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Rapturism And Logic

Gerald K. Webber

Published: March 10, 2009

So Dale Gillis (Christianity vs. Rapturism, March 3) has concluded that since some so-called "Rapturists" are reading "The Secrets of Enoch" (which almost no one considers authoritative), all belief in the Rapture is bogus. Does anyone else see a rending of the laws of logic here?
It matters little that a trifling handful of so-called Rapturists (who believe that Jesus will one day remove his church from the Earth before cleansing and preparing it for his return to rule and reign) are wacky in other areas. That doesn't cancel the orthodoxy of a belief they rightly maintain in another.
Indeed, a huge component of biblical Christianity has long been convinced that passages such as 1 Thes' 4:15-17 speak clearly of a gathering of God's people, dead and alive, out of the world to be "with the Lord" prior to the cataclysmic judgments of the Tribulation. The Apostle Paul believed this, and he wrote long before 1950. His followers don't typically read "The Secrets of Enoch." Nor do they deserve a tarring with Mr. Gillis' broad brush.
Gerald K. Webber
Sebring