Latest / Abide Meditation App / The Origins of the Rapture

Transcript

The Origins of the Rapture · Abide Meditation App

0:00
Speaker 1: In the blink of an eye, millions disappear and the
0:03
Speaker 1: world is thrown into chaos. Cars crash, planes fall out
0:07
Speaker 1: of the sky, and there are piles of clothes everywhere.
0:11
Speaker 1: That's the upshot of the twenty fourteen movie Left Behind,
0:14
Speaker 1: starring the One and Only Nick Cage. Cage is an
0:17
Speaker 1: airline pilot whose co pilot and many passengers simply vanish.
0:21
Speaker 1: In fact, millions have vanished across the world. Those who
0:25
Speaker 1: disappeared were Christians taken to Heaven, and the unbelievers were
0:29
Speaker 1: well left behind. The Left Behind movie was based on
0:32
Speaker 1: a best selling series of books that outline a scenario
0:35
Speaker 1: in which true Christians are snatched up to Heaven right
0:38
Speaker 1: before the appearance of the Antichrist. This climactic moment is
0:42
Speaker 1: called the rapture, the sudden physical removal of all living
0:46
Speaker 1: Christians from the world into God's presence. While the Left
0:49
Speaker 1: Behind franchise is probably the most famous example within the
0:52
Speaker 1: prophecy fiction genre, for many American Evangelical Christians, the core
0:56
Speaker 1: idea of the rapture is not fiction at all. They
0:59
Speaker 1: believe that the rapture will actually happen. Rapture theology, as
1:02
Speaker 1: interpreted by many American evangelical Christians has several principles. First,
1:06
Speaker 1: of course, the rapture the sudden disappearance of Christians at
1:10
Speaker 1: any moment, but specifically a pre tribulation rapture, meaning that
1:14
Speaker 1: this sudden removal of Christians occurs before a time of
1:17
Speaker 1: global hardship and suffering called the Tribulation. During this period,
1:21
Speaker 1: a human foe called the Antichrist will rise to power. Finally,
1:24
Speaker 1: at the end of the Tribulation, the Second Coming occurs.
1:27
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ will return, resurrect all believers, and dispense justice
1:31
Speaker 1: to the sinners. He will defeat the Antichrist, imprison the devil,
1:34
Speaker 1: and establish an earthly kingdom that will last one thousand years,
1:38
Speaker 1: the so called Millennial Kingdom. After the one thousand years,
1:42
Speaker 1: there will be a final confrontation with Satan before he's
1:45
Speaker 1: defeated and thrown into the Lake of Fire for good.
1:48
Speaker 1: Scholars call this theology dispensational pre millennialism. It's probably the
1:52
Speaker 1: most common form of rapture theology among American evangelicals, but
1:55
Speaker 1: there are other versions that we won't get into. Pre
1:57
Speaker 1: millennial refers to the belief that Jesus will of effectively
2:00
Speaker 1: returned twice, once before his millennial kingdom in the Rapture,
2:04
Speaker 1: and then again after the Tribulation to establish his kingdom.
2:07
Speaker 1: And dispensational refers to the idea that God's relationship with
2:10
Speaker 1: humanity has undergone distinct phases or dispensations throughout history. Each
2:15
Speaker 1: dispensation is a unique stage in which God relates to
2:18
Speaker 1: humanity in a certain way. For many dispensationalists, history is
2:21
Speaker 1: partitioned into seven dispensations, and we are living in the
2:24
Speaker 1: second to last one, on the cusp of the end
2:26
Speaker 1: of the world. While virtually all Christians believe in the
2:29
Speaker 1: second coming of Christ, most do not adhere to this
2:32
Speaker 1: view of the end times. Belief in the Rapture is
2:35
Speaker 1: not promoted among Catholics, the different branches of Orthodox Christianity,
2:39
Speaker 1: or the majority of Protestant Christians. However, it is popular
2:42
Speaker 1: among American Evangelicals. As one of the largest religious groups
2:46
Speaker 1: in the United States, American Evangelicalism has a high visibility
2:49
Speaker 1: in the country both culturally and politically, so their support
2:53
Speaker 1: of rapture theology and the huge popularity of prophecy fiction
2:56
Speaker 1: like The Left Behind series gives the impression that this
2:59
Speaker 1: view of the end times is more widely accepted than
3:02
Speaker 1: it really is, but it has been hugely influential. One
3:06
Speaker 1: historian describes dispensationalism as perhaps the most resilient popular theological
3:11
Speaker 1: movement in American history. Dispensationalists beliefs such as the rapture
3:15
Speaker 1: have even influenced a US foreign policy, as former Secretary
3:19
Speaker 1: of State Mike Pompeio is a dispensationalist evangelical and has
3:22
Speaker 1: spoken openly about his belief in the rapture. So where
3:26
Speaker 1: did this idea of a pre tribulation rapture come from?
