Showing posts with label Rapture. Show all posts

Image by ChuckHolton via FlickrI enjoyed what Rachel Held Evans says about Harold Camping and the Rapture which he predicted for today. You can see the whole post over here. The whole thing's good. I thought the part below here was real good.

I confess that beneath my playful derision lies a hint of fear, not that I’ll be “left behind” but that I’m already caught up—in a delusion, in false hope, in a God of my own making…and perhaps, in a looming Great Disappointment.

Like it or not, Harold Camping and his followers make us laugh because we see a small piece of our faith in theirs. They are exaggerated caricatures of ourselves.

We too are guilty of projecting onto God our expectations and desires.

We too can get overconfident in our interpretations of the Bible.

We too expect God to judge the way we think he should judge, act when we think he should act, be who we think he should be.

And, you gotta admit,  there’s a chance that we too might be absolutely, devastatingly, irrecoverably wrong.

OK.  I have been mostly silent about the whole "Jesus Coming on May 21, 2011" stuff that's been going on.  I believe that Christ will come again at some point but I believe we're kind of in the dark as to when that's going to occur.  Many times Christians or sects within Christendom have known the day or year when Jesus was supposedly to return  And each time we've been wrong.  And so, my hunch is that that, even with a lot of advertising and free media exposure warning people that tomorrow's the "big day," I will probably be around to blog another day...and not because I've been "left behind" while all the true believers are taken up into heaven, but because it just didn't happen.

This is not, in any way, shape or form, meant to imply that "the Rapture" won't happen tomorrow.  It is only meant to say that I don't really think it will...although I believe that when it happens the salvation I have in Christ will put me on whatever side He's on.

So, I try to separate myself from those who believe Christ is coming tomorrow and dismiss them as crazy, Christian folk.  But there's something about all the "end times" talk that makes me realize that, I'm just not that different from these folks we see on the news or driving around in their "rapture" vans.  Even the Anchorage Daily News had a story on the front page.  That's the ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS, folks.  There are a lot of similarities between myself and those who have sold everything in preparation for the rapture tomorrow.  We believe a whole lot of the same stuff.  And...I do believe that Christ will come again.  Most of my argument really boils down to timing. 

Yet it's easier to cave into the rapture humor.  One, it makes me feel good to distance myself from religious crazies out there...making me feel a little less religiously crazy myself.  Two, it diffuses some of the tension this discussion can get into if we REALLY get into it.  Three, it can be pretty funny.

And so, I offer the following "rapture humor" from The Lutheran Satire.  There's a lot of "meat" here that gets at some of the arguments between dispensationalists and non-dispensationalists.  But there's a lot of humor here too.

It's VERY funny.  It addresses some of the theological/Biblical issues involved.  And it makes me realize how thin the line of division between these two characters is.



Regardless of what tomorrow brings, I cast myself on Christ today.