fiery dream of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70.”
None of their fellow Christians’ criticisms matter to Rapture believers, though. Early on, Christians learn to ignore competing interpretations of their holy book. And this doctrine in particular affects its believers in a very profound—and perhaps even unique—way.
Why the Rapture just hits evangelicals’ sweet spot
A lot of the worst-of-the-worst beliefs in evangelicalism are that way because they work. And by work, I mean they get evangelical leaders what they want.
Hell looks exactly as it does because it works to keep butts in pews (BIPs, a very important indication of an evangelical leader’s real power). Those butts freeze in place long past the time when their owners would normally have been long gone. Even some long-ago deconverted Christians still feel terrified of Hell sometimes. Even knowing it’s false, even knowing it’s purely made up by Christian leaders craving power, it’s just so over-the-top and despicably evil that some people can’t get away from it.
Related: A detailed journey into the sordid, storied history of Hell
All the lies and emotional manipulation of the anti-abortion culture war work. They ensure that tons of people vote Republican who might not otherwise do so. Various big-name evangelical leaders worked very hard to create this culture war specifically to deliver votes to Republicans. Before that, they pushed segregation—as in, evangelical support of it—but that sold poorly outside of the Deep South. By now, their anti-abortion efforts have paid off so grandly that even some atheists get taken in by the cause’s talking points.
Complementarianism and purity culture evolved into their current forms because they work. They maintain women’s subjugation to men. It’s supposed to fail almost everybody. And it does. But those failed by it will never question its legitimacy. Instead, they always blame themselves—and keep these beliefs safely compartmentalized away from reality.
The Rapture functions in similar manner.
How to mix up a Rapture scare
Part conspiracy theory, part smug condescension over outsiders to the tribe, part unwarranted self-importance, part anxiety-inducer, part FOMO on steroids, the Rapture nestles down in that sweet spot of evangelical needs. It frightens the kinder, more compassionate sheep into line as much as it functions as a bludgeon for the less-so types.
That’s why it isn’t going anywhere.
All that’s different lately is the conjobs offering the false prophecies. For the past couple of Rapture scares, very few big-name leaders participated. Rather, these new false prophets were just hopeful, aspiring hucksters on youth-oriented social media sites. There, they hope to find victims who won’t realize they’re being snookered with yet another false prophecy—and who can be counted upon to lack the Bible literacy needed to discount such fearmongering.
No matter who’s pushing them, Rapture beliefs work for leaders far more than followers—like every other toxic evangelical belief. Such beliefs mostly terrify followers rather than giving them “blessed hope.” Sometimes, the flocks enjoy a little titillating frisson of fear, sure. But the Rapture goes way past that line.
And thus, I expect it’ll long remain part of evangelical leaders’ repertoire of fearmongering tricks—even for 40 years past 40 years, and then another 40 for good measure.
51 Comments
OldManShadow · 09/26/2023 at 10:18 AM
You take a single word from I Thessalonians, you rip a lot of verses from Daniel (written 2nd century BCE, not during the Exile) out of context, mix it up with a 2nd century CE book that barely passed the canon test and was primarily aimed at reassuring Christians at the time that God would set things right and you come up with bullshit.
But bullshit that really captured the popular imagination during the Cold War when the threat of nuclear annihilation loomed over everyone and made us think that the end was indeed nigh.
The cure for this nonsense is to study the bible away from your church and pastor. It’s pretty easy to see how rancid the End Times sausage is when you realize how it was made.
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:32 PM
I agree! My last night as a Christian was spent in a solo Bible study about prayer. By dawn, I no longer believed.
ericc · 09/26/2023 at 10:45 AM
[i]”Before that, they pushed segregation—as in, evangelical support of it—but that sold poorly outside of the Deep South. By now, their anti-abortion efforts have paid off so grandly that even some atheists get taken in by the cause’s talking points.”[/i]
Segregation didn’t disappear, it mutated into more socially acceptable forms. White flight first, then voucher programs and school choice.
