"88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988...2012" (Eschatology is Hard)

I recently joined an online discussion about eschatology, or the study of the "end times". I began my thoughts with reference to a modern "classic" (er, sort of):

Actually JB, the book that comes to my memory is "88 reasons Why The Rapture Will Be in 1988". Apparently we missed it! :)

The truth that strikes me about date-setting specifically (and predictions more generally) is that, despite the fact that Jesus' first coming was, at the time, the most prophesied event in human history, nearly everyone got it wrong ... including (indeed, especially) the most humanly "prepared"--the Jewish clergy. Their problem was not a lack of information, it was the hardness of their hearts compounded by the inability to imagine God's actual plan beyond their narrow, self-referential interpretation of Scripture.

What this tells me is that the purpose of the prophecies about His second coming is not prediction, but preparation.

If pressed, I will confess to amillenialist leanings, which is to say that I tend to think the "last days" began in the 1st Century (Heb 1:2) and that the "thousand years" of Revelation 20 is a figurative reference to Christ's present reign over His church (this interpretation requires a non-chronological reading of Revelation). I generally admit to that tentatively, because I find the topic to be more divisive than it ought to be; because I think Jesus' first coming demonstrates that interpreting prophecy is much harder than we tend to think it is; and because it is far from being a central point of the Faith.

Moreover, my understanding of church history is that eschatology can be very trendy ... in other words, the popular view of this subject often changes with the times, with the ebb and flow of world events. This is an understandable phenomenon, but should caution us that our interpretations are easily influenced by the specific places and times in which we live.

My guess is that, when He does return, the circumstances will be unlike anything most of us has quite imagined, yet all of us will afterwards conclude that we should have known (and, more importantly, should have been prepared), as the prophecies will have clearly foretold precisely the way it actually happened. In other words, it'll be kinda like the first time, if only in that sense ... :)

Back to my point about "not prediction, but preparation", I rather like the way Keith Green put it (*Update -- the old Keith Green YouTube video was taken down, so I've replaced it with another version of the same song):

Source:

"Back to my point about "not prediction, but preparation"

Many Protestant Christians believe that the end of the world will come in the form of what they call the Rapture, when the righteous will all be whisked away to heaven. Shakers believed the Rapture would come in 1792. Seventh Day Adventists first calculated it would happen in 1843, then when nothing happened, they found an error in their calculations and corrected it to 1844. The Jehovah's Witnesses made firm predictions for 1918, 1925, 1941, 1975, 1984, and 1994. A book was published in 1988 called 88 Reasons the Rapture is in 1988. A number of Bible scholars found firm scriptural evidence that the Rapture would happen in October of 2005. Thousands of Koreans gave away all their money and possessions in preparation for the Rapture on October 28, 1992. Even Sir Isaac Newton made a calculation based on scripture that showed the Rapture could not happen before 2060. Some Jewish scholars place the "end of days" via Armageddon in the year 2240. I couldn't find 2012 mentioned in any of these stories.

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Is the Rapture a Biblical Doctrine?

The Doctrine of the Rapture of the Church is the popular Nicean Christian belief that at some point in the future HaShem will extract all true "Christians" from the earth, "in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye" leaving everyone else here to suffer under the reign of the coming Antichrist (Rex Mundi).

This idea gained popular support through the teachings of Dr. Clarence Larkin (Dispensational Truths), Rev. Charles Scofield (The Scofield Bible), a plethora of Second and Third Great Awakening Evangelists (see my study The Great Awakenings for more on these religious developments), and more recently from the unbiblical works of fiction by Tim Lahey known as The Left Behind Series in which the Antichrist is depicted as a Transylvanian Dracula-type Liberal do-gooder gone bad! Likewise, Family Radio of Harold Camping has used this teaching to mislead millions. We need to understand the truth of this! Is this a biblical doctrine? More: