I simply do not understand this obsession with Rapture.

It is a way of escaping our obligation to be good human beings in this life. In the Eastern religions, Buddhism in particular, we are advised to do good in this life because that is all there is. There is no belief in apocalypse. That parallels our western belief in Existentialism. There is simply no meaning to life except what we assign to it using our intelliegence and our moral sense.

Hindu beliefs.

These people are terrified. Pity them.

I don't remember anything in the New Testament saying that the wicked would be not held accountable for their actions so why would some of these dubious and corrupt politicians be so earnest in their attempt to bring about the rapture which I believe is a reframing of the apocalapse.

Of course, being brain-dead, most fundies think it's been around forever. But it originated in the 1800s.

"To understand, we must return to the 19th century British Isles. In 1830 in Port Glasgow, Scotland, Margaret Macdonald expressed her belief that scripture taught that Christians would be raptured, or translated, from the earth before the Great Tribulation. This is the first time that anyone in Christian history had distinguished two stages of the Second Coming: the first stage, in which Christians are taken out, and the second stage, in which Jesus returns to earth."

Rest is here:

http://reformed-theology.org/html/issue06/pre-trib.htm

Revelationist cultists use parts of the bible to justify themselves