N.T. Wright’s Rapture Rhetoric

It's OK to disagree, but how we disagree reveals a lot about us!

Folks have been disagreeing about the rapture of the church for hundreds of years, and one’s rapture views do not classify him as either heretical or orthodox. The reasoning which we use to defend our position, however, does reveal our true biblical posture, and this is particularly noticeable in the rhetoric of N.T. Wright in his recently revived rapture challenge, Farewell to the Rapture[1], on his blog. Let’s talk about it:

Fact Check: “The American obsession with the second coming of Jesus — especially with distorted interpretations of it — continues unabated.”  In reality, evangelical commitment to the rapture is fading in direct correspondence to the impact of the new Calvinism, though it did experience a short revival around the turn of the century. More importantly, it is unfair to call this an obsession by any stroke, unless one is trying to prejudice the issue.

Fact Check: Wright then supports his observation by referencing the LaHaye/Jenkins Left Behind series.[2] Wright has every reason to challenge some of the nonsense in this fictional series and we acquiesce. The series does not, however, represent the theology of the average believer in the rapture, and in fact, barely treats the rapture subject. Opposing the rapture because some abuse the doctrine is akin to refusing to own a car because some drive recklessly. Wright has prejudiced the facts and would cast rapture believers as obsessed fans of this fanciful series.

Fact Check: “It is Paul who should be credited with creating this scenario.  Jesus himself, as I have argued in various books, never predicted such an event.” While the claim that Jesus did not teach the rapture is certainly up for debate, the most dangerous part of this statement is that Wright’s own view of the inspiration of the scriptures in exposed. Clearly, the intimation is that, if Jesus did not mention it, we must limit what Paul said only in light of what Jesus taught while on earth. What Wright fails to understand is that Jesus’ basic ministry was the offering of the gospel of the kingdom to the nation of Israel while Paul’s subsequent mission was to carry out the ministry of Messiah among the gentiles (Romans 11:13). This discussion is fully expanded in Acts.  Further, Paul received additional revelation by the mouth of Christ, (1 Corinthians 11:23, Ephesians 3:3). It only makes sense that Paul would stress the rapture more than Christ because its message relates to the consummation of the ministry of the church. The entire scope of the nature of the church and its place in history was a yet unrevealed mystery (Colossians 1).  If we are to follow Wright’s logic we must discard anything Paul taught which Christ did not teach.

Fact Check: “Understanding what will happen requires a far more sophisticated cosmology than the one in which ‘heaven’ is somewhere up there in our universe, rather than in a different dimension, a different space-time, altogether.”  Heaven and earth are not different dimensions, they are separate entities and each has a clearly delineated past, present, and future laid out in God’s Word. This dimensional claim, of course, is the result of Wright’s own obsession with ancient near east religion, and pagan worldviews, now expressed in the modern notions of theoretical physics. The Bible clearly and consistently refers to heaven as a physical place, and for that matter, it is up. These are basic biblical tenets that virtually all of God’s people in all camps have held universally until the popularization of the views of the Bible Project, Heiser, and the likes of Wright.  To accept this “sophisticated cosmology” is to go far beyond the limits of God’s Word and it requires, by the way, a restatement one’s of anthropology, hamartiology, angelology, soteriology, and even theology proper as Wright’s friends at the Bible Project have so clearly evinced.

Fact Check: Wright then treats a few select rapture passages in an entirely metaphorical context insisting that “Paul’s mixed metaphors of trumpets blowing and the living being snatched into heaven to meet the Lord are not to be understood as literal truth, (as the Left Behind series suggests), but as a vivid and biblically allusive description of the great transformation of the present world of which he speaks elsewhere.” Follow the steps. First, we are to treat any and all rapture passages as metaphorical and reject any literal statements regarding the rapture at hand. Secondly, we are to understand that they are all vivid biblical descriptions of the coming transformation of this present world.  In order to build this scenario, we must reject simple, literal interpretation and substitute Wright’s wisdom in assigning the correct metaphors to each passage. Finally, we must somehow fit this into his dominionist worldview.

Fact Check: “Wouldn’t this be overturned if we recaptured Paul’s wholistic vision of God’s whole creation?” Unlike Dr. Wright’s, Paul’s “wholistic” vision of God’s whole creation certainly conformed with Christ’s and the other apostles’ views. It was articulate, definitive and exquisite.