Likewise anti-abortion is mutating. There is a distinct lack of the “foetus as person” extremism in the national conversation now, compared to it’s prevalence before Roe was overturned. The Roe backlash cost them political power, so now we see them temporarily backing off of early term restrictions in a lot of places. Haley is an example, she’s explicitly calling for the GOP to stop pushing early restrictions as politically unfeasible. But like segregation, it’s not a change of heart so much as optics. I have no doubt there are conservative or evangelical planners out there trying to figure out a more socially acceptable way to get to the same end point. They’ll test drive a bunch of ideas, and when they find one that works, they’ll use it.
Lucios · 09/26/2023 at 3:39 PM
Yup. Like the perennial rebranding of “consequences for our bigoted actions”. Once upon a time it was “political correctness”, now it’s “woke”/”CRT”. At the end of the day, it’s still just a way for them to call people “N-word lovers” without getting decked.
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:34 PM
It’s hilarious to see the true believers encountering these more realistic Republicans. “But wait… it’s MARDAR, right? PWESHUS BAYBEEEZ DAYING ERRYWHERE, right? Why are we backing off?!?!?” And they self-destruct from the contradictions involved.
Likewise, when all those anti-Covid-vaxers were freaking out about the jab. “It’s my body! My choice…! Er… I mean…”
ericc · 09/28/2023 at 2:10 PM
In yesterday’s GOP debate, the abortion question didn’t come until very late and the speakers moved off the topic as fast they could.
I’d say the candidates have gotten the message. Can’t go moderate, that p1sses off the fundie base. Can’t go fundie – even in the primary – because it will come back to bite you in the general. So for now, they’re avoiding the topic as much as they are allowed to.
Until the GOP can come up with a new dogwhistle that the fundies recognize but which the moderates/independents don’t understand. Then that is what they will all sign up to support.
Chris Peterson · 09/28/2023 at 2:43 PM
The reality is that there are a lot more left-leaning voters than right-leaning. But they need to vote. And abortion is proving very effective at getting them out. A big problem for Republicans. And then there’s the reality that even most Republicans support abortion rights. That’s a problem for most of the current Republican leadership, which has been pushing against abortion for years. When we had Roe v. Wade it was an academic argument. Now, it’s impacting lives.
ericc · 09/28/2023 at 3:55 PM
The reality is that something like 65% of the US public does not like abortion limits in the first trimester but is perfectly fine with them in the last, with an exception for life-saving measures.* This is not conservative, but it’s not excessively liberal either.
If a progressive candidate pushes ‘legal abortion throughout the entire pregnancy’ in all but the most blue districts, I predict they are going to get beaten as badly as the GOP got it right after the Roe decision.
So I guess my agreement with your statement depends on how you would define “more left-leaning than right-leaning.” The majority position seems somewhere more in the middle to me.
*Ironically, this position aligns with Roe as originally envisioned back in the ’70s, but not with any of it’s newer incarnations (either ‘red’ ones where or ‘blue’).
Chris Peterson · 09/28/2023 at 4:01 PM
The majority of Americans support: abortion during the first trimester (which is really all that matters), they support “socialized” medical care, they support action on climate change, they support LGBTQ rights.
It’s pathetic that these things should be seen as “left-leaning”, but such is the nature of American society and politics.
Artor · 09/26/2023 at 11:34 AM
There’s a pile of empty clothes on my bedroom floor, but I can tell you it’s been a very long time since there was any rapture in that room.
Houndentenor · 09/26/2023 at 12:38 PM
I grew up Evangelical. We had Chick tracts in our home. (I still have ptsd from some of them, so please don’t post any links, but you can find them online if you don’t know what they are. Most here will find them funny. I still don’t.) Anyway, it was only as an adult in mainline protestant churches that I learned what a fringe doctrine the Rapture really is. But due to some aggressive marketing in the 70s, 80s and 90s, including a series of novels and multiple films, it is now mainstream. But it’s not really in the Bible. Not unless you do a Qanon style conspiracy theory mash-up of unrelated passages from different parts of the Bible. Such BS. And people actually believe it!
