RUptured Rapture III

Due to the mysterious disappearance of Uncle Cephas, this blog is now in new hands.---not

...All kidding aside, there probably are people who might have taken my last two posts seriously.

Then again, when my brethren of the Dispensationalist persuasion get all excited about the imminent return of Christ every time a bomb goes off in the Middle East, other good friends of mine foul their breeches every time there are a few more tornadoes touching down this season. They believe we're all going to roast to death next year due to human-induced global warming, even though we're still a long way from being able to raise veggies and milk cattle even in the southernmost parts of Greenland (as the Norse settlers did a scant millennium ago). Other people whom I love believe that dungeons and thumbscrews in the basement of the US Capitol are just another bill away the minute the Jumboes displace the Jackasses as the slightly majority party in either house of Congress. Heck. When I waxed sarcastic and said that as a good Evangelical I was going to enjoyed live liberated lesbian stew instead of roast turkey for Thanksgiving, a learned colleague of mine actually believed me! Well, that's one I'll never try again.

The point of the matter is that apocalypticism is a good way to rally the troops and get them fired up for the next campaign, be it evangelistic or political. It's also a good way to get attention, or skew perceptions of the truth in a way you'd like.

Good job, Harold Camping! You had people talking about you from coast to coast! Now, why not study up on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and give them a little more prominence in your ministry?

After all,
That's what Paul
Would have said to steady
Us and get us ready
One the way
To that great day.

Ruptured Rapture?

Atheists--otherwise known as idolators too dishonest or disingenuous to name their gods--are planning to celebrate on Saturday, when, according to a certain Mr. Camping, Jesus Christ will return and rapture his church. Fundamentalist Christian though he be, Uncle Cephas is not about to don ascension robes and wait for the trumpet to sound, but will go about his ordinary business.

For those who do not know what it is, the "raputre" is when Christ removes his church from the world at his second coming. The doctrine is derived from I Thessalonians 4:16-18:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven witha shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words.

Many today believe that this "rapture of the saints" will be a secret affair, to remove the church from earth just before the great tribulation just prior to the end of the world. With this point of view, Uncle Cephas demurs. Paul's passage is one of the loudest in the whole Bible, with shouts and trumpets. It seems to be simply God's way of handling those saints alive on the day of resurrection.

But as for Camping's prediction that Christ will rapture his church this Saturday, Jesus himself says "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Hence, Uncle Cephas is fairly certain that the world will not come to its consummation this Saturday, nor, for that matter, any time during 2012.

One would think that we should have learned our lesson back in 1844 and 1845, when, ignoring Brother William Miller's predictions, Christ refrained from returning, despite the elaborate calculations and earnest searching of the Scriptures that preceeded that expectation. But somehow, every age seems to have its Campings, who are more than ready to earnestly and soberly give grist to the mills of those who sit in the seat of the scornful and counsel of the ungodly (Psalm 1:1)

Still, let all Christians watch and pray, and continue witnessing and doing good. After all, we will still be a day closer to the Day of Judgment, no matter what. And let all seekers be aware that the blood of Christ continues to speak better things than the blood of Abel, the latter condemning the sinner; the former being the atonement for the same (Isaiah 53, Hebrews 2), and the bride of Christ (the church) still says with the Holy Spirit "come" (Rev. 22:17).