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The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation

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Excellent book. I found it riveting and read it in one day. It is a clear and easy read. It outlines how there is no "Rapture" found in scripture. This is a false theology invented 170 years ago by piecing together unrelated biblical texts and then tossing in some extra stuff. It's not even a literal interpretation of the Bible. Yet one of the challenges of the theology is its impact on foreign policy and the environment today. Having a true interpretation of endtimes, as actually found in scripture, will correct many hurtful and sinful policies currently practiced by those who adhere to the Rapture theology. Rossing also opposes the violence associated with a Rapture interpretation of the book of Revelation.

She then goes on to give a very comprehensive and persuasive argument for what Revelation actually says. Violence is of mankind; "Lamb power" and testimony are of God. Jesus is "Emmanuel," Hebrew for "God with us." God does not take us up from Earth, Rapture the faithful away, but comes down to Earth, to be with us and heal our wounds. I think this book is recommended reading for anyone who has ever read the Left Behind series. It will also be helpful for church Bible study and discussion groups.

If you want to be entertained with an exciting, but very whacky story, then read the LEFT BEHIND series. But if you want to be able to separate solid biblical interpretation from something that has been made up out of whole cloth and then has served as a basis for a money making machine and some very questionable political positions, then read this book first. It is good, solid, scholarly biblical interpretation. I'm just afraid that those who are persuaded that the LEFT BEHIND series is based in "truth" won't bother to read Rossing's book and be thoughtful about this issue. Great book which deserves a lot of attention!

In "The Rapture Exposed," theologian Barbara Rossing uses the verb "fabricate" to examine the "Left Behind" series of novels by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, and brilliantly refute their distortion of God's vision for the world. "The Da Vinci Code," another fabrication masquerading as truth, can easily be de-coded by checking out the Opus Dei and Priory of Sion Hoax sites, or taking a class in "Da Vinci 101," but recruiting people into believing they will be spirited up to heaven "any day now" and citing the Bible as evidence is not even biblical. Jesus himself says in Matt 24:36 that the world's end will come at a day and hour not even the Son knows.
"THE RAPTURE IS A RACKET" proclaims Rossing in her Chapter 1 opening sentence, then continues, "In place of Jesus's blessing of peacemakers, the Rapture voyeuristically glorifies violence and war." LaHaye's fictional output surpasses that of fellow Rapturist Hal Lindsey, whose 1970 "Late Great Planet Earth" saw the Cold War as an indication of end times. Lindsey found the Antichrist first as Soviet, but now as Muslim. Of particular interest is Rossing's Chapter 3: "The Rapture Script of the Middle East."
Rossing points out that no passage in the Bible uses the word "Rapture" -- as LaHaye and Lindsey admit -- and traces this distortion of Christian faith to John Nelson Darby, a 19th century evangelical preacher, who invented "dispensations" -- seven intervals of time that he said were God's grand timetable for world events. Darby's scenarios were based on three verses from Daniel 9:25-27.
Rossing's chapter, "Prophecy and Apocalypse," refutes the Rapturists'claim that John's Book of Revelation (or Apocalypse) gives us God's play-by-play prophetic script for the future. She reminds us that, contrary to the association of the word with disaster, apocalypse means "unveiling," and was a popular form of ancient literature. Visionary journeys, such as the one John describes, were not fortune-telling, but calls to repentence and faithfullness, much like Scrooge's visions of the Past, Present and Future changed his life.
In Rev 19, Rapturists consider an armed Christ returning to earth to do battle as the culmination of his reappearance, but Rossing considers the Chapters 21 and 22 visions of a New Jerusalem far more revealing. The picture of life together in a new world where God comes down to earth to "wipe away every tear," is the spiritual promise of Revelation. She writes, "The New Jerusalem vision is meant to be God's vision by which we live our lives right now.... First we go in to worship, to the throne of God...to see the Lamb's vision of true power and life and salvation. Second, we return back home to the world, with our
vision transformed in a new way, transfigured in light of the Lamb." This is the message of hope referred to in Rossing's subtitle: God comes down to dwell with us, we are not selectively snatched up.

The Rapture Exposed by Barbara Rossing exposes some of the falicy in our modern way of thinking about the Revelation. Rossing denounces the Left Behind books as exploiters of this "fictional" way of thinking. She is trying to tell the Christian community that Jesus will not come down and damn all the unfaithfull to hell, but will instead save EVERYONE from damnation. He has already saved us by his death on the cross. Her message is one of hope. Rossing does an excellent job of teaching her theory of the Revelation and the "rapture." I would highly recommend that every Christian read this eye-opening book.

