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The Rapture
120 Plays1 year ago
The expectation that believers will be raptured away from earth before the apocalypse has inspired imagination, lots of fiction, and some strange readings of the Bible. Matt and Nick investigate a key rapture passage within its original context, trying to understand how 1st century cultural practices illuminate this passage. Why does this provide comfort regarding those who’ve died? Why would anyone travel out to meet an arriving official? Does anyone know where Matt can get a veloci-rapture shirt? Try not to get left behind during this dive into 1 Thessalonians 4.
Resources Referenced: A New Heaven and a New Earth by J. Richard Middleton, The Ballot and the Bible by Kaitlyn Schiess, The Late Great Planet Earth by Hal Lindsay, The Left Behind Series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins.
Interlude Music: Dreamday by Autohacker, Angels and Stardust by Squiid
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
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Transcript
Introduction and Childhood Influences
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Repaired Eye podcast. Today we have a conversation about the rapture. The idea of rapture, as we discussed, is a fairly new one. Now, I'm not talking about the second coming of Jesus, but we're talking about a different doctrine, one that
00:00:27
Speaker
As a child, the idea that true Christians could disappear at any moment, raptured away into heaven, was heavy on my mind. It was something I thought about frequently. Being a good Christian meant living a rapture-ready life, anticipating the day when Jesus would snatch away all the true believers from this earth.
00:00:44
Speaker
Yeah, same for me. I can relate. It was such just an assumption. Like it was just one of the basic facts of Christianity for me. It was never really assessed or considered seriously in any way. And it was like actually a pretty central idea too. When I thought about future hope or what my expectations were for the future in Christianity, my eschatology, Rapture sat right at the center of that.
Cultural Significance and History
00:01:05
Speaker
I remember at summer camp, there was a shirt. It had a picture of a dinosaur floating away from the earth with the text, Velocirapture, and I wanted it so badly. I actually looked for it recently on Amazon and I can't find it. I'm kind of sad because I want to wear a Velocirapture shirt.
00:01:20
Speaker
Maybe we can make it and sell it on our website. Yeah, for the traditions that teach this doctrine, it is actually central. What else about your faith is like shockingly different than anyone else in the world than believing that at any moment your clothes could be left in your chair and you'd just be gone, or your pilot on the Boeing 747 would just disappear and the plane would go down. Oh, wait, they go down even with pilots with those planes.
00:01:45
Speaker
That is a religious belief that is transformative and like shocking to anyone else who doesn't have that belief. And given kind of the shocking nature of that distinction, it's essential part of defining you as a Christian within some of these traditions. Yeah, it's easy for Christian identity to be formed at least part on the idea of we are the people looking forward to the rapture. We're the people who will be vindicated at the rapture when we disappear and our clothes fall into a pile on the ground.
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah, like the Son of Man was vindicated. Sort of. Caught up to the clouds. What's bizarre, though, is that we don't see this idea of rapture in any of church history into the last few hundred years. In fact, the version that's become really popular today came from John Nelson Darby in the 19th century.
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah, theologian from the United Kingdom or Scotland or something like that. But his theology really took off in the United States. Yeah, we've talked about the importance of cultural context for understanding Scripture. And I think if you see an idea that didn't exist through most of church history, but then suddenly becomes very popular in one specific context, it should at least make us ask the question, does this idea have more to do with that specific cultural context? Or is this really a truth of Scripture that's been there the whole time and just most of the church missed it?
00:02:54
Speaker
Yeah, and someone really close to me growing up told me one time, if it's new, it's probably not true. But just because something is new, and to be fair, it doesn't mean it's false, right? There could be reasons why it hasn't been explored yet. Absolutely. Yeah, it it certainly can be true, even if it's new.
Rapture Theology in Context
00:03:12
Speaker
But I think the fact that an idea like the rapture is unique to modern Western English-speaking culture should absolutely make us ask why that is the case, right? It should be a good indication that we need to take a closer look at that.
