Oh No....Some Guy At Huff-Po Says There Is No Rapture!

Some guy named Zack Hunt has penned an anti-Rapture article for the Huffington Post that is causing a bit of a hubbub. I’ve seen several fellow Christians forward it to me, with the intention of asking my take as a pastor-theologian. The popularity of this particular article at the moment notwithstanding, here is my short answer: there is nothing new here. This guy is simply promulgating a tired old take on a biblical doctrine, and he's not doing it particularly well. 

I am familiar with this type of argument, and remain unimpressed by it. There is much about pre-millennial eschatology (or, for that matter, all eschatology) that stands on rather shaky textual ground. But for all their bluster about how they are the Reasonable Crowd, the Evangelical-Haters always end up resorting to silly and fallacious argumentative strategies. I have three specific problems with this article:

1.       It is anecdotal. This belongs to what I call the “Bible Belt BS” premise. You’ve heard it before: “I grew up in the Bible Belt, so I have a right to criticize all of Christianity with the broad brush of what I think I learned about it when I was 8.” A reasonable argument is one that begins with a premise and works toward a syllogism, as opposed to a story about one person’s limited and biased experience. I would throw equal criticism at anyone who argues that God heals because she knows someone who got healed. Since we all know people who didn’t “get healed,” there needs to be a better logical defense for the premise of divine healing than anecdotal examples. Same with eschatology.

2.       It is shallow. I’ve come to expect this from anything appearing in the Huffington Post to begin with. But if, in the first paragraph of your argument, you can’t spell your way out of a 3^rd-grade homonym contest (“head over heals” instead “head over heels”) then you might be writing for an online publication with little to no editorial oversight—to say nothing of your own lack of education, credibility or grammatical/literary maturity. And make no mistake about it: this author wants to discredit Jack Van Impe on the basis of a lack of education and credibility. In so doing, Zach Hunt has been hoisted on his own petard.

3.       It is historically inaccurate. The notion that the Rapture is a “new” concept that began with John Nelson Darby in the early 19^th century is an old canard, and as false as Joe Biden’s hair plugs. While Darby is the first person to “jump start” the pre-millennialist popularity in the Western hemisphere, the truth is that the entire early Church embraced a pre-millennialist eschatology. You’ll note that the “early” theologians he references who were preterist or amillenialist were Augustine and Aquinas. Not only are these two guys separated by about 1,000 years, but Augustine is about 200 years after a major shift in Church eschatological doctrinal formation. The first century or two of the Church saw a unanimous embrace of the belief that Christ was on His way back. When He didn’t show up by the end of the 2^nd century, many theologians started looking for ways to re-interpret those passages of scripture. Thus, the advent of amillenialism, preterism, etc. So Zack Hunt's view of the end times is actually the "newcomer" on the theological scene. Ironically, this particular author’s professor had told him correctly….we are in the last days, and have been for 2,000 years. That is no reason to doubt Christ’s words, however. In fact, the Greek ἁρπάζω (“harpazo”) from 1 Thessalonians 4.17 means to “snatch,” as a thief grabs something violently. The Latin translation of this word was “raptus,” from which we take our word “rapture.”

I can embrace as fellow Christians others who don’t see the end times as I do, since eschatology isn’t a cardinal doctrine of the faith. As long as that person believes in the bodily return of Jesus Christ, he isn't committing heresy by disbelieving in the Rapture (for which a very sound biblical case has been made by many, including myself). But if he takes a snarky, disrespectful tone to brothers and sisters who are pretty obviously more studied than he on the topic, paints all of them with the broad brush of Toothless Hillbilly Evangelical, and publishes his bile on the nation’s leading liberal blog, he is doing something other than “embracing” his fellow Christians in love.

Consider the source before ascribing any validity to it.