3:29
Speaker 1: Proponents of rapture theology look especially to one particular Bible
3:32
Speaker 1: passage composed by the apostle Paul, which they argue refers
3:35
Speaker 1: to a rapture like event. First, Thessalonians, Chapter four, verses
3:39
Speaker 1: sixteen and seventeen. It's worth quoting the whole thing, For
3:43
Speaker 1: the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the
3:45
Speaker 1: archangel's call, and with the sound of God's trumpet, will
3:48
Speaker 1: descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.
3:52
Speaker 1: Then we who are alive, who are left, will be
3:54
Speaker 1: caught up in the clouds together with them, to meet
3:56
Speaker 1: the Lord in the heir, and so we will be
3:58
Speaker 1: with the Lord forever. So what does this mean? First
4:01
Speaker 1: of all, I need to stress scholars are not one
4:04
Speaker 1: hundred percent sure. It's famously one of the most confusing
4:07
Speaker 1: passages in the entire New Testament. As the scholars can
4:11
Speaker 1: Ded de Moss and Joel Baden say, despite the many,
4:14
Speaker 1: many studies on this passage, the cultural and intellectual context
4:18
Speaker 1: of being quote caught up in the clouds together with
4:21
Speaker 1: the Lord and the Heir has remained obscure. Has remained
4:24
Speaker 1: obscure is an academic way of saying, we just don't
4:27
Speaker 1: know what Paul means here, but let's try our best.
4:30
Speaker 1: This verse comes from a letter that Paul wrote to
4:32
Speaker 1: a church that was worried that the return of Christ
4:35
Speaker 1: had not happened yet, especially because some members of the
4:37
Speaker 1: congregation had already died without experiencing the Second Coming. That's
4:41
Speaker 1: not supposed to happen. They're supposed to witness the inauguration
4:44
Speaker 1: of a new kingdom, not simply die. So Paul is
4:48
Speaker 1: offering an interpretation of what will happen to those that
4:50
Speaker 1: had already died, and ends the passage with, therefore, encourage
4:54
Speaker 1: one another with these words he was trying to comfort
4:57
Speaker 1: a bunch of Christians who thought the return of Christ
4:59
Speaker 1: should have happened by now. Now the dead in Christ
5:01
Speaker 1: will resurrect, don't worry. The New Testament scholar Helmut Kester
5:04
Speaker 1: argued that ancient imperial military imagery is bubbling under the
5:08
Speaker 1: surface of this passage. The text says, the Lord himself,
5:11
Speaker 1: with a cry of command, with the Angel's call, and
5:14
Speaker 1: with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven.
5:17
Speaker 1: This description can be seen as echoing the imagery of
5:19
Speaker 1: an emperor visiting a colony or province who would be
5:22
Speaker 1: escorted by trumpets and other symbols of authority. When Paul
5:26
Speaker 1: says they will meet the Lord in the heir, that
5:28
Speaker 1: word is translating the Greek word of pontesis, which is
5:31
Speaker 1: a technical term for the act of going out to
5:33
Speaker 1: meet a dignitary or monarch from another city. So, according
5:37
Speaker 1: to Kester's interpretation, which is shared by other scholars such
5:39
Speaker 1: as bart Ermine, the people meeting Christ and the clouds
5:42
Speaker 1: are basically an imperial delegation of emissaries going out to
5:46
Speaker 1: meet the Emperor. Kester argues that there's no sense at
5:49
Speaker 1: all that they will stay up there in the clouds,
5:50
Speaker 1: but rather will promptly return to Earth, escorting Jesus to
5:54
Speaker 1: establish his new kingdom, just as a delegation of emissaries
5:57
Speaker 1: would escort the Emperor into the city. Est concludes that
6:01
Speaker 1: it is not possible to understand this passage as a
6:03
Speaker 1: statement about the rapture of the believers into heaven. In
6:06
Speaker 1: their study on this passage, doctor Moss and doctor Baden
6:09
Speaker 1: offer another complimentary interpretation, arguing that Paul may have been
6:13
Speaker 1: influenced by ancient Jewish ideas that God's chosen people will
6:17
Speaker 1: literally gain the ability to fly at the end of days.
6:20
Speaker 1: The key text here is Isaiah chapter sixty, verse eight,
6:23
Speaker 1: Who are those who fly like a cloud? Like doves
6:26
Speaker 1: to their coats? Although this is a reference to the
6:28
Speaker 1: white sales of a ship bringing the Israelites back from diaspora,
6:32
Speaker 1: later Jewish theologians interpreted this text apocalyptically, those that fly
6:37
Speaker 1: like a cloud are literally people who will fly at
6:40
Speaker 1: the end of the world. For example, a passage in
6:43
Speaker 1: the Rabbinic text called the Talmud says, in the future,
6:45
Speaker 1: the Holy One will lift Jerusalem three parasangs high. Unless
6:49
Speaker 1: you think it is painful to go up to it.