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:35 PM
I had tons of the tracts and comics too, so yeah, I know what you mean. No links, but I will say that I reviewed one of the Rapture movies some years back. Holy cow, it was funny to me (not having grown up in it) until the little girl entered her quiet house. Then suddenly I understood perfectly well why this stuff devastates so many people, and I was furious.
Chris Peterson · 09/26/2023 at 2:07 PM
Of course, Jesus (or those who invented his myth, anyway) claimed he’d be back within the lifetime of those who knew him. And while the Second Coming isn’t technically The Rapture, the two are deeply related in evangelical doctrine. So the failures started very, very early!
WisdomJusticeLove · 09/27/2023 at 1:07 PM
Yup. Mark 9:1 and Mark 13:30 seem pretty clear Jesus himself thought the end was “soon”.
Some Christians like using the excuse:
“Well, to god, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like a day. So even if he’s ‘days’ late, he’s still on his time table.”
What gets me about that is, “day” is an objective measure. “Day” shouldn’t be open to interpretation like “delicious”, or “funny”, or “cool”. And it should have been an objective measure for quite some time. Go back 300 years and no one would know what “camera”, “telephone”, or “zipper” means. But everyone should know what “day” means. And if an objective measurement like “day” is open to “interpretation”, then any word is open to “interpretation”. Imagine saying, during the Noah flood story:
“Well, 1 cubit is like a thousand cubits, and a thousand cubits like one cubit.”
Chris Peterson · 09/27/2023 at 1:11 PM
Maybe God just happens to live on a planet that rotates, very, very, very slowly?
Zaqqum · 09/27/2023 at 6:37 PM
Funnily enough, the “thousand years” excuse goes back to the NT (2 Peter 3:8) and was itself concocted by that particular forger to help his fellow Jesusers deal with scoffers in his time (“First of all you must understand this, that in the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and indulging their own lusts and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since our ancestors died, all things continue as they were from the beginning of creation!”).
Note that he still considers his own time to be the ‘last days’ and later on advised his readers to keep waiting for the judgment to come, as if they are to expect it in their lifetimes (and “Peter’s”). This is consistent with not just Jesus’s claims in the gospels of the imminent end, but of all epistles that mention it, plus Revelation, in which Jesus himself directly states, “Look, I am coming soon”. And the thing that every book of the NT is most consistent about–the return of Jesus, soon–is also the NT’s most consistent failure.
Erik1986 · 09/27/2023 at 4:18 PM
I find if you quote that verse to many Evangelicals, you get the knee-jerk “taken out of context” response. What it actually means is………….yeah, right.
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:36 PM
Right? Learning about the types of millennialism was kind of hard for me a while ago because I always mixed them up in my mind when I was Christian. I’ve got it sorted now, I think, but you’re so right – the failures started very early.
Lucios · 09/26/2023 at 3:36 PM
The heavenly war with a dragon and shit sounds like something out of Warhammer 40k.
Robert C · 09/26/2023 at 5:20 PM
Sorry, but the “Rapture” isn’t fringe and it wasn’t invented by Darby. Darby invented dispensationalism. Paul invented the “rapture” in response to members of his church dying before Jesus returned. His church expected to “wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath.” (1:10) Paul expects an immanent return: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes?” (2:19) “May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones.” (3:13) Finally, Paul comes to the crux of the problem, the death of believers before the return of Jesus: “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.” (4:16-17) The majority of the house church expected to be alive to witness the coming of Jesus: “May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” (5:23-24) The clear implication of this missive is that most Christians would be physically alive “when the Lord himself will come down from heaven.
Elsewhere Paul claims that all believers, living and dead, will be transformed: “I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed—in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality.” (1 Cor. 15:51-53) Two thousand years have passed and none of this has happened. Paul got it wrong and every End Timer since has gotten it wrong as well. But repeated disconfirmation scarcely matters when you’re part of a cult. That’s what makes Christianity a cult. More here:
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-jesus-cult-robert-conner/1142060343
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:42 PM
The Catholic Church never taught Rapture beliefs. They’re amillennial. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennialism#:~:text=The%20Catholic%20Church%20strongly%20condemns,history%20through%20the%20eschatological%20judgment.
