Category Archives: Eschatology and Afterlife

The Rapture? Why I want to be Left Behind

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Ian Paul writes on his blog Psephizo Why I want to be Left Behind. He refers to Matthew 24:36-41. This is one of the main passages used to support the teaching on the Rapture, the idea that at some time before Jesus returns to earth all Christians will be taken away from the earth – and those Left Behind will suffer the worst of the Great Tribulation.

But Ian notes that in this passage the teaching in verses 40 and 41 that some “will be taken” seems to parallel “the flood … took them all away” in verse 39. Thus the ones who “will be taken” are not the ones God is rescuing from disaster but the ones subject to his judgment. So not surprisingly Ian concludes that when this happens he wants to be left behind. So do I!

I note that in the original Greek the parallel is not quite so clear as different verbs are used for “took … away” and “will be taken”. This explains Dick France’s earlier caution about this interpretation, mentioned by Ian. But the parallel seems clear to me even if it is conceptual more than verbal.

Meanwhile the other passage used to support the idea of a Rapture before the return of Jesus teaches no such thing, in fact precisely the opposite. In 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17 it is very clear, from the Greek word epeita “After that” which links these two verses, that it is only after “the Lord himself will come down from heaven” that “we who are alive … will be caught up”. There really is no biblical basis for the popular idea of a secret pre-Tribulation Rapture, which was in fact first put forward clearly as recently as the early 19th century.

So Tom (N.T.) Wright, as quoted by Ian, is surely right about the Matthew passage when he writes:

There is no hint, here, of a ‘rapture’, a sudden supernatural event that would remove individuals from the terra firma….  It is a matter, rather, of secret police coming in the night, or of enemies sweeping through a village or city and seizing all they can.

Thanks to Simon Cozens for the link, in a comment on Eddie Arthur’s post The End of the World Is Nigh (or Is It?).

Heaven, Hell and Bell

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Over the last few months the blogosphere has been aflame with discussion of hell, sparked by Rob Bell’s book Love Wins: At the Heart of Life’s Big Questions. Indeed many bloggers cast Bell himself into the flames, even before they had read the book.

I haven’t read the book. I probably won’t. So I will refrain from any detailed comment on it. All I will say is that, as far as I can tell, Bell mainly asks questions, and those who condemn him do so on the basis of how they assume Bell would answer his own questions. That is not a Christian approach. Indeed to condemn anyone, with the kind of language I have seen in some places, is not a Christian approach.

At some point I would like to outline here my own position on heaven and hell. For now I will simply say that I have a lot of sympathy with N.T. Wright’s position, as I outlined it in an old post Heaven is not our home …

I am writing now mainly to draw my readers’ attention to Suzanne’s long series Blogging heaven and hell (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 – maybe more to come). Suzanne asked me to join the debate, but my thoughts have been elsewhere. She has many sensible things to say, as well as many useful links.

I don’t agree with Suzanne’s tentative universalist position. But I strongly agree with her that it is wrong to use threats of hell as a way to impose one’s will on others, in the church or in the home.

I would also be very cautious about using threats of hell-fire in evangelism. I’m not saying there is never a place for telling unbelievers that they will go to some kind of hell if they do not repent. But it is not a generally effective strategy today, at least in the western world – and it is not a general feature of the early Christian sermons in the book of Acts, so no one can claim that it is a biblically required part of a gospel presentation. Indeed, as I read somewhere recently, while Jesus spoke a lot about hell he did so mostly not to ordinary “sinners”, but to Pharisees and the like who claimed to be right with God but opposed Jesus’ message. So perhaps if we do preach about hell, it ought to be mainly within the professing church, to those who claim to be going to heaven but are not producing the fruit of good Christian lives.

Why the fascination with prophecy?

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Why is it that whenever I write on this blog anything about prophecy I attract far more readers than for anything else I write about? My post David Wilkerson prophecy: earthquakes in Japan and USA has been read over 1600 times in four days. The follow-up Rick Joyner on another Japan earthquake prophecy has been read over 800 times in 48 hours. By contrast, in the last week only one of my other posts, Why I am ignoring Japan, has been read as much as 100 times. So why do my mainly Christian readers have this fascination with prophecy?

For the convenience of those readers, I have set up a new category for this blog, Prophecy, currently containing the 22 most relevant posts over the last five years.

I think the underlying reason must be that Christian people are longing to find some significance in current events, especially in the turbulent times we seem to be in. These times are in fact probably no more turbulent than any others: what is new is only that turbulence from anywhere in the world is reported to us on a minute by minute basis on TV and the Internet. But what matters is the public perception that our times are unusually turbulent.

