That “THE RAPTURE – Fall 2009? page has apparently changed his date from Sept 22 to 23.

I’m chuckling at the idea of how many fundies in Canberra, Sydney & Brisbane fell on their knees, thinking the Rapture was at hand, when the east coast of Australia was blanketed in red dust over the last 2 days. And we’ve had golf ball-sized hail, gale-force winds, bushfires, and and tornado, too.

Of course, there is a rational scientific explanation for all this.

For some cool pix and a discussion as to why the dust storm happened, see the AV at:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1096897/Dust-shroud-diverts-Sydney-bound-flights

The Kingdom of God sounds like divinely inspired social liberalism as opposed to divinely inspired social conservatism.

Maybe, if “social liberalism” itself actually practiced (or even preached) most of the things I mentioned above. These days I’m not so hopeful about that. The “liberals” in this country sometimes seem just as petty and self-serving as anyone else most of the time. What I’m talking about is quite a bit more radical than the “liberalism” I see around me today.

(Though I will admit that modern liberalism does have many of its roots in this “Kingdom” gospel reading of the Bible… for instance look into the “Social Gospel” movement of a century ago.)

This discrepancy is one reason why many people conclude that there probably really isn’t a God. It is all just different groups of people saying what they believe and attributing and escalating their beliefs to a divinity.

Perhaps for some. Though in my case, and I’m just speaking personally here, I didn’t actually believe any of that stuff I mentioned above until I started reading the Bible in this new way. In other words, I wasn’t a “social liberal” (far from it!) that adjusted my religious views to fit those beliefs. Rather I was a hardcore social conservative, and it was the Bible that changed me. Honestly. All of those values I mentioned (“non-violent peacemaking, social justice, compassion, radical inclusiveness, inward transformation, communal sharing, and self-sacrificial love”) are things that I learned from the gospels, not from “social liberalism”. Again, just speaking of my own experience. I’m sure others may hold their beliefs for the reasons you suggest.

Thanks for the explanation. If all Christians subscribed to these principles, there probably wouldn’t be a “new atheistic” movement.

The Kingdom of God sounds like divinely inspired social liberalism as opposed to divinely inspired social conservatism.

It seems that God inspires different groups of people to different conclusions.

This discrepancy is one reason why many people conclude that there probably really isn’t a God. It is all just different groups of people saying what they believe and attributing and escalating their beliefs to a divinity.

Perhaps sometime you can explain what exactly is meant by “the Kingdom of God”… Although, I presume it is not something that can be condensed into a quick paragraph or two.

Well, again, it depends on who you ask…

In terms of the third view I mentioned, it generally refers to the new way of life and alternative social order taught and modeled by Jesus. It is a “realm” in which people do the will of God by pursing his way of non-violent peacemaking, social justice, compassion, radical inclusiveness, inward transformation, communal sharing, and self-sacrificial love. In this view Jesus came to inaugurate this kingdom (e.g. his prayer “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heave”) and his followers were called to form a new community (i.e. the church) that would begin to live into this new way of life and act as heralds of the kingdom. (Obviously we haven’t always done a very good job of it over the intervening centuries.) In this way the Kingdom was and remains both a present and future reality. It is already here, but it is not fully realized, and Christians are called to help participate in its fulfillment by living into it in the here and now – not just waiting to go there someday when we die… or after the Rapture.

Does that make sense? Hope it wasn’t too “theological” or jargony.

I don’t know that I’ll have time for a dedicated post on that topic anytime soon. However let me give you a real quick overview.

For the past century or so (at least since Albert Schweitzer) liberal scholarship has assumed that Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who taught that the end of the world (i.e. the end of all human history) was imminent. For liberals Jesus said the end was coming soon, and when it didn’t, the early Christians had to adjust their theology and eventually give up their apocalyptic expectations.

Most conservative (i.e. fundamentalist and evangelical) scholars likewise agreed that Jesus preached about the end of human history, but they differed in that they didn’t think Jesus taught it was imminent. For conservatives, the end is still yet to come.

More recently a new perspective has emerged among both liberal and conservative scholars that what Jesus and the apostles preached was not the “end of history” per se, but rather the “end of the age”, i.e. the end of a particular era of history and the beginning of a new way of God working in the world – what Jesus called “the Kingdom of God”. In this view, what Jesus was talking about when he warned of the imminent “end of the age” was in fact the end of the Jewish Temple system and the exclusivity of the Mosaic covenant, and the judgment and destruction he predicted were the consequences he foresaw if the Jews continued to pursue their path of violent rebellion against the Roman Empire. In this sense the “end of the age” did in fact happen, in 70 CE when the Romans crushed the First Jewish Revolt and destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem. But it was followed not by the end of all history, but by beginning of a new age, the age of the Kingdom.

Hope that helps to clarify the differences. If you haven’t noticed already, I tend to affirm the third option.

Depends on which set of scholars you listen to, and what you think the early Christians meant by “the end of the world”.

Mike,

I’d be very interested (and others might also) to learn about what other scholars think the early Christian’s believed. I always kind of thought the early Christians were like modern day Jehovah’s Witnesses running around with all kinds of End-of-Days predictions. Perhaps you could educate us with a quick summary of the different scholarly viewpoints in a dedicated post sometime.

From what I understand, the early Christians (1st and 2nd century) really did think the world was soon coming to an end.

Depends on which set of scholars you listen to, and what you think the early Christians meant by “the end of the world”.

As for the Rapture, no one believed in that until about 180 years ago when the doctrine was invented by John Nelson Darby.

And I’m pretty sure Pete doesn’t believe in it either. He’s just using it as a story device to make his point.