6:51
Speaker 1: Scripture teaches, who are those who fly like a cloud
6:54
Speaker 1: like doves to their coats? So according to this the
6:58
Speaker 1: end of day's Jerusalem will be a floating sear but
7:00
Speaker 1: fortunately you can reach it because you will fly. This
7:03
Speaker 1: idea is repeated in multiple rabbinic texts, not just the Tumud.
7:07
Speaker 1: It's worth mentioning that these texts are much later than
7:09
Speaker 1: the letters of Paul, but Massam Baden theorized that the
7:12
Speaker 1: ideas found in these texts might stretch back to the
7:15
Speaker 1: lifetime of Paul, and that these people being taken up
7:18
Speaker 1: in First Thessalonians four may be viewed as traveling via
7:21
Speaker 1: cloud to reach the end of day's Jerusalem floating in
7:24
Speaker 1: the sky. Do they stay up there? Well, scholars don't
7:28
Speaker 1: know the phrase, so will be with the Lord forever
7:31
Speaker 1: might imply that they remain up there in the clouds, though,
7:33
Speaker 1: as we saw with scholars like doctor Kester, others argue
7:36
Speaker 1: that Paul would have likely assumed that these people then
7:39
Speaker 1: return to Earth. Regardless, this passage is not describing a rapture.
7:42
Speaker 1: Paul is describing the resurrection event at the end of days,
7:45
Speaker 1: the same event he describes elsewhere, like in One Corinthians
7:48
Speaker 1: fifteen when he says that our bodies will be transformed
7:51
Speaker 1: into immortal bodies in an instant, But now he's describing
7:54
Speaker 1: it with a colorful metaphor of escorting Jesus like an
7:57
Speaker 1: emperor into the city. The notion of being zen apped
8:00
Speaker 1: away like in the Left Behind movies would have been
8:02
Speaker 1: unthinkable to Paul. Proponents of rapture theology have interpreted this
8:06
Speaker 1: passage alongside other apocalyptic passages in the Gospels. Matthew twenty
8:10
Speaker 1: four says, then two will be in the field, One
8:12
Speaker 1: will be taken and one will be left. Two women
8:15
Speaker 1: will be grinding meal together. One will be taken and
8:18
Speaker 1: one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do
8:21
Speaker 1: not know what day your Lord is coming. These verses
8:24
Speaker 1: are the partial inspiration for how the rapture has been
8:26
Speaker 1: depicted in film Sudden Disappearance. But in this verse it's
8:31
Speaker 1: a bit vague as to who's being taken and who
8:33
Speaker 1: is being left. Are the believers taken or the unbelievers?
8:37
Speaker 1: The verse is not entirely clear. A parallel passage in
8:40
Speaker 1: Luke seventeen is more explicit. On that day, no one
8:43
Speaker 1: who is on the roof of his house with his
8:45
Speaker 1: goods inside, should go down to get them. Likewise, no
8:48
Speaker 1: one in the field should go back for anything. Remember
8:51
Speaker 1: Lot's wife, which is a reference to the woman in
8:53
Speaker 1: Genesis who looked back at the burning city of Sodom
8:55
Speaker 1: while escaping, turning her into a pillar of salt. Because
8:59
Speaker 1: proponents of raps theology read these passages alongside First Thessalonians,
9:03
Speaker 1: they assume that the one being snatched away in Matthew
9:05
Speaker 1: and Luke is the lucky one, the one escaping calamity.
9:09
Speaker 1: But in these texts the metaphor is surviving a calamity.