The doctrine of premillennialism in general and the doctrine of the rapture (as stated both implicitly and explicitly) have been shared among God’s people for centuries. It is not a recent American invention or obsession. While it has suppressed during the reign of orthodoxy so-called, it is the result of a commitment to literal interpretation (while respecting biblically verified figures of speech and metaphors). We cannot pick and chose what verses we will use, what verses we will treat as literal and metaphorical, and what scenarios we must imagine in order to make things work.

If metaphors are in vogue, consider this. Theoretically, we could take all the parts of an automobile and place them in one large box. That would not be a wholistic collection.  We could even assemble some creative, functional items using those pieces. That still would not be a wholistic assembly. Paul’s wholistic view includes all the respective elements of Bible prophecy, properly assembled, and easily understood and recognized by all of God’s people who will commit to simple, literal interpretation, allowing metaphors to illumine and expand what God has clearly stated. The problem with literal interpretation is that is so boring and leaves so little room for the creativity of human flesh.

The choice is in front of us. We can embrace a self-canonizing, self-perpetuating, and self-interpreting Bible, or we can be forever dependent on higher authorities and their various mixes and blends of theological fantasy.

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[1] ntwrightpage.com/2016/07/12/farewell-to-the-rapture/

[2] Tim F. Lahaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind (Cambridge, UK: Tyndale House Publishing, 1996).  Eight other titles have followed, all runaway bestsellers.

Why Your Prophetic Position Matters

Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and thy dominion endureth throughout all generations.

Psalm 145:13

All wrong thinking is wrong thinking about God. All wrong thinking leads to wrong behavior.  All wrong behavior leads to wrong consequences.

The entire Word of God is bound up in one theme, the plan and program of God through His Son Jesus Christ, Luke 24:44-48. This plan is enmeshed in the entire fabric of God’s Word from Genesis through Revelation.  It is a literal plan. It is an obvious plan, it is a profound plan. Most importantly, it is a plan designed from beginning to end to extol the glories of Jesus Christ. It has been said that 2/3 of the scriptures are essentially prophecy, prophecy which is ultimately about Jesus Christ.

Three steps open the prophetic Word to us:

First, we must accept the scriptures as the inspired Word of God. That is, we must be committed to the idea that every word is equally inspired. It is not enough to believe in the popular doctrine of inerrancy. Inerrancy does not commit to the inspiration of the words, only the concepts behind the words. There is no negotiation on this point. To hold to anything less is to hold to heresy.

Secondly, we must interpret the scriptures literally, following simple common sense rules, when the Bible uses symbolism to illustrate a literal truth. The evidence for this is in the examples that the apostles gave us for their own literal interpretation. Notice the argument of singular versus literal in Galatians 3:16 over the discussion of seed.

Thirdly, the scriptures are thematic. They have an underlying theme. We interpret the scriptures through the Messiah. (Luke 24:44-48.) We admit our bias and admit our inability to place the proper value on literal passages. There will always be a need to agree to disagree on particulars because we are human.  However, when we take literally God’s stated plan for Messiah as the lens through we view the Bible and we always interpret this book in terms of Jesus Christ and His stated objectives (as outlined in the Old Testament and affirmed and expanded in the New Testament) we always come out agreeing on the basic prophetic infrastructure of the Word of God. [In a technical sense, we say that we interpret the Bible literally through a Christological grid.]  In other words, we impose a predisposition on our literal interpretation. We interpret according to a theme, One Theme. We assume, in advance, that we will find Jesus Christ everywhere in this book and that all the truth revealed about Him will fit into one beautiful picture.

What premillennialism represents. Premillennialism is simply an acknowledgement that God’s program for Messiah has been outlined in two phases. First, Messiah will bring justice to all the earth through the Jewish people and the restoration of Israel. Secondly, Messiah will also be a light to the nations (the Gentiles) and this global witness to the nations will occur before justice is brought to all the earth (Isaiah, chapters 40-49.) While the New Testament apostles grasped and expanded this truth in Acts (cf. chapters 13 and 15), it was the apostle Paul who received special revelation from the Lord regarding the details of this mystery age (Gal 1:12.)

These are the ABC’s of premillennialism which should not even be so labeled. It should simply be labeled Messiahism because is a simple basic commitment to the singular program of Messiah which is worked out in two phases, exactly as specified by the covenants.

