It's The End of the World As We Know It?

Rapturists absolutely salivate at the thought of others not being chosen, of others not being flown up to heaven with them to be with God. They love the idea of looking down on others in peril because they alone did what was right and just. It's what makes them feel special. It is utterly childish and unloving to smile upon your brethren who are allegedly going to be left on earth. That is not Christ's love. That is not what Christ taught. And most importantly it scratches out the idea that God's love is unconditional. It makes God look like a selective bastard who conducted this whole world experiment knowing that a fraction of a fraction would make the cut, willing to scrap a berjillion people because they exercised the free will He gave them in a way unpleasing to him. Numerous biblical parables (not to mention common sense) contradict this. Oh, and the bible specifically states that "no one knows the day or the hour". Not even these people. I think they do a disservice to Christianity and believers in general. Their credulous declarations cast a pall over all believers as being "nutters".

End of the world? I call bullshit.

I'm halfway through Barbara Rossing's book The Rapture Exposed: The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation. It is a worthy read and one that knocks any rapturistic attempt at logic in the dirt.

About the Book:

The idea of "The Rapture" --- the return of Christ to rescue and deliver Christians off the earth --- is an extremely popular interpretation of the Bible's Book of Revelation and a jumping-off point for the best-selling "Left Behind" series of books. This interpretation, based on a psychology of fear and destruction, guides the daily acts of thousands if not millions of people worldwide. In The Rapture Exposed, Barbara Rossing argues that this script for the world's future is nothing more than a disingenuous distortion of the Bible. The truth, Rossing argues, is that Revelation offers a vision of God's healing love for the world. The Rapture Exposed reclaims Christianity from fundamentalists' destructive reading of the biblical story and back into God's beloved community.