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The Rapture Exposed

Westview Press

Chapter One

If I knew the world were going to end tomorrow I would plant a tree. MARTIN LUTHER I need a new car. Something tells me it's going to be our only chance to survive. "BUCK" WILLIAMS (TIM LAHAYE AND JERRY JENKINS, NICOLAE, 12) We need a shelter ... I'm talking about getting an earthmover in here and digging out a place we can escape to. REV. BRUCE BARNES (LAHAYE AND JENKINS, TRIBULATION FORCE, 32)

The rapture is a racket. Whether prescribing a violentscript for Israel or survivalism in the United States, this theologydistorts God's vision for the world. In place of healing, theRapture proclaims escape. In place of Jesus' blessing of peacemakers,the Rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war. In place ofRevelation's vision of the Lamb's vulnerable self-giving love, theRapture celebrates the lion-like wrath of the Lamb. This theology isnot biblical. We are not Raptured off the earth, nor is God. No, Godhas come to live in the world through Jesus. God created the world,God loves the world, and God will never leave the world behind!

Rapture theology is disastrous for the Middle East and it is evenmore dangerous for planet earth. Proponents love to use the imageof a countdown, reminiscent of a missile launch or space travel. Godhas a clock that is counting down, its hands drawing ever closer tomidnight. Never mind that clocks and stopwatches were not inventeduntil long after the Bible was written, it is their favorite image.God's prophetic stopwatch is ticking down to the end of the world.

John Hagee, pastor of the 15,000-member Cornerstone Churchin San Antonio, borrows his particular doomsday clock from theBulletin of the Atomic Scientists, an effort on the part of nuclear scientiststo alert the world to the danger of nuclear annihilation. In1947, these scientists initially set the hands of the clock at sevenminutes to midnight. They periodically moved the hands closer orfurther from midnight depending on their evaluation of the globalnuclear arms risk.

"God has a similar clock, my friend, and its hands never movebackward," writes Hagee in the introduction to his book Daniel toDoomsday: The Countdown Has Begun. "Doomsday-the stroke ofmidnight-is coming." But note the crucial difference betweenHagee's prophetic doomsday clock and that of the scientists. Thenuclear scientists developed their clock to alert the world to ourperilous situation so that the hands will never reach midnight. The scientistsare trying to keep us from destroying the world.

Not Hagee. For him and other Rapture proponents the stroke ofmidnight on the doomsday clock is inevitable and even welcome.God plans to destroy the earth and there is nothing we can do tostop it. The countdown to the end is already under way. Each chapter of Hagee's book advances the clock one minute closer to midnight,culminating in the final chapter, entitled "Midnight: Doomsdayat the Great White Throne," when the world comes to an end.

The Rapture is the reason Hagee and so many others revel in theprospect of destruction for the earth; the Rapture will be their"great escape" from earth. As Hagee boasts about the Rapture,"Believers in Christ will escape doomsday! Mark it down, take it toheart, and comfort one another with these words. Doomsday iscoming for the earth, for nations, and for individuals, but thosewho have trusted in Jesus will not be present on earth to witnessthe dire time of tribulation."

Similarly, Hal Lindsey writes, "Although I grieve over the lostworld that is headed toward catastrophe, the hope of the Rapturekeeps me from despair in the midst of ever-worsening world conditions."He and other proponents of the Rapture are confident thatJesus will come to snatch or "Rapture" them up to heaven beforeunleashing a seven-year period of global tribulation and terribledestruction on the earth. Lindsey interprets Revelation's referenceto "those who dwell in heaven" in chapter 12 of Revelation as proofthat he and other Christians will not be found on earth during thewoes and tribulation but rather will be part of "another specialgroup called 'those who dwell in heaven.'" Only non-Christianswill suffer the fate of being "left behind" on earth.

In the summer of 2003 Ted Turner and Public Broadcasting Systemsponsored an eight-hour special "Avoiding Armageddon,"warning of nuclear and chemical weapons proliferation and urgingthe world's leaders to take steps to curb the danger. The next week,in reviewing the week's news through her end-times lenses, abreathless Rexella Van Impe asked her husband on their fundamentalistChristian cable television show, "Jack, Ted Turner thinksArmageddon can be avoided. Is he right?" No, Armageddon cannotbe avoided, was Jack Van Impe's enthusiastic reply to viewers. VanImpe is the author of The Great Escape: Preparing for the Rapture, theNext Event on God's Prophetic Clock and other books on the Raptureand the Middle East. Like Hagee and Lindsey, he is confident thatGod will destroy the earth and also that he and Rexella will be rapturedup to heaven before it all happens.

Rapture and Armageddon scenarios tap into Americans' love fordisaster films and survivalist plot lines. Readers of end-times novelsreadily envision themselves among the select few who will escapeplanetary disaster. Like the remnant who survive an attack on theplanet by alien creatures in the 1996 film Independence Day, or thecouple who survey the devastation of New York City after the tidalwave caused by the impact from a comet in the movie Deep Impact,or survivors in the 1998 thriller Armageddon, readers of these scriptsplace themselves in the role of the elite individual heroes who willsurvive Armageddon or other disasters while the rest of the planetperishes. Even once-jailed televangelist Jim Bakker has now disavowedhis previous pre-Tribulation Rapture theology as escapist,calling it a racket that preached a false gospel of prosperity-combinedwith the promise of escape from any consequences.

Christ will return, on that the Rapture proponents and I agree. Ipray for it each time I pray "Thy kingdom come" in the Lord'sPrayer-a prayer that is never once prayed in the twelve Left Behindnovels. Jesus taught an urgency about his kingdom in this prayerthat is still very much alive for Christians today.

But we completely disagree on what that urgency means for theworld and for our life today. We differ, first of all, on our views ofGod-whether our God is a God whose will is to destroy theworld. Second, we differ on whether Christians are to embrace anescapist ethics, as Rapture proponents argue, or are to urgentlylove and care for the world in anticipation of Christ's return, as Iadvocate. These differences in ethics will be crucial for our future.

GOD STILL LOVES THE WORLD-GOD DOES NOT DESTROY THE EARTH

Jesus is coming back at a moment we cannot know. But that doesnot mean that God is getting ready to destroy the earth and takeChristians away to another planet. A Presbyterian pastor taught mea Rapture song he learned as a child: "Somewhere in...