Christianity has been all over the news the past couple of days because of Harold Camping’s misguided Rapture prediction. While few people ascribe to Camping’s sort of biblical numerology, this episode got me thinking about the way many Christians read the Bible. I’ve long felt that, despite the prevalence of Bible translations and Bible-study aids, the Church is functionally biblically illiterate. We simply don’t know how to read the Bible well.

In their landmark book, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart offer up a time-tested, God-honoring approach to Bible reading and study. While the book is full of helpful insights, there is one that stands out to me amidst the flurry of Rapture theology and end times predictions: The Bible cannot mean what it never meant. In other words, the meaning of Scripture does not change with shifting cultural pretensions. God does not change the meaning of his word for your sake.

The Bible was God’s word to someone else long before it was God’s word for you. The Bible was not written to you; it was written to an altogether different group of people who lived and loved and argued and fought and died long before you were ever born. This means that, in order to discover the meaning of Scripture, we must approach it with respect for the original audience. If we are to be faithful to Scripture, we have to learn to read it historically. The Bible cannot mean what it never meant. You are not allowed to redefine God’s word based on the issues of your particular time and place.

This has a wide array of implications. Specifically, this means that Genesis 1 was not written to answer the challenge of Charles Darwin. This means that the book of Revelation was written with Rome in mind, not the United Nations. This means that no author of Scripture ever wrote a word about the Rapture, because the doctrine of the Rapture didn’t come about until the early 19th century. The Bible cannot mean what it never meant. Only when we learn to read the Bible with the original audience can we begin to make any sense of the implications it has for us today.

Today is an important day for a lot of people who love Jesus. Unfortunately, all of their hopes will be dashed. May 21, 2011, will come and go without a Rapture, and this end of days prediction will prove false, like every other prediction before it.

The temptation for all of us who saw this coming will be to gloat, and to laugh, and to say “I told you so”. But that response is just as far from Christ as using numerology to predict the second coming. 6:01 EST will not be a time to gloat or smile at the foolishness of those who believed Harold Camping. Instead, it will be a time to mourn with those who mourn–those who have forsaken everything in anticipation of this moment.

If you’re reading this after 6:00 tonight, and you believed that you were to be taken from this world, I’m sorry. I hope that you won’t be disillusioned with Jesus, but I do hope that you will repent of and forsake doomsday prophecy. Jesus told us that nobody knows when he’s coming back, not even himself. Certainly the Father wouldn’t bypass the Son and reveal this information to Harold Camping or other would be prophets. I hope that in the midst of your despair, as you try to put the pieces of your life back together, you’ll let this humble you to the point of destroying your idol of endtimes-knowledge. I hope that you can find solace in Jesus Christ, regardless of dates or times or Raptures.

My heart goes out to you because you’ve been had. Someone has substituted numerology and bizarre mathematics for biblical exegesis, and you so desperately want to be with Jesus that you fell in for it. I’m sorry. But the good news for you is that Jesus is here for you right now, on this planet, in this life. He dwells in you be faith and through the power of the Holy Spirit, and he has grace for you, available now. If it’s 6:01 and you’re still here, don’t be angry. Turn to Jesus, and let this humiliation be an opportunity for worship. Because even though he hasn’t taken you home via Rapture, he loves you and is with you right now.

By now you’ve no doubt heard that the Rapture is supposed to happen tomorrow. Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time Harold Camping has predicted the end of the world. In fact, we have a long history of enterprising individuals who have convinced themselves and others that God had given them a special revelation as to the end of all things. Do you remember the book, 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 (and don’t forget the follow up book the next year)? We tend to get fascinated by these things.

Let me say, first of all, without hesitation, there is no Rapture. It will not happen. It is not in the Bible. I’ve written about this extensively in the past, and if you’re curious, you can read my thoughts here, here, here, and here. While a lot of folks are laughing at the Rapture crowd, I don’t find it amusing. This is a dangerous doctrine that has far more in common with Greek Philosophy and Gnostic Heresy than Christian Theology. Underneath the doctrine of the Rapture is the belief that this world is fundamentally evil and destined for annihilation, making escape from this world necessary for all true believers to experience eternal life with God in heaven.

The idea of escape from this world is a very old idea, going back at least to ancient Greek Philosophy. Many Greek teachers believed that this body was a prison for the soul, and that death was a welcome escape from the pains and rigors of this life.

The idea that this world is evil also goes back a long way. The early Christian heresy Gnosticism taught that everything material was evil and everything spiritual was good. These two streams, escapism and dualism, combine with a fundamentally flawed eschatology to create the doctrine of the Rapture.

But none of this has anything to do with Jesus, who, rather than escape the trial set before him, endured the suffering of the cross and died for our sins. In his death, Jesus has set the pattern of life for those who would come after him–suffering for the sake of his glory. Not escape, but endurance.

What is more, in his resurrection (a bodily resurrection, not a disembodied apparition) Jesus has begun the renewal and recreation of this world, which God has already called “good” and stills deem it good enough to redeem. God judges the world not because he has given up on it, but because he wants it to become what he intended it to be from the beginning.

The Bible teaches us not to seek escape from this world, but rather to engage with it in order to spread the rule and reign of Jesus Christ into every heart and home on earth. If you believe in the Rapture, I urge you to reexamine the passages I’ve linked to in this post, and also to take a close look at the worldview that is driving your profession of Rapture Theology. I sincerely believe that belief in the Rapture clouds our understanding of Jesus and Scripture, and I only offer my words here because I know that you deeply love Jesus and are fundamentally committed to the teachings of Scripture. Please, for the sake of the kingdom and your heart, take a second look at the Rapture.

