Summary: Our world is in agony but we live in hope of God’s triumph. In a way we cannot yet see, even evil will be used for good. In many evangelical circles, this blessed hope has been hijacked by an apocalyptic nightmare. 

Why I Left Left Behind Behind

It looks like this world will crumble beneath the weight of its own stupidity. Don’t be fooled. Christ is working in the chaos to bring about an ending that will make all creation stand and cheer. But when? How? These questions land me in the realm of eschatology. “Eschaton” means end, so “eschatology” is the study of the end. As with questions of the world’s beginning, questions about its end go beyond the scope of normal human experience. We must use stories and images to imagine it. When we describe these transcendent realities in terms of our present experience we create absurdities. The mystery of creation is reduced to seven 24 hour days. The return of Christ is misshapen into the Left Behind series. 

The early believers called the triumph of Christ “the blessed hope.” Ours is a groaning world. The blessed hope says our pains are not death throes but labor pains. Somehow, in the midst of our suffering, a new world is being born. How do cancer and divorce and my own sinfulness play into the coming world? How could God possibly bring good from this mess? I do not know. No one does. It has not yet been born. All I know is that right now, I feel a strange mixture of pain and expectation. Paul describes the tension:

For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body. For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for who hopes for what he already sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it. (Romans 8:22-25)

I admit the absurdity of my existence but feel hope in something I do not yet see. Against all logic, I have hope. When I try to put this hope into words, it evaporates.“Hope that is seen is not hope.” Sadly, I grew up under a theological perspective that claimed to see the end of the world in chilling detail. The blessed hope was replaced by an apocalyptic nightmare. This world was a ticking time bomb. Any second, Christ would snatch the true believers from the earth and all hell would break loose.

Where Did Rapture Theology Come From? 

As a kid, I took it for granted that my branch of Christianity was “the historic Christian faith.” I knew there were other versions out there but I saw these as distortions of the real thing that I practiced. I was well into my 30s before I realized that my version of the faith was just one expression of a diverse array of beliefs and practices that stretched back for centuries. The more I saw the scope of this, the harder it was to believe I had been born in the center of the bull’s-eye. 

I was even more shocked to discover that, historically speaking, my version of Christianity was just plain weird. We followed a system called Dispensationalism. I never heard it called Dispensationalism. We called it “believing the Bible.” People who didn’t see it our way didn’t believe the Bible and probably weren’t Christians. But I have learned that Dispensationalism is a long way from the center of the historic Christian faith. It is a recent belief that developed in England in the mid 1800’s, promoted by a man named John Nelson Darby. In the 1900’s it was spread in the United States by the Scofield Study Bible. 

One Sunday evening in church in the late 70’s, my sister and I watched a movie called A Thief in the Night. It scared us senseless. We drove home ashen-faced, terrified that we might miss the rapture and be left to face the bloody horrors de...