00:03:24
Speaker
Yeah, it should at least give us maybe a level of humility about it because this is not a universally agreed upon doctrine throughout any of church history until modern times in a very specific Western European and American context. It has not existed anywhere else. That alone should just be enough to, I think, give us a little bit of humility and maybe be like, I wonder why this is the case. Interesting.
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, definitely should raise some questions for us. Now, the key passage for rapture theology is 1 Thessalonians 4, 16 through 17. 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.
00:04:16
Speaker
There are some other passages that people will look at and say, oh, this might be referring to a rapture, um like Matthew 24. That's a passage we've looked at. You've got where it says, two will be in the field, one will be taken, and one will be left. Today, even people who hold to a rapture theology, if they're kind of scholarly or more prone to actually study the Bible in depth, have more and more moved away from seeing that as a rapture passage.
00:04:37
Speaker
Yeah, I'm very familiar with institutions that teach rapture theology, dispensational institutions, and they are not teaching Matthew 24 as rapture theology. Another really strong one, though, that I would add is is that passage in Revelation, where there's letters addressed to the churches. To one of the churches, the passage says something like,
00:04:56
Speaker
If you remain faithful, you will be saved from that hour of trial that is coming upon the whole earth. And that is actually wed with 1 Thessalonians 4 and then some like Zechariah passages and all that together is kind of combined to promote this kind of rapture view. Yeah. Different people will see different passages that they'll say, oh, this looks like it's talking about a rapture. But I think all of those passages really kind of ride on the coattails of this 1 Thessalonians 4 passage.
00:05:22
Speaker
They do, and admittedly so. I actually know this. While I was studying theology in Bible College, I was struggling a little bit with the rapture view. And all I was doing was reading the New Testament, reading the Olivet Discourse, reading Paul. And to me, it sounded like the same thing was being described. And I thought, what are the chances Paul was referring to something different than the Olivet Discourse?
00:05:42
Speaker
or another like second coming type of passage. And I started to be convinced like, I don't know if he is. So I asked one of my profs that I respect very much. I said, do I need First Thessalonians 4 to believe in the rapture as a separate thing from the second coming of Jesus? And he said, yeah, if you don't have First Thessalonians 4, you don't really have rapture doctrine. Yeah, it's very much that linchpin text that rapture beliefs write on.
00:06:06
Speaker
And when we say that this rapture idea is a new modern theological idea, but we're not saying that the doctrine of the second coming of Jesus is a new idea. Not at all. What we're talking about is seeing this 1 Thessalonians 4 event as some separate event from the second coming of Jesus where everyone agrees Jesus comes and returns and inaugurates his rule over this physical earth.
Biblical Interpretations and Controversies
00:06:31
Speaker
So, as people who want to take the Bible seriously, if we're going to look at this rapture idea and say, okay, well, this has only popped up in modern, recent context, and we want to say, okay, is this what the author here meant when he wrote First Thessalonians for? We should take a close look at it. And see, is a rapture understanding of this passage actually coming from a good study of this passage? Or is it perhaps just coming from the fact that we're in a unique context when we read it? It's for sure a fair question.
00:06:57
Speaker
So we want to understand a passage like this, we're going to have to start by looking at the context. Surprise, surprise. Yeah. What was the purpose of this text? Now, fortunately, this is one where the purpose of the text is very, very clear. In 1 Thessalonians 4, 13, at the beginning of this passage, you see, brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind who have no hope.
00:07:20
Speaker
And then at the end of the passage, the other bookend, therefore encourage one another with these words. So what is the context here? The context is concern for Christians who've died. And why would this be such a big question? Well, because Jesus' kingdom hadn't yet been fully realized.
00:07:37
Speaker
We just went through the Son of Man stuff. I mean they're all waiting for Jesus to like return and bring the eternal kingdom and everything will be great again. That hasn't happened and some people have now died a generation or more after Jesus's death and they're wondering like we're dying away here and the kingdom of God hasn't been fully realized what's going on.