9:13
Speaker 1: In Matthew twenty four, the disaster is specifically a flood,
9:16
Speaker 1: so the one being snatched away is the unlucky one
9:18
Speaker 1: swept away by the flood. The person who pauses to
9:21
Speaker 1: try to save their belongings are the ones swept away
9:24
Speaker 1: the judgment, while those who are left behind are the
9:27
Speaker 1: ones to be saved. Without the context of First Thessalonians,
9:30
Speaker 1: no one would assume a rapture is being described in
9:33
Speaker 1: these passages. Although the New Testament does speak of a
9:36
Speaker 1: second coming of Christ, these and other verses taken by
9:38
Speaker 1: themselves do not point to the end time scenario of
9:41
Speaker 1: the sudden disappearance of Christians. These ideas developed over time, and,
9:45
Speaker 1: like the belief in the Antichrist, are a pastiche of
9:48
Speaker 1: ideas drawn from multiple different Biblical passages, passages that were
9:52
Speaker 1: not originally intended to be interpreted side by side. So
9:55
Speaker 1: if it's not in the Bible, where did the idea
9:56
Speaker 1: of a pre tribulation rapture come from? If you've looked
9:59
Speaker 1: into the subject, you may have heard that the rapture
10:01
Speaker 1: was invented in the eighteen hundreds by a man named
10:04
Speaker 1: John Nelson Darby. And as we'll see in the next section,
10:07
Speaker 1: that's definitely when the precise contours of dispensationalist theology were
10:11
Speaker 1: first developed, systematized, and popularized. But there are some possible
10:16
Speaker 1: hints that Christians starting in the late Antique period believed
10:19
Speaker 1: in a pre tribulation rapture like event, even if that
10:22
Speaker 1: event does not resemble the dispensationalist version of the raptures
10:26
Speaker 1: seen today. Now I'm using the qualifier possible hints because
10:30
Speaker 1: the evidence we're dealing with are not well developed theological treatises.
10:35
Speaker 1: The evidence I'm about to show you are passing references
10:37
Speaker 1: in a small handful of fringe ancient and medieval texts. Moreover,
10:42
Speaker 1: these passages have been analyzed almost exclusively by pro rapture
10:45
Speaker 1: evangelical theologians, people who may be motivated to prove that
10:49
Speaker 1: this idea was taught by the early Church. More research
10:52
Speaker 1: is needed in this field, conducted by more critical scholars,
10:55
Speaker 1: but I'm sharing these passages as potential evidence that problematizes
10:59
Speaker 1: the idea that a pre tribulation rapture was invented in
11:02
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds. First, let's consider a document called the
11:05
Speaker 1: Apocalypse of Elijah, a text that was circulated among Egyptian
11:08
Speaker 1: Christians around the third century CE. The document outlines the
11:11
Speaker 1: scenario in which an anti christ like figure called the
11:13
Speaker 1: Lawless One is persecuting Christians when God sends an army
11:17
Speaker 1: of angels to rescue them. On that day, the Christ
11:20
Speaker 1: will pity those who are his own, and he will
11:22
Speaker 1: send from heaven his sixty four thousand angels. Now, those
11:26
Speaker 1: upon whose forehead the name of Christ has written, and
11:29
Speaker 1: upon whose hand is the seal, both the small and
11:32
Speaker 1: the great will be taken up upon their wings and
11:34
Speaker 1: lifted up before His wrath. Archangels then lead the rescued
11:38
Speaker 1: believers into a liminal place simply called the Holy Land.
11:42
Speaker 1: It's unclear if the author specifically means the land of Israel,
11:45
Speaker 1: but it's a logical conclusion. The text draws imagery from
11:48
Speaker 1: the Book of Exodus, in which the Israelites follow a
11:50
Speaker 1: pillar of fire, but in this case, the archangels Gabriel
11:53
Speaker 1: and Uriel make a pillar of light. Once they arrive
11:56
Speaker 1: in the Holy Land, the text says they will neither
11:59
Speaker 1: hunger nor thirst, nor will the lawless one have power
12:02
Speaker 1: over them. The next chapter describes the decline of the earth.
12:05
Speaker 1: The trees are uprooted, wild beasts and farm animals will
12:09
Speaker 1: die in catastrophe, birds will fall on the ground. So
12:13
Speaker 1: here we see a possible early example of Jesus rescuing
12:16
Speaker 1: Christians from experiencing the destruction of the earth, but it's
12:20
Speaker 1: nothing like the Left Behind rapture. Mainly, there's no indication
12:23
Speaker 1: that they're transported to Heaven, but rather remain on Earth
12:26
Speaker 1: in a safe place, the Holy Land. Another example comes
12:29
Speaker 1: from a sermon probably composed in the seventh or eighth centuries,
12:32
Speaker 1: called the Apocalypse of Pseudoephram Pseudoephrim because it seems to
12:35
Speaker 1: have been forged in the name of the Syrian church
12:38
Speaker 1: father Ephram. The text describes a tribulation at the end
12:41
Speaker 1: of the world, you know, the drill, wars, disasters, diseases.
12:44
Speaker 1: Then the Antichrist arises and rules of the world from Jerusalem.
12:48
Speaker 1: In this text is a passage that appears to some
12:51
Speaker 1: modern evangelical theologians as a rapture like event. For all
12:54
Speaker 1: the saints and elective God are gathered prior to the
12:57
Speaker 1: tribulation that is to come and are taken to the
12:59
Speaker 1: l lest they see the confusion that is to overwhelm
13:02
Speaker 1: the world because of our sins. This seems pretty straightforward,
13:05
Speaker 1: but it's more complicated than that. Scholars have described the
13:08
Speaker 1: end times theology found in this text as confused, contradictory,
13:12
Speaker 1: and muddled. For example, in the very next section, it
13:16
Speaker 1: says that during this terrible time, neither Christian nor Heretic,
13:19
Speaker 1: neither jew nor pagan will have time to bury their dead.
