“You Yourselves bear me witness that I said ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before Him’.” (John 3:28)

Of course John’s comment is in light of his ministry. For he says that he was to announce the Christ because he is not the Christ: his role was to prepare the way. John sees that his own life isn’t purposeless but is actually tied up in the work of God by the presentation of the Lamb of God.

He was sent to preach repentance and when he saw the Lamb of God he pointed him out, openly acknowledging that this is the provision that God had made. (John 1:19-34)

To John’s mind, this probably meant something else. He probably thought as Jesus as the Lamb ruler who would forcefully take away the sins of the World. After all, it was only a short time later that he would be imprisoned, still waiting for the Christ to reboot this entire world, and wondering why it hadn’t happened yet.

In Matthew 11, John, seeing that Herod is still in power (and he’s still in jail) sends a message to Jesus via disciples: “Are you the Christ that we’re waiting for?” He spent his life pointing out this person, he could’ve sworn that this was the very thing he was called to do, but things had turned out so differently and dire: could he have been wrong?

Christ responds neither yes nor no but pointing out the work of God. The Lame walk. The blind see. The Gospel is being preached.

The next historical note we have about John is that he’s beheaded at a party for a cruel mother and her daughter. (Matthew 14:1-12; Mark 6:14-29; Luke 9:7-9).

You see, Christ explains, John wasn’t merely some spectacle in soft clothes out in the wild—some oddity to ogle. This John was God’s prophet: the very Elijah who was supposed to come (if they would have had him) before the end of the age: the one who prepared the way of the coming of the Lord Himself. This John, in prison who eventually died of beheading, was the greatest of the prophets (Matt 11:11a).

Without a miracle. Without a sign. With a backwater ministry in the Jewish outback. John functioned where he was supposed to function doing what all the prophets before him did, but better. Point to Christ.

Every single prophet in the Old Testament pointed forward to Christ via the power of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes fuzzily. Sometimes explicitly. But always predicated upon God’s revelation and looking forward to God’s distant promises. John alone, out of all the prophets, announced Him within days, inaugurated him via baptism, and witnessed the descending Holy Spirit upon Him. None of the prophets were given that position (Heb 11:39).

But John didn’t see everything. He was still an Old Testament prophet. He didn’t see  the crowds cheering around the one who comes in the name of the Lord (Mark 11:9; John 12). To him wasn’t given the horror of seeing the Messiah rejected and pinned to a tree (John 19). He would never witness the wonder of the risen Messiah (John 20). To him wasn’t given the chance of listening to the risen Lord for several days before he was taken up into heaven (Acts 1). To him wasn’t given the chance of participating in the prophesying in tongues which was a witness of the Holy Spirit being poured out in the last days (Acts 2).

None of those things were given to him; God didn’t grant John that role.

And he knew that at this point.

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Every now and then I like posting something incisive that was written in the past because it speaks so well into the present. The sweet thing about this is that these guys, who are often waved away today, have dealt with a lot of the same issues while remaining simultaneously (by the modern mind) ignored. This comes from Douglas Moo.

The truth of the imminent coming of our Lord Jesus Christ is an important and indispensable element of biblical truth. That this coming is to be premillennial the Scriptures plainly state. That a time of unprecedented Tribulation will immediately precede that coming and that living believers will be raptured into the presence of Christ at His coming are also plainly stated.

But the time of that Rapture with respect to the tribulation is nowhere plainly stated. No Old Testament or New Testament author directly addresses that question or states the nature of that relationship as a point fo doctrine. What I think the Scriptures indicate has been stated on the preceding pages.

But, because this conviction is founded upon logic, inferences, and legitimately debated points of exegesis, I cannot, indeed must not, allow this conviction to represent any kind of barrier to full relationships with others who hold differing convictions on this point. May our discussions on this point enhance, not detract from, our common expectation of “the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13)

Three Views on The Rapture (1996), page 211 (I added paragraph breaks but the emphasis was original to Moo).