00:07:55
Speaker
Yeah, like you said, there's concern that they've missed out. And I think their concern is not necessarily that these people who have died have missed out on Jesus' returning kingdom. I think it was clear that Jesus had overcome death. So somebody who has died is not now beyond Jesus' ability to save them. I think there was probably concern that they had missed out on Jesus' arrival.
00:08:14
Speaker
Now this is a cultural thing that is kind of hard for us to understand, but greeting important figures at their arrival was a big deal in Roman culture. If some kind of bigwig was going to come visit your city, the word you would use in Greek for this coming arrival is the parousia. So not surprisingly then, it's the same term Paul uses frequently when he's going to describe the second coming of Jesus. He's looking forward to the parousia of Jesus.
00:08:38
Speaker
He marries this idea up with kind of Jewish expectations regarding the day of the Lord. This was the day when Yahweh would return, when the trumpets would sound, and his angels would judge the nations and vindicate his people. Paul takes this Jewish idea and now recognizes that it's going to be Jesus returning, his royal arrival. It's going to be Jesus' parousia. And that's exactly what is described here in 1 Thessalonians 4, verses 15 and 16.
00:09:04
Speaker
According to the Lord's word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming, or the parousia of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep, 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.
00:09:24
Speaker
So that's comforting for me because now I know what happens to my dead loved one, which is again their original question. Yeah, if getting to be there at the arrival of this figure was a big deal, if somebody had died, you'd be concerned had they missed out on this big moment, this big parousia event that we as Christians are looking forward to, Jesus' arrival.
00:09:45
Speaker
Don't worry, they are going to be able to greet Jesus first in a resurrection event. And what did it look like, you think, to welcome an important figure to your city? If you knew somebody important was coming and they were nearing your city, you didn't just wait inside. It was common practice to go meet the one arriving outside the city, and then you would accompany them on the final leg of their journey.
00:10:07
Speaker
Getting to accompany this arriving figure into the city was a sign that you were on good terms with them, that you were allied with this arriving figure. I think about modern meetings. We actually got a few that kind of function the same way. Like you ever pick up a friend from the airport?
Theological Shifts and Influences
00:10:21
Speaker
Yeah, yes, I remember. Yeah. You got somebody who's flown all the way to your city and then you drive over to the airport, you get to meet them at the airport and then bring them back to your home.
00:10:29
Speaker
I think every time my parents arrive, my kids just mob them in the driveway. The phrase that you would use for this sort of meeting, this specific type of meeting, where you go meet somebody on their way so that you can accompany them for the final portion of their journey in Greek, is to meet them iss apentisen. And that's exactly what Paul describes here in 1 Thessalonians 4, believers meeting Jesus iss apentisen.
00:10:53
Speaker
The same exact phrase is used in Acts 28, where the narrative tracks Paul and his companions' long, difficult journey towards Rome. Acts 28, 14-16. The brothers and sisters there had heard that we were coming, and they traveled as far as the Forum of Apias and the Three Taverns to meet us, East Apantheson. At the sight of these people, Paul thanked God and was encouraged. When we got to Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself with a soldier to guard him.
00:11:18
Speaker
So Paul's traveling to Rome here, and the people in Rome know that he's coming, so they travel out to meet him, Is Appentecin, at the Forum of Apias, which is actually about 40 miles outside of Rome, and at the Three Taverns. I love the name of the Three Taverns, that feels so like high fantasy to me. yeah something straight out of Lord of the Rings. So they do this so that they get to accompany Paul on the rest of his journey into Rome. When Paul enters Rome, they want to be the ones who are arriving with him, because that's a sign that they're on good terms with Paul. It's a symbol of honor, a symbol of respect. So, 1 Thessalonians 4, 17th through 18. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet, Esop and Thessen, the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
00:12:04
Speaker
So meeting Jesus East Appenteeson is to join him on his journey and would show that the dead in Christ are still in God's favor. Yeah, so you can imagine somebody at Thessalonica in the first century who is looking forward to the arrival of Jesus and they're excited for that day that they're going to get to meet their coming Lord.