This book is as much about emphasizing the actual teachings of the Book of Revelation as it is debunking the extremely strange beliefs underlying things like the Left Behind series. Ms. Rossing is clearly (clearly, that is, to anyone who has actually sat down and read the book) an extremely devout Christian who is upset that the genuine teachings of the New Testament in general and the Book of Revelation have been obscured by the premillenial teachings that have cropped up in the past 170 years. The book therefore has a twofold purpose: a warning against what can only be considered fringe religious thought and explication of the theology of Revelation.

I am part of a rapidly vanishing breed: a politically liberal Christian evangelical. Specifically, I was raised Southern Baptist, though I have left the denomination because of the forsaking of traditional Biblical principles by the convention in the past two decades (specifically, the assertion of the authority of pastors, in contradiction of the centuries old Baptist doctrine of the priesthood of the believers; the recent emphasis on a subservient role of women in the church, to the point of instructing wives to obey their husbands; and the widespread role the convention has played in promoting regressive, right wing politics, whereas Baptist had until the 20th century mainly been politically progressive). In junior high in Little Rock, Arkansas I became a dedicated Bible reader. I first read it from cover to cover in the Living Bible paraphrase, then reread it in the King James Version (still my favorite translation--I've since read it two more times in the KJV), then the NIV version, later the Today's English version, and finally the NRSV. At the same time I began reading many religious books. I learned a great deal from several of the works of C. S. Lewis. I also read Hal Lindsey's THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH. I read the latter with some bafflement. It was pretty clear to me that anyone reading the Bible with an open mind was not going to get the kinds of ideas out of it that were found in Lindsey's book. But because so many of the people I knew at church believed in premillenialism, I persisted in reading books about end times, even though the gap between what I found in the Bible and what I read in those books was too profound for me to believe in any of it. For instance, it was crystal clear that the vast majority of Christians who had ever lived did not believe any of the stuff that one found in Lindsey or the Scofield Reference Bible or later in Tim LaHaye's books. Lindsey responded to this criticism by saying something along the lines that only those near the end of time would grasp these things, but that was another argument that I couldn't find in the Bible. On all of the major doctrines of the Christian faith there are a substantial number of verses that are pretty clear. For instance, on the centrality and crucially of the resurrection of Jesus there are multiple passages, including Paul's long passage where he declares that if Christ be not risen from the dead, then we are of all people most foolish. But this kind of clarity concerning end times are promulgated by Lindsey and later by LaHaye is obviously missing. It occurred to me even in high school that Lindsey was not only possible mistaken but that he probably was.

Moreover, Lindsey in the early seventies was making a series of historical assertions. When I got into college and started studying Church history in particular and Western history in general I realized that throughout Church history various teachers about the end of the world had arisen and they were invariably wrong. Over and over people like Lindsey and LaHaye had made predictions about the end of the world and had always been proven wrong. And these mistaken prophets had sometimes attracted large numbers of followers. I quickly realized that eventually history would invalidate Lindsey's book and the same is true of LaHaye. Like so many false prophets who came before, their prognostications will prove wrong. They will not stand the test of time. This is why the earlier editions of THE LATE, GREAT PLANET EARTH can no longer be found. They have already been proven wrong. Lindsey's original edition was stuffed with references to Communist nations. He has since revised his book, editing out the host of passages where he was proven wrong, trying to be a better prophet the second time around. But what he and his readers don't realize is: this has happened before. In 2050 the final of edition of THE LATE, GREAT PLANET EARTH and all of the Left Behind books will be at most quaint curiosities. We will laugh at them just as we smile when we read of the thousands of people who went out into fields in 1,000 AD to await what some were prophesying would be the time of the return of Jesus. The point here is that I was lucky to very early on, through my reading of the Bible and through studying Church history, to realize that the premillenialists were only the latest of a long succession of sadly mistaken individuals who have warped the Bible to drag some bizarrely odd beliefs out of it.

As Rossing explains, while there have always been bizarre theories throughout church history about the end of the world, the current premillenial version is of quite recent vintage, coming out of the work of John Nelson Darby, one of the founders of what is now called the Christian Brethren (for a marvelous portrait of a prominent early leader of the Brethren, one should look at Edmund Gosse's great classic FATHER AND SON, about his father, who was after Darby the most famous member of the Brethren, a prominent scientist who understood accurately the implications of Darwin's work, but resisted by originating the odd theory that God put the fossils in the rocks 6,000 years earlier). In other words, before John Nelson Darby, no Christian held premillenial beliefs, from Paul to Peter to Augustine to Aquinas to Martin Luther to John Calvin to John Wesley to George Whitfield to Jonathan Edwards. (Anyone wanting a fuller treatment of the evolution of end-times thinking throughout history should look at Eugene Weber's superb APOCALYPSES: PROPHECIES, CULTS, AND MILLENIAL BELIEFS THROUGH THE AGES.)

