I'm Going To Die! The Rapture

rapture

Well…That’s it! I’m going to die. I can’t avoid it. Just like every other person in the history of humanity, I’m going to die. There will be a time where one moment I am here and the next I am not. And I am terrified of the prospect. I’m not sure if this will make sense, but I am not afraid of death itself as much as I am afraid to die. Let me explain. I would not hesitate to die for someone I love or care for – especially my family. It’s simply the idea of dying that terrifies me.

Being a philosopher sucks! Don’t ever become one if you can avoid it. Being a philosopher requires constant introspection and you are always pursued by truth. No matter how much you want to avoid it, truth and reality are always there holding your ideas accountable. @*#&%$^ Truth!

I mean, I believe in an afterlife – at least I think I do. But, that is as a theologian and a Christian. As a philosopher, I have to concede the possibility that there is no afterlife. The prospect of nonexistence terrifies me. I’ve always known myself and I’m fond of him. (I could shed this broken body though.) The notion that one moment I can be here perceiving reality and the next I’m just gone keeps me up at night.

In addition to all of the fun things that comprise my interests, I am also an amateur poet. Many years ago I wrote the following poem:

Experiencing Death

I wonder what it will be like when I die.

What will it feel li

Clever, I know.

Isn’t Jesus Going to Return?

I have not always thought this way about death. In fact, for the first part of my Christian journey, I was convinced that I would never die. I was utterly convinced that my generation was the generation to witness the return of Jesus. Yup, just as they have been predicting since the New Testament.

My generation was different than all of those other ones though. All of those other people tried manipulating numbers to calculate his return. But, I didn’t look at the numbers. I looked at the signs of the times. And it was getting really bad. There were hostilities in the Middle East and a war with Palestine. Russia was always lingering in the background ready to pounce on someone. And the gays! Let’s not forget about how depraved our nation was becoming.

All of the prophetic voices on Saturday night declared this truth, using newspapers and news broadcasts to prooftext their prophecies. Even the Baptist preachers I listened to reiterated these “facts”. And they were facts because they were in the news. I could see the headlines with my own eyes.

Pairing all of that with the prophecies, that really never made sense to me, but I trusted gurus when they uttered the 7^th week of the fourth sunrise when venus is in line with the star of David we shall see the anti-Christ. I mean, I guess I can see it.

I became paranoid and was always vigilant in trying to locate the anti-Christ so I didn’t get tricked into accepting the mark of the beast (you know, just like all of those losers who were tricked into getting the COVID vaccine). In fact, in high school, I was convinced that Benjamin Netanyahu was the anti-Christ because of an image I saw of him in a major magazine.

Sorry Kid’s Grandpa is NOT Coming Back

Unfortunately, Jesus is in heaven and he is not coming back. I mean would you want to come back? Look at this place. Look at us. I remember after deconstructing my eschatological positions how disappointed I was that this belief I had was not based on reason or reality. @*#&%$^ truth.

My deconstruction has taught me that Jesus is not going to return in a physical sense. At least not in the way that we have traditionally imagined it. All of these unique ways that we have thought about Jesus returning are largely based upon Christian movies and books based heavily on dispensational theology (you have Scofield to thank for that).

Our modern notion of the rapture is fairly new. It was created by John Nelson Darby (founder of the Plymouth Brethren) and was largely based upon the vision of a child at one of his evangelistic crusades. Ever since that gathering, Christianity has never been the same.

You may not know this but rapture theology has heavily influenced Christian White Nationalism (CWN) as well. CWN operates under the idea that if we can create a Christian nation, then we can hasten the return of Christ. Well…perhaps more accurately, we can hasten the inevitable influence of the anti-Christ – I guess it depends on your end times belief. Regardless, nothing we as humans can do will hasten anything when it comes to God’s will.

The arrogance that some people think humans have this ability to make God do things, or that we can know the mind of God through his word is crazy. But, I guess it is to be expected from this extreme version of evangelicalism.

Rapture, Salvation & Ministry Anxiety

For many years I had rapture anxiety. Yea, it’s a thing! Google it. I thought about it all of the time. It influenced so many of my life decisions early on in my faith journey. It created anxiety within me about sin that every other week I found myself rededicating my life to the lord. Eventually, I would run out of excuses when I asked for forgiveness for whatever my sin of the week was.

After the excuses ran out I had salvation anxiety. Was I still saved? Was there a magic number of sins I could commit before Jesus cut me off from heaven? There were all of these ethical ideals that I passionately committed myself to.

Ministry was always difficult while trying to reconcile my ethical imperfection with my duties of being a minister of God. How could any minister of God be so sinful and then preach to others about their ethical indiscretions?

Then I encountered the wild idea that Christianity was not about ethical mandates and whether or not I could attain perfection. Where did I get that crazy idea, to begin with? Oh right, 1 Peter 1:16 “…be holy because I am holy” The problem with this verse is that holiness is not an ethical mandate. In fact, it has nothing to do with ethics. You have heard it said that God cannot exist in the presence of sin because he is holy. However, holiness literally means “set apart”. God’s set-apartness is about how God is different from other deities – that he is set apart from them. It has no ethical ramifications. Moreover, when the text says “be holy because I am holy”, it is a plea for Christians to be different than those who do not know Christ. It does not mean “be perfect because I am perfect”.

Final Thoughts

So, someday, I am going to die. I still remember the feeling when I encountered the idea that someday I would actually die. That there would be no rapture to rescue me from my eventual demise. It was disheartening and very difficult to deal with. You normally deal with your own mortality at a fairly young age. However, for me, I was much older when I really began to consider the fact that I would face the same fate as every person who has ever lived (except Jesus of course).

I think many Christians today think the same way. They think that more than likely they will be raptured before tasting the sting of death. It makes people act a certain way in the world. They don’t care as much about the things that they ought to. They act more radical than they otherwise might. They live their life a different way.

Now, I live day-to-day. I live for the moment. I never know when I might die so I live as though it is inevitable – because it is. I live like it is immanent – because it is. In the breadth of all of history, ours is but a moment in time. What will we be able to do in our sphere of influence in that time? “How Shall We Live”?