Anyone read David Currie's Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind?

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I haven’t read it but I think I will. Another good refutation of the whole dispensational-pretrib-rapture doctrine is by a man named David Chilton. (of blessed memory)
He was not a catholic (of course he is now) but he came from the post-millennial Christian reconstruction camp out of the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler Texas.
His book “Paradise Restored” is a very basic explanation of post-millennialism with a fair number of footnotes. The follow-up tome, which is not for the casual reader, is called “Days of Vengeance” and is extensively footnoted and referenced.
Again, these are NOT catholic books by any stretch of the imagination. However you can actually download them for free at
freebooks.com This is the publisher’s website. Speaking of the publisher, a fellow named Gary North, he can be kind of rough around the edges if you know what I mean. So try not to be offended if you read any of his stuff. Sorry Gary.

Peace,
+Nathan
 
Mijoy2 said:
Jeanette L, I’d further recommend visiting Shoeman’s web site by the same name of his book www.salvationisfromthejews.com.

In particular find and listen (it’s a pretty easy site to navigate around) to his interview by Steve Wood (I beleive is his name). It’s facinating and talks a great deal about end-time issues from a Catholic perspective. Schoeman has been well received by virtually all of EWTNs most popular personalities. He’s been a quest at one time or another on all of EWTNs broadcasts. This says a lot to me about Schoeman’s credability.

You’ll also find he has a new book on the horizon. I can’t wait!
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Thanks a bunch! Funny how you can get sent into a completely different direction at a moments notice. Three nights ago I was starting a book on women mystics of the Church, I guess I’ll have to save that for another time, all this end times stuff has got me busy now!

And of course, all this at the same time that Iranian nut is here making all kinds of noise. That’s what really gets my old Evangelical mindset spinning!:rolleyes:
 
Jeanette_L said:
Thanks a bunch! Funny how you can get sent into a completely different direction at a moments notice. Three nights ago I was starting a book on women mystics of the Church, I guess I’ll have to save that for another time, all this end times stuff has got me busy now!
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😃 That’s how I get, too. That’s why I have a stack of books on my nightstand that I’ll never get to, but keep adding to!

If you haven’t already, you may want to visit this thread for more “Rapture” refuting resources:

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=110317
 
Read it, loved it—1st comprehensive, coherent explanation for the sleight of hand games the Darbyites play with Scripture. Mainline Protestants should enjoy it as well; Methodists, Episcopalians, etc tend not to be Rapture theologians and thus may find this a very useful tool in understanding the eschatology of Scripture.
 
Teflon93 said:
Read it, loved it—1st comprehensive, coherent explanation for the sleight of hand games the Darbyites play with Scripture. Mainline Protestants should enjoy it as well; Methodists, Episcopalians, etc tend not to be Rapture theologians and thus may find this a very useful tool in understanding the eschatology of Scripture.
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I love it also.
 
Am I missing something here,the rapture theory is not part of catholic teaching.Jesus will come once only at the end of the world as written in the apostles creed.(To judge the living and the dead).also look in the catechism.
 
robert_ambrose said:
Am I missing something here,the rapture theory is not part of catholic teaching.Jesus will come once only at the end of the world as written in the apostles creed.(To judge the living and the dead).also look in the catechism.
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I see that you are from New Zealand, so you probably aren’t quite as bombarded as we are here in America with the erroneous Pre-Tribulation Rapture teachings that run rampant in most of the Evangelical, Fundamentalist and Non-Denominational churches here.

The book written by David Currie refutes these errors using Scripture, to give Catholics a good understanding of the issue and keep them from falling into the error themselves. It is a very seductive teaching (the Pre-Trib Rapture) and many Catholics are drawn away from the Church because of it.
 
What made a really big impression on me were the true stories in the introduction. People deciding NOT to fight abortion because it would be “polishing brass on a sinking ship” (the END was coming, so what difference would it make?), people deciding NOT to have children, NOT to buy a house, NOT to finish getting their degrees, etc. I thought, “Are you kidding me? People decided to just stop living because they believed the world was going to end any day now?”

But David’s own story of coming home from school when he was a 10-year-old child and not finding his mom or his sisters home, not knowing where they were and, in a panic, thinking “IT HAPPENED!!!” and THEY were raptured and HE wasn’t so therefore he was “left behind”–now THAT really got to me.

