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Highlands Today

Christianity Vs. Rapturism?

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Dale L. Gillis

Published: February 26, 2009

Has Christianity been replaced by Rapturism? Those who believe that God will whisk away Christians before the end times know little of traditional Biblical interpretation.

I have a tract on the end times put out by Billy Graham Ministries in 1950. It says nothing about Rapture because Christians had never heard of Rapture in 1950. Today, if you look up the Doctrinal Statement of the Moody Broadcasting Network, it concludes by affirming the Rapture. The same statement does not manage to mention free will or traditional Protestant beliefs like the priesthood of all believers.

Recently I found that some believers in Rapture are reading The Secrets of Enoch and treating it as Scripture. While Enoch is an ancient book, it isn't in the Bible or even in the Apocrypha. Supposedly it was written before the flood and Noah carried a copy on the Ark.

Secrets of Enoch assume that God has a physical body. It tells us that both Eden and the place of torment for mortals are in the third heaven. This is apparently lower than the moon and sun, which are in the fourth heaven. The fifth heaven contains the place of torment for demons, the angels who rejected God.

Although read by Rapturists, Secrets of Enoch says nothing about God planning to Rapture believers off the earth before the end. Believers in an end times Rapture certainly count themselves to be religious conservatives and often accuse religious liberals of adding to the Bible. It is difficult to imagine a more uncalled for example of adding to the Bible than taking books like the Secrets of Enoch as authoritative.

Dale L. Gillis
Sebring

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