{"id":631,"date":"2014-06-05T22:13:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-05T22:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/why-the-rapture-isnt-biblical-and-why-it-matters.html"},"modified":"2014-06-05T22:13:00","modified_gmt":"2014-06-05T22:13:00","slug":"why-the-rapture-isnt-biblical-and-why-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/06\/why-the-rapture-isnt-biblical-and-why-it-matters.html","title":{"rendered":"Why the Rapture Isn’t Biblical\u2026 And Why it Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
I grew up in church culture. Most of what I recall from those early childhood and teenage years bring memories of good things.\u00a0 People genuinely taught me that loving Jesus matters more than anything else in the world.\u00a0 The world, after all, is corrupt and the place we truly long for is far, far away \u2013 heaven.\u00a0 So we are to love Jesus and hate the world.\u00a0<\/span>Now, this is not hatred toward the people on earth.\u00a0 I did not grow up in a church culture that taught that we ought to tell outsiders how much they suck, but that this \u201cworld is not my home, I\u2019m just a passin\u2019 through.\u201d<\/span><\/div>\n

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World and physicality = bad.<\/span><\/div>\n
Jesus and spiritual bliss in a distant heaven = goal of the game.<\/span><\/div>\n

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This distinction came with a subset of beliefs about the destiny of God\u2019s world.\u00a0 Eventually this planet would be destroyed and we Christians would \u201cfly away\u201d to heaven at the rapture of the church.\u00a0 Certain Christians understood the timing of the rapture as it corresponds to the book of Revelation differently than others, but no one ever denied the imminent return of Jesus to evacuate the church out of earth.<\/span><\/div>\n

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What I\u2019ve come to realize is that the church of my youth probably had the rapture all wrong.\u00a0 You see, the Bible flows from Creation (Gen 1-2) to Renewed Creation (Rev 21-22).\u00a0 This is the narrative of Scripture.\u00a0 Nothing in the text (if read in its proper context) alludes to the actual complete destruction of the planet.\u00a0 This world\u2019s worth to the Creator runs deep and because of this, the world as a whole ought to be\u00a0intrinsically valuable<\/a>\u00a0to us.<\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
Physical\/earthly realities such as social injustice, violence, hunger, preventable sickness, and the destruction of nature are invitations to the church of Jesus to get our hands dirty and proclaim that\u00a0this world matters<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0(even in its broken state)!\u00a0Christ will complete creation upon his return, uniting heaven and earth for the life of the age to come!<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n

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Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n

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I grew up in church culture. Most of what I recall from those early childhood and teenage years bring memories of good things.\u00a0 People genuinely taught me that loving Jesus matters more than anything else in the world.\u00a0 The world, after all, is corrupt and the place we truly long for is far, far away […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nWhy the Rapture Isn't Biblical\u2026 And Why it Matters<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I grew up in church culture. 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