Pope Benedict wrote that. For those who don’t wanna click:
“The Antichrist’s deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the “intrinsically perverse” political form of a secular messianism.”
If Catholicism didn’t push Rapture, then it wasn’t pushed.
I’m with you on the cult, totally understand where you’re coming from. Whoever wrote Paul’s letters was just as apocalyptic as whoever inspired the Gospel’s stories. And they were all wrong. The death-cult had to adjust to life as an ongoing religion, and it managed the task very fitfully. We still see hints of its first incarnation between the slats of the new one.
In truth, I think I remember now reading that Darby got his Rapture ideas from a very emotionally disturbed teenage girl in his entourage. So we might both be wrong.
Robert C · 09/27/2023 at 9:17 PM
1 Thessalonians predates Catholicism by at least a couple of centuries.
WisdomJusticeLove · 09/26/2023 at 6:03 PM
The beauty of the modern Christianity is telling many people you ALMOST carried enough water. I’ll never be enough. Similar to how god returning “soon” is never really “soon”. Don’t worry, the end of the world is happening soon, but the church still needs your money, for reasons.
Robert C · 09/27/2023 at 11:26 AM
The Second Coming is one of Christianity’s oldest and most successful grifts. They’re always selling tickets to the Second Coming.
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:43 PM
You never, ever, know for sure that you’re safe. It’s sickening and perverse, esp for a religion that promises peace, love, and mercy.
Kevin R. Cross · 09/29/2023 at 5:22 AM
But it makes perfect sense when you acknowledge that the sole true point of any organized religion is control of the populace. If you cannot know you’re safe, it’s easy to manipulate you into doing as the leadership desires.
Traveller · 10/05/2023 at 4:13 PM
When Fundies are threatening with that BS, up to claiming just one third of all men who have lived through history (6,000 years, of course) will go to Heaven, my personal schadenfreude is to imagine things go VERY different to what they claim.
Take your pick: other gods coming to fight God, Jesus, etc. and defeating it (say, Athena lancing again Jesus and Zeus finishing God with a bolt), us taking things in our hands throwing them the most powerful thermonuclear weapon available (God can’t defeat iron chariots after all) and getting rid of a mistake, or both.
Anri · 09/26/2023 at 7:44 PM
Sorry, Christians, the Rapture happened about 12 years ago, almost nobody was taken – you weren’t.
Now what?
Chris Peterson · 09/26/2023 at 7:50 PM
And Trump and his minions demonstrate that we are now living in the time of tribulations.
Anri · 09/27/2023 at 6:51 AM
As far as I can tell, every generation has presumed it was living in the end times – that it was the end point of history, the Most Important Time.
If any of them have ever been right, I haven’t noticed.
ericc · 09/27/2023 at 7:55 AM
Yep. Each generation includes a lot of people who want or need to feel like they’re special. Thinking that Jesus is going to come in *your* lifetime puts you at the center of the universe the same way the Church’s geocentric model did in the middle ages. Just in terms of time, instead of location.* Because the unthinkable alternative is that what is happening around you is not a big deal, nobody is coming to save you or reward you, and you need to get over it and go live your life.
*Note that modern American evangelicals still carry a bit of that ‘we are special, we are the geographical center of the universe’ belief with them – in the form of thinking America is God’s chosen country.
***
Well if the rapture comes, party at my mom’s house. It’ll be empty and it’s a mile from the beach.
Chris Peterson · 09/27/2023 at 9:13 AM
I don’t think that’s true at all (or maybe I’m misunderstanding the comment). First, this idea largely belongs to Christians, not other people. And within generations of Christians, there have been many that were not obsessed with the end times. Certainly our Christian heritage societies today have few people who think that way.
WCB · 09/26/2023 at 11:50 PM
Jesus repeatedly tells us in the gospels, “Sell all you have and give to the poor”. Very few Christains are willing to do that. So when the rapture comes, most Christians are not going to make the cut. Except for a few elderly nuns. Sorry about that Christians!