Rossing, who is a New Testament scholar, is at her best when she is contesting LaHaye, Lindsey, Van Impe, and other premillenialists through a detailed discussion of the Bible. The fact is that these people are not good readers of the Bible. You don't look at what they write and then read the New Testament and have it make more sense. Instead, you have to nearly memorize what they say and then parrot is apart from reading the Bible. Rossing, on the other hand, gives you tools to make sense out of the Bible. She uses the Bible to contest LaHaye's reading of Jesus as the greatest mass murderer in history. Over and again she posits the peaceful images of Jesus found throughout the Bible but especially in Revelation--where the predominant image of Jesus is a Lamb--with the violent and murderous images of God found in LaHaye's books.

The book also serves as a very helpful commentary on Revelation. I have a confession to make here. Revelation has always been one of my least favorite works in the Bible. I think the absurdities perpetuated by the premillenialists ruined it for me. But Rossing does a marvelous job of reclaiming the New Testament from the premillenialists and showing how it remains relevant through its actual message, which is one of God redeeming (not destroying) the earth, of peace through the redemptive work of Jesus, and reconciliation.

I also was impressed by the loving tone of the book. Though the purpose is at least half polemical in purpose, she is obviously a goodhearted and loving person. She is overwhelmingly positive in her tone, striving to show how caring and concerned God is in contrast with the destructive scenarios one finds in the Left Behind books. If anything, she is a bit easy on the inherent nastiness of the views one finds in LaHaye and Jenkins's books (though in fairness to Jenkins, in interviews he doesn't come across as anywhere near as extreme as LaHaye). Rossing mentions Tertullian positively near the end of the book, but I had already been thinking of another passage in his work that is far less flattering and very much in the spirit of the premillenialists. One of the joys of Christians in heaven, Tertullian said, would be to watch the sufferings of the damned in hell. I have always found that to be one of the most troubling sentiments ever expressed by a Christian, but LaHaye's Left Behind vision is only slightly less sadomasochistic. Hopefully Rossing's book will have some influence is causing some Christians to delight in the healing power of Jesus the Lamb of God, instead of engaging in fantasies of God torturing the ungodly. But in fact I think that time will be the cure for the premillenial heresy. Historically fallacies such of this fade after they fail to predict future events. When will the fad start to lose traction? It is hard to say precisely, just as it is hard to say how effecting efforts to rewrite the theory as world events fail to take the shape that these people imagine. My guess is that by the 2020s premillenial thought will be in decline. Even reading Lindsey as a junior high schooler I realized that it probably would start to fade before around 2010. Time truly will heal all.

A premillenialist friend of mine, resistant to having their mind changed on all of this, has asked me whether I am worried about my own fate by refusing to buy into what I consider to be fradulent theology. My reply was and is that in the New Testament there is no mention of anything important in the life of a Christian turning on believing in any of this nonsense. Instead, there is a clear image of a last judgment where God will judge us on how we have treated the poor and needy. There is nothing about exulating in the tortures to be suffered by those who are not raptured.

Until I read this book, I would have told you that I wished the Council of Nicea would have left Revelations out of the canon. It has caused more problems than it is worth, or so I would have told you.
But, when you see this work through Christ love for us, it changes it from a good War Story to one of Christ's love for us, and is in harmony with the other works of the New Testament.
And it leaves the absurd concept of the Rapture where it belongs, as an 19th century myth. Amen.

Prof. Rossing shows her Lutheran heritage well as one of the main differences between the Evangelical(Lutheran) Church of the 16th c. and its more radical offshoots was a stout defense against millenarianism/chiliasm which is what the 'LEFT BEHIND' series is all about. Condemned as erroneous almost 500 years ago, this error is still erronous-even in its new 19th c Darby-Scofield manifestation. While some within the Protestant camp (We Catholics have never been afflicted with this curse)may be discomfited; I challenge them to READ the book and then rethink what they have been told.

The book seems to fall naturally into two sections: the first section is an expose of pretribulation rapture theology, the second concerns a more proper interpretation of the Book of Revelation.

The first half of The Rapture Exposed is just what the title suggests: an expose of the cult and doctrine of the rapture. Rossing does a good job of expressing the history of the doctrine of the rapture (which was invented less than 200 years ago), as well as examining the resulting theology, social issues, and even the foreign policy that has arisen from it. She does so as a scholar. She has no axe to grind, and she wastes no time calling names. The simple facts themselves are inflammatory enough without adding any vitriol.

Basically the theology of rapture is one based on fear, attempted literalism (which requires a multitude of "gaps"), and a pronounced dualism of "us" against "them." "They" are out to get us, but God is going to rapture "us" from the earth and pour out wrath and destruction upon "them" and His creation, which will be turned over to the antichrist, for seven years.

