Did You Know The Rapture Wasn't Originally In The Bible?

[GOPS Worst Fear]

I watched the National Geographic Channel the other night and they talked about "The Secret of the Revelation" in the Bible. It said the rapture as we believe it was NOT in the original Bible. That it was based on a woman's vision. Margaret McDonald was born in 1815,was a Scottish-Irish woman, is credited as the originator of the Pre-Tribulation view.

http://www.prophetseye.com/margaret%20macdonald.htm

How it got into the Bible?

A man by the name of John Nelson Darby helped put it into the Bible.Darby is noted in the theological world as the father of "dispensationalism," later made popular in the United States by Cyrus Scofield's Scofield Reference Bible. He originated the "secret rapture" theory wherein Christ will snatch away his true believers from this world without warning. Dispensationalist beliefs about the fate of the Jews and the re-establishment of the Kingdom of Israel put dispensationalists at the forefront of Christian Zionism. He did so, based on Margaret Macdonald's vision.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Nelson_Darby

[Rabrrrrrr]

1. Dude, you didn't listen quite closely enough.

The rapture isn't in the Bible at all.

John Darby's stuff made the idea of a "rapture" part of Christian thinking, within some subsets of Christianity, but he didn't **put** it into the Bible. He either **read** it into the Bible (a process called eisegesis) or more likely just simply and ignorantly made it up based on a very errant reading of Scripture.

But even after Darby, the Bible still doesn't have the "rapture" in it.

[melnjones]

2. lol, thanks...

You saved me the trouble of having to say the same thing.

[Erika]

3. How about the uplifting of the 144,000 righteous?

That is in the Bible and the Jehovah Witness's totally believe in it.

[Drum]

9. That applied to 12 tribes.

Do Jehovah's Witnesses belong to that group as a birth/bllodline thing, or are they converts, recruitments, etc?

Only those with a birthright to the 12 tribes "in the Bible" would qualify, wouldn't they? Besides, there were far fewer people on earth 2000 years ago...numbers mean nothing, and the text besides is incomplete and arbitrarily selected.

[Erika]

12. They are sticking with the 144,000 number

as a fundamental Biblical fact.

[okoboji]

21. ha ...... 144,000

anytime a Jehovah Witness comes a knocking at my door, I always say the same thing to them .... I will only join up if you can guarantee that I will be part of the 144,000 ....

they leave quickly enough.

[RoyGBiv]

11. What's funny ...

What's funny about the 144,000 is that you can find about 144,000 different interpretations of who and what those 144,000 are or are supposed to be. I'm exaggerating a bit, but just a bit.

For instance, this number is mentioned twice. Some say these are two different groups. Others say they are the same. Some say they are all virgins. Others say they are simply "pure of heart" or some such thing. And then there are those who say that one group is virginal, the other not.

The variations could go on and on and on...

[ProudDad]

29. Isn't that

the number of people who paid to go to Woodstock?

Maybe only the people who paid for Woodstock get to go?


It makes as much sense as anything else in that silly book.

[GOPS Worst Fear]

6. My point was...

The Born-agains continue to claim that the Rapture exists and says it's in the Bible..when it isn't.Not the Pre tribulation version.

[TankLV]

16. That is correct. The "rapture" is pure, unadulterated BULLSHIT.

[bdamomma]

28. this should be no surprise to us

because these people only believe BS, Bush=BS

[LittleClarkie]

18. Indeed. It's Darby's interpretation OF the Bible that's at issue

The other theory I've heard and rather liked was that the beast was Cesear, and the mark of the beast was the mark you had put on you because you were supposed to worship him each day and be able to prove it. The crypic writing of Revelations was the early Christians way of talking about Cesear and what was going on in their world without getting in trouble, since the writing would make no sense to anyone who wasn't a believer. It was meant as a writing of hope for the future.

That's my pov anyway.

[WCGreen]

30. A Cesear, not thee Cesear....

Revelations are common in the bible...

All it means is a visionary dream...

The historical folks believe that the book of Revelations, Johns Revelations, was penned at about 90 CE and had to do with the friction between the Jesus Movement as practived by the Jews and the Jesus Movement as practiced by converts and gentiles...

Far cry from damnation and Hell's fire....

[sam sarrha]

22. much of what gOD did is old Sumerian stories.. gOD is a plagiarist.!!

