Time to Leave the Rapture Theory Behind

Lake Erie

I left the "rapture theory" behind many years ago. Why? Biblical-textual reasons. The Christian scriptures do not suport this. R-theory is narrow, modernist, and mostly found in American. It's un-Hebrew, this being important since the Christian scriptures are Jewish documents and must be understood in a Jewish context.

If you want to study this biblically read first, of course, the Judeo-Christian eschatological texts (Daniel, Revelation, Jesus' eschatological words, and Paul's.

Get some good bibilical commentaries on these texts. For the NT Gospel commentaries I use see here.

See a post I have made here

Read N.T. Wright's Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the
Church. Wright's more scholarly, in-depth presentation of NT eschatology (Jesus' eschatology) is found in his Jesus and the Victory of God.  

Read Ben Witherington on the problem with rapture theology in The Problem with Evangelical Theology: Testing the Exegetical Foundations of Calvinism, Dispensationalism, and Wesleyanism.

See this little article by Wright - "Farewell to the Rapture."   (Thanks to Chris Butson for pointing me to this.)

It's time to leave rapture theory behind, not because there was no "rapture" on May 21, 2011, but because there's not going to be one at all.