Recently, I was
asked my opinion on a blog post about the Rapture. It seems that
there is a new Left Behind
movie coming out, and so the topic of the Rapture seems to be coming
up a little bit more. Personally, I don't understand why someone's
rebooting this franchise. The first Left Behind
movie seemed close enough to the book, was decently acted, and, as I
understand it, did okay financially being followed by two more movies
in the same series (which were direct to DVD and didn't seem to do as
well). I don't know why a studio would believe that if they gave it a
bigger budget and more well known actors that they'd achieve a higher
return on their investment than the first one, especially given the
limited audience to which it's catering.
The
blog post I was asked about looked at the passage in Matthew 24:40,
which the movie poster for the reboot cited. This passage is often
used by supporters of a pre-millenial, pre-tribulation rapture to
prove their interpretation from Holy Scripture. It reads:
“At
that time two will be in the field, the one [person] is taken and the
one is let go.” (my lit. trans.)
A
similar passage in Luke 17:34-35 is brought up by the blogger:
“I
say to you, in this night two will be on one bed, one person will be
taken and the other will be let go. Two women will be grinding on the
same [night], the one will be taken and the other will be let go.”
(my lit. trans.)
The
bloggers take on these passages was that Jesus was referring, not to
the end times rapture, but to the Roman holocaust which brought about
the destruction of the temple in 70 AD, and resulted in the
dissolution of the Jewish province of Judea and the fatal last stand
(and mass suicide) at Masada in 73 AD. Jesus in
saying that one would be taken and the other let go, in the blogger's
view, referred to one being caught and killed by the Roman legions
and the other one escaping the slaughter.
Upon
reading the blogger's take, and seeing his logic, I concurred with
his assessment. In the context of the whole passage, his take on it
in its literal, historical, grammatical context made more sense than
to associate these verses with the rapture. It was actually one of
the best exegetes on a passage that I had read in a long time.
This
got me to thinking more generally about different passages in the
Scriptures and how we are taught to see them. When I was in Bible
School, we were taught a very specific interpretation of certain
passages (the “rapture” passages in question among them). It came
to the point where I couldn't see those passages apart from that
interpretation, regardless of whether or not it was in context.
What's ironic about this is
that the school I was trained in, and the churches I attended, were
very heavily self-proclaimed “scripture only” Bible churches and
organizations that scorned the use of a “Sacred Tradition” in the
interpretation of Scripture, and yet it was a (shaky) tradition which
was used, even mandated, to interpret those passages in question. For
example, the teaching of a pre-tribulation rapture was not to be
qestioned. Any other interpretation of Holy Scripture was considered
anathema (and one could be threatened with expulsion if they didn't
comply).
As
I was weaned away from my Evangelical Protestant training, I had to
learn to be able to disassociate those interpretations from the
passages in question and to look at them without the theological
baggage which was imposed on them. In other words, I had to unlearn
how to think about those passages and what they meant. It's taken
years for me to unlearn all the mistaken (and sometimes forced)
interpretations and links between verses and passages and to just let
the text speak for itself in the context of the surrounding verses
and passages, and the linguo-socio-cultural context in which they
were written.
Where
a pre-tribulation rapture is concerned, there's little doubt that
it's a relatively recent innovation dating from no earlier than the
1700s, and was really made
popular and widespread only in the 1830s. It was unheard of in the
ancient Church, where the Church Fathers were explicit that they
expected for Christians to go through the time of tribulation and
then those who remained faithful to Christ would be transformed,
deified while still living, joining those who were resurrected from
the dead and deified. They believed this because it was the explicit
teaching and understanding of the Apostles as is reflected in their
writings, the New Testament.
If
we're going to learn from the Holy Scriptures, we have to let them
speak for themselves and not force interpretations which we agree
with on them. We have to learn to speak their language, and not they
ours. When we force the Scriptures to say what we want them to say,
then the resulting text is no longer the word of God, but the word of
us. And when we force our own word on those trying to understand the Holy Scriptures, then we truly are leaving them behind.
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