Rossing does a nice job of pointing out how much of what passes as dispensational theology is actually based on works of fiction, particularly the wildly popular Left Behind series by LaHaye and Jenkins. This is the same theology that is taught by Hal Lindsey. It is what I call "Comic Book Eschatology" (just think of the elaborate graphs and images of Clarence Larkin). It is the theology of cartoonist Jack Chick and televangelists like Jerry Falwell, John Hagee, and Benny Hinn. It is a theology based on fear, a fear which requires a violence not only to creation, but to our fellow human beings as well; a theology of God, guns, and bunkers.

Rossing also points out the "suspension of ethics" that is acceptable for the "saved" but not to the rest of humankind. This thinking is behind why many Americans were justifiably horrified at Saddam's reign of torture and murder, but have no problem with the same tactics if they are used by President Bush. Apparently it's not fascism if we do it. Remember how James Watt told the U.S. Congress that protecting natural resources was unimportant in light of the imminent return of Jesus Christ? In public testimony he said, "after the last tree is felled, Christ will come back." It is easy to see the utter selfishness of dispensational eschatology. Since the world is going to be destroyed by God any day now, why would we as Christians even want to do anything like taking care of it? Why would we polish brass on a sinking ship? Says Rossing, "The Rapture vision invites a selfish non-concern for the world. It turns salvation into a personal 401 (k) plan that saves only yourself."

Rossing claims, rightly, that "Most Christian Churches and biblical scholars condemn Rapture theology as a distortion of Christian faith with little biblical basis." The problem is that dispensationalists put tremendous amounts of money into publishing their views. They are the "squeaky wheel." They sound like the majority, although they are not. This book is a good counter balance to the avalanche of Left Behind fictional theology.

Personally, I believe that when I pray the Lord's Prayer, when I ask that "Thy kingdom come ON EARTH as it is in Heaven," I am praying not for dispensationalists to be yanked out of the world so that God can pour out His wrath on creation, but rather that God's kingdom will continually manifest ON EARTH until it is all brought into a unity in Christ Jesus (Ephesians 1:10).

In the last half of the book author Barbara Rossing examines what she calls "Lamb Power." This is the "redefinition of victory and conquering" that the Book of Revelation gives to believers as opposed to the definition espoused by first century Rome and twentieth century dispensationalism. Says Rossing, "Lamb theology is the whole message of Revelation... a theology of the cross, of God's power made manifest in weakness... Evil is defeated not by overwhelming force or violence but by the Lamb's suffering love on the cross. The victim becomes the victor." She points out that, opposed to the pro-war ideology of dispensationalism, the central verse and truth of Revelation for followers of the Lamb is found in chapter 12, verse 11. "But they have conquered him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they did not cling to life even in the face of death." We conquer by identifying with the shed blood of the Lamb and by our testimony to peace and justice, giving up our lives to His way - we manifest the victory of the Lamb already won at Calvary.

Rossing's view of Revelation is a present reality. "The New Jerusalem is meant to be God's vision by which we live our lives right now, as followers of the Lamb and of Lamb power in our world." It is our Exodus experience. "The Lamb is leading us out of the heart of empire, out of the heart of addiction to violence, greed, fear, an unjust lifestyle or whatever holds most of us captive. It is an exodus we can experience each day. Tenderly, gently, the Lamb is guiding us to pastures of life and healing beside God's river." And that is the point of Revelation: God plans to heal the nations, not destroy them.

The bottom line is that we get to choose which kind of victory we envision. Do we want the violent warfare that characterizes "the beast" of Revelation as well as dispensational eschatology with its helecopters and guns (as demonstrated by the Tribulation Force in the Left Behind novels)? Or do we want a victory based on peace and justice for all God's creation? Right now we are exporting the USAmerican version of victory based on violence and war to the world. What a tragedy. We must begin as believers to choose, not the vision of what John Hagee calls "a furious Jesus," but the vision of the Lamb who has already conquered and is now seeking to dwell among us in peace and justice.

Dr. Mike Kear

This beautifully written, accessible book challenges the violent world view of those Christians who proclaim a doctrine of armaggedon as central to the faith. Rossing lovingly disagrees, pointing out that the vengeful Christ portrayed in the Left Behind series and other endtimes fiction is a contradiction to the Biblical image (found in Revelations!) of the lamb that was slain for the sake of the world. I challenge those readers who reject her conclusions to re-read her discussion of Biblical proof texts with their Bible in hand, and with an open mind.

This book speaks words of hope and grace in ways that I only hope that I'll someday be gifted to speak. Dr. Rossing writes theologically sound biblical exegesis -- and I am ever grateful! I have a copy for my library and will be donating copies to my churchs' libraries as well. This book is academic but not in such ways to be scary! As a pastor, I am grateful to have this book as a reference so that I will be able to best respond to church members who are puzzled about the book of Revelation.