13:22
Speaker 1: A few sections later, the text says that the tribulation
13:25
Speaker 1: will overwhelm all people, just and unjust, which suggests that
13:29
Speaker 1: the author assumes that Christians are still there on earth
13:32
Speaker 1: to experience the tribulation. They're not all gone. The scholar
13:36
Speaker 1: David Malcolm Bennett, one of the few researchers to study
13:39
Speaker 1: this text, says that these pre tribulation theologians are imposing
13:42
Speaker 1: their own theology on the text, since Pseudoephim seems to
13:45
Speaker 1: assume that Christians are still on earth during the Tribulation,
13:48
Speaker 1: Bennett concludes what is probably intended by those comments is
13:52
Speaker 1: that the Saints will be protected by God within the Tribulation,
13:55
Speaker 1: rather than removed from it left behinds rigid literal interpretation
13:59
Speaker 1: is clearly alien to the thought of Ephraim, whose method
14:03
Speaker 1: was much freer and more imaginative. Fast forward to the
14:06
Speaker 1: turn of the fourteenth century, a document dating to around
14:09
Speaker 1: thirteen oh seven called the History of Brother Dulcino mentions
14:12
Speaker 1: a rapture like teaching among a renegade monastic order called
14:16
Speaker 1: the Apostolic Brethren, led by a friar simply known as Dulcino.
14:20
Speaker 1: This group was violently persecuted by the Catholic Church and
14:23
Speaker 1: its leaders were burned at the stake. The text says
14:26
Speaker 1: that the members of the Apostolic Brethren would be caught
14:28
Speaker 1: up into heaven three and a half years in the
14:30
Speaker 1: reign of the Antichrist, and in this way they will
14:32
Speaker 1: be preserved unharmed from the persecution of Antichrist. After the
14:37
Speaker 1: death of the Antichrist, brother Dulcino himself would return to
14:39
Speaker 1: earth as pope. Now it's worth mentioning that this text
14:42
Speaker 1: was composed by an opponent of the Apostolic Brethren, so
14:45
Speaker 1: it should be skeptical that the text accurately reports their theology.
14:49
Speaker 1: But whether or not Dulcino held to this belief, some
14:52
Speaker 1: pro rapture theologians in recent years have held this up
14:55
Speaker 1: as an example that the idea of a pre tribulation
14:57
Speaker 1: rapture was held by at least some Christian before the
15:00
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, though with some important changes. Notice that the
15:04
Speaker 1: text says Dulcino and his followers would be transferred into Paradise,
15:08
Speaker 1: not the whole of Christianity, only Dulcino's followers, and there's
15:12
Speaker 1: little to indicate that Jesus Christ is doing the rapture
15:14
Speaker 1: and returning. Here it's brother Dulcino who returns to earth.
15:18
Speaker 1: Judging from texts like the Apocalypse of Pseudoephraim, the idea
15:21
Speaker 1: that God will rescue some or all Christians and spare
15:24
Speaker 1: them from the Tribulation may have been held by some Christians,
15:28
Speaker 1: but these texts do not mirror what we see in
15:31
Speaker 1: modern rapture theology. Two of our three examples seem to
15:34
Speaker 1: suggest that Christians remain on earth during the Tribulation, and
15:38
Speaker 1: the third example only describes a small group of one
15:41
Speaker 1: man's disciples. So how do we get to the left
15:43
Speaker 1: behind style of the rapture, the complete sudden removal of
15:48
Speaker 1: Christians from Earth. For that, we need to turn to
15:50
Speaker 1: this guy, the Englishman John Nelson Darby, known as the
15:55
Speaker 1: father of dispensationalism. Darby was an influential preacher, theologian, and
16:00
Speaker 1: Bible translator who rose to prominence in the eighteen thirties.