When we see natural or man-made disasters, none of us want to think that people have died for nothing. When wicked people seem to get their way, we don’t want them to go unpunished. And when we hear reports that God has given to his prophets advance warning of these events, we are at least reassured that he is in control and has not been caught unprepared. This much is certainly one of the proper purposes of prophecy.

The problem comes when we take this one step further. Somehow it is not enough for us that God is in control and will bring about his purposes at some time in the future. We long for God to intervene to put things right, and to do so immediately, on our timescales, not on his in which “a thousand years are like a day” (2 Peter 3:8). We expect him to take the same kind of action that the UN forces are currently taking in Libya, only more quickly and more effectively. If we had the chance to play God, we might have struck Gaddafi down with a thunderbolt and driven all his forces into the sea like the Gadarene swine. But that is not God’s way of working.

The issues get even more confused when we try to pin on to current events some kind of eschatological significance. We tend to assume that if God has foretold some event through his prophets it must be a sign of the imminent end of the world as we know it. We realise that only at the return of Jesus will all the wrongs in this world be put right. And we long for his appearing, as indeed we should do (2 Timothy 4:8).

The problem here is that, most likely, current events are not at all signs of an imminent end. This is the message of the passage from Matthew 24 which I quoted in my post on the David Wilkerson prophecy. History is littered with false prophecies that the end is nigh, just as Jesus predicted in that same chapter. Many of us will remember how 30 to 40 years ago Christian authors like Hal Lindsey predicted that the Cold War would lead to Armageddon and the return of Jesus. Today these “prophecies” look ridiculous. And very likely any predictions of eschatological significance to now current events will look just as ridiculous In another 30 to 40 years.

All this is not at all to discount prophecy today. God does seem to be giving to his prophets real advance warning of many of the major events shaking our world, literally and metaphorically. The purpose of these prophecies is not to satisfy our curiosity about the future. Part of it is indeed to reassure us that God is in control. But surely their main purpose is to warn us of how we need to repent, to change our behaviour, so that we are not overtaken by unexpected disaster.

When we read prophecies about earthquakes, and even ones about financial collapse, how often do we focus on dates and places and skip over the lessons on how God would have us respond? I confess to being guilty of this in my recent posts on prophecy, as I quoted only the predictions and not the lessons – although in fact the lessons were the larger parts of what Wilkerson wrote and Joyner said. But it is most unwise to ignore God’s warnings, as if we do we too might find ourselves victims of disasters which God allows to happen in this world.

The end of the world postponed until 2013?

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In September 2008 I reported on the panic that was gripping the world that the whole universe might come to an end the following day, when the Large Hadron Collider was switched on. Of course nothing much happened that day, except that the LHC was eventually switched on – and then rather quickly switched off again because of a fault. In fact in 2008 they never really got round to colliding any particles.

By November 2009 the LHC was up and running again, and colliding particles. Indeed in that month it succeeded in breaking the record for the most energetic particle collisions ever done – but only by a rather small margin, 1.18 trillion electron volts compared with a previous record of 0.98 trillion. This year they are hoping to increase the power gradually to seven trillion.

But it seems the world has a reprieve of four or five years, from the original switch on date, before it is in real danger – that is if there is anything real about this alleged danger. The BBC reports today that the LHC will be run at half power, a maximum of seven trillion electron volts, until late 2011 – and then shut down for up to a year, for safety improvements before it can be run up to its full power of 14 trillion. That means that the earliest it will be used at full power is late 2012, and more likely not until 2013. As the real predicted danger, of black holes and strange forms of matter being formed, comes at that 14 trillion electron volt level, it seems that we can sleep in peace for a few more years.

Or can we? The LHC may not be coming in full power until 2013, but perhaps Jesus will come first…

Raised with Christ: Review part 8 and conclusion

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This is the concluding part 8 of my review of Adrian Warnock’s book Raised with Christ, which I started here – part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7.

Adrian concludes his book with two chapters about how the resurrection gives Christians hope for the future.