00:12:20
Speaker
If they have a loved one who's died, they might be concerned that that loved one was going to miss out on that fantastic moment that they're looking forward to. Jesus, Parsia, his arrival. But Paul is comforting the Thessalonians here, telling them, don't worry, you don't need to grieve as somebody who has no hope. Your loved ones are going to get to meet Jesus just like you will.
00:12:47
Speaker
um One other thing we've got to look at closely here, and it's this phrase for getting snatched up. Right. Getting harpazzo. This is really the word that I think drives rapture theology. The idea that Christians are going to get snatched up into the air to meet Jesus in the clouds. Yeah, because that is the description. Exactly. And it's actually the same word that Paul uses to describe his experience of getting snatched up into the third heaven. Whatever that means. Ah, he was raptured. Yeah, if you were going to be consistent about the way you translated these passages, you would translate them the same way.
00:13:21
Speaker
And in 2 Corinthians 12, 2 through 4, he describes this experience. We think he's talking about himself here, but he says, I know a man in Christ who 14 years ago was caught up into the third heaven. Whether it was in the body or out of the body, I don't know. God knows. And I know that this man, whether in the body or apart from the body, I don't know, but God knows, he was caught up to paradise and heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell. Presumably, Paul was still writing his letter to the Corinthians from Earth. I would think. His experience that he describes of getting caught up in the third heaven didn't imply that he was transferred away from Earth for a long time. Fair assumption. But even he didn't know if he was out of... Maybe he left his body behind like a cloth on the chair. Well, it is interesting. He is able to use this word and the word itself doesn't necessarily imply for him that this experience was a bodily experience or some kind of out of body experience.
00:14:14
Speaker
He says straight up that he doesn't know. He's like, I might've been in my body and I might not have been, I don't know. Weirdly open about that. The implication being, obviously, this was some type of vision, trance-like, something out-of-worldly that is not the normal human consciousness based on bodily sense experience. Yeah, and that's what he's describing in that rapture passage from 1 Thessalonians 4, where he writes that believers will be snatched up to meet Jesus, Esamateson, in the air, and they will be with him forever. He doesn't provide any clarification regarding where these snatched-up believers go after this meeting.
00:14:48
Speaker
Maybe if we were to ask him, he would be like, whether in the body or out of body, I don't know. He only clarifies that they will be with Jesus. We should ask, why doesn't he feel the need to clarify where believers go after they meet Jesus in the air?
00:15:02
Speaker
because the big important thing is that they're with Jesus. And he actually does tell you previously and they're going to greet him, presumably to return with him to the land to inaugurate his rule. That's obviously the end of the biblical story that the kingdom comes forever and ever. Amen. And it's also what East Appenteeson means.
00:15:21
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think Paul felt the need to clarify where the believers and Jesus were going after this meeting, because everything else he's written has made it very clear. He's described the parousia. This is Jesus coming to the earth. He's described believers meeting Jesus east up on Thyssen, so that they can be with him for his arrival and his coming to earth. So when he describes believers as being snatched up, I think for a first century audience, they would go, excellent, we're going to need something like that so that we get to be with him at his descent.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah, if we're dead, our bodies need to be raised so that we can meet Jesus. And so then the best way to kind of describe that is, yeah, you get raised and kind of greet him there and get a return with him to inaugurate his rule. Yeah, if you know a royal figure is coming from the east, it's easy to go meet them, Esamatisan, out east of your city. yeah Jesus coming from the sky, the clouds as he ascended, in order to go meet him, we're not commanded to go try to build a hot air balloon or some kind of an aircraft so we can go meet him. Paulus shares the believers here, oh you will get snatched up, like don't worry about that detail, it will get taken care of.
00:16:24
Speaker
It's interesting, too, because, again, their original question, like, what about my loved one who died in Christ? And basically what he's arguing is, don't worry about them. In a way, they are even more honored than you. Jesus, in his arrival, will honor them even more, perhaps because they will be able to be with him first. He says they will get to precede you. like yeah Not only are they not getting left behind, they're first in line to get to go meet Jesus.
