Eschatology 101 (end times)

C

crazydanny

Registered Senior Member
All religions seem to have some kind of end times gameplan. Usually it involves the good guy ("we") creaming the bad guy ('them").

Being a Christian, I subscribe to the general thought line for the
Tribulation, but I have a question:

The Rapture--God has never shielded his believers from adversity before, as a matter of fact, he usually uses trials to strengthen our faith and to prepare us for more difficult times. The idea of him pulling all the believers out when things get sticky doesn't jibe with the Bible...he may protect us during (i.e., the hebrews during the egyptian plagues), but never has he taken us out of the battle.

Some thoughts on this, please.
 
Your right, the whole idea of the rapture seems wrong. Why would God pull all the christians out and let people that are already going to hell suffer even more? Why does the devil need to have a period of complete control over the earth? Why doesn't God just zap all the heathens right after the rapture?
 
According to Oxford Paperback Dictionary And Thesaurus rapture means: great pleasure or enthusiasm or expression of it. Given that definition, I thought this was interesting ...

"Supporters of this doctrine are most commonly found among fundamentalist and conservative Protestants, and is strongly disputed by other Christians. Supporters for this belief generally cite two primary sources in the New Testament:

In 1 Corinthians 15:51-52, the Apostle Paul writes: "Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed."
In 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, Paul writes: "For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Generally, an elaborate set of predictions about the end times are constructed from these two sets of verses, together with various interpretations of the book of Revelation and the predictions of Christ's return in Matthew 24:30-36. In general, believers in the rapture consider the present to be the end times, and offer interpretations of the various symbolisms in the book of Revelations in terms of contemporary world events. They believe that, because of the presumed imminence of the end of the world, they have a unique ability to correctly understand these symbols, which had seemed so cryptic to Christians in earlier times.

Belief in the rapture became popular in some Christian circles during the 1970s, in part thanks to the books of Hal Lindsey, including The Late Great Planet Earth. Many of Lindsey's predictions in that book, which assumed that the rapture was imminent, were based on world conditions at the time. The Cold War figured prominently in their predictions of Armageddon, and other aspects of 1970s global politics were seen as having been predicted in the Bible. Lindsay believed, for example, that the 10-headed beast cited in Revelation was the European Economic Community, which at the time consisted of ten nations.

Many Christians continue to believe in the rapture, with their interpretations of biblical eschatology having been updated to reflect changes in world conditions."

Source: Wikipedia
 
Pentencostals tend to harp on the End-times and the Rapture the most in the christian community. Things like bar-codes are interputed as the feareed mark of the beast (666) and the explosion at Chernobyl as the Third trumpet in Revelations. But if you were to go back to the late 1950's people would be interpeting WW II as proof of the end times.

My question is, why would God, an infinite being, create people for a brief 2000 years?

And why is it that nearly every generation believes it will be the last?
 
end times parallels

Although I have difficulty reconciling myself to the principal of rapture, I do believe that a lot of the signs of the end are coming true around us.

Some points:
In Revelations, 11:1, he is told to measure the temple, but to leave out the outer wall.
a: we know that Rev was written after the fall of Jerusalem and that would be indicative that the temple mentioned in 11:1 would be a third (or at least subsequent) Temple. We also know that there is only one place that the Jews are allowed by God to place this temple, and that would be on the site of the temple mount.
b:Recently, a cartographer was paid to go to Jerusalem by the Israelis, and do a precise estimation of the Temple Mount. The interesting point (some might say chilling point) is that he has found that the Temple did NOT stand in the spot currently occupied by the Dome of The Rock, as had been believed for some hundreds of years, but at some 70-odd feet away, in what is now an empty lot. He said the Jews would be able to build their temple, in the EXACT configuration mandated in the Bible by God, with the exception of the outer wall, which would intersect the Dome Of The Rock....:bugeye: How is that for 20/20 vision?

