Paul's Passing Thoughts

I was 17, (I think) at Fishnet, a Christian Woodstock, when I had my first serious conversation about end-time theology. I had that conversation with Hal Lindsey, a preacher who has made his living packaging and repackaging all things Second Coming. If memory serves I disagreed with his reading of a passage in Daniel. He was less than amused; he was the authority and I . . . wasn’t. My peon public objection was a threat to his livelihood. Preachers can never tolerate such things.

Back then I was under the delusion that preachers wanted to talk about the truth, about the ideas that shaped doctrine. It took me a long time to figure out preachers never have that motive. Certainly, had I understood this truth, Hal’s reaction to my question wouldn’t have surprised me.

Since I’m a hard-headed soul the interaction at Fishnet wasn’t the last unwelcome doctrinal conversation I would have with preachers and certainly not the last discussion about “biblical” eschatology.

(Eschatology, for those of you who don’t know, is the formal term for the Rapture, or End Time things.)

Anyway, the next notable time I entered this Rapture fray was during college: 1988 to be exact. A guy by the name of Edgar C. Whisenant, published a book titled: 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.

The book was garbage but it still took the country by storm. (If Wikipedia is to be believed, it sold 4.5 million copies.) True story. I visited a friend of mine from college in Virginia and when her mother (we’ll, call her Mrs. H) heard me reject Whisenant’s book she cried for two days. Mrs. H. started praying and fasting to save my soul and read from 88 Reasons Why . . . every couple of hours to persuade me. When that didn’t work Mrs. H. gave me a Pre-Millennial systematic theology book by Dwight L. Pentecost. I pulled out of the driveway with Mr. H begging me to recant lest I be left behind.

So, you can imagine that if the country at large had this kind of emotional investment, the veritable belt buckle of the Bible Belt in Tulsa Oklahoma at ORU, my university of choice, was sweat soaked infestation: Rapture Fever burned across the quad in South Tulsa, like Pentecostal wild fire.

As a budding Theology student, and as an eager member of the ORU School of Theology, I joined the general academic outcry against the madness. A great college friend Bret Nicolson, now a pastor in Evansville Indiana, and I spent HOURS, in our ORU dorm rooms, arguing the merits and doctrines of the Rapture madness. Those many musings eventually culminated in me doing my Senior thesis on the subject. I titled the paper: “Are We Getting Out of This Place or Not.” Dr. Autry was not amused. The upside was, the Dwight L. Pentecost book was a primary source for my rebuttal. Mrs. H. if you are reading this, thanks. And oh, . . . told you so.

>snicker<

Anyway, in 1988 the furor over the Rapture was new to me, but now I’m older and a LOT wiser. Rapture Fever infects the masses about every decade or so. Resurfacing again in my life time in 1995 when the world was treated to the Tim LaHay, Left Behind series. Just for the record, the only thing that got left behind in the books and movies was any respectable biblical exegesis and acting. But hey, he sold a LOT of books: 65 Million copies.

(Evidently the Rapture is a growth business.)

And the next one that comes to mind was Herold Camping who said that May 24th 2011 was the day that big J was gonna whisk everyone away.

(Do you like how I did all that alliteration. That was kinda fun)

And then in 2017 there was an eclipse and Jesus is supposed to be coming back . . . again.

And of course, He didn’t. He hasn’t and he’s not this year, not next, or the one after that or the one after that. (Mark my words. If not I’ll be glad to say I told you so). But that won’t stop LOTS of people from making really, really bad life choices even in the face of insurmountable evidence that whomever is making the prediction the day or hour or year will be WRONG.

So how can this be? How can ostensibly, intelligent, 21st century people, with a full grasp of reality in 95% of their life get so screwed up in the other 5%.

Where does this Rapture Fever come from? And why does it cycle with such consistency?

I’ll tell you but, like Hal Lindsey and Mrs. H. and a host of other people I’ve encountered when talking about this subject, you won’t like the answer.

Spoiler alert. I’m gonna rip off the band aid.

The rise of Rapture doctrine is inversely proportional to social/political chaos.

Or said another way, the more people feel uncertain about the future the more helpless they feel in dealing with reality, the more they abandon reality and look for a way to escape.

Or said another way, the feebler people feel, the more they yearn for someone to erase reality.

Or said another way, the Rapture, the longing for the return of Jesus, is an existential punt.

I told you, you wouldn’t like it.

And we have seen this existential punt, drawn through history like a standing wave, cycling above and below the line as cultures and nations ebb and flow through civil stability and unrest.

