“Schizophrenic” is kinda harsh. As I recall, she made her “Rapture” prophecy either while she was down with a fever or recovering from one.
Darby was pretty much against the Edward Irving-led “Charismatic” movement, so I don’t know how much cross-pollination of ideas between the two circles there would be.
Sometimes, it just seems like there is something in the air that various people latch onto at once- like it was Reformation time in the early 1500s & Republic time in the late 1700s. The 1830s was Rapture time (without the actual Rapture.)
IF the Rapture does indeed happen, various “Satanic” explanations are already circulating-
two explanations I’ve actually read quoted from New Age materials (don’t have cites handy, sorry)-
the divisive Christians had to be removed to clear the path for universal harmony,
those who vanished were the first wave to go into Bliss & now the Masters/Space Brothers/Teachers are coming to prepare the rest of humanity to follow.
The mechanisms for the Disappearance may be anything from Interdimensional Translation to UFOs.
Btw, James BeauSeigneur’s CHRIST CLONE Trilogy of novels has a really unique way of presenting the Rapture so it doesn’t look like the traditional “Rapture”- as the Christians go into their Heavenly bodies they leave their physical ones behind, so actually it seems there is a great Christian die-off.
If there actually is a Rapture, I think he’s wrong, but it was an imaginative presentation.
I have several translations on hand (all Hebrew-to-English, no intervening Greek or Latin translations), and they all say, more or less, “the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.”
For instance, see the JPS* translation, starting with chapter nine.
And yes, I’ve wondered about this as well - why does G-d tell Moses to speak to Pharaoh, and then deliberately make Pharaoh resistant to Moses’ arguments? Ah, but that’s for another thread…
*The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text, The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1917.
A cynical answer would be that you’d have a lot of Christian Rapturists still around denying that the disappearance of all those billions of people was the real Rapture. Because they hadn’t been taken.
If I were Satan, however, and I wanted to cover up the Rapture, I’d probably go with mass impersonation. Send up a few billion of my demons, change their appearance so they looked like all the disappeared people, and convince all the remaining real people that everything’s the same as it always was.
One of the verses which is often cited is Matt. 40-42 “Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming.”
I am of the school of thought (and, yes, I know it is extremely controversial) that this is taken out of context and that it ignores the verses which precede it…
Matt. 24:37-40
“But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left.”
In the “days of Noah,” the wicked were taken in the flood. So, this “rapture” of which people speak is exactly the opposite of what many believe.
So, if I were the devil, I would convince people that they want to get onto the rapture train, like good little Christians, and then take them for a ride when the day comes.
I once made the mistake of declaring, in front of another Christian, that I do not believe in the rapture. I have never seen a more distinct look of “we need to save your lost soul NOW!” But my girlfriend is a Christian and I think she is with me on this one, or at least it is not an issue for us.
That said, and seeing as this is hypothetical, if the LaHaye/Jenkins story came true and all Chhristians suddenly vanished, I would appear as Jesus as tell the remaining survivors that now is their last chance to join me.
I personally put about as much stock in the rapture and Dispensationalism as I put into extraterrestrials with anal probes prowling around the suburbs of Chicago, but I have a super secret fantasy that if it ever actually does happen, I’m going to really enjoy watching all the people who will deny that it was actually the rapture because THEY weren’t take up…
Does any significant subset of Christians actually believe that dinosaur fossils were created by Satan, or is that just another one of those ‘Jesus horse’ things - existing more or less entirely as an unfounded allegation?
Also (and more to the point), is there any Christian theological support for the notion of Satan being capable of creating things?
It actually happened last month. As advertised (in some quarters), 144,000 people, living and dead were assumed bodily into the Presence. More specifically, 143,999 dead people, and me.
Problem is that all of the dead ones had lived at various times, and in widely varied geographical locations during the past 2,000 years.
NOT ONE OF US had actually ever met any of the others in life. Closest I came to an English speaker was a minor English nobleman from 1214.
