philipmarus:
- After the Rapture and the tribulation, when the Jews rebuild the temple we (All of us christians) we will all become Jews.The Church age was just a temporary, remedial action of God like staying in Motel while on your way to a final destination.
Carl Olsen covered a lot of this in his book “Will Catholics be Left Behind?” (Offhand, I don’t remember if Paul Thigpen got that deep into it in his book, “The Rapture Trap,” and I haven’t read David Currie’s book yet.)
Basically, this is a common theme in some of the fundamentalists churches that believe in the rapture. Their belief is that God did not break or supercede his original covenant with the Jews. (Catholics believe that the covenant was made “new” or “superceded,” with the passion, death, and resurrection of Christ. Everyone has a moral obligation to “kick it up a notch” to the new covenant, so to speak. )
The rapturists don’t see it that way–they think of it as two separate “promises” of God going on right now–the old covenant of the Jews, which has not yet been fulfilled (it’s “on hold”), and the new covenant of the Christian church. They believe that God will restart the old covenant in the final days, which will bring about the Rapture. The thinking behind it is that the word “church” is not found in the middle part of the book of Revelations. Supposedly that means that the “church”–(only the Bible-believing Christians, to them) must be removed from earth, removed from human time and history, i.e. “raptured away,” so that the Jewish old covenant can be restarted, the temple rebuilt, the animal sacrifices reinstituted, then the anti-christ will come to power and stop the temple sacrifices, etc. (Of course, Christ is the final sacrifice for all time, and there’s no way that “imperfect” old covenant sacrifices are ever going to resume.)
Actually, according to this theory, we Christians are “standing in the way” of these events taking place, almost like we are an unforseen mistake of some kind. If you’ve ever listened to or watched fundamentalist radio shows or tv broadcasts (I hear them while waiting for CA Live to come on), that’s why they are so gung-ho on supporting the state of Israel, politically/economically/militarily so that the temple can be rebuilt. Once that is done, the rapture will be imminent, which is their “get home free” card. The sooner the temple is rebuilt, the sooner they will be raptured.
There is absolutely nothing Scriptural about the rapture. All the verses that allegedly point to it are taken out of context (especially 1 Thess. chapter 4 -sorry forgot the verse #, around 13-17 I think). Scripture is pretty clear that when Christ comes back, it’s going to be loud, and glorious, and there won’t be any doubt to anyone–no “sneaking” around, hiding in the clouds, taking a select group of people away and leaving the rest to suffer tribulation. (After all, Jesus suffered horribly on the cross–what makes any one of us think we are entitled to better treatment? That we don’t deserve tribulation? We’re told to “pick up our cross,” not wait for a “get out of jail free” card.)
If anyone else out there can explain it better, please jump in.