And do you want to hear the real punchline to the joke: The cycle is exacerbated by historic Christian doctrines. The roots of Christian doctrine come from St. Augustine merging 2nd century Christianity with 3rd century Platonism. 90% of what you hear in church today, in the 21st century, is Augustine, which really means you’re listening to Plato.

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger. You can find this stuff out yourself in about 2 hours with that cool answer box called Google. Just think, I spent a LOT of money 20 years ago, to learn this stuff. You can get it for free.

Anyway, Augustinian dogmas turned the world into an insurmountably evil place, inhabited by a metaphysical aberration called Man and dubbed the cosmos malevolent.  The height of this worldview is in the Dark Ages: the Dark Ages were dark in principle because people during that time took Augustine seriously and the result was a nightmare come to life. Thankfully, the world was pulled out of the madness by Thomas Aquinas: he reintroduced Aristotle to the world, and within 400 years the Enlightenment sparked the Age of Reason, that culminated in the American Constitution. Political freedom released the human mind to thrive and soon the world was filled with light: the cosmos was intelligible, knowable and benevolent. And for a while, it seemed that Augustinian doctrines would slide into the primordial ooze like so many disastrous ideologies that came before.

“John, you are crazy! Your great learning is driving you insane! I don’t listen to Augustine, I listen to my preacher and he reads the BIBLE! He’s always telling me about the good that God does.”

Hold on there, Festus. I get it. I’m Dorothy pulling the curtain back revealing the man pulling the very real, very tangible levers. I’m that punk in 4th grade who told you that Santa Clause wasn’t real and it was mom and dad that put the presents under the tree. You might not like it but that doesn’t change the truth.

The intellectual pedigree goes like this (assuming you are a Protestant) Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Reformed Theology—a bunch of 17th century thinkers—the 20th century resurgence of Calvinism, your pastor. There isn’t any preacher in America that hasn’t been affected by the resurgence of these doctrines. And I’d bet money that for every time that preacher tells you about the “good” he hedges and fudges with three times the reiteration of your sin, and depravity and guilt, and weakness.

And so here we are in the 21st century, being fed a steady diet of metaphysical gloom and doom and the name of Christian righteousness. The more Augustinian doctrines of self-doubt and human impotence overtake a cultural mind the more people pine for a world that is not this world.

So, there you have it. Go to church on Sunday and hear how wretched you are, how bad the world is, how evil life is. Watch the news. Watch America—the single most amazing political achievement in human history—tearing itself apart; watch people do evil and call it good, do crazy things and call it sane. It is enough to make grown people turn to alcohol or religion. Any religion. Any mysticism that can show them how to get away from reality.

You think I’m being cynical?

Nope. Just making an observation.

The problem is that the very doctrines people turn to for comfort and hope are the same doctrines that affirm reality is an evil chaotic place that no man can tame or grasp.

Now you can follow the progression to Rapture Fever:

• As the cycle of social unrest increases social instability, the more people go to mystical sources to find “answers.”
• Preachers tell everyone that this world is evil and everyone is sinfully incompetent.
• Psychological impotence grows in its own echo chamber of despair.
• Eventually people accept the premise and punt.

Alakazam Poof! The Edgar C. Whisenant’s and the Tim LaHay’s and the Harold Camping’s of the world seem like the clarion call of sanity. Their voices affirm people’s greatest fears and satisfy their greatest hopes. Men will sell their souls for a glimpse of stability so if someone claims a special ability to reveal a new reality, they will lobotomize themselves to wipe out what they feel they have no power to master.

My greatest objection to Rapture doctrine has little to do with when it will or won’t happen. My objection has always been against the underlying attitude: the wholesale abdication of civil responsibility. It is much easier to breathe portents of divine retribution and pretend you will be somewhere else when the bad #$%@ happens.

It sounds Churchy for preachers to thump their Plexiglass podiums while reading the book of the Revelation and ranting about God pouring out Fire and Fury against whomever violates their moral sensibilities. But in the end it is all posturing. People infected with Rapture Fever have no intention of taking any action, responsibility, or initiative. “I’m getting out of here so I don’t care what happens next,” is their battle cry. They capitulate, pretending that the course of human events is beneath them. They abandon the responsibilities of self-government and flee the obligations of a representative republic without so much as a fair thee well. The result: they contribute to societal decline by sitting idly, waiting for a bus that never comes and then complain their world is turning to #$%@.

And it is for this abdication that those infested with Rapture Fever should be called to account by the doers, the able, the rational, the responsible, and the motivated.

Get in the game!

~ John Immel