Chris Peterson · 09/26/2023 at 11:57 PM
It’s the final joke of a monster god. Nobody makes the cut. It didn’t waste any effort creating a heaven. All it needs is hell.
spiritplumber · 09/26/2023 at 11:43 PM
Something I’ve been pointing out to Christians is that a “Left Behind” scenario is obsolete, in that a lot of the evil things that the Antichrist is supposed to do are WORSE than what’s already implemented, and we would simply “tank” most natural and supernatural disasters. The ending would look a lot like C&C3 rather than Left Behind.
On that note, I don’t know if you remember that “Left Behind Kingdom Come” sequel that I was writing, but I finished it 🙂
ericc · 09/27/2023 at 11:13 AM
I take some amusement that LaHaye’s novelization of the end times was published in 1995. And every year, that gets just a bit funnier.
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:44 PM
AHHH link us! I want I want I want it!
spiritplumber · 10/27/2023 at 2:48 PM
https://www.emlia.org/pmwiki/pub/web/LeftBeyond.TalesFromTheBeyond.html Here you go!
jennny · 09/27/2023 at 4:02 AM
Maybe it’s just me, but I wonder if folk in the denominations who believe their prophet’s latest hotline message from on high about the rapture, are really reacting to the brainwashing they’ve received. That their god is an awesome, miracle-working god. He already intervenes supernaturally – hallelujah – in their lives by finding those car keys, or healing that sick person who actually received the best treatment from modern medicine. So they long for the day when that omnipotent god will show the world that he is just that. He’ll reveal himself at the rapture and prove they were smugly right all along and they’ll get their just (naked?) reward.
Robert C · 09/27/2023 at 11:30 AM
There’s always been a strong element of revenge porn to Christian Judgment Day scenarios. According to Matthew, it starts with Jesus: “But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Just wait, you’ll get what’s coming to you!
BensNewLogIn · 09/27/2023 at 11:38 AM
The Bible says clearly that no one knows the date or the time of the end times. So psychologically and sociologically, I see two things going on here. One, they get to scare themselves. That’s always fun. And two, they get to feel super Duper important because they know something special, because they are special, because God thinks that they are special.
In short, my favorite subject: religious megalomania.
About 30 years ago, there was a Christian cult in Korea that swore that the end times were coming, and they were ready for it. They sold their possessions, they had abortions, they did whatever they could, although they didn’t explain that if the end times were coming, what was the point of selling their possessions? What were they going to do with the money?
anyway, the date came and they were all waiting for the rapture in the end times. According to my memory, nothing happened. So, the leaders of the cult did a whole bunch of re-calculations of the date, and they came up with a new date that for realsies what’s going to happen. No doubt about it. Well, that date came and went, and the news papers reported nothing out of the ordinary. So, the leaders of the cult did another set of furious re-calculations, and announce that this time, they absolutely had the correct date and everybody better get ready for Jeebus to return.
Not surprisingly, not a single newspaper report at the end of the world. This time, the leaders of the cult made a different announcement: I GUESS WE MADE A MISTAKE.
YA THINK?
Captain Cassidy · 09/27/2023 at 7:50 PM
I’m surprised they even made the announcement. The SOP in these cases is to memory-hole the entire thing and start over.
30 years ago…. Hm, I wonder if this is connected to a Korean Christian cult that thought they’d just birthed Jesus’ second coming? It was right about that same time, the 1990s. They called this kid the Jesus of the East. Then they flew into Vancouver’s (BC) airport to await the Jesus of the West. Poor kid. I think he was 10? Clearly not enthused with all this to-do. They just stayed in the airport for a week or so. I lived in Vancouver at the time and the papers were just full of wide-eyed speculation about wtf was going on. The cult thought once they united their Jesuses, the EOTWAWKI would finally start.