16:03
Speaker 1: Originally an Anglican priest in Ireland, he eventually grew disillusioned
16:07
Speaker 1: with the church and resigned his position. In the eighteen
16:10
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, he became associated with a Christian movement
16:13
Speaker 1: called the Plymouth Brethren, named for the fact that one
16:15
Speaker 1: of their largest congregations was based in the port city
16:18
Speaker 1: of Plymouth in southwest England. The Plymouth Brethren were a
16:21
Speaker 1: group of anti establishment Christians who rejected professional clergy, were
16:26
Speaker 1: very critical of established churches like the Church of England
16:29
Speaker 1: and claimed to read the Bible literally. Now, to say
16:32
Speaker 1: that Darby invented dispensationalism in general and the rapture specifically
16:37
Speaker 1: is probably an overstatement. The concept of dispensations pre dates Darby,
16:41
Speaker 1: and at the time premillennialism was already an idea held
16:44
Speaker 1: by some Anglican Christians in English and Irish intellectual circles,
16:48
Speaker 1: though more on the margins of those intellectual circles. Moreover,
16:52
Speaker 1: a Baptist theologian named Morgan Edwards, who was active decades
16:55
Speaker 1: before Darby throughout the seventeen hundreds, seems to have taught
16:58
Speaker 1: a version of the rapture that all also placed it
17:00
Speaker 1: before the Tribulation. So while Darby was not inventing ideas
17:04
Speaker 1: out of whole cloth, we can definitely say that he
17:06
Speaker 1: systematized and popularized the idea of the rapture within his
17:09
Speaker 1: complex theological system that went on to get very popular,
17:13
Speaker 1: and we can trace a direct line of influence from
17:15
Speaker 1: Darby to the Left Behind series here. In the twenty
17:18
Speaker 1: first century, Darby argued that history is divided into dispensations,
17:22
Speaker 1: which we define at the start of this video as
17:24
Speaker 1: discrete ages during which God relates to humanity in different ways.
17:28
Speaker 1: Later popular formulations divide history into seven dispensations. The first
17:33
Speaker 1: begins with creation and ends when Adam and Eves sin
17:35
Speaker 1: against God. The next one is the antidiluvian dispensation, or
17:39
Speaker 1: the time before the Flood, which goes from Adam to
17:41
Speaker 1: Noah and ends with the great Flood described in the
17:43
Speaker 1: Book of Genesis. The second to last is the Age
17:46
Speaker 1: of the Church, and the final is the Millennial Kingdom.
17:49
Speaker 1: Now Darby's exact divisions are not quite so clear cut.
17:52
Speaker 1: He seems to have divided history like this on screen,
17:54
Speaker 1: starting with Noah and ending with the final dispensation that
17:57
Speaker 1: begins with the Rapture. Darby argued that these spensations were
18:00
Speaker 1: a boom and bust cycle, always ending in tragedy, always
18:05
Speaker 1: with humans failing, the fall of humanity and to sin
18:08
Speaker 1: Noah's flood, the Babylonian exile, disaster after disaster after disaster.
18:14
Speaker 1: Like later formulations, Darby believed that we are living in
18:17
Speaker 1: the second to last dispensation, the Age of the Church,
18:20
Speaker 1: but even this dispensation is headed for ruin. Like other
18:23
Speaker 1: Plymouth Brethren, he thought that most established churches in this
18:26
Speaker 1: era have fallen into apostasy. He believed that only a
18:29
Speaker 1: small remnant of Christians were truly destined to be saved.
18:33
Speaker 1: Darby taught that the church dispensation would end with the rapture,
18:36
Speaker 1: a two stage return of Jesus. First, Jesus would appear
18:40
Speaker 1: in the clouds and Christians would rise to him, as
18:42
Speaker 1: described in First Thessalonians Chapter four, Then seven years of tribulation.
18:47
Speaker 1: Then Jesus would return physically to earth after the tribulation,
18:50
Speaker 1: establishing his one thousand year rule and commencing the final dispensation.
18:54
Speaker 1: As we've said, these ideas were not one hundred percent novel.
18:58
Speaker 1: The historian Daniel Hummel, who wrote the most most recent
19:00
Speaker 1: and comprehensive history of dispensationalism, says that Darby was not
19:04
Speaker 1: making entirely novel contributions on any of these points, but
19:09
Speaker 1: he was shaping a new type of Christian identity that
19:12
Speaker 1: bundled a condemnation of established churches, a pre millennial eschatology,
19:17
Speaker 1: and a dualism between heaven and Earth. So how did
19:21
Speaker 1: Darby's theology get so popular While the Plymouth Brethren went
19:25
Speaker 1: abroad throughout the mid eighteen hundreds, Plymouth Brethren preachers started
19:28
Speaker 1: to bring their ideas to North America, where they found
19:30
Speaker 1: a bunch of people already obsessed with predicting when the
19:33
Speaker 1: Second Coming of Jesus would occur. William Miller, whose followers
19:36
Speaker 1: would later form the Seventh day Adventist denomination, taught that
19:39
Speaker 1: the Second Coming of Christ would occur in eighteen forty
19:42
Speaker 1: three or eighteen forty four. When this prediction failed, others
19:45
Speaker 1: stepped in with their own predictions. So the Plymouth Brethren
19:48
Speaker 1: found a very receptive audience in the US. Darby himself
19:51
Speaker 1: also traveled to North America, visiting seven times between eighteen
19:55
Speaker 1: sixty two and eighteen seventy seven. He spent most of
19:57
Speaker 1: his time in the American Midwest and New England, between
20:00
Speaker 1: several major cities, and urban evangelicals started to adopt his ideas,
20:04
Speaker 1: most importantly a man named Dwight L. Moody. Moody was
20:08
Speaker 1: a Revival preacher based in Chicago at the time. Though
20:11
Speaker 1: he had some disagreements with Darby, he started teaching pre
20:13
Speaker 1: millennial ideas in his sermons, spreading far and wide the
20:17
Speaker 1: idea that a pre tribulation rapture was about to happen
20:20
Speaker 1: any day. Moody thought he was living in the final days.