Because most people I know who believe the Rapture is imminent don’t bother to get into all the “details” of what the Bible really says… their pastor TOLD them the Bible said so and that’s good enough for them. He pointed out the verses that prove it and that’s all they have to go on–“Look, see, it says it right here in Scripture!”

I have argued this point with a few people (especially the ones who were stockpiling water and food for Y2K because THEY KNEW the world was going to end… and the ones who made NO preparations for the same event because THEY KNEW they’d be raptured and so it wouldn’t affect them anyway!) and trying to get them to look past those verses that “prove” the Rapture is true and imminent is almost impossible. They seem to live for nothing else. They can’t wait to be snatched up into the clouds while the rest of us are “left behind”.

I wish I could get just ONE of them to read the book. But if their pastor doesn’t tell them to, they probably won’t (and they say Catholics don’t think for themselves, they just let the Pope tell them what to do and think!)
 
bluerose said:
But David’s own story of coming home from school when he was a 10-year-old child and not finding his mom or his sisters home, not knowing where they were and, in a panic, thinking “IT HAPPENED!!!” and THEY were raptured and HE wasn’t so therefore he was “left behind”–now THAT really got to me.
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Our Pentecostal pastor used to end every service with, “I’ll see you Sunday if the Lord doesn’t come first.” I used to whisper to my wife, “No need to print a bulletin then” and get my elbow in the ribs.

Currie has a great term for the continual errors in the predictions of the date of Christ’s return by Rapturists—“the rolling apocalypse”.
 
I just have to relate my favorite “end times” story.

A woman was on our local news one day to warn everybody that the end of the world was coming in just a few days. She and the members of her church had seen a sign of some very strange clouds that told them so. She even had a photograph of the sign.

This is what the sign looked like: at the top was a horizonal line with a kind of “tail” hanging down from its left end. Below that was a circle. Below that was yet another circle.

Such things do not appear in nature, so it certainly had to be a sign from God that the world was going to end.

Well, the reporter took the photograph, turned it 90 degrees, and said, “Isn’t that just a skywriting advertisement for the new 007 movie?”

She was speechless.

Just had to tell that story. Back to the topic!
 
Mannyfit75 said:
Anyone read Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind by David Currie?

Here is a summary of the book:

Author David Currie grew up conviced that one day all true Christians will suddenly be snatched up to heaven. The unfortunate souls left behind by this “rapture” will endure seven horrible years of tribulation, at the end of which Christ will return to earth for a glorious thousand-year reign.
Today, millions accept this end-times theology, assuming — as Currie did — that the Bible clearly teaches it. Many plan their lives around it. But, after studying Scripturefor decades, Currie has come to see that accepting the Bible means rejecting the rapture.

In this remarkable book — the world’s most careful and thorough scriptural study of the rapture — Currie demonstrates why. He considers all the relevant verses ( there are hundreds!) and examines them in the light of ancient history, the writings of the earliest Christians, and the claims of the rapturist theologians. With painstaking thoroughness, he unlocks the meaings of key biblical prophecies that culminate in Christ’s Messianic Kingdom— including those verses in Daniel, Matthew, and Revelation that rapturists turn to most.

Marshaling evidence as startling as it is compelling, Currie argues that these prophecies of war and tribulation don’t point to some still-unrealized apocalyptic future. Rather, most of them were fulfilled long ago: the spiritual, priestly Kingdom prefigured in the Old Testament was inaugurated on Calvary, consumated in 70 A.D. with the destruction of the Temple, and continues to exist today…the Catholic Church!

That surprise you. Yet, as Currie shows, it’s the only conclusion that fits all the scriptural and historical evidence.

Rapture: The End-Times Error that Leaves the Bible Behind makes Scripture, prophecy, and history come alive; and it demonstrates that if you open your Bible, you’ll find that God’s plan for the future of the world is not filled with darkness and disaster, but with light, mercy, and hope.
**
About the Author**

David B. Currie is a former Fundamentalist missionary whose deep study of the Bible led him into the Catholic Church. He is a popular speaker and author of Born Fundamentalist, Born Again Catholic.
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Yes. I’ve read the book. Very interesting and very well supported argument - from scripture. Worth the read if you’re going to be discussing this topic from a non-fundamentalist and/or non-dispensational POV.

Peace,
-Robert
 
Here is an interesting bit of scripture:

Those that believe in a pretrib secret rapture should have a problem with this verse

2 Pet 3:10

But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up.
 