A bunch of people visited claiming to be JotW, but the leader (and father of JotE) rejected them all. One guy had promise, but was too short to be it because the leader-and-daddy had foreseen that JotW would be like Abe Lincoln, tall and very pale and skinny. Eventually they had to go home, though. A bunch of them later moved to Garland, Texas, including the leader-and-daddy and JotE, because the leader thought Garland sounded like “God’s land” with his accent. I think they’re all there still. I hope JotE grew up and left the cult and became an engineer or something. It sucked that all those adults drew a child into their wacky ideas.
BensNewLogIn · 09/28/2023 at 2:58 PM
It could be the same cult, but I doubt it. It’s not like Cults are really expensive. Unfortunately, this was in the days before the Internet, otherwise I would have some sort of record of this. I just remember reading it back in the 90s. There were a couple of articles in the Chronicle. I don’t know enough about Asian culture to get it, but Korea seems to be very fertile ground for Christian nuttiness. It has made little impact in Japan and China, at least the nutty parts
Carstonio · 09/30/2023 at 8:23 AM
Fear seems to be part of it, the possibility of being left behind as insufficiently devout.
Atea · 09/29/2023 at 11:26 AM
John Loftus at Debunking Christianity has touched on this topic many times. Here is an essay from about 2009…https://www.debunking-christianity.com/2009/12/why-i-think-rapture-madness-is-indeed.html
Christianity is a cult, so there is no surprise that the rapture idea is part of the package. Besides, Jesus got the prediction wrong on when it would occur, so being wrong about it is part of the tradition!
Paul S. Jenkins · 09/29/2023 at 5:15 PM
Harold Camping had another strategy — it didn’t fail, at least, not in the way we might think it did:
https://www.evilburnee.co.uk/2011/05/camping-good-numerologist-but-poor.html
Zaqqum · 09/29/2023 at 8:59 PM
Kinda OT, kinda not–John Nelson Darby, Comrade Rapture himself, was a member of the Plymouth Brethren church in the UK back in thne 19th century, both where and when he developed the doctrine in question here. Since then, this church, through immigration and some conversion, has spread worldwide, especially in the anglosphere.
However, they seem to be unable to escape the clutches of secularism in USia. In a series of articles that I had to reread to make sure this was really happening, the locals in South Barrington IL collectively denied this denom, over the apparent objections of the park board, the sale of unused public parkland to build a church and school. Reasons for the opposition include both the sale at a loss to taxpayers and objections to this denomination’s bigoted practices. That this actually happpened in this day and age is…well, something.
Good background from Bishop Accountability (not just for Catholics anymore, huzzah!)
https://www.bishop-accountability.org/2023/09/protest-claims-of-abuse-halt-chicago-area-land-deal-with-plymouth-brethren-church/
And the endgame–
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20230928/bullying-threatening-critics-led-south-barrington-park-board-to-cancel-land-deal-officials-say
Whatever Johnny is doing now, I bet “rapture” isn’t an accurate description of it. I think Dylan and his times a’ changin’ is better prophecy than anything Darby had to say, these days.
RainbowPhoenix · 09/30/2023 at 12:45 AM
It’s hilarious that post-trib rapturists think they could handle a real tribulation when they’re just like all of their other tribemates in falling to pieces when they are told to mind their own business.
Traveller · 10/05/2023 at 4:05 PM
That nonsense about the Virgo constellation is nothing new. I remember it back in 2017, and of course NOTHING happening. Nor the Cassini probe coming back to avenge that she was sent to die in Saturn’s atmosphere by NASA the previous week.
Dear gods, it’s amazing how much BS can be produced from a lone verse from a schizophrenic if not just a fraudster as Joseph Smith much later who never met in person Jesus, and others (Daniel and Revelation) totally taken out of context.
Mojohand · 10/09/2023 at 1:55 PM
“… Rapture beliefs just hit the sweet spot of conspiracy theories, dysfunctional authoritarian behavior, and unwarranted self-importance.”
Oh what a perfectly apt and delicious sentence! That one will be going in my ‘saved quotes’ folder.
spiritplumber · 10/27/2023 at 2:24 PM
Did you guys ever gat around to reading “Left Beyond”? It’s a long-form story and RPG worldbook inspired by Fred Clark’s LB commentary.
https://f3.to/omega/ here it is 🙂