In chapter 18 he looks at the future hope for individual believers. He notes how this helps us to endure difficulties in this life. But he rejects how

many Christians associate “going to heaven to be with Jesus when we die” with a disembodied “spiritual” resurrection. (p.243)

He also rejects the idea of “soul sleep”, noting that “Our spirits are already with Christ in heaven” (p.244, citing Ephesians 2:6) and suggesting that after the death of the body

We remain distinct, aware beings, but in heaven we still await our eternal destiny of a physical resurrection. When we die we only become aware of what is already true of us. (p.245)

The very same bodies that are placed in our tombs will one day rise again. … We will, however, be changed from being weak, frail, and mortal into being glorious and eternal. (p.246)

In passing Adrian quotes Spurgeon agreeing with me that resurrection bodies have blood (p.243).

In his concluding chapter 19 Adrian moves on to the broader hope of the “The Resurrection of All Things”. He looks at the renewal of creation without death. associated with “the actual revealing of the resurrected children of God” (p.250). Thus he answers the question of where our resurrection bodies will live, which (in agreement with N.T. Wright’s view) will not be in heaven as popularly understood:

in the new creation heaven will be a place on earth as the heavenly Jerusalem descends. We will live on earth with renewed bodies … (p.252)

Adrian then looks at the judgment to come at the return of Christ. He ignores controversial issues of chronology as he describes three possible outcomes: condemnation, leading to real pain, but not for Christians; being saved “as through fire”; and rewards for those who have been faithful.

The last section of the chapter is a look at the kingdom of God, which is eternal, but already present now, as

God himself is living inside us! We experience the power and presence of a Jesus who is living, active, and doing things today. …  The kingdom really is now and not yet! (p.259)

We have already been raised with Christ, and yet we are waiting for the final day when our bodies will be resurrected with Christ. (p.261)

Adrian may have in mind some of his more conservative and “cessationist” Reformed friends when he writes:

It is sobering that Paul warned us that in the last days there would be people “having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power” (2 Timothy 3:5). I trust that none of us deny the power of Jesus’ resurrection to work in our lives and change us. But I hope that as we have been studying this subject, we are now more desperate than ever to see his transforming power at work, changing everything in our lives and in those around us. (p.261)

Adrian fittingly closes the book by quoting Ephesians 1:17-21 as a prayer for his readers.

I nearly wrote that I was pleasantly surprised by “Raised with Christ”. I was certainly pleased by it. But I wasn’t really surprised to find that Adrian could put aside the sometimes polemical tone he uses on his “blog” and write something as well argued and positive as this book. As I would expect it is not at a high academic level, and this occasionally comes through in minor weaknesses in the argument. But this ensures that the book is accessible to ordinary people with a reasonable education.

The only significant reservations I have are really because, as an Arminian charismatic suspicious of much “Reformed” evangelicalism, I do not fit into Adrian’s target audience. That is why I found somewhat grating the way in which he keeps quoting Spurgeon, Lloyd-Jones, and Piper, as well as older Puritans. But I know that for Adrian’s intended audience of Reformed readers, “cessationist” as well as charismatic, these are the traditionally accepted authorities, and so it is important for Adrian’s case to show that these preachers and writers support it.

I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone whose background is “Reformed” or conservative evangelical and whose faith seems to be somewhat doctrine-centred and dry. In fact I can think of people I might like to give it to. I would think that anyone like that who read this book would find it acceptable – and if they then took its message to heart their faith would be transformed. I hope and pray that God uses the book in this way to revitalise many Christian lives.

Our world may be a giant hologram

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I thank a Facebook friend for a link to a fascinating article. According to the New Scientist (and it’s not the 1st April issue), Our world may be a giant hologram. No, this is not some new science fiction idea, the next step on from The Matrix perhaps. Apparently some real scientists have detected tiny oscillations in space-time which are best explained by this theory: everything we see in three dimensions is in fact some kind of holographic projection of events on a two-dimensional boundary of the universe.

I must say I am not entirely surprised. What does surprise me is that the scientists, or at least the writer of the popular New Scientist article, put this in terms of space only and not also of time. If in fact we are talking about the four-dimensional space-time we observe being a hologram projected from its three-dimensional boundary, then that is getting very close to the kind of concept I was struggling towards, but never fully articulated, more than three years ago, in my unfinished series Kingdom Thermodynamics (part 2, part 3, part 4 which is as far as I got with this).

In that series I was thinking mostly in terms of the universe as we now observe it being determined by its boundaries in the past and in the future, in the same kind of way that a hologram is determined by the details on its boundaries. This is distinct from the generally understood picture of the universe, as constrained by what happened on a past boundary but open in the future. In fact this latter is the picture presupposed by discussions of causality and of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as I discussed previously.

