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"The Rapture" is shorthand for the idea that at some time in the future all true Christians, living and dead, will suddenly be caught up into the heavens to meet their god. This idea originates in the Bible, in 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17, where it is written:
"The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." [New American Standard Bible, 1995]The use of the term "Rapture" for this moment comes from Latin translations of the original Greek text, in which the word used in the passage above is "raptius," meaning 'snatched away' or 'caught up'. A 19th century Anglo-Irish minister, John Nelson Darby, is generally credited with originating the notion of the Rapture as part of a broader vision of Christian eschatology known as Dispensationalism. Darby's views later circulated widely in America and gained traction through the Scofield Reference Bible. In the century since, many divergent and often conflicting views of the so-called "end days" of Christianity have been put forward by American Protestant thinkers, only a few of which include the Rapture as part of the picture. Yet its power as an idea and an image remains strong, in part because the Rapture vividly expresses a universal longing to be released from earthly pain and sorrow. In working on Playing the Rapture, we asked a number of people for their thoughts about the Rapture. Here are a few of the widely varying responses we received: "No one who believes the Rapture is ambivalent about it." "Maybe the Rapture has already happened, but so few went no one noticed." "It's like the most exclusive nightclub in the world." "There's a secret fear that everyone else will go and you the believer will be the one left behind." "Once you make the Rapture a game, you bring it to the level of a game." "[It's] this knowledge that the end is coming and we are all provided for." "It is right in this period for things to seem dark." "I'm looking forward for anything to happen." "What if we are the harbingers of the end times, what if we manifest it by focusing on it?" |