00:16:48
Speaker
which is actually expected in the context of perhaps difficulty and persecution. Think of like the persecuted in the throne room of God in the Revelation scene, where the persecuted are honored as enduring and Jesus then rewarding them, the first in his kingdom, sort of something like that. Yeah. So this idea of believers going to meet Jesus in the air and then returning with him to the earth is sometimes mockingly called the idea of a yo-yo rapture.
00:17:13
Speaker
Oh, okay. That idea can maybe seem weird to a modern audience that expects that the final destination of believers is in heaven. We kind of have this expectation of going away. But for a first century audience where getting to meet the coming Jesus was such a cultural idea, like this was something they expected, something they looked forward to, something they hoped for, the idea of getting to go meet Jesus in the air and accompany him back to his earth would have been a great source of hope and comfort
20th Century Impact and Cultural Biases
00:17:40
Speaker
for them.
00:17:40
Speaker
And not only that, but you alluded to this. The end of this story is that God rules on earth forever and ever, amen. No one had this idea, not the Jews, not the Christians. No one had this idea of spending their eternity off the earth somewhere.
00:17:57
Speaker
And so it's almost obvious what happens after your dead loved ones meet Jesus. What happens is Jesus is now on earth with you forever and the kingdom has come. That is the end of the story according to the Jewish prophetic hope and according to certainly the early Christians. I think that should drive us to ask, how is it then that a story that is so different has become so popular in American churches today?
00:18:30
Speaker
Well, I don't know all the reasons, but in Plato and his world of the forms and his kind of like antibody type of theology, the real ideal world is out of earth, is in the world of the forms, up there somewhere, and is not here. This earth was created by the demiurge. and The desire is to kind of escape it, to not be here, but to be in the world of the forms.
00:18:53
Speaker
that idea and then as expressed in maybe Gnostic writings too I'm not sure because I'm less familiar with them but I'm sort of convinced that that had to have influenced Christian theology somewhere along the line because at some stage now we Christians started telling a story that was more Platonistic than it was Jewish. I mean that's the point that Richard Middleton makes. So those are maybe the deep roots but obviously this kind of like otherworldly hope has been popularized for whatever reason in our country, in our modern time, by popular series like the Left Behind series, the Late Great Planet Earth, and stuff like that. And I'm not sure why they were so influenced to follow Darby's line of thinking. I just don't know the history there.
00:19:40
Speaker
I do happen to know that these ideas of an otherworldly Christian hope coincided well with a lot of political movements going on in the middle of the 20th century, which is when this view really took off in popularity in America, and Caitlyn Schuss makes this point.
00:19:58
Speaker
It's interesting that Platonism drove these kind of shifting ideas that influenced a lot of Christians to start seeing Christianity as being a religion that focuses on leaving Earth. A religion that puts as central to its hope the idea that Christians will get out of here. It's not surprising then once that context is kind of set to see that rapture theology takes off and becomes super popular.
00:20:18
Speaker
In the advent of the nuclear age, it's not actually surprising that a religious system would very much lean into hopes of otherworldly realities. If you think that a nuclear holocaust is imminent, which a lot of people did in the 60s, and to be fair it is and always has been since then, then it is very easy to start placing our hope somewhere else because all I see in this world, in my mind's eye, is death and destruction.
00:20:47
Speaker
I don't see no kingdom of God coming. This cultural shift that has influenced Christianity leaves Bible readers in our context in a really tricky position. Because even before Bible readers have read this first Thessalonians 4 passage, they've certainly encountered rapture in both Christian and non-Christian cultural context. You mentioned the left behind books. Those are very popular. They got made into movies with Nicolas Cage. And Kirk Cameron, let's be fair. Kirk Cameron. The Simpsons will do bits on rapture.