Genesis and the flood were stories from Sumeria, the originals had no gOD involved in them, just stories.

also Revelation of John is not from the John who was the disciple, Todays largest Death Cult is based on a political rant by a guy named john ,80 years after the death of Jesus.... that was written in code during the persecution of the Christians, he was giving the romans hell about politics, he apparently was a prolific writer.. even the Catholic church knows it is bogus but it is to good a manipulative tool to toss out. i read about this first in a Jewish research book ..it had the bible scripture of the new testiment on the left page and the historical relevence on the right page.. explaining what it was about and what was going on socially and politically at the time, it was a facinating book

[On the Road]

25. Well, What' s in the Bible

is in 1 Thessalonians:

6For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.

Certainly sounds like the rapture. Of course, what you call it depends on how it relates to other descriptions of the end times, such as Mark 13, which is typically seen as a description of the "Tribulation." Jesus says:

19because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning... 20If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive.... 26"At that time men will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory.

As to whether those are two descriptions of the same event, or how they relate to each other and all the other Biblical references, the Bible itself does not lay out a sequence. If you believe them, you have to lay out your own.

For centuries, the dominant interpretation was that the Tribulation occurred in the past, when Jerusalem was beseiged and destroyed by the Romans, supposedly as a judgment from God over the death of Jesus. With the Tribulation out of the way, the Second Coming of Jesus could occur at any time with no particular historical signs.

Darby may not have been the first to put the Tribulation in the future, but he was the great popularizer of that interpretation. His system of Dispensationalism is almost universal among evangelicals. Most Protestants don't even know there's any other interpretation, even in churches (eg Presbyterian) who used to utterly reject dispensationalism.

As a literalist,Darby must have found it difficult to accept that the moon turned to blood in 70 AD, even though Isaiah and other prophets used cosmological descriptions to refer to ordinary historical events.

Even more importantly, placing the Tribulation in the future allows an evangelist to scare an audience with forebodings of worldwide suffering and to thrill it with predictions of strange and wonderful events that may happen in the near future. The temptation was probably too great to resist.

This is not to agree or disagree with the OP, just to give some context.

[wyldwolf]

32. I did a text search for "rapture" and got this

Fab Five Freddie told me everybody's high
DJ's spinnin' are savin' my mind
Flash is fast, Flash is cool
Francois sez fas, Flashe' no do
And you don't stop, sure shot
Go out to the parking lot
And you get in your car and you drive real far
And you drive all night and then you see a light
And it comes right down and lands on the ground
And out comes a man from Mars...

[RoyGBiv]

4. Interpretation ...

You're talking about what a historian or literary analyst would call interpretation.

"The Rapture" is based on interpretation, rather sloppy and disjointed interpretation at that.

Biblical scholars who aren't caught up in their own dogma will likely tell you most of the passages used to develop the idea of a rapture-like event are historical, i.e. describing a contemporary event, and not prophetic at all.

[rurallib]

5. A lot of the crap in the bibble kind of slid in

Had a chance to read the Bart Ehrman book? "Misquoting Jesus" is the name I think. Lots and lots of stuff kind of got in there because some one 500 years later thought it would fit, like the "let anyone among who has not sinned cast the first stone" story.
When you think that much of the new testament was written long after Christ died, AND that of all the writings only a few were selected that reflected a certain ideology you begin to understand that the bible is more a political book than a history/ religious book. In my opinion.

[acmavm]

8. The Bible has been tampered with since the days shortly after

the first draft. More rewrites than a bad Hollywood movie.

[GOPS Worst Fear]

10. You should also Check out "Banned From The Bible" on A&E

It talks about the Apocalyptic verses of St. Paul in which it talks about Jesus, Thomas, and others being ascending into hell. It also talks about a verse that says when Jesus comes back and sets up his kingdom he is going to let the sinners out of hell. That part surely would upset all the self righteous born agains who think they will be the only ones that live again.

[zeemike]

24. Actually there is no evidence to show that

And in fact the only evidence we have is the Dead Sea Scrolls, and that evidence actually points to the probability that the bible as we have it today is an accurate copy of the one that existed in the first century.
The parts of the scrolls that had the old testament were word for word the same as we have today, and that proves that at least for the old testament, it was copied accurately over the last 2000 years.
We assume too much when we think that monks copying the bible in a monastery made mistakes or just changed the text to suit themselves. I see no reason to think that the copiers of the bible had problems with integrity.

