Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind (9 page)

Premillennialists are those who expect Christ’s second advent to
precede
the Millennium. Most of them expect Christ’s supernatural return soon. Upon His return, He will set up an earthly, corporeal kingdom here on earth for a thousand years, centered in Jerusalem.

Premillennialism adopts a pessimistic view of mankind. Its adherents believe that man is so inherently evil and totally depraved that it will be a steady downward slope for civilization until Christ’s return rescues us. They believe the present world is a sinking ship.

This rampant pessimism is certainly not hard to document. In Dallas Seminary’s journal,
Bibliotheca Sacra
, Lehman Strauss wrote that our only hope is the rapture. This is because “we are witnessing in this twentieth century the collapse of civilization. It is obvious that we are advancing toward the end of the age. Science can offer no hope.… Doom is certain. I can see no bright prospects, through the efforts of man, for the earth and its inhabitants” (“Our Only Hope,”
BS
[April 1963]:154).

The pessimism of premillennialists assumes that if America falls, so must Christianity. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that premillennialism is basically an American phenomenon.

Another prominent characteristic of premillennialism is found in its treatment of the Bible. Unlike postmillennialism, it truly seeks faithfully to answer to the biblical data. Although they tend to be literalists, premillennialists have a reverence for the Bible’s message that strikes a chord with Christians of all faith traditions. If you read your Bible daily and try to understand God’s message to you, there is a good chance you lean toward premillennialism.

The Millennium is mentioned only once in the Bible, in a very symbolic book, The Apocalypse. Its mention immediately follows a description of “the great supper of God,” in which “the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great” is eaten (Apoc. 19:18). Critics believe that the premillennialist places too much emphasis on a literal interpretation of what certainly seems figurative.

This system—also called millenarianism, millennialism, and chiliasm by its critics—appeared quite early in the Church, but was never the majority position. The response of the eastern part of the early Church to what they viewed as a serious error was to question the authority of The Apocalypse. The western part of the early Church accepted the canonicity of The Apocalypse, while holding that the Millennium passage was symbolic. What is significant, however, is that neither East nor West accepted premillennialism as consistent with the original teaching of Jesus and His Apostles.

A second problem with premillennialists has to do with their vision of the Kingdom of God. Is it spiritual or physical? The premillennialist would claim it must be a corporeal reign of Christ here on earth. Critics would counter that this completely misunderstands the message of the major prophets of the Old Testament (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel), not to mention the message of the entire New Testament.

The premillennial rapturist position is the focus of this book. It is the theology underlying the
Left Behind
series and
The Late Great Planet Earth
. As the Protestant Dr. Wells has aptly pointed out, rapturists are the most consistent of the premillennialists, although not all premillennialists are rapturists
(TSS)
. We will return to a critique of premillennial rapturist thought when we examine the individual Bible passages.

Postmillennialists believe that the second advent of Christ will
follow
the Millennium of peace and justice—the opposite of what the premillennialists believe. Postmillennialists teach that it is the duty of the Christian community to improve the world to such a point that Christ deems it ready for His return. They believe man can establish the “utopian kingdom” on earth. Unlike the pessimistic premillennialist, the postmillennialist espouses a very optimistic view of man.

For a modern rationalist, this idea is much easier to believe than an imminent supernatural second advent. It found fertile ground in the rationalistic mindset that enveloped Europe in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and still appeals to those whose theology is of a modernist, antisupernaturalist bent. In postmillennialism, any supernatural invasion of our world by a victorious Christ is roughly a thousand years away.

The violence and suffering of our modern world has made the rosy outlook of postmillennialists more difficult to swallow. In this country, World War II was a watershed. After the devastation and inhumanity of that conflict, preceded as it was by the suffering of the worldwide depression of the 1930s, the appeal of postmillennialism waned. It has a relatively small following now.

In addition, postmillennialism does not deal adequately with the scriptural data. Some would say it does not even try. As a result, we will not spend much of this book discussing it. The Catholic Church’s view of this system has always been clear. “The kingdom will be fulfilled … not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God’s victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from Heaven. God’s triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world” (
CCC
, par. 677).

The third view, amillennialism, is the one held by the vast majority of Christians, whether Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant. It is the only acceptable option for the Protestant who claims to stand in the tradition of Luther or Calvin and for the Catholic who seeks to remain faithful to the teaching of the Church.

Amillennialists agree with historical premillennialists in believing that Christ’s return can occur during any generation. This is what they mean by saying that the return of Christ is “imminent.” However, they do not believe that there will be a corporeal reign of the risen Christ on earth after that second advent.

Amillennialists agree with postmillennialists in teaching that Christ’s return will come
after
the Millennium and immediately before eternity. But unlike the postmillennialists, they believe the Millennium is a
spiritual
reign of Christ that has been present in the Church since Pentecost. In other words, the Millennium is an ecclesiastical kingdom, founded at Pentecost.

