Yesterday afternoon I received a letter in the mail from someone who I have not seen for many years, but who is related to people I know better and have seen more recently. This letter contained a single solitary cd entitled “Rapture Prep” with no letters or explanatory documentation, and so I was rather leery of its contents. This morning I decided to investigate the cd, even though it appeared rather sketchy, at the very least so that I might see its contents. I still have no idea why it was sent to me, or if anyone else has received a similar cd (if you have, please let me know).

Upon investigation of this cd, I found that it was more or less divided into four sections. The main cd itself had some notes and advice on how to use the materials and what material would be of most use if one were an atheist/agnostic, a Muslim, a Jew, a Christian who did not believe in heaven and hell, or one who was not sure about the rapture. There were other articles and lessons that appeared specifically targeted to different religious groups, including Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Lutherans, and Roman Catholics. It appeared that at least one purpose of this very odd cd, contained of reading material, audio lessons, and videos (some of which, unfortunately (?) do not work on a Mac computer such as I am using right now, is to provide a fairly wide-ranging work on “Christian” apologetics.

The other part of this work, none of which appears to have been original with my acquaintance, except perhaps the copying of it, is a specific approach to premillennial eschatology based upon a specific interpretation of prophetic scriptures to support the rapture. Oddly enough, this particular eschatological approach approach appears to support a KJV-only approach, as the cd included a digital copy of the KJV version, which is one version which I do not own at all in my personal library (for very specific reasons).

And at this point it is worthwhile to discuss those reasons, as they relate to my general issues with rapture eschatology in general. It is my general experience that those who are very vocal about being KJV-only not only lack historical awareness when it comes to their favored translation of the Bible, but also when it it comes to larger questions, including questions of eschatology. The King James Version was itself a revision of the Bishop’s Bible, an “official” Bible based off of Erasmus’ Textus Receptus that had a marked bias toward the authority of the bishops and the corrupt hierarchical structure of the Anglican Church. The beauty and elegance of the King James Version (which was never actually “authorized” by King James) is largely stolen without attribution from better translations of the Bible from William Tyndale and the Geneva translators (I have a particular love of both the Tyndale and Geneva translations, and both are well-represented in my Bible library). It must be conceded on textual grounds that the Textus Receptus, even if it does utilize the Byzantine Majority Text (which I prefer on historical grounds as far as Greek manuscripts are concerned), is not a representative sample, allowing some errors (like the Johannine pericope in 1 John 5:7) to creep in.

Where this relates to eschatology is rather straightforward. An exclusive use of an imperfect and inferior translation (inferior both on technical grounds as well as on moral grounds as being the unattributed work taken and in some cases corrupted, as in the use of bishop over elder in the Pauline epistles, from the better works of others) demonstrates a lack of historical awareness and a rather narrow and partisan perspective. And the same is true with a rapture theory, which again depends on forcing a specific interpretation into broader and general problems of deliverance that tends to bolster pietistic ideals of desiring to escape from a troubled world (and not bear our responsibility for its state through our inaction) and also reflects a historical and biblical ignorance of how God works to deliver believers as a faithful remnant through persecution.

And this I have to say despite my own premillennial eschatological views. I do happen to believe that there is a futurist meaning to Revelation which demands a visible and premillennial coming of Jesus Christ to establish His rule over the entire earth. But, as someone who also believes that the historicist, spiritual, and preterist interpretations biblical prophecy are also valid at least in part, to force the Bible to mean one thing and only one thing when it comes to deliverance from tribulation is itself grossly improper. The most reliable way to understand how God will work with people in the future is to understand how God has worked throughout humanity in history, and this demonstrates the extreme unlikelihood of the rapture, which has never been the way God has worked with His people in history.

Let us give a few examples from scripture. In a time of great trial and tribulation in ancient Israel, the prophet Elijah was accused to have been “raptured” away by God’s spirit by the godly palace servant Obadiah (see 1 Kings 18:9-14). But Elijah’s rapturing away was not to heaven, as is mistakenly thought (see 2 Kings 2:1-18), but rather to other parts of the earth (see 2 Chronicles 21:12-15, written after his chariot ride). When Obadiah accused Elijah of being raptured, was he going to heaven? No, he had just come back from dwelling with a widow of Zerephath, a city in the region of Sidon, a neighbor of Israel. This was similar to the rapture of Philip by the spirit from the oasis where he baptized the Ethiopian eunuch (see Acts 8:39) or that of Enoch (see Genesis 5:24), where God’s Holy Spirit moves people along the earth to do His work and to deliver them from death, but not to bring them to His throne.

Most of the ways that God protects His people are not through such “rapturing” that moves them along the earth, but through the protection God gives even through suffering, whether it involves actual captivity (like that of Daniel and Ezekiel) or whether it involves God saving people through sieges and other great suffering, as was the case with Jeremiah or those people who sighed and cried at the sins committed in the temple (see Ezekiel 9:4). The fact that the deliverance of God’s people throughout recorded history has not been by hiding them in heaven, but by providing a means of escape from trials or preservation through trials suggests that this is how God will continue to work during whatever times of tribulation we have yet to face.

And yet why is the idea of a rapture and an escape from the problems of earth so appealing? If people do not desire to take responsibility for life, or for showing people a better way to live, their plans consist of finding an escape. Rapture, at its core, is a means of escape from the suffering and trials and burdens of responsibility in this world. If we are in preparation to be kings and priests, we are being prepared to rule. We do not prepare to rule by running away from the problems that we will be called upon to help resolve. We’d better start working on those problems now.