20:23
Speaker 1: He wrote, I look on this world as a wrecked vessel.
20:26
Speaker 1: God has given me a lifeboat and said to me, Moody,
20:30
Speaker 1: save all you can, but rapture. Theology really exploded in
20:34
Speaker 1: the US thanks to this guy, Cyrus Schofield. He was
20:38
Speaker 1: a Confederate soldier turned Union sympathizer, turned politician and lawyer
20:42
Speaker 1: who converted to Evangelical Christianity in the late eighteen eighties,
20:46
Speaker 1: launching a second career as a theologian and preacher. He
20:49
Speaker 1: was part of the whole Dwight L. Moody movement, and
20:51
Speaker 1: he started preaching within the local Moody network of congregations,
20:54
Speaker 1: where he adopted dispensationalist ideas. He went on to publish
20:58
Speaker 1: the Schofield Reference Bible in nineteen oh nine, a King
21:01
Speaker 1: James version of the Bible with commentary explaining the text
21:04
Speaker 1: from a dispensational pre millennial perspective. So, for example, right
21:08
Speaker 1: here at the beginning in the Book of Genesis, the
21:09
Speaker 1: Schofield Bible has a subheading above Genesis, chapter one, verse
21:13
Speaker 1: twenty eight, calling it the first Dispensation below the text
21:17
Speaker 1: and the footnotes, it provides a helpful definition of what
21:19
Speaker 1: that is, and in a note under the all important
21:22
Speaker 1: passage First Thessalonians, chapter four, verse sixteen, the Scofield Bible
21:26
Speaker 1: takes the two stage resurrection narrative for granted, explicitly saying
21:30
Speaker 1: that the passage describes the first resurrection. So by using
21:33
Speaker 1: footnotes and subheadings, the Schofield Reference Bible basically builds a
21:38
Speaker 1: pre millennial dispensationalist framework around the entire Bible, and as
21:42
Speaker 1: a study Bible, it presents itself as a scholarly authority,
21:45
Speaker 1: using scholarly academic language to disregard competing interpretations, especially rejecting
21:50
Speaker 1: critical biblical scholarship and Darwinian evolution, which made it a
21:54
Speaker 1: very popular bible within fundamentalist circles, and it was very popular.
21:59
Speaker 1: It sold one million copies within a decade and exceeded
22:02
Speaker 1: two million copies by the end of World War II.
22:05
Speaker 1: The Schofield Bible thus spread dispensationalist ideas like the Rapture
22:08
Speaker 1: to millions and millions of conservative evangelical Christians, effectively solidifying
22:13
Speaker 1: dispensationalism as a part of American evangelical culture for the
22:17
Speaker 1: rest of the twentieth century. So by the mid twentieth century,
22:20
Speaker 1: the rapture and other dispensationalist beliefs had become a staple
22:24
Speaker 1: of end Times thinking among conservative American evangelical Christians, and
22:28
Speaker 1: it reached new heights of popularity during the Cold War,
22:31
Speaker 1: when many began to look for a religious explanation for
22:33
Speaker 1: current events like the rise of the Soviet Union and
22:36
Speaker 1: the establishment of the modern state of Israel. A new
22:38
Speaker 1: generation of evangelical authors started to interpret geopolitics through the
22:42
Speaker 1: lens of dispensationalist thinking. Most importantly, how Lindsay, I'm speaking
22:47
Speaker 1: to you today from the last battlefield on planet Earth.