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Every now and then, on a Friday, I’ll step into the deep waters of Philosophy, ramble on about some idea and maybe even interact with something I might be reading. Most of the time, a real philosopher could probably read my drivel and speak into it offering a corrective—but for now I’ll speak from ignorance. After all, it is Friday; what better way to have fun than with philosophy. In this post I’ll deal with some philosophical issues surrounding the rapture (or lack thereof come May 21st) in under 700 words.

Let’s say that the rapture doesn’t happen on May 21st, 2011 (which, according to the last posts, seems extremely likely) does that mean that God doesn’t exist? After all, there is a group of Christians saying that it is an irrefutable fact that the Bible teaches this date for the rapture. And if the Bible teaches it, and it doesn’t happen, then surely God doesn’t exist.

This sounds silly, but I’ve seen folk raising this point as if now we’ll have the proof either way. But there’s several responses to this.

The Bible could be wrong, is one response. That shouldn’t be as catastrophic as some Christians might think. The existence of God isn’t predicated on a Bible that doesn’t make mistakes; it’s predicated on the fact that God exists. If the Bible contained errors, that wouldn’t negate the truth claim of God existing, it would just put into question what we can know about God’s existence.

Even then, that shouldn’t put us into an agnostic tailspin. We might wind up looking at the Bible like any other collection of ancient documents: containing historical data while simultaneously containing mistakes. So the way we would look at a modern textbook in School and say “this didn’t happen exactly this way” while still trusting what the book says, we can likewise do this with a Bible that contains mistakes of the proportion of predicting Christ’s return on May 21st, 2011.

But we don’t even have to go as far as saying the Bible is wrong. We might offer an easier response: the date-setters are wrong—and that could be at two levels. One level (which I think the date-setters might employ) is that (a) the calculations were wrong or (b) the event was right but the extent of the event was mistaken. Jehovah Witnesses, for example, long predicted that Christ came but made a correction saying that Christ entered into Earth with some sort of presence of judgment awaiting Armageddon. They weren’t saying that before the prediction failed. Anyway, this would only prove the fallibility of men.

The second level (which the date-setters will avoid if the event doesn’t occur) is that the date-setters were wrong on almost everything. They started trying to do something that there is no warrant to do, they based their math on presuppositions, and they preached a message which God never authorized. If anything, this wouldn’t disprove the existence of God either; it’d just prove that men can make intentional mistakes when they try to do what they aren’t authorized to do.

Even if the rapture does happen, it wouldn’t prove these date-setters were right. It could be that the rapture happens, but these people got the right day by luck and not by mathematics or revelation. This would leave these people wrong on everything except for the date which they hit by accident.

Of course, I personally doubt the event will occur tomorrow, but either way it doesn’t disprove the existence of God nor prove that the exegesis of the date-setters was spot-on.

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Folk have been setting dates on the Rapture for a long time. If you check the inerrant internet repository of all knowledge, you’ll find dates set for March 21, 1844, 1914, 1981, 1988, 1994 (Harold Camping’s first date), 2011 (Harold Camping’s second date), and even 2060 (Isaac Newton).

But this is only recent history. Before the Bible was even finished we had people saying that Christ would return—in fact, the second letter of 2 Thessalonians was because there was a teaching that the Day of the Lord had already occurred (2 Thes 2:1-2); Paul actually kicked some folk out of church for teaching that sort of thing (2 Tim 2:16-18). Some sites online have even tried to record the history of date-setting, though it’s definitely not comprehensive.

The thing is that every single rapture prediction has to come face to face with verses that state that no one can predict the event.  So you have Christ saying that no one knows the day or the time of Christ’s return (Matt 25:1) and that we should always be ready for his return (Mat 24:42) and that (at the point of stating it) not even Jesus knew the time of his return (Mat 24:36). Angels don’t know when it will happen (Mk 13:32) and in fact, Christ says that it’s not for us to know when it happens (Acts 1:7) .

