Being a Christian Is Falling Over and Over Again Until Jesus Returns
Viktor Vasnetsov's 'Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,' 1887.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
The world did non come to an finish on September vi, 1994. Nor on May 21, 2011, or October 21 of that aforementioned yr, though Harold Camping ground had said in each case that it would. As I sit down typing in the year 2016, the world is still rotating on its axis, spinning 19 miles per second around the sun.
Like then many Christians who came before him, Camping ground was possessed by the thought of predicting the end of the globe, and talked ceaselessly nearly it on his radio bear witness at Family unit Radio Network, of which he was president. Listeners contributed to what became a $100 one thousand thousand campaign to convince the world of the May 21 judgment 24-hour interval (known in Christian theology every bit the Rapture), when Jesus would take all his believers to heaven. Like many would-be prophets, Camping moved the target each fourth dimension he was wrong. Later the October 2011 date passed, he just permit it go. Fifty-fifty prophets can become confused.
Today, if you want to know how close we are to the globe'southward cease, all you need to do is check the Rapture Index, a frequently updated scoreboard of 45 factors that point to the nearness of the Rapture. (A score of over 160 indicates it'south fourth dimension to "Fasten your seat belts." We are currently at 181.) The popularity of the Left Behind serial and songs like Larry Norman's "I Wish Nosotros'd All Been Fix" among certain evangelical communities signal an ongoing cultural fascination with End Times and a willingness to assist usher them in by proclaiming how rotten things are in the globe right at present — a key tenet in Rapture theology, as in life, is that things usually get worse before they get better.
Why are Christians so obsessed with the end of the world? Generally for the same reasons Christians are obsessed with annihilation: It's in the Bible. The Old Testament is full of terrifying, cryptic prophecies almost the End Times: "The ii kings, their minds bent on evil, shall sit down at 1 table and substitution lies," the prophet Daniel says. "Merely it shall not succeed, for in that location remains an end at the time appointed." (Ii kings exchanging lies sounds ominously like the plot to Game of Thrones.) So, in the New Testament, Jesus tells his disciples that "the sign of the Son of Homo will announced in heaven, and so all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see 'the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven' with power and dandy glory." The Second Coming of Christ involves its own vocabulary; words like "Postmillennialism" and "Pre-Tribulation" get tossed around in Terminate Times crowds like confetti at a parade.
Some Christian denominations are more likely than others to be interested in eschatology. Southern Baptists will talk with you nigh the End Times over coffee and donuts after a Sunday service; Episcopalians will talk about politics, sexual activity, or money with you earlier they'll wander into end-of-the-world territory. It's inherently creepy stuff, the idea that the world volition end not considering the lord's day has burnt out or a comet has destroyed the Earth but considering an omnipotent being wills its destruction. But it's on our commonage minds: As of 2010, Pew reported that 41 percent of Americans believe Jesus will "probably" or "definitely" return to World by 2050.
The early church believed that Jesus would render very soon, fifty-fifty during their lifetimes, and Christians have been revising that prediction ever since.
Judgmental Christians are easy targets for ridicule and disdain, and, to be sure, Christians have perpetuated some of the worst (and silliest) ideas about the end of the earth. At the aforementioned time, most religions have at to the lowest degree some rather outré ideas about the style the world will end. For many Christians, spreading the give-and-take nearly the Rapture is an act built-in of genuine concern.
"The urgency was that the Rapture could happen at whatever time," says Melisa Blankenship, a San Francisco-based church data manager who attended Calvary Baptist Church in San Mateo, California, in her youth. One night, Blankenship'south church building held a special service to screen the film A Thief in the Night, the first in a series of films about the Rapture. In the film, immature Patty Jo Myers wakes up one day to detect her family gone along with millions of other people, and has to alive through the Tribulation, a fourth dimension period referred to in Daniel seven, during which state of war, dearth, and other plagues ravage the Earth and kill nearly of those who remain. Blankenship remembers being "terrified" watching the movie equally a 7 twelvemonth old. Equally an adult, though, she tin can see what motivated the pastors at her church building: "In a weird manner, I call up information technology was pity on their terminate." If you were convinced the world was going to end in a peppery war zone and you could take your loved ones with you to heaven, wouldn't you want to practise the same?
Talking about the Finish Times is too an urgent mode of sharing the gospel of Jesus, "promot[ing] a strong emphasis upon evangelism of the lost," according to the Pre-Tribulation Research Heart. Run by Thomas Ice and Tim LaHaye (the latter of Left Behindfame), the Pre-Trib Enquiry Center acts as a clearinghouse for Biblical prophecy scholars to share their work on the Rapture and their interpretation that the church will exist raptured earlier the Tribulation. "The most unloving matter you can do is not [share] the gospel," says Ice, who as well disputes the wisdom of predicting a specific date and time for the Rapture. "In that location is a lot less date-setting now than there has been in the past," he says.