22:51
Speaker 1: Hal Lindsay was an author who sparked a cottage industry
22:54
Speaker 1: interpreting current events as fulfilling biblical prophecy. Many people think
22:58
Speaker 1: that because this man's the Antichrist, that he'll appear to
23:01
Speaker 1: be evil, But Satan's no fool. A graduate from Dallas
23:05
Speaker 1: Theological Seminary, he published a book in nineteen seventy called
23:08
Speaker 1: The Late Great Planet Earth. It was basically an explainer
23:11
Speaker 1: of pre millennial dispensationalism packaged for a popular audience, blending prophecy, spirituality,
23:17
Speaker 1: and geopolitics, and it was a mega bestseller. It became
23:22
Speaker 1: the best selling nonfiction book of the nineteen seventies, with
23:25
Speaker 1: ten million copies sold in the nineteen seventies and twenty
23:28
Speaker 1: eight million sold by the year two thousand. The historian
23:30
Speaker 1: Daniel Hummel says that the book entered the bloodstream of
23:34
Speaker 1: American culture, making the word rapture a household term. The
23:38
Speaker 1: book also kickstarted decades of people monetizing dispensationalist theology and
23:43
Speaker 1: rapture predictions in books, radio shows, movies, and later on
23:46
Speaker 1: social media. Notably, one of these authors was Tim Lehay,
23:50
Speaker 1: the Baptist minister who would go on to co write
23:52
Speaker 1: The Left Behind series in the nineteen nineties, but he
23:55
Speaker 1: got a start in the nineteen seventies, soon after Lindsay
23:57
Speaker 1: published his book. Though Lahay's first book was nowhere near
24:00
Speaker 1: as popular as the Left Behind series, which sold eighty
24:03
Speaker 1: million copies, perhaps no other work is more responsible for
24:07
Speaker 1: belief in the rapture. In other words, the idea was
24:09
Speaker 1: spread not by theologians, but by popular media. And here
24:13
Speaker 1: we see an interesting phenomenon. Here in the twenty first century,
24:16
Speaker 1: tension between the evangelical intelligentsia and popular evangelical belief. Doctor
24:21
Speaker 1: Hummel argues that we're witnessing a collapse in dispensationalist theology
24:26
Speaker 1: here in the twenty twenties. In the early two thousands,
24:28
Speaker 1: conservative American evangelicalism swung toward what some have called New Calvinism,
24:33
Speaker 1: led by figures like the Baptist theologian John Piper. Piper
24:37
Speaker 1: explicitly rejected the concept of a pre tribulation rapture, as
24:40
Speaker 1: did Nti Write, an Anglican theologian and scholar who became
24:44
Speaker 1: very popular among certain segments of American evangelicalism. Wright explicitly
24:48
Speaker 1: attacked rapture theology in his two thousand and eight books
24:51
Speaker 1: Surprised by Hope. Evangelical universities founded by dispensationalists, such as
24:54
Speaker 1: Biola College and Gordon College ditched the theology, as well
24:58
Speaker 1: as did some evangelical denomine. In twenty nineteen, the Evangelical
25:02
Speaker 1: Free Church of America removed premillennial theology from its statement
25:05
Speaker 1: of faith. So, while rapture theology remains very popular today,
25:09
Speaker 1: it draws most of its inspiration from pop dispensational writings
25:12
Speaker 1: like the Left Behind series. Some historians go so far
25:15
Speaker 1: as to call it a form of folk evangelicalism, as
25:18
Speaker 1: the theological muscle backing the belief has diminished as evangelical
25:22
Speaker 1: theologians and institutions have turned away from it. All this
25:25
Speaker 1: to say, belief in the raptures started on the fringe
25:27
Speaker 1: of evangelical theology, but it may be headed to the
25:30
Speaker 1: fringe once again. As we talked about in this video,
25:32
Speaker 1: Rapture theology draws a lot of inspiration from First Thessalonians,
25:36
Speaker 1: a text composed for a congregation that was very concerned
25:39
Speaker 1: that Jesus had not returned yet. As the decades and
25:41
Speaker 1: centuries went on, Christians started to grapple with this delayed
25:45
Speaker 1: return in writing, developing new theological frameworks to make sense
25:49
Speaker 1: of it. One of these texts is the Gospel of Thomas,
25:51
Speaker 1: which has passages that describe the coming of the Kingdom
25:54
Speaker 1: of God as an internal event rather than an external
25:57
Speaker 1: political event. I'll be teaching an online webinar of about
26:00
Speaker 1: the Gospel of Thomas on Monday, July thirty first, starting
26:02
Speaker 1: at six thirty pm US East Coast time. Tickets cost
26:06
Speaker 1: whatever you want. I don't want cost to get in
26:07
Speaker 1: the way think of this webinar like a guided close
26:10
Speaker 1: reading of a very complicated text. I'll walk us through
26:13
Speaker 1: the major themes in the Gospel of Thomas, some key passages,
26:16
Speaker 1: and the scholarship on what the text actually means. If
26:18
Speaker 1: you can't make it during that exact timeslot, don't worry. Afterward,
26:21
Speaker 1: I'll send out a recording of the webinar to everyone
26:23
Speaker 1: who signed up. Just head on over to religion for
26:26
Speaker 1: Breakfast dot event bright dot com to join. So again,
26:28
Speaker 1: that's Religion for Breakfast dot Event, bright dot com. Thanks
26:32
Speaker 1: to everyone. Hope to see you there.