Fidelis said:
This nation came to an end when, by and large, they did not recognize their Messiah in Jesus Christ and when their temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD – thus ending their sacrificial system.
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Come on Fidelis, scripture 101 time. Show me where the bible, either catholic or protestant bible, where it teaches the nation of Israel is nevermore. Sure you can find it in some ECF writings and teachings from people like Sungenis and Salza, but what about scripture? What does God say when he announces through Jeremiah that he will make a new Covenant with the House of Israel and Judah in Jeremiah 31?

To help you out, to sum up, Israel is as safe as the secrets of how God put the Universe together. Doesn’t Paul say there is now a remnant of Israel saved by grace in Jesus’ Church?

Yes, Moses warned to individuals who did not accept the prophet to come that is greater than he. But we now know God always has a believing remnant saved.
 
JoeyWarren said:
Here is an interesting bit of scripture:

Those that believe in a pretrib secret rapture should have a problem with this verse

2 Pet 3:10

But the day of the Lord shall come as a thief, in which the heavens shall pass away with great violence, and the elements shall be melted with heat, and the earth and the works which are in it, shall be burnt up.
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No problem at all with this one. The day of the Lord will come like a thief to the world. But take in consideration all the prophecies concerning the day of the Lord. In no particular order- the Lord coming to Israel to put an end to the seige of Jerusalem, the tribulation, the Wedding Supper of the Lamb, the Millineum, the Judgeing of nations for its treatment of Israel, the land and the people, the loosening of Satan at the end of a 1000 years and his last pitiful attempt to go up against the Lord Jesus. Revelation 21 speaks of a New Heaven and a New Earth because the first ones had passed away. They passed away after all other prophecies were fulfilled.

So the question YOU got to ask yourself, did Peter hear or read what was revealed to John in Revelations?

So what you have is a very accurate, but compressed view of the Day of the Lord in 2 Peter 3:10.
 
Fidelis said:
The modern, secular nation State of Israel is not equivalent to the biblical kingdom of the same name. OT Israel was a theocracy established by God to be led by Him and was closely tied to how well they trusted in him and obeyed the statutes he gave them. This nation came to an end when, by and large, they did not recognize their Messiah in Jesus Christ and when their temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD – thus ending their sacrificial system. The modern state of Israel, aided by the UN and Protestant Christians sympathetic to Dispensationalism, was established by Socialist Jewish refugees primarily from Easten Europe and Russia. Even many modern Jews correctly do not equate OT Israel with the State of Israel – though they rightly defend it’s right to exist in peace (as do I, of course).

Beginning Apologetics 8, What Catholics Believe About the Second Coming, the Rapture, Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and Indulgences, in commenting on some of the errors of the “Rapture” enthusists, states:
This *Catholic Answers *interview with Jewish converts Rosalind Moss and Roy Schoeman (not Schoemaker, as I mistated above)may also be helpful.
catholic.com/thisrock/2005/0501fea3.asp
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Back to you Fidelis. What about Ezekial’s “dry bones” prophecy? I don’t understand how someone can read this and still expect that if the Jews ever returned to their land that they must be EXACTLY like they were described in the OT. I would expect the secular world to use this excuse, but come on. It is easy to read they come back into their land in initial unbelief, and then slowly and painfully be built up again.

And look at how long they have been dispersed throughout the world for all those hundreds of years. Look at what happened to 6 million of them before they started coming back in large numbers. You expect them to be like the OT nation after living in the rest of the world for hudreds of years and still feeling the heat from almost being burned in cremation ovens?

You like to mention the fact that “many” modern Jews that live there don’t believe in what God is doing. But you fail to mention the “many” modern Jews that live there and do believe what God is doing, wheter they are Christians or Jews that are awaiting the coming of Messiah.
 
Lev23 said:
brilliant

Just look at what new specific prophetic events were revealed in Revelation.
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So you believe in John Darby’s Biblical view that all Christians will be assumed into heave before the Great Tribulation, just like the fictional story of the Left Behind Series? Yes or no.
 
Mannyfit75 said:
So you believe in John Darby’s Biblical view that all Christians will be assumed into heave before the Great Tribulation, just like the fictional story of the Left Behind Series? Yes or no.
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I would presume his answer to be yes.
 
I read the book once and am reading it through again, this time as more of a ‘study’. I have my bible with me and I’m reading the passages and he talks about them. It’s taking a VERY long time since the book is so huge all on its own, but it’s worth it. His attention to detail (I’m a very detailed person) is just the type of writing that I like.
 
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