Of course this has theological implications. The universe open to the future presupposed by scientists is the basis of Open Theism, the controversial teaching that even God doesn’t have definite knowledge of the future. By contrast, more traditional evangelical thinking, Arminian as well as Calvinist, is or at least would most logically be based on the idea of a closed and predetermined future, an ultimate boundary to space-time.

I can’t help wondering if scientists are now inching towards this latter position, rather than the open future which they have presupposed for so long. I should clarify that this does not imply determinism. Indeed the evidence they have found for the hologram idea is precisely that what happens on the boundary is random, on a tiny scale, and so not predetermined. Instead we have a picture of a universe which is not fully deterministic, but nevertheless whose future is in general terms already fixed – very much like the biblical picture.

The Naked Dead Arise!

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Nearly two years ago I caused some controversy by raising the question Does the risen Jesus have blood? This also referred more generally to resurrection bodies. Now a new question on the same lines has arisen at the blog Singing in the Reign: Will the Dead Be Raised Nude? In this Brant Pitre examines

the Jewish tradition which identified the resurrected body with the “garments of glory” that Adam and Eve had lost in the fall but would be restored to the righteous in in the messianic age

– a tradition which he sees reflected in 2 Corinthians 5:3. But he notes that Michelangelo, in his Last Judgment scene reproduced in the post, as well as Mel Gibson depicted naked resurrection bodies.

I don’t think there is any clear biblical teaching on this one. Presumably the risen Jesus appeared in appropriate clothing, even immediately after the resurrection when Mary Magdalene mistook him for a gardener (John 20:15). But that is not necessarily a precedent for the general resurrection. As for 2 Corinthians 5:2-4, surely the clothes mentioned here are a metaphor for the body, not to be understood literally.

Brant refers to “garments of glory” supposedly worn by Adam and Eve in the garden. But the biblical text makes it clear that these, if they existed at all, were not literal clothes:

The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.

Genesis 2:25 (TNIV)

The resurrection life is more than a restoration of Eden, but not less than it. In it there will again be no shame, as all sins will be forgiven and everyone will have an unrestricted relationship with God (Revelation 21:3-4). The reference to robes (22:14) is surely symbolic. So, as I understand it, in the reurrection we will not be clothed in any literal sense, but only in the glory of God.

Essex vicar predicts the end of the world as we know it

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Sam Norton, a Church of England vicar here in Essex, is quite astonishingly pessimistic, even apocalyptic although it seems for entirely secular reasons, about the state and future of the world. Last year I reported his predictions that oil prices would continue to rise, but instead they have fallen dramatically. He starts his new post with something of an explanation for why this has happened, while insisting that it will not last. For, he argues,

The problem will emerge with further strength when the economy gets through the economic aspects of the present crisis and tries to get back upon its previous growth-based models: the price of oil will increase again and choke off that economic growth. In sum, my view is that, for a period of 10-15 years, economic growth has ceased, indeed, that it will go into reverse.

Well, so far, this is believable – but it ignores the point that as oil prices increase, so, after a time lag, will supply, as expensive oil reserves such as the oil sands of Alberta are exploited, and as users shift to alternative energy sources such as coal, nuclear and renewable. Some of these shifts of course would have worrying implications for the environment and for global warming, but that is a separate issue.

But Sam then takes his predictions too far, matching the nightmare scenarios of the climate change extremists whom he does not support:

I see much of the middle-class Western lifestyle coming to an end over this period; a vast amount of unemployment which will – in a benign outcome – shift to working the land, or, in a less benign outcome, the resurrection of a slave society. …

I see us rapidly approaching a bottleneck – a time of greatly increased pressure and tension, and not all of us will get through. However, decisions that we make now – more at the personal and local society level than at the government level (I tend to see the government as a problem not a solution, as people know) – will make a big difference to what happens. Learn to store more food. Learn to garden or develop a skill that will allow for trading for food. Get to know your neighbours and develop contacts across the community.

I foresee a time of tremendous upheaval and suffering in this crisis that has now begun; a time with greater parallels to the 1340s [the decade of the Black Death] than the 1930s, and a lot of people, a lot of societies, quite possibly even some nations (eg the US and UK in their present form) will not make it through.

