November 6, 2005: The Rapture and the End Times

+THE THIRTY-SECOND SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
Today’s Readings: Wis. 6: 12–16; Ps. 63; 1 Thess. 4: 13–18; Mt. 25: 1–13


As we listen to our second reading today (1 Thess 4: 13–18), we hear a mysterious, and maybe even frightening, description of what it will be like as we come to the end of the world. St. Paul says that the Lord will give the command, God’s trumpet will sound, Jesus will come down from heaven, and those who have died in Christ will be first to rise from the dead. Then, St. Paul continues, those faithful believers who are still alive will be—as it’s translated here—“caught up” into the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Not your average day on Van Alstyne Street!

In some fundamentalist and evangelical Protestant churches, this prelude to the end times is known as the “Rapture.” In fact, they teach that if you’re not a “true Christian”—in other words, if you don’t adhere to substantial portions of their own teachings—you won’t be “raptured” with the Lord. Instead, you’ll be left behind to face a terrible seven-year period of tribulation and suffering on earth, graphically described in Chapter 2 of the Book of Revelation, where Satan will be in charge and rule with a rod of iron (Rev 2: 18–29).

In fact, very often, believers in the Rapture cite today’s Gospel about the wise and foolish virgins (Mt 25: 1–13) as a warning: you better get your act together and become a true disciple before it’s too late, because you never know when the trumpet will sound and the Rapture will take place.

According to the fundamentalists and evangelicals who await the Rapture, we Catholics especially better change our ways—because we’re among the ones who will be left behind since we’re not “true Christian believers.” We have many horrible beliefs, they say, and we do unspeakable things, such as use holy water, sing the Ave Maria, and actually believe some of the teachings of St. Augustine! Huh? Well, that’s what they say…

A lot of people believe all this. You may have heard of the novels written by Tim Lahaye, called the Left Behind series. There are a number of these books now, and they’re very popular. At least one took the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. These stories use a lot of emotional appeal and soft-sell to promote the idea of the Rapture.

This Rapture business, though, is a very confusing. The rapturists say that Christ will only come one more time—but their explanation shows that He will actually come a second and a third time! The Rapture is kind of a secret, invisible coming of Christ to “catch up” the select few believers… and then, at the end of the seven years of tribulation, the Lord will be back for a third time to whop the Antichrist.

Oddly enough for fundamentalists and evangelicals, the Bible never speaks of any “rapture.” The rapturists took several Greek words having to do with the end-times—parousia, apokalypsis, epiphaneia—and tried to give them different meanings… but it all quickly unravels and becomes very mixed up. It shows what happens when you take many different kinds of biblical writing and symbols out of context and try to interpret them literally—but only sometimes.

I say sometimes, because the same fundamentalists say that the passages in the Bible about baptism and the Eucharist should be interpreted metaphorically—but we should take literally what it says about dragons, beasts with many horns, locusts, bowls, trumpets, and Jesus with a sword coming out of His mouth!

So, what’s the “real deal” on all this? What does the Catholic Church really believe and teach about the end-times?

For one thing, the Nicene Creed which we recite at every Sunday Mass, teaches that Jesus “will come again in glory to judge and living and the dead, and His kingdom will have no end.” So we do believe in Christ’s Second Coming—and many rapturists are surprised to hear this! Yes, Christ will come again.

We also believe, as the Bible states and as the Catechism reaffirms, that before Christ’s Second Coming—the only coming left—the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers (CCC 675). It will be a time of great religious deception offering people an apparent solution to their problems at the price of totally defecting from the true faith—in other words, mass apostasy. The leader of this deception is known as the Antichrist, and the sign that he is coming is that people will glorify themselves in the place of God and Christ.

It’s pretty obvious that we already live in this age leading up to the Second Coming—and of course, Scripture also makes clear that nobody knows the “day or the hour” when the Lord will come again—which is why the Church constantly teaches that we better stay alert and be ready, since the Lord might show up at any moment now… the real meaning of the parable of the wise and foolish virgins.

At this Second Coming, Christ will judge the living and the dead, and the good—those souls destined for heaven—will be “caught up” to the Lord. So in that sense, you might say that they will be “raptured.” And this is the exact same view that the Orthodox and mainline Protestant churches also hold. Even the founders of the major Protestant traditions—Martin Luther, John Calvin, John Wesley—didn’t believe in a secret rapture.

So how come this Rapture business is so popular? I guess because it seems to give some people hope that they can avoid a lot of suffering, pain, hostility, and even dying. It’s nice to think that God will whisk you away so you can bypass all that.

Yet, even Christ Himself endured much suffering and death in His passion before His resurrection. Our Lord tells us that we, too, must pick up our cross and carry it.

It’s always a dangerous thing to try to remove the cross from Christianity—because then you’ve strayed far from Christ.

There’s no doubt that we are in the last days, and the signs of the end of the age are upon us. What we must do is to be zealous for the faith… to pray every single day… and make our common prayer the words of St. John that he uses to conclude the Book of Revelation (Rev 22: 20): “He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!”