NIV 1 Thess. 4:
13Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve like the rest of men, who have no hope. 14We believe that Jesus died and rose again and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. 15According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. 16For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. 18Therefore encourage each other with these words.
Many of us are familiar with these words from 1 Thessalonians 4 as a description of a doctrine called "rapture." This doctrine comes down to us through the dispensationalists Darby and Scofield who popularized this idea. They vouchsafed to us this eschatology that gave the church such popular books as The Late Great Planet Earth and Left Behind. Let me try to paraphrase this the way these believers might translate the same passage:
Brothers, we don't want you to be in the dark about those who have died. We believe that Jesus died and went up into heaven and will come back for them. We tell you that those who are alive when he returns will be preceded by those who died. He will come down out of the blue with a shout like the archangel, and with a trumpet blowing, and will raise the dead in Christ first. After that, the living will be lifted up into the sky to meet the Lord up in the clouds. And then we will forever be with the Lord.
We would say, then, that this is a "literal" rendering of the passage. But many passages in the Bible might also have a more symbolic interpretation. Consider if this passage were paraphrased through a more symbolic lens, concerning some of the imagery in these verses:
Brothers, we want you to understand about your friends who have died. We don't want you to lose hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, just as they died and will rise again. He will receive them. Those of us who are alive in the day of his disclosure will not be left out, either. Jesus is being revealed to all the world like an angel blowing a trumpet or like a voice out of heaven. The dead have gone on to meet him, and we aren't far behind. We are headed for a reunion with them and him, that great cloud of witnesses coming together again. We will remain with them and him in the ages to come.
What's the difference? The literal picture sounds a little wild and crazy. Not that God can't be wild and crazy if he wants to; but planes and trains crashing and people flying up into the sky out of graves and out of their houses? You've seen the pictures.
Maybe this already happened and is happening, since people die all the time. Where do they go? Into oblivion? Maybe this isn't to be taken as a future event as much as a reality of what has taken place through Christ in this world. He is taking us with him. It isn't that we're awaiting a "rapture," as such. We all will die at some point unknown to us. That's our rapture moment. That's when we "change as in the twinkling of an eye" and shed this mortal coil, as they say.
Darby's followers hatched up the word "rapture" for the Greek word harpazo, which means, basically, "to seize." I used the word "reunion," as a little less sensational way of painting the picture of what Paul is trying to say here in comforting the people of Thessalonica. He just means that death is the passage to better things now provided by Christ, to the afterlife meeting with him. When you think of it, death is, itself, like a seizing. It happens in a flash, in an instant, and then everything that person knew is gone.
I also use the word "disclosure" in place of the Greek word parousia, as discussed in another blog below. This word may not at all mean "coming," as in the second appearance of Christ, as much as it means he is being disclosed to the present world ongoing. And we are his "witnesses" of this disclosure. We are privileged to know who this is that is taking humankind to the next level, if you will - none other than the one we still call, in the West, Jesus the Christ.
Isn't this less confusing than Jesus crashing through the clouds on a white horse calling billions of people up out of the planet in an anti-gravity moment and then coming back with them armed with swords ready to carve up the carcasses of those hapless folks left on the planet? Hm. We have certainly had some imaginative theologians along the way. It could make an interesting movie (it hasn't yet), but I think we need to get a little bit more down to earth with this.
Many of us are familiar with these words from 1 Thessalonians 4 as a description of a doctrine called "rapture." This doctrine comes down to us through the dispensationalists Darby and Scofield who popularized this idea. They vouchsafed to us this eschatology that gave the church such popular books as The Late Great Planet Earth and Left Behind. Let me try to paraphrase this the way these believers might translate the same passage:
Brothers, we don't want you to be in the dark about those who have died. We believe that Jesus died and went up into heaven and will come back for them. We tell you that those who are alive when he returns will be preceded by those who died. He will come down out of the blue with a shout like the archangel, and with a trumpet blowing, and will raise the dead in Christ first. After that, the living will be lifted up into the sky to meet the Lord up in the clouds. And then we will forever be with the Lord.
We would say, then, that this is a "literal" rendering of the passage. But many passages in the Bible might also have a more symbolic interpretation. Consider if this passage were paraphrased through a more symbolic lens, concerning some of the imagery in these verses:
Brothers, we want you to understand about your friends who have died. We don't want you to lose hope. We believe that Jesus died and rose from the dead, just as they died and will rise again. He will receive them. Those of us who are alive in the day of his disclosure will not be left out, either. Jesus is being revealed to all the world like an angel blowing a trumpet or like a voice out of heaven. The dead have gone on to meet him, and we aren't far behind. We are headed for a reunion with them and him, that great cloud of witnesses coming together again. We will remain with them and him in the ages to come.
What's the difference? The literal picture sounds a little wild and crazy. Not that God can't be wild and crazy if he wants to; but planes and trains crashing and people flying up into the sky out of graves and out of their houses? You've seen the pictures.
Maybe this already happened and is happening, since people die all the time. Where do they go? Into oblivion? Maybe this isn't to be taken as a future event as much as a reality of what has taken place through Christ in this world. He is taking us with him. It isn't that we're awaiting a "rapture," as such. We all will die at some point unknown to us. That's our rapture moment. That's when we "change as in the twinkling of an eye" and shed this mortal coil, as they say.
Darby's followers hatched up the word "rapture" for the Greek word harpazo, which means, basically, "to seize." I used the word "reunion," as a little less sensational way of painting the picture of what Paul is trying to say here in comforting the people of Thessalonica. He just means that death is the passage to better things now provided by Christ, to the afterlife meeting with him. When you think of it, death is, itself, like a seizing. It happens in a flash, in an instant, and then everything that person knew is gone.
I also use the word "disclosure" in place of the Greek word parousia, as discussed in another blog below. This word may not at all mean "coming," as in the second appearance of Christ, as much as it means he is being disclosed to the present world ongoing. And we are his "witnesses" of this disclosure. We are privileged to know who this is that is taking humankind to the next level, if you will - none other than the one we still call, in the West, Jesus the Christ.
Isn't this less confusing than Jesus crashing through the clouds on a white horse calling billions of people up out of the planet in an anti-gravity moment and then coming back with them armed with swords ready to carve up the carcasses of those hapless folks left on the planet? Hm. We have certainly had some imaginative theologians along the way. It could make an interesting movie (it hasn't yet), but I think we need to get a little bit more down to earth with this.
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