Now I think it is clear to me that this is not intended to be a prophecy or any kind of divine revelation, but simply a prediction based on data and trends, even if perhaps it is informed by biblical principles. This is what distinguishes Sam from those preachers who walk around with sandwich boards proclaiming “THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!” But, just as those preachers typically used their backs to preach “REPENT AND BELIEVE THE GOSPEL”, so also Sam finishes off as one would expect from a Christian minister, with a Bible verse:

Yet I also believe that what we do now will make a difference in the end, and I trust that our labour will not be in vain. “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I’m not quite sure what Sam means here. But even if this blackest of scenarios does prove accurate, God will provide for those who trust in him, and will eventually put all things right in the new heavens and the new earth.

Church leaders and the steward of Gondor

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John Meunier has an interesting and provocative post in which he compares church leaders with the steward of Gondor, in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He suggests that, just as the stewards of Gondor started to see themselves as kings,

the leaders of the church start to imagine they are Christ. …

It was this impulse and arrogance that caused the Reformation. But the Reformers were just as eager to become the voice of Christ themselves.

The stewards’ pretensions didn’t last long when the true king arrived. I hope that not many church leaders have this kind of attitude. But any who do will find themselves embarrassed, to say the least, when Jesus returns in his glory and settles accounts with them. Tolkien was surely aware of what Jesus had to say about stewards (the KJV rendering at least) such as Luke 12:42-46.

The End of the World Tomorrow?

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Usually mainstream scientists and journalists treat predictions that the world will end on any particular day with utter contempt, as coming from religious nutcases. And indeed they are generally right to do so, for the Bible clearly states that Jesus will come again on a day when he is not expected (Matthew 24:44). Indeed I remember the day in 1975 when Jehovah’s Witnesses were predicting the end of the world (actually I can’t find any mentions now of a specific day, only a year, but there were certainly days being predicted at the time), and reasoning as a young Christian, but not very seriously, that Jesus could not possibly come on that day as there were people expecting him, and so it was OK for me to get drunk that night!

So it comes as quite a shock to find posted on the BBC blog a post entitled The end of the world is not nigh, in which science correspondent Tom Feilden reports that “Some scientists have voiced fears” that something which will happen tomorrow, Wednesday 10th September, “could trigger a black hole that would swallow the planet (and the rest of the solar system for good measure) in a matter of minutes.” Tom has to reassure his readers with:

The world is not going to end … on Wednesday. That’s the verdict of an exhaustive safety assessment.

So what is happening tomorrow which has worried not just religious extremists but some serious scientists, and prompted even the BBC to issue this kind of reassurance?

It is an event which is being covered by BBC radio as The Big Bang. They seem to have taken that title from the worst fears of some scientists, that what happens tomorrow will be something like a replay of the original Big Bang. We can hope that whoever thought up this title doesn’t have the gift of prophecy!

The event is of course the one I already reported in advance in June, the official switch-on of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a new particle accelerator which has been built at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. The huge cost of this has been justified because, it is hoped, it will be able to smash sub-atomic particles into one another with so much energy that completely new particles are formed, providing profound insights into the fundamental nature of the universe. It seems perverse, even a big boys’ toys method as a friend of mine suggested, to investigate such things by smashing things up as hard as we can, but this does seem to be the only experimental approach.

The potential problems have been summarised in this report from CERN, with links to more comprehensive discussions. There seem to be two possible dangers. One is that the new types of matter or energy produced (“strangelets”, “vacuum bubbles” or “magnetic monopoles”) just might react with ordinary matter in some kind of chain reaction, which could immediately turn the whole world into something far more explosive than an H-bomb. The other is that the LHC may be able to produce microscopic black holes which could grow and swallow up the earth.

The basic safety argument here is that the earth has always been bombarded with cosmic ray particles, some of which are far more energetic than anything the LHC can produce, and has survived for billions of years. The CERN scientists note that

Over the past billions of years, Nature has already generated on Earth as many collisions as about a million LHC experiments – and the planet still exists

Well, maybe we have just been lucky so far, or protected by God. Would we know if other planets had disappeared into black holes? Probably not if they were outside our Solar System. So is it responsible for us to launch thousands if not millions of LHC experiments to increase the risk? Anyway, cosmic ray collisions are not directly comparable because any dangerous particles resulting from such collisions of fast moving particles with stationary matter would be shot out of our earth at very nearly the speed of light, so perhaps before they could be dangerous, whereas ones produced by the LHC from head on collisions may be much less energetic and so remain within the earth for long enough to be dangerous.

As I reported in June, if by any chance the earth is swallowed up in this way tomorrow, or later, the way it happens will be well in line with biblical prophecy, especially in 2 Peter.

Will the world end tomorrow? I don’t think so. But, following the apostle Peter’s advice, I won’t take the opportunity to get drunk!