[Alexodin]

7. Darby didn't write any part of the Bible he simply interpreted

some highly symbolic passages literally. The fundamentalists have great difficulty distinguishing metaphor from literal.

[Drum]

13. The attempted indoctrination of me (in my teens) clearly implied that

...that faith had to trump thinking (called "skepticism.") Once they close can that door, the sky's the limit.

[SlipperySlope]

17. Why would God speak in metaphors?

I don't think he needs to mumble.

[Alexodin]

20. The men that wrote the Bible really did have to worry about

persecution. Jesus spoke in parables to avoid the sedition laws of the day. Much of the Bible is highly symbolic for others reasons. Symbolism can be very powerful which is one reason why fascists love flags and things like swastikas so much. It may have been a way of keeping the knowledge sequestered among a chosen group of elites and therefore exclusive. Exclusivity is very desirable when marketing anything because only you have it.

[Hardrada]

19. And satire from reality.

[GrpCaptMandrake]

14. True, true!

Darby is the worst thing ever to happen to English-speaking Christianity.

And the Religion Industry Goons/Fascists don't know that Revelations, itself, is a coded message to the followers of The Way who were being dipped in oil and having fence posts stuffed up their asses so they could serve as streetlights on the Appian Way.

That's way to obvious for the literalists. They need to really believe in a seven headed monster. I bet the old Godzilla movies make 'em wet themselves.

[1monster]

15. uh huh. That's what would make all these folks trying to bring on

Armageddon so desperately a real comedy if it were not for the fact that bringing on Armageddon will only lead to disaster for everyone and every thing on the little blue planet...

[Sam Odom]

23. There is NO Rapture

Like there are no 'christ' or 'allah' or 'jehovah' or '_______'

Christians can kiss my ass :)

[Blue_In_AK]

26. Not only was it not originally in the Bible

but it still isn't. It's all the product of someone's fevered imagination.

[NMMNG]

27. I know

Yet countless fundies are spraying their shorts over this ball of nonsense. They are willing to kill and to die for it. And that is bloody scary.

[Bridget Burke]

31. Real Fundamentalists agree with you.

Here are some opinions from those who KNOW their Bible:

Rev. Barbara Rossing, a biblical scholar, teaches at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago. She spent a year studying the "Left Behind" novels, and now, she's written her own book, “The Rapture Exposed,” designed to debunk the theories of LaHaye and Jenkins.

“You can piece together that vengeful warrior Jesus. You can find him here and there. But the heart of the Bible, the overwhelming message, even in the Book of Revelation, is a non-violent lamb who conquers, not by killing people, but by giving his life,” says Rossing, who believes that the "Left Behind" authors are marketing a false view of the Bible....

... Rev. Peter Gomes, a Baptist theologian at Harvard University, and one of the country's preeminent Christian thinkers, says the Book of Revelation has questionable roots.

“It’s the only book of all the Scripture written in a kind of metaphorical, metaphysical code. It’s unlike any Gospel, unlike any poetry or history," says Gomes. "And it's called Revelation, because it's the inside of the head of this fellow John. And some people have said the inside of the head of a man who was filled with splendid and glorious hallucinations."

www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/04/13/60II/main611661.shtml

I'm not implying that these scholars are Fundamentalists, strictly speaking. But their critiques are based on serious Biblical scholarship. (You can find Hardshell Fundamentalist sites that agree with them.)

Read the rest of the article to realize why many less scholarly oppose the Rapture theory. Much of its current popularity is based on the Left Behind books, co-written by the loathsome Tim LaHaye, a founder of the Religious Right.

[Jacobin]

33. Um, "The Bible"

(as if some consider it to be a single work of divine creation) is merely a collection of writings over a long period of time, translated according to political agenda from time to time, changed according to political agenda from time to time, with certain gospels left in and certain gospels left out. To deny this as a fact is a basic failure to deal honestly with reality.

It is entirely man made, has no connection to some spaghetti monster in the sky, and has about as much right to be venerated or worshipped as your average romance novel in your local BooksAMillion.

The fact that the leadership of certain nations appears to be guided in foreign and domestic affairs by how contemporary druids interpret this gibberish is not cause for concern, it is cause to consider how one might expect to survive in the second coming of the Middle Ages, which is clearly almost upon us.