We have already conceded that, due to the weakness of human flesh, we must all agree to disagree with a large dose of humility on numerous matters. That is not the Bible’s weakness, it is ours. The question on the floor is this. Where do we draw the line in agreeing and disagreeing? Clearly, we are admonished in the Word of God to both speak and defend sound doctrine (2 Tim 1:13, 1 Tim 6:3-5, and a host of others.) At the same time, we are not to “strive about words to no profit (2 Tim 2:14.) The modern mentality is to assume that sound doctrine relates to the basics of salvation and that Bible prophecy is pretty much like a set of Legos with which we may all play to our content or ignore at our pleasure. Yet, we discover the opposite in the Thessalonians epistles that were written specifically to correct behavioral problems related to an incorrect prophetic position. Notice how outspoken Christ and Paul both were in their warnings that we should let no man deceive us regarding prophetic matters (typically, Mark 13:5,6; 2 Thessalonians 2:3.)

Here is why we cannot agree to disagree on premillennialism. 

1. To accept any other position than premillennialism is to reject the literal interpretation of the Word of God.  Reformed theology with all its varieties and shades of millennial positions is evidence of exactly what happens when men depart from a simple literal system of interpretation.

1. When we reject literalism in favor of any mix of allegorical interpretation Pandora’s box is opened and a flood of wild and fancy prophetic schemes inevitably follow.  The millennial cults of the 19th Century and the apocalyptic cults (such as the Weavers and Davidic Branch cults) are simple illustrations of this. 
2. When literalism is mixed with the leaven of allegory in prophecy it must, of necessity, leech into the other major doctrinal disciplines as well. Augustine, who reintroduced allegory back into the church intentionally limited it to eschatology. It flowed instantaneously into soteriology, ecclesiology, and all the other “ologies.”

2. To accept any other position than premillennialism is to inevitably corrupt the doctrine of the grace of Christ.  It is to sentence yourself and your children to unending doctrinal confusion.  That leads, of course, to no doctrinal stand at all.  Remember, there is no such thing as a partial Premillennialist! When one departs from this truth, he immediately blurs all distinctions between

• the church and Israel;
• salvation and discipleship;
• the church and the kingdom;
• the apostolic message and Paul’s message;
• law and grace.

What happens when we do this?  In varying cultures and at varying times we have reaped the horrific results of each of these departures. Perhaps, most sadly of all, is the bondage into which this system brings us, because once grace and law are mixed, in any percentage, grace is nullified and we begin to experience, in our lives the bondage and susceptibility to sin which the law imposes on us. Every single doctrinal system (bibliology, Christology, anthropology, hamartiology, ecclesiology, angelology, soteriology, and eschatology) is affected when premillennialism is abandoned.

3. The grace of God teaches us to look for and long for the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior Jesus Christ. This is to be a daily, ongoing anticipation that produces hope and purity in our experience (Titus 2:11-13, 1 John 3:3). NO OTHER POSITION produces this vibrant, daily, living hope, though, of course, there are folks in these other systems who long for the return of Christ.

And how will a typical Reformed teacher disagree with the above? He will claim that theirs is the truly unified system; He will claim that they have the historical property rights to the issue, they will claim that premillennialism is a simplistic position, and at the same time, he will claim that it is inconsistent and convoluted. There are answers to each of those claims and they deserve answers, but one will notice an underlying theme in most of those arguments. Every effort will be made to shift the discussion from the actual scriptures themselves to philosophical, rational, and historical arguments.

If I might be allowed to make one note regarding my personal convictions (a rational, historical argument!). It is my own conclusion that amillennialism is simply a step toward liberalism (Follow Canada’s evangelical history as an example.) Further, it has historically led to anti-Semitism at worst and the disenfranchisement of Israel at best. Consider the views of the late D. James Kennedy and the Knox Theological Seminary for a simple starter*. The great lovers and defenders of God’s people Israel have always been premillennialists.

Why can’t we agree to disagree? Because premillennialism is at the foundation of all that we believe and hold dear.  It is a core belief, not a preference. The system of interpretation which brings it to us is the system that brings us the free gospel of the grace of Christ and insists that that gospel not be perverted from within or without. Simply stated, there are only two kinds of churches, those committed to a consistently literal hermeneutic and those who are at the whims of every scholarly pastor and teacher to whom they submit.

Prophecy is not a playground. The Lord did not say, “Do not fudge on any other doctrinal truth I have given you, but you are free to disagree on Bible prophecy!” Interestingly, 2/3 of His book is prophetic in nature and many of its strongest most shocking warnings are directed toward those who would play with prophetic truth. To agree to disagree on premillennialism is tantamount to throwing our hands up in the air, giving up all hope of truly understanding and defending the scriptures.


*Kennedy is an example of a wonderful, godly man who rejected literal interpretation.
https://www.pre-trib.org/articles/dr-mike-stallard/message/a-dispensational-response-to-the-knox-seminary-open-letter-to-evangelicals