Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (6 page)

In a 1993 interview for the television show
This Week in Bible Prophecy
, Lindsey reaffirmed his belief that we are at the very end of history (while implicitly admitting he was wrong about the 1980s): “I have believed from the beginning that the generation of the fig tree in Matthew 24 was the generation that would see all the signs come together, and that would see the return of Christ. I haven’t changed. This is the generation that will see the coming of the Lord in the rapture.” By 1994 he was warning again about making any plans for the future: “I wouldn’t make any long-term earthly plans.… The end times are almost here”
(PEW)
.

In the pews of Protestant churches after 1988, the frenzy continued. In 1989, the prominent Fundamentalist Jerry Falwell sent out a mass mailing to raise money from his supporters. It stated, “In just a few days we will enter what may very well be … the final decade!… Jesus is coming soon.… I want you to be ready” (
BET
, 11).

On October 14, 1990, readers of the
Chicago Tribune
were informed that there were close to fifty million Americans who believed the “end is near.” A few years later, on December 19, 1994,
U.S. News and World Report
confirmed this number: almost one in five Americans believed the world would end within a few years.

As recently as the Persian Gulf War, fifteen percent of all Americans were sure that the conflict between Kuwait and Iraq was the start of Armageddon. In the midst of this speculation, Charles Dyer of Dallas Seminary fanned the flames of Armageddon Fever with the 1991 book
The Rise of Babylon: Sign of the End Time
. He argued that Iraq would successfully rebuild Babylon as a great city to have her ready for destruction as described in The Apocalypse.

In 1993, David Koresh appeared on the national scene. His Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas, had calculated that Armageddon would occur in 1995. This final worldwide battle was to start at their compound in Waco, dubbed “Ranch Apocalypse.” A battle
did
occur: seventy-six souls perished on April 10, 1993 in the fire that suddenly engulfed their buildings during a raid by federal law-enforcement officials.

People continued to assure us that we were on the cusp of destruction. Harold Camping confidently declared, “When September 6, 1994 arrives, no one else can become saved; the end will have come” (
NNF
, 533).

Well-known televangelist Paul Crouch predicted on February 22, 1994 that the world cannot “go beyond 2005 or 2010.”

Televangelist Pat Robertson urged viewers of
The 700 Club
on May 12, 1994, “We are possibly talking about the final age of humankind, right now. Let’s work together while we have a chance. Please call and make a pledge.” Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. The next year, he pleaded, “All signs point to the end of the world and the end of life as we have known it.… Nobody knows the day or the hour.… We’re coming up on the time of the end.… Now the time is urgent to bolster the resources of the Christian Broadcasting Network.… The worst is yet to come.… Now is the lull before the storm.… Your dollars may not do any good in five years or so.” It is now more than five years later, and I am quite sure that Robertson is still asking for financial support.

As the end of the millennium drew nearer, the frenzy intensified. Jack Van Impe is a well-known radio preacher on the largest Evangelical television program about the end times. On June 22, 1994, he unequivocally stated during his television show
On the Edge of Eternity
that the rapture would occur around the year 2000. Without Christians on earth, “by the year 2001, there will be global chaos.” A few years later, on February 5, 1997, he started rolling the end of the world by announcing that “everything is winding up within the next ten years” and that the end would surely come somewhere between 2001 and 2012.

In 1995, Tyndale House published a series of books about the rapture and the Great Tribulation, beginning with
Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days
. The series’ theological assumptions are similar to those of
The Late Great Planet Earth
. Each new book in the series is also an instant bestseller. It seems as if almost everyone has read a book from this series, even otherwise sensible Catholics.

Left Behind
author Tim LaHaye wants to convince America that the rapture “could be any time: today, tomorrow, next week”
(CT)
, while protecting his flanks with the “rolling end of the world” strategy. He will not compromise on the fact that we are in the final generation. In his book
Are We Living in the End Times?
he writes that either the 1948 or 1967 date (for the beginning of the generation that will see the end) works just fine. But he goes on to add that a generation is no longer forty years, as rapturists have always assured us, but could be as long as eighty or ninety years. This, of course, gives him almost until the middle of the twenty-first century, most likely long after his own death. Only then will the truth of his interpretation of prophecy be determined. Of course, he will sell a lot of
Left Behind
books in the meantime.

In the 1997
Prophecy Study Bible
, John Hagee also teaches that our generation is the final one. That is not a new statement. But his rolling end of the world has discovered a new start to the forty-year generation: the November 4, 1995 assassination of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. That would give rapturists until 2035 to publish more books.

Perhaps the silliest proposal leading up to the new millennium was made by Michael Drosmin in
The Bible Code
, published in 1997. This book contended that computers have unlocked the Hebrew text of the Pentateuch to predict that the “time of the end” began in September 1996 and that Armageddon will be fought in 2000. Now that we are past that year, I suppose we can all rest easier. But don’t get too comfortable. According to
The Bible Code
, all life is in danger of being wiped out when a comet crashes into the earth in 2012.

One of the scarier groups in the end-times frenzy is the Concerned Christians. Eight of their American members entered Israel with the intent of causing a deadly shoot-out with Jerusalem police on the eve of the new millennium. This violence was supposed to trigger Christ’s return. There were also dozens of nonviolent Christians who settled in Israel in 1999 in hopes of getting a bird’s-eye view of Jesus’ return to the Mount of Olives.

