Behold, I am telling you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. [1 Corinthians 15:51-52 (NASB)]
When researching another devotion, I learned that a Jeopardy contestant missed this $1,000 clue: “It’s the ascension heavenward by true Christians both living & dead at Christ’s second coming.” Although the answer was the Rapture, the contestant, an Episcopal priest, remained silent. He later explained that he didn’t believe in the Rapture or hold to a literal reading of Revelation, adding that the literal reading of Revelation is a “a product of the modern era.” His words gave me pause.
In the decades I attended denominational churches, I never heard any reference to the Rapture and can’t recall ever hearing a sermon about the tribulation or Christ’s return. While I’d read bits and pieces of Revelation, it seemed so bizarre after the first three chapters that I thought the Apostle John might have imbibed in the 1st century version of LSD. It was not until I began attending more evangelical and Bible-based churches that I became familiar with both the Rapture and Revelation.
Although not found in Scripture, the word “rapture” comes from the Latin rapiõ meaning “to seize, snatch away,” which is equivalent to the Greek word harpazõ or “caught up” that is found in 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 and 1 Corinthians 15:50-52. In the Rapture, dead and living believers will be caught up together to meet Jesus in the clouds to make way for God’s judgment and wrath that will be poured out on the earth during the Tribulation. Because Scripture is unclear about how and when this will occur, Paul called it a mystērion—something that only can be known through God’s revelation. Being a mystery, however, doesn’t mean something like it won’t happen.
While there is general agreement throughout the Church about the resurrection of the dead and Christ’s return, there is a diversity of thoughts about the particulars. Unlike essential doctrine in which Christians have unity (e.g. the forgiveness of sins and Christ’s deity, death, and resurrection), there’s plenty of liberty about the specifics of the end times and Christ’s return. That Episcopal priest is just one of many Christians who don’t believe in the Rapture.
My issue is with the priest’s easy dismissal of Revelation. Perhaps he’s like a mainstream pastor friend who questions whether Revelation belongs in the Bible. Even though the New Testament canon was not firmly established until 397, the book of Revelation was considered part of the Church’s holy Scriptures in the early stages of Christianity. It was listed as part of the canon around 180 AD in both Irenaeus’ Against Heresies and on the Muratorian Fragment. Church fathers like Irenaeus (bishop of Lyons), Papias (bishop of Hierapolis), Theophilus (bishop of Antioch), Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria all accepted the Apocalypse as revealed in John’s vision.
While a renewed interest in Revelation may be “a product of the modern era,” the earliest church fathers like Irenaeus and Justin Martyr took a literal view of the thousand-year reign with Christ. It was only after Constantine awarded full legal recognition and favor to the Christian church in 313 and Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire in 380 that the focus of the church changed. No longer being persecuted for their faith, Christians went from looking for their ultimate comfort in the world beyond the grave to seeking comfort in this world. As believers became more content in the here and now, they became less eager for the Apocalypse, God’s future judgment, and Jesus’ return.
While we don’t know whether the end is near or in another 2,000 years, we should look to Christ’s promised return. As the final chapter of our salvation, Revelation never should be ignored, scorned, or forgotten. It can be confusing, intimidating, and mind-boggling at times, and we’ll probably never fully understand it. Nevertheless, Revelation is worth reading; after all, it’s the only book in the Bible promising a blessing to those who read its words and do what it says!
Our fast-paced world is ever-changing and once ordinary items like slide rules, cassette tapes, boom boxes, floppy discs, dial phones, film, and VCRs are relics. My kids don’t use maps, write checks, or have a land line and my grands have never used a library card catalogue, set of encyclopedias, dictionary, carbon paper, or typewriter. We no longer need to get up to change channels, turn the lights on or off, or see who’s at the door. Our camera, maps, calculator, credit cards, compass, note pad, address book, plane tickets, and Bible all fit into our cell phones and everything on our phones (along with a fitness tracker and heart monitor) fits into a watch!
I’ve heard it said that no one is truly educated without a passing knowledge of Greek mythology, the works of William Shakespeare, and the Bible. The people who compete on the game show Jeopardy, however, are supposed to have more than a passing knowledge of those subjects and many more. Last month, however, all three Jeopardy contestants were baffled when the $200 clue wanted to know what came between “Our Father which art in Heaven” and “be thy name” in Matthew 6:9. None of the contestants even ventured a guess and, after an embarrassing silence, host Mayim Bialik supplied the answer: “What is ‘hallowed’?”
The Israelites had just crossed the Jordan River and were preparing to conquer Canaan when Joshua came upon an armed man. Joshua was a stranger in a foreign land and, as Israel’s general, he may have been scrutinizing Jericho’s defenses to determine his plan of attack. I wonder if Joshua brandished his sword (while shaking in his sandals) as he queried, “Friend or foe?” The man, however, was neither ally nor adversary. Identifying himself as the commander-in-chief of the Lord’s army, his loyalty was to neither side. His allegiance was to God and the only side he was on was God’s! God wasn’t on Israel’s side any more than He was on Canaan’s. Israel, however, was on God’s side because their conquest of Jericho was part of His master plan of redemption. It was because they were on God’s side that the fortified city’s walls collapsed.
I think Satan chuckles every time he sees another division in Christ’s church. He probably shouted with glee when the Southern Baptist Convention recently expelled five congregations (including the mega Saddleback church) and when the no-longer-united United Methodists lost 1,800 congregations and found themselves embroiled in lawsuits with many of those congregations. Although Methodist Bishop Tom Berlin sadly noted that, “The path of anger and hostility is not the Christian way,” it seems to have become the way of Christ’s church in the 21st century! While today’s issues are different, they are no less divisive than an issue that threatened the very existence of the early church.
Immediately after the Parable of the Mustard Seed, Jesus compared the Kingdom of Heaven to the yeast a woman added to “three measures of flour” when making bread. While “measures” seems vague, the original word used wasn’t. It was seah (about a peck and a half of flour) and three seahs were over 167 cups (nearly 50 pounds) of flour. This was an enormous amount of flour for just “a little yeast” and, as He did in the previous parable, Jesus used hyperbole to emphasize the power of something very small. The question in this parable is whether the yeast is a metaphor for a bad or a good thing.
Devotions of the Heart 