00:21:16
Speaker
Yeah, they do. People who have no idea where the doctrine came from are very familiar with the idea of the rapture. It's just part of our culture. So when somebody who is part of our culture and has grown up with this idea just being in the air that they breathe, reads 1 Thessalonians 4, 16 through 17, it's very easy to say, oh yeah, I know what that's talking about. That's the rapture. Yeah.
00:21:36
Speaker
I think the fact that our reading of this passage can be so heavily influenced by our cultural context should act as a good reminder to Christians that we need to seek to read better. Because if you allow your beliefs about Scripture to just be set beforehand, and then you start encountering new ideas,
00:21:52
Speaker
It's easy to just start asking yourself, well, can these new ideas or these other interpretations, can they really disprove what I hold to be true? What I just fundamentally assume are true beliefs about Christianity, which I think is the case for rapture for many people. And it's easy to find on the internet, a lot of people defending rapture by saying, hey, these arguments against rapture are not silver bullets that defeat rapture doctrine. They can say, oh, maybe Paul was using parousia to refer to something besides Jesus' second coming.
00:22:20
Speaker
Maybe he's using Isopontis in here for a more generic meeting, rather than the more specific way we see it used elsewhere. So unless you can defeat my rapture theology, my rapture theology stands. But doesn't that mentality imply that you're just going into the text with a bunch of assumptions from late 19th century theologies? It does. In fact, I agree with every one of those arguments.
00:22:42
Speaker
There's no single argument that is going to definitively 100% disprove rapture theology. If you're absolutely convinced that it's true, you're going to be able to continue to hold onto that idea. That's true of any doctrine. You can find it if that's what you're looking for. And church history is full of Christians that have held beliefs that seem bizarre to us today in hindsight. And I think that's where rapture theology is going to be. Probably a couple hundred years from now, Christians will look back and say, how on earth was that something that a lot of people believed?
00:23:10
Speaker
So when we look at different understandings of this first Thessalonians passage, this passage is taken as the rapture doctrine in passage, we need to ask ourselves, not is a rapture reading possible, but we need to ask ourselves, well, what understanding of this passage is more likely? Yeah, is it probable?
00:23:26
Speaker
Is it probably what the author was thinking? Yeah. If I try to put myself in a first-century context, try to imagine myself in a first-century church at Thessalonica reading that, how would I have understood that passage? As John Walton put this, we must consistently and mercilessly engage in purging our interpretations of anything that cannot be defended as part of the author's intention.
00:23:49
Speaker
Yep, it's just hermeneutics 101 that the location of meaning in the biblical text is in the original author and recipient's interaction. Not in like what I want it to mean in my cultural context. We don't in our theology and in our understanding of the Bible have any room for relativism. And this is a conversation that's important
Ethical Implications and Restoration Hope
00:24:10
Speaker
too. This is more than just a discussion about whether or not Christians are present on earth or not during a seven-year tribulation.
00:24:17
Speaker
If that's all that we were discussing here, we certainly wouldn't have done a full podcast on this. The big problem with a doctrine like this is that it can shift the emphasis of Christian hope from being resurrected at Jesus' return and move it towards a Christian hope for being snatched away from this world.
00:24:33
Speaker
an escapist's sort of mentality, which can then influence really how you orient your whole life. Yeah. Paul concludes this passage by saying, therefore encourage one another with these words. So whatever you're looking for in this passage, whether it's Jesus coming or Christians escaping earth, you're going to be looking to that for encouragement in this current life. So those who read this passage as being about the churches rapturing away from earth, take this to mean that we should be encouraged that we'll be raptured away. The hope of this passage is hope of an escape.
00:25:03
Speaker
And if hundreds of thousands of Christians have this same kind of hope of escape, it's not entirely surprising that they would maybe, not explicitly, but not be vocally against the development of weapons technologies, the war and injustice of this present age.
00:25:22
Speaker
I'm not saying an escapist mentality makes you embrace like warfare or nuclear programs and stuff like that, but it certainly isn't to hedge against it. It certainly isn't helping you seek justice and forgiveness when it's very costly this side of the kingdom of God. It's actually no encouragement at all to sacrifice for your neighbor, for your refugee brother or sister, or for your national enemy.