Christian groups have reportedly raised more than five million dollars to assist in the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. Although this rebuilding need not start before the rapture occurs, they believe that the rapture cannot occur later than its completion. Therefore, the start of construction on the Temple would force the rapture to come quickly. Of course, the appearance of a completely red heifer for the Temple’s cleansing is seen as a sign of the impending rapture as well.

The war on terrorism that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001 quickly became another reason for rapturists to declare the end was imminent. I had two friends contact me within days. One reminded me that The Apocalypse predicted that “Babylon would be burned up in a single day.” This person saw a direct fulfillment in the tragedy in New York. The other stated that this was an event of biblical import, because Matthew tells us of “wars and rumors of wars” (Matt. 24:6) that would occur just before the end.

Rapturist preachers have certainly tried to connect September 11 to the prophecies of the Bible. Grant Jeffrey, a Pentecostal author and speaker, called this event a “part of the distress of the Last Days”
(CT)
. Bishop G. E. Patterson, head of the Church of God in Christ, wrote that this “could very well be the beginning of the countdown that will usher in the final world conflict which will usher in the return of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ”
(CT)
. Baptist Bishop Alden Gaines of Philadelphia has stated that the fulfillment of biblical prophecy “is happening right now.… I believe that’s going to set the stage for this particular antichrist to step forward.… I see it all fitting in”
(CT)
.

Although the events of September 11, 2001 were momentous and horrible, there is no more reason to believe that they were prophesied in the Bible than was the sacking of Rome or the Communist revolution in Russia. (Come to think of it, some contemporaries
did
say the sacking of Rome was foretold in the Bible.) But the fact that this war on terrorism will be at least partially waged in the Middle East is seen by rapturists as confirmation that it is probably the beginning of the end. Anything touching on Jerusalem in Israel or Babylon in Iraq strikes a raw nerve with them.

Let me assure you: I do not doubt that Jesus is coming again! He said He would, and I certainly do not doubt His word. But there is something horribly wrong with the history we have just briefly surveyed. All these predictions, from the Montanists to the
Left Behind
series, fail for lack of fulfillment. Perhaps those who have made such predictions are misinterpreting Scripture. Perhaps if we examine the biblical data carefully, we will be able to ascertain its teaching while avoiding predictions that necessitate another rolling end of the world.

But first, we need to delineate exactly what rapturists believe. And so in this next section, I will attempt to explain and defend the “pretribulational scheme” of rapturist thought. (There are two others, the midtribulational and posttribulational. These two systems, however, have very few adherents.) We must first thoroughly understand this system if we are to decide for ourselves whether the Bible supports it.

In light of the embarrassing miscalculations of prominent rapturists, why do people, particularly twenty-first-century American Christians, still find the rapture and its related topics so fascinating? Is the biblical evidence for the rapture really that compelling?

It shouldn’t surprise you to hear that I do not believe that the Bible teaches there will be a rapture distinct from the second coming. What
might
surprise you is that the leading living theological proponent of the rapturist system seems to agree with me.

For many years, Dr. John Walvoord was president of Dallas Theological Seminary, an institution that has become synonymous with an unwavering allegiance to the rapturist system I described earlier (pretribulationalism). Along with Dr. Charles Feinberg of Talbot Seminary, Walvoord has done more than any other in his generation to provide this system of theology with an intellectual foundation. Both men were family friends, and I have many fond memories of them at our family dinner table.

In the first edition of his 1957 book,
The Rapture Question
, Walvoord wrote, “The rapture question is determined more by ecclesiology [theology of the Church] than eschatology [theology of future events, specifically the last things].
Neither posttribulationalism nor pretribulationalism is an explicit teaching of Scripture. The Bible does not in so many words state it”
(
TRQ
, foreword; emphasis added). Let me remind you that this is from a theologian whose commitment to
sola Scriptura
(“Scripture alone”: the belief that Scripture alone is the primary and absolute source of authority for all Christian doctrine and practice) is unwavering!

This admission—that the believer’s rapture is not a clear and concise teaching of the Bible—was so explosive that in all future editions of this book it was deleted. Lack of clear biblical support is the elephant in the living room that all educated rapturists know exists, but never discuss. But there it is: nowhere does one passage of the Bible speak of both the rapture and the second coming. Nowhere does one passage of the Bible lay out the time scheme that rapturists must justify by piecing one verse here with another verse there.

If an ardent proponent of a believer’s rapture states that the teaching is nowhere in Scripture, what makes so many people think it is taught there?

Let me try to answer that question by giving a biblical case for the rapture. I will argue as I would have twenty-five years ago, when I was a convinced rapturist trying to justify this system of theology to students in class.

All through history, Christians have believed that the world will see a terrible persecution just before the second coming of Christ. This persecution is tied inextricably to one person, the “antichrist.” He is also known as the “man of sin,” the “son of perdition,” and the “man of lawlessness.”

This man is spoken of repeatedly by the New Testament writers. John the beloved wrote, “You have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.… This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:18, 22; cf. 2 John 7).

The most important passage in this regard, however, is 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12. First, the apostle Paul makes clear that his topic is the moment when Christ comes for His Church by writing, “now, concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet Him” (2:1). This is speaking of the second coming of Jesus Christ, not the rapture.