Sermon writing can be a funny thing. Well, maybe not funny…but interesting. Well, maybe not for you, but for nerds like me. I’ve been working on one particular sermon for a while now, and I just can’t seem to get it right. Maybe it’s because I’m not scheduled to preach it for a few months and I like to tinker if I have time. That, and I can be a perfectionist about certain things.

A typical sermon of mine is about 8 pages. I’ve written nearly 30 for this one. Obviously, there’s a lot that has to go. This is why the Good Lord invented blogging! So here’s a bit from a sermon on Jeremiah 1 that you will never hear me preach.

•••••

4 The word of the Lord came to me, saying,

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

6 “Alas, Sovereign Lord,” I said, “I do not know how to speak; I am too young.”

7 But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am too young.’ You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you.8 Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you,” declares the Lord.

9 Then the Lord reached out his hand and touched my mouth and said to me, “I have put my words in your mouth.10 See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot and tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant.”

This is Jeremiah’s divine interruption. He’s minding his own business, quietly going about his priestly duties in the comfortable suburb of Anathoth, when all of a sudden God shows up and ruins everything.

Jeremiah wanted out of this. His was not a welcome divine interruption. Jeremiah didn’t think he was cut out to be a prophet. He was afraid. So he gave God two excuses: “I do not know how to speak. I am too young.” In other words, “I don’t have the skill, and I don’t have the experience.”

When God comes to us with a job offer, we, like Jeremiah, try to reason with him that we possess neither the skill nor the experience for the task. “A prophet has to speak,” Jeremiah reasons, “but I don’t know how. A prophet has to have a certain gravitas and wisdom that can only come with age. I’m just a kid. So you see, Almighty God, Creator of the universe who stands outside of time and sees the end from the beginning, you must be mistaken. I’m not the right guy for the job.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to reason with God, but it generally doesn’t go well for us. I imagine God standing there, listening patiently, and then responding, “Oh, okay. Did I mention that whole, ‘Before I knit you together in your mother’s womb, thing’? Oh yeah, that’s right, I did.”

Our excuses never hold water with God, because he knows that behind your excuse is fear. Jeremiah was afraid; it’s as simple as that. Jeremiah’s fear, like our fear, was borne out of his frailty. He could not speak, and God was calling him to a speaking ministry, to be a prophet to the nations.

Many of you have seen The King’s Speech, the story of King George VI. He had a major speech impediment at a time when, due to the advent of radio, public speaking became a necessary task for England’s royals. He was the second son of King George V, and as the second son, the odds were against him ever becoming king. This relieved him, because his speech impediment, his frailty, made him very afraid of ever becoming king.

But his worst fears were realized when his father died and his older brother abdicated the throne to marry a divorced American woman. On top of this, Hitler, who was a renowned and captivating orator, was on the march on the Continent, and a second great war seemed inevitable. Such were the circumstances under which the stammering Duke of York became King George VI.

As with Jeremiah and King George VI, God calls us to tasks that take us into the heart of our frailty. The stammering king stands up to the loquacious Fuhrer; the unskilled and inexperienced prophet takes on his own people, calling them to repent of their idolatry. And you, called by God to a task that demands what you do not have within you to deliver. But God says, “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you and will rescue you.”

Jeremiah’s divine interruption came with two divine promises: 1) I am with you. 2) I will rescue you. God’s presence and strength will overcome Jeremiah’s lack of skill and experience because God is with those he calls. Divine habitation follows divine interruption.

Your divine interruption has come with two divine promises: 1) God is with you. 2) God will rescue you. God’s presence and strength will overcome your lack of skill and experience because God is with those he calls. Divine habitation follows divine interruption, for Jeremiah, and for you. God is with you, and God will rescue you.

I blogged yesterday about what we find at the end of the Bible–the wedding of Jesus and his bride, the Church. I tried to make the point that this heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, in Revelation 21 and 22 is actually us. It’s not a city at all; it’s just a picture of the new people of God.

The picture is meant to be contrasted with Rome, the “Eternal City” and source of persecution against God’s people. John measures the heavenly city to show that it is incomprehensibly large, and far greater in every respect than Rome. In other words, Rome loses. The enemies of God lose; and the Church, those who persevere through trial and persecution and hardship–the Church wins because our Husband fights on our behalf.

The good news of all of this is that we have a Husband, a Conquering King-Groom, who is, even now, fighting on our behalf. All of the powers of evil that rage against us are not, themselves, without an enemy. Jesus is waging war for you. He is destroying “all dominion, power and authority”, and he is putting all of his enemies “under his feet”. This is what he is doing, right now, for us, in us, and through us.

Wherever you may be right now, you are headed for a wedding. That’s how this story ends and the next story begins. The wedding of Jesus and his Church. And your Husband is not simply waiting around for you to arrive; he is actively creating a world that he deems suitable for your eternal presence. He is preparing a place for you by waging war against evil and darkness and sin and idolatry.

The Greeks loved drama. They had, basically, two kinds of dramas they would write: tragedies and comedies. The way to tell the difference was in the ending. Tragedies end with a funeral; comedies end with a wedding. You are in a comedy. Live, therefore, in the hope that this story–your story, my story, our story–ends with a wedding.