And this is when the theological nuances enter in. Date-setters have a long history of saying that this was true back then (when Christ made the statements) but it isn’t true now: that we have been given plenty of information to try to figure out The When. They’re close, but have taken things a step too far.

We have been given a lot of information about Timing but we haven’t been given information about The Time.

You’re probably wondering what the difference is. Here’s an example: when it is cloudy out you must use your headlights. This is a statement about timing based on certain situations but it is not a statement of what time you are to use the headlights. It’s not like I said “at 5:34 on May 21st you must use your headlights.”

Likewise in Scripture, there is information given about Christ’s return and the rapture but Christians put this information together in different ways to figure out the timing of the Rapture but they shouldn’t do it to put together the Time of the Rapture.

So for example 1 Corinthians 15 ties the Resurrection of the Dead to Christ’s return so the timing of the rapture is “at Christ’s return”.  So the timing of the rapture winds up being linked. That’s easy, true, but it gets more difficult when you add more information: information that Christ adds.

Christ says that when people are saying “peace and safety” that we need to be watchful (Mk 13:32-37). That just like in the days of Noah, when people thought everything was fine, so the coming of the Son would occur in this sort of environment (Mt 24:36-39). That his coming is when people don’t expect him to come (Lu 12:40), almost like a trap (Luke 21:34-35) and that we must be vigilant (Mk 13:33-37).  Paul says that date-setting is problematic since Christ’s coming is like a thief in the night (1 Th 5:1-2) and he’s just echoing Christ himself (Luke 12:39 ; Rev 3:3; 16:15).

The indication of these verses all seem to be that Christ is coming in judgment of the Earth, that it is the time of His wrath, and therefore believers need to be ready for his coming. Since His coming is already tied to the resurrection of the dead, the timing of the rapture seems to be “when the Lord comes to judge the earth.”  Noting that believers are not appointed to wrath (Rom 5:9; Rev 6:17) some believers think that the Church is being rescued from the wrath while fully expecting the rapture is imminent  (Jam 5:8; 1 Pe 4:7).

But Christ gives more information. So you have Christ saying that his coming is after certain horrendous things in Matthew 24. You’ll have rumors of war, famines, earthquakes, delivering of Christians to tribulation, a great apostasy, false prophets, increased lawlessness, the Gospel reaching out to the whole world—and then the end comes. Christ tells believers when they see the abomination that makes desolate, that they’re to flee to the mountains praying that all this doesn’t happen in winter. That all this is so bad that there will never be a more horrid time after this—then Christ comes like in the days of Noah where all the people are wiped out.  Paul points out that before the Day of the Lord, the man of Lawlessness would be revealed (2 Thes 2) which puts yet another timing marker.

Other believers  then, argue that since there are markers of wrath in conjunction with the coming of the Lord, and the believers are told to expect the Lord’s coming at any moment, that therefore Christ’s coming will be either during or after the outpouring of God’s wrath and that Christians will be saved through (and not from) the wrath. The rapture, in this nuance, occurs after or during all these things (Luke 21:25-28).

Then you have those heterodox (though I’d say heretical) Christians who say all of this has already happened in 70A.D and that no one is waiting for Christ’s return because He already returned and that all we’re waiting for is to die and then spiritually go to the Lord. They follow the error of Hymenaeus and Philetus  and get away with it because we live after those two.

The point here is that we don’t know the hour or the day of the Lord’s coming, indeed we can’t know it, but we have plenty of markers to give us the timing of His coming and these markers might be theologically put together to give us a construct of the timing of the rapture, but they don’t necessarily have to be. Is the rapture before, during or after God’s wrath? We don’t know.

The fact is that we Christians should all be eagerly waiting his coming either way while avoiding the trend of setting dates.

(A nice easy-to-read overview with arguments on each side is Three Views of the Rapture. It’s written by three premillennialists, one being specifically dispensational, but they do a good job of trying to stay on target. What’s should be noted is that views of the millennium don’t necessarily change in regards to the timing of the rapture. An Amillennialist can still be a post-tribulational rapture proponent.)

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