I was a convinced premillennialist for most of my life. Yet even then I knew that the bulk of the biblical data is rather clearly in the amillennial corner. The Bible continually uses the terms
Kingdom of God, Kingdom of Heaven, Messianic Kingdom
, and
Church
interchangeably (Matt. 7:21, 9:35, 16:13–20; Luke 11:20; John 3:15). As one of my premillennial professors at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (full professors there must certify their belief in premillennialism) once stated, “There are only six verses that make me a premillennialist: Revelation 20:1–6. All the rest of the Bible is amillennial.”

Some have claimed that the majority position of the early Church was the premillennial, but this is highly debatable. Indeed, early Christian writers could have talked about a thousand-year reign of Christ and still have been amillennial. In 200 or 300 A.D., the thousand years spoken of in The Apocalypse were still stretching into the future further than any human eye could see.

The crucial issue in understanding the early Church Fathers is their view of when the kingdom
started
. Were kingdom benefits already available? A premillennialist would have declared that millennial benefits were still unavailable, whereas an amillennialist would have believed he was already in the spiritual kingdom of God and its blessings had already arrived. Epiphanius of Salamis makes clear that the majority of the early Church were amillennialists (
HE
, 77:26). This includes even Justin Martyr. (
DJT
, LXXX;
FA
, XXXIX).

We will later determine why the amillennialist believes that while the thousand years is a long time, the biblical evidence does not necessitate a Church age of precisely 365,250 days. Amillennialists believe that the thousand years spoken of in The Apocalypse must be understood within its figurative context.

I attended a premillennial seminary and taught premillennialism in both classroom and pulpit. During this time, it seemed to me that amillennialists did not take the teaching of Revelation 20:1–6 seriously. I never encountered an interpretation of that passage that I found true to Scripture.

A good part of the reason was that the purported kingdom of the amillennialist did not match the reality of the Church that I experienced. To my way of thinking, the contention of any Protestant that Christ’s Kingdom was already established spiritually here on earth bordered on the ludicrous. I wondered where they saw it. The Presbyterian, Reformed, and Lutheran denominations were not worldwide, nor did they have an institutional unity that even remotely resembled a Kingdom of Christ. Nor were they ancient enough!

Not until many years later would I consider the Catholic Church as a possible embodiment of Christ’s Kingdom here on earth.

The fairest way to decide the merits of any Christian belief system is to examine carefully the Bible passages that are said to support it. It was a thorough examination of just that sort that led me, a convinced rapturist Fundamentalist, to reconcile with the Roman Catholic Church almost a decade ago. (My book
Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic
provides details of the journey.)

While the Catholic appeals to Scripture, Tradition, and the teaching authority, or Magisterium, of the Church to guide his beliefs, rapturists claim to rely exclusively on the ostensibly clear and self-interpreting text of the Bible. So it is fair to ask whether the rapturist belief system is the best way to understand the relevant Scripture passages, considered apart from other authoritative voices. Of course, as Catholics, we would say this approach removes two legs of the three-legged stool of truth. But discounting for our purposes Sacred Tradition and the Magisterium, can the rapture theory really do justice to what the Bible teaches?

To be thorough and fair, I will attempt to survey all of the relevant passages, looking at the common rapturist interpretation of each and trying to determine whether it is the best understanding. I will then offer my own conclusions from a Catholic perspective.

Keep in mind, however, that it is not possible for anyone to claim that his understanding of a passage is
the
Catholic one if the Church herself has been silent on the issue. “There are but few texts whose sense has been defined by the authority of the Church”
(DAS)
. The passages we will examine most closely do not fall within those few texts. Yet we will at all times endeavor to stay within the parameters set by the Church, mindful that there can be a multitude of valid Catholic opinions about most passages.

Indeed, it is very probable that some good Catholics will disagree with my treatment of some of these passages. Your pastor may give a homily based on one of these passages that takes a different understanding from the one this book presents. There is nothing wrong or unusual about this, as long as he does not claim that everyone must agree with
his
perspective. My purpose is not to review the entire scope of Catholic possibilities, but to show that there exists at least one consistent Catholic perspective on each given passage that is truer to the text and to history than the rapturist perspective is.

In our exegesis, we will be ever mindful of our goal. As St. Jerome said, “The office of a commentator is to set forth, not what he himself would prefer, but what his author says.” I believe it is fair to state that this is how the early Church handled Scripture.

We will also honor the traditional Christian view of Scripture’s reliability: that the texts as originally written are without error in all that they intend to teach. The Church has clearly stated that Scripture is fundamentally a revelation of God Himself, culminating in the deeds and words of our Lord Jesus Christ. As Vatican II stated, “The books of both the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; they have God as their author.… Therefore, since
everything asserted
… must be held to be asserted by the Holy Spirit, it follows that the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully, and
without error
that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation” (
DV
, 11).

As a former Protestant preacher, I think I can say that most rapturists would have no trouble agreeing with Church teaching regarding Scripture. (Granted, more than a few would have trouble with the source!)

Fortunately for us, there are not many passages of Scripture that bear on the discussion at hand. We will spend most of our efforts examining passages in three books of the Bible: Daniel, Matthew, and The Apocalypse. We will take brief excursions into a handful of other passages as well.