A dull time was being had by all. I asked to come back, and they let me. Set me down at the exact time and spatial coordinates I had been taken from, too. It’s just as well. kaylasmom would have been pissed if I’d missed getting dinner on the table for a whole week.
You have to understand the way fundie Christians view non-Believers. According to them, all non-Believers actually do understand that Christ is Lord, but have chosen to hate Christ instead. Christ’s love is all around us, but since non-Believers refuse accept the love of Christ, something as mundane as the Rapture is unlikely to change our minds.
Satan will certainly be active during the last days, but as to how he’ll be active, multiple theories abound. One thing is for sure: by the time of the Rapture, the AntiChrist will already have risen to power, so he’s certain to come up with a plausible explanation. Remember, the AntiChrist will be ten times more charismatic than Barack Obama and Hitler combined, so people will believe whatever he says with no proof needed.
The way it was taught to me, dinosaur bones etc. were created by God to test our faith.
When Jesus spoke of the last days, he said that generation would not pass away until all those things were accomplished. It didn’t happen so the church decided he meant a different generation.
This to me is another way of humans teaching their beliefs. They have that right, but I wouldn’t worry too much about it actually happening.
1st paragraph- Nonsense! Maybe you’ve met fundies like that but most that I’ve known believe that most non-believers are partly deceived, partly culpable to varying degrees.
Re the response of non-believers to the Rapture, the usual Rapturist scenario is that afterwards, at least 144,000 Jews/Israelites come to Christ & multitudes of Gentiles follow suit (Revelation 7 & 14), with other multitudes following the Beast.
Was the dinosaur bone test actually taught by the Pastor or by some Sunday School teacher who was just spouting his/her own nonsense? Every Creationist I’ve heard totally believes in dinosaurs & finds them in the Bible (the great sea creatures of Gen 1, Day 5, Behemoth & Leviathan in Job). Last week I went to the Creation Museum in Kentucky and one thing was clear- they love Dinos!
I heard the “dinosaur bones were put here by God to test us” argument fairly frequently when I was a child in Louisiana, including from a Baptist sunday school teacher and from my grandmother. I think the fundies have become more accepting of dinosaurs than they used to be.
Could I ask when this was? In the late 60’s, early 70’s, I never heard anything about Dinos not existing. They were always worked into the Creationist scenarios I was taught (either the Six Literal Day 6000 yr old version or the Original Creation-Luciferian Destruction-ReCreation one).
And I can second this, having grown up on the other side of the country from Dio (MN) in an Assemblies of God church. This was during the late '80’s - mid 90’s, so i regret to inform you that this idea hasn’t died its natural death quite yet. It’s one of those things that doesn’t “fit” and therefore = deception of Satan.
Btw, I am also curious if Satan can “create” things. I was always lead to believe that Satan had no physical control over man or matter but is a master manipulator; he could only show you a parrot and convince you it was a dog.
I can think of a couple times that it would have been nice to have a guy like that around. “Aw shit, the cops are here. Satan, you wanna get this one?”
In addition to Darby, another person responsible for the rapture theory (and the whole dispensational premillenial thing) was an American, Cyrus Scofield. Scofield was a minister who published “Scofield’s Reference Bible”, a KJV bible heavilly annotated by Scofield (and I mean really annotated. Scofield’s commentary tends to be longer than the books on which he comments).
His notes and annotations tied together the different bible verses into an organized and complete theology promoting the theory of the rapture and dispensational premillenialism, so that anyone who bought one of his bibles could have it spelled out there for them.
For instance, Scofield’s notes to 1 Thess 4:17, one of the verses quoted by **Dio ** read:
This doesn’t make sense. If you think they’d still be around, you think they’re not “real Christians,” and if you think that, then after the rapture, it is most likely they will be (collectively at least) tools of Satan, and so should not be listened to.
(without the actual Rapture.)