00:25:49
Speaker
yeah Then I wonder, in our American context, if it has lulled us into being far more comfortable with kind of participating in the world systems as they are, as violent as they are, as unjust as they are, and kind of cheaply saying, well, I know it's all bad. I'll be raptured out of it instead of really working to self-sacrificially confront the violence and the unjust systems of the world through an ethic of self-giving love.
00:26:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think the encouragement of this passage should be read very differently. Paul's point is that even though you are living in and among the troubles of this world, especially death, you can live with hope that at Jesus' return, death will be overturned. That those who have been faithful to Jesus in their lives will be honored. They will be vindicated. The whole world is going to get to see that those indicated ones are the ones who get to join Jesus at his arrival. They're the ones who get to pass through the gates with him. The hope given in this passage is hope in restoration, not a hope of escape.
00:26:52
Speaker
Right. There are so many ethical questions this raises. I only raised a couple of them. Warfare and injustice. How about a very practical one like environmental sustainability of the land that God's given us to rule and manage? Well, if I think that my hope is off of this land that God gave us to manage, why the heck would I manage this land? That seems like a waste of time and resources and energy that could be going to spread the gospel or something, you know?
00:27:21
Speaker
Why worry about this earth? Why worry about justice? Why even worry that much about Christian community? If it's really all about getting souls fire insurance so they get snatched away to heaven rather than torn away to hell, then Christianity looks very different from the Christianity of the Bible.
00:27:38
Speaker
It does. And again, this is not to say that if you have this kind of dispensational rapture view, that you are automatically like for environmental degradation and for injustice and for warfare and for nuclear proliferation. But again, the point is that en masse at scale, when Christian theology adapts otherworldly hopes,
00:28:01
Speaker
it really does influence what people are comfortable with and how they orient their posture towards the unjust fallen systems of the world in the present. And you just can't get around that ideas do have consequences, especially at scale. Yeah, I think the rise of rapture theology The de-emphasis on justice, on environmental issues, on welcoming the refugee are all symptoms of this bigger underlying problem that Christians have lost focus on the true Christian hope, which is for humans, resurrection, which is exactly why this is kind of a kickoff episode for a series on resurrection. It's worth looking at why this is so central to Christian hope and why it's such a problem that we have in so many ways replaced hope of resurrection with hope of getting out of here.
00:28:51
Speaker
This really does kick off our series on resurrection here because if we're saying, you know, what Christian hope is not, it is not an otherworldly get the hell out of this place type of hope. What is it? Well, it is what the Jews thought. It is what the early Christians thought, which is a restored world when Jesus returns, resurrects all his people and where his kingdom is realized over this planet. Yeah, we look forward to that day when Jesus arrives.
00:29:20
Speaker
And as we'll talk about the original view, we would argue, it's a non-escapist view because on Paul's theology, what you do in the here and now functions as a type, as a symbol, as a sign for that future world. And in fact, everything done in love will somehow be carried into that future.
00:29:41
Speaker
That's his language of rewards and glory and stuff like that. So it very much matters how we orient ourselves in this present fallen age where God's kingdom has not fully been realized yet. So those are going to be fun conversations to have for sure. Yeah, living in light of Jesus' return can look very different than living in light of hope of escape.
00:30:02
Speaker
rightto In the fourth century, John Chrysostom wrote about the encouragement to believers in the first Thessalonians 4 passage. He said, If he is about to descend, on what account shall we be caught up? For the sake of honor, for when a king drives into a city, those who are in honor go out to meet him, but the condemned await the judge within. And upon the coming of an affectionate father, his children indeed, and those who are worthy to be his children, are taken out in a chariot, that they may see and kiss him.
00:30:31
Speaker
but those of the domestics who have offended remain within. We are carried upon the chariot of our father, for he received him up in the clouds, and we shall be caught up in the clouds. See thou how great is the honor. As he descends, we go forth to meet him, and what is more blessed than all, so we shall be with him.