The “Rapture” is just one of many false and heretical interpretations of the “Millenium.”
The Church has no problem with a genuine, unmodified notion of the “Millennium.” The Chuch has told us what this Millennium is NOT. But she has not yet ruled definitively on what this Millennium exactly IS. Then Cardinal Ratzinger has stated that the matter is still open to discussion and that “the Holy See has not yet made any definitive pronouncement in this regard.” What the Holy See has definitively pronounced is an anathema against a “false” millennium, known as millenarianism: a heresy accepted by some who professed a belief in a carnal and visible reign of Christ for a period lasting *literally *1000 years.
However, never has the Holy See condemned the Apostolic Father’s Tradition in this regard. Indeed, the Apostolic Fathers themselves - Papias and St. Justin Martyr, for instance - bear witness to the orthodoxy of their unmodified doctrines handed on to them from the Apostles.
In The Dialogue with Tryhpo, St. Justin Martyr says:
These are the words of Isaiah concerning the millennium: “For there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, and the former shall not be remembered…but they shall be glad and rejoice in these things, which I create. For, behold, I make Jerusalem a rejoicing, and my people a joy; and I shall rejoice over Jerusalem, and be glad over My people. And the voice of weeping shall no more be heard in her, nor the voice of crying. There shall no more be an infant of days there, nor an old man that shall not fill up his days; for the child shall die a hundred years old…And they shall build houses and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruits of them, and drink the wine…For as the days of the tree of life, so shall be the days of My people, and the works of their hands shall be multiplied. My elect shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth children for a curse; for they shall be a righteous seed blessed by the Lord, and their posterity with them. And it shall come to pass that before they call, I will hear…Then the wolves and lambs shall feed together, and the lion shall eat like the ox, and the serpent shall eat earth like bread. They shall not hurt nor destroy on my holy mountain, saith the Lord…” (cf. Is. 65:17-25). Now…we understand that a period of one thousand years is indicated in symbolic language. When it was said of Adam that “in the day that he eateth of the tree, in that he shall die,” we knew he was not a thousand years old [Adam lived to be 963]. We also believe that the words, “The day of the Lord is a thousand years,” also led some to the same conclusion. Moreover, a man among us named John, one of Christ’s Apostles, received and foretold that the followers of Christ would dwell in Jerusalem for a thousand years, and that afterwards the universal and, in short, everlasting resurrection and judgement would take place. To this our Lord himself testified when He said: “They shall neither marry, nor be given in marriage, but shall be equal to the angels, being sons of God, that is of the resurrection.” [Note: Justin Martyr’s language following the word “afterwards” refers to the New Jerusalem, and not to the millennium.]
As St. Justin Martyr was born just one generation after the Apostles, his testimony, like that of Papias (the disciple of St. John), is significant for its orthodoxy and unmodified influence. This apostolic witness and doctrinal orthodoxy is further exemplified in the writings of St. Irenaeus. Irenaeus was schooled in his youth by St. Polycarp, the Apostolic Father who saw and listened to the Apostle John, and was later consecrated Bishop of Smyrna by St. John. The same truths pronounced by his predecessors come to light as he comments, in the Adversus Haereses, on Sacred Scripture:
So, the blessing foretold undoubtedly refers to the time of His Kingdom, when the just will rule on rising from the dead; when creation, reborn and freed from bondage, will yield an abundance of food of all kinds from the heaven’s dew and the fertility of the earth, just as the seniors recall. Those who saw John, the Lord’s disciple, [tell us] that they heard from him how the Lord taught and spoke about these times…Days will come when vines will grow each with ten thousand shoots, and on each shoot ten thousand branches, and on each branch ten thousand twigs…then thousand clusters…ten thousand grains…And other fruits and seeds, and grass…And all the animals who use the products of the soil will be at peace and in harmony with one another, completely at man’s beck and call.
Tertullian, in his treatise* Against Marcion *,comments on this coming Millennium, also called the temporal kingdom or, in more recent language, the Era of Peace:
We do confess that a kingdom is promised to us upon the earth, although before heaven, only in another state of existence; inasmuch as it will be after the resurrection for a thousand years in the divinely-built city of Jerusalem…We say that* this city has been provided by God for receiving the saints on their resurrection, and refreshing them with the abundance of all really spiritual blessings*, as a recompense for those which in the world we have either despised or lost…Of the heavenly kingdom this is the process. * After its thousand years are over, within which period is completed the resurrection of the saints, who rise sooner or later according to their deserts [merits], there will ensue the destruction of the world* and the conflagration of all things at the judgement: we shall then be changed in a moment into the substance of angels, even by the investiture of an incorruptible nature, and so be removed to that kingdom in Heaven [the New Jerusalem].
lot less than you all do about Catholic teaching on this subject, but in other discussions of this topic, I have rediscovered a very familiar thought: That if we look to the teaching of Jesus Christ, we find that He did not teach a “Rapture”.
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