Math and organized religion, on the face of it, don't seem to mix well. Hundreds of Christian groups accept tried to use the Bible to predict when the world volition end, using a (hardly clear-cut) combination of events mentioned in the apocalyptic Book of Revelation. The early on church believed that Jesus would render very soon, even during their lifetimes, and Christians have been revising that prediction ever since. Cotton Mather, a Puritan minister who was influential in the construction of the Salem Witch Trials, appear that the world would terminate in 1697. Heavily influenced past Revelation, Mather was convinced that the presence of witchcraft in America combined with the appearance in 1682 of what we now know is Halley's Comet (celestial events and motifs are significant in Revelation) spelled the cease of the world. When that year came and went without outcome, Mather revised his prediction: 1736, according to the Bible, would exist the year of the world'due south terminate. But kidding! Unhappy with 1736, he before long moved the date up to 1716; when that year came and went, Mather suggested the world would end in 1727. While a large earthquake did shake Boston that twelvemonth, the only thing that quickly came to an end was Mather, who died in Feb 1728.
Mather is part of a centuries-long tradition of Christians who have made these bold predictions. There'south an entire Wikipedia page full of entries about people who thought the Earth was virtually its final mean solar day; the reasons varied from an event where British hens laid eggs with "Christ is Coming" etched into them (sadly, a hoax) to numerology based on Revelation, Daniel, and other books of the Bible. Disciples of William Miller, a Baptist pastor who claimed the world would finish on October 22, 1844, had to put upwardly with those who "tauntingly inquir[ed], 'Have you lot not gone up?'" This failed prophecy led Millerites to endure through The Great Thwarting, a confusing period of time in which some of their churches were attacked. Having been played for fools by someone with sincerely held beliefs, many Millerites returned to the denominations they came from or started new ones birthday — the Seventh-Day Adventist Church formed every bit a reaction to Miller'southward failed prophecy.
Thomas Ice of the Pre-Trib Inquiry Heart distinguishes between the Rapture (believers existence carried up to heaven) and the 2d Coming of Christ (Christ coming down to Globe, which will happen vii years later on the Rapture). Being accompanied past other believers on your way to heaven can beget some unique fears, as Lyz Lenz wrote for this magazine in January: "I worried about being raptured on the toilet and having all the ungodly come across my butt. And then I held information technology until I thought I would burst, racing to the bath and praying to Jesus he'd hold off on any magnificent return until I could just pull my pants upwards." I asked Water ice whether he felt any tension between the mundanity of daily life and the weight of constantly thinking about the stop of the globe every bit we knew it. Ice mentioned two Peter iii, which warns that "the mean solar day of the Lord will come like a thief…. While you are waiting for these things, strive to be institute by him at peace, without spot or blemish." The point, Water ice told me, is to wait in patience while "constantly cultivating a relationship with Christ." At the grocery store, picking up the kids from school, going to the bathroom — wherever you lot are, sensation of the Rapture and its possible imminence can atomic number 82 a person to a sense of abiding vigilance.
"In that location was no sense of peace, even with the people that were saved," Blankenship says. "You always had to be vigilant to make sure your conservancy was real."
In that location is some other, final reason Christians may be so obsessed with the Rapture, and it isn't high-minded or Biblical: It's the simple truth that none of the states know with absolute certainty what volition happen to us when we die. We all desire to be certain that something expert will happen to us, or, at the very least, that null peculiarly bad volition befall us one time nosotros've shuffled off this mortal whorl. Maybe heaven is a story we tell ourselves in society to alive.
Harold Camping died in 2013 later on suffering complications from a autumn at his habitation. Embarrassed, he had retired from his work at Family unit Radio and apologized for misleading his followers. Family Radio Network posted an update proverb Camping had "passed on to celebrity and is now rejoicing with his dearest Savior!" The prophet had foretold the end of the world but not his ain decease, and Family Radio memorialized Camping with a verse from Revelation: "And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and at that place shall be no more than death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be whatsoever more hurting: for the old things are passed away."
Armageddon Awareness Twenty-four hours is Pacific Standard's special written report for Globe 24-hour interval 2016, in which nosotros confront our fears almost the apocalypse while celebrating those things that brand our planet worthwhile.
Source: https://psmag.com/news/why-are-so-many-christians-obsessed-with-predicting-the-rapture
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