I had heard of a book, two years ago, called The Christ Clone Trilogy, which I have yet to find a copy of. In this book, according to what I've read on the internet, a scientist obtains genetic material from the Shroud of Turin, and creates a clone, purportedly to prove that Christ was actually a visitor from an alien civilization.
The author takes the point of view that this clone would become the Antichrist of Revelations. Now think: If someone actually did this thing, what would world reaction be? Obviously creating a duplicate of Jesus' unique genetic sequence would not force his spirit to reinhabit his body, so just exactly WHAT spirit would be in the clone?
a: Certain church groups (in particular the Roman Catholic) would immediately make this clone a "living holy relic", and place it at the top of the list of things that are worshipped. Anyone who's theology is messed up, to begin with, is going to be drawn in by this particular shell-game. When you can accept transubstantiation of the flesh, Mary as co-redeemer, etc. et al, you won't strain at the gnat of a Man Created copy of the Savior.
Folks, we all know, that if someone created a clone of Jesus Christ, there would be a worldwide church of the clone numbering in the hundreds of millions within a month. People hunger so much for something to believe, but also want something they can touch before they believe in it, that this would be more than most could resist.
b:Here's the kicker, there are separate groups out there trying to achieve THIS VERY THING RIGHT NOW!!! Last year, I ran onto a web-site called clonejesus.com, with the expressed intention of creating a clone of the Lord so that we would have an earthly object for our adoration. Who is to say that someone isn't actually trying to accomplish this very thing at the moment you are sitting in front of your pc reading this post?

I'll tell you what, you don't need to watch Hannibal Lector movies to get chills, there is enough material going on in the world around us to keep you up at night, staring at your ceiling....

more on this later.....
 
doesn't anyone find the idea of god descending and the devil arising to be quite hokey pokey? i mean, if i saw that i don't think i would believe it was happening, nor actually do i have any reason to think it'll happen- mainly because, correct me if i'm wrong, has ANYONE seen or heard anything that would indicate such a show as this? no. if god can come down as he pleases why not be actively involved in us- his "glory"(anyone else find that to be B.S. in large sums)?
 
re: hokey

does not the bible say that many things of God will appear to be foolishness to the unbelieving world?

Hey, when you create the universe, you get to make the rules
 
crazydanny,
If you look at the events described in Revelation closely you'll see that the "rapture" doesn't really make sense. I think it was orinally based on one or two scriptures that were meant to indicate the sudden nature of the second coming. Even the first Christians thought it would happen in their own lifetime, and the words "sudden" and "soon" are all over the place. But the meaning is that we can't know when, just that we should be ready for it. The concept of a "rapture" doesn't hold much biblical water.

One problem I have with it is that Jesus prayed for His people not to be taken out of the world.
John 17:15
My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

When in the eschatalogical timeline is the rapture supposed to happen, again?
 
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I thought this might be of interest ...

Eschatology literally means "the study of last things". It is a general-purpose term that can have more than one meaning. In Zoroastrianism, Christianity and in Norse pagan theology, eschatology refers to a theology concerning the end of the world, as predicted in in the prophecies of these faiths, and as recorded in their sacred texts. Eschatology also refers to the study of general afterlife concepts of other religions, especially the western monotheistic faiths. In this broader sense, eschatology can refer to the messiah, a messianic era, the afterlife, and the soul in religions which have such beliefs.

As far as we know, Zoroastrianism had a fully developed concept of the end of the world as being devoured by fire already in 500 B.C. and is thus the oldest eschatology we know of. [More...]

See also: Death, Afterlife and Eschatology
 
sequence of events

to the best of my understanding, most pre-trib rapture proponents believe the rapture occurs a short period before the actual 7 year period of the tribulation (reference novels such as the Left Behind series, etc.)

I ran across an article about a fictional work called the Christ Clone Trilogy, by a BeauSigneur (may be spelled wrong, sorry!). In the article, the rapture was described as not a sudden vanishing of millions, but a worldwide instant death of million, where the christians all flop over dead at the same time, and of course awaken to their heavenly bodies. This makes some sense, since it was made clear we do not keep these mortal forms in heaven...however, if there IS to be a Rapture, it would be my assumption that God would make it obvious that he was the responsible party by making millions vanish, rather than having millions suddenly die, so that people could just blame in on a mysterious disease or environmental condition.
 
In that case, the rapture happens everyday - 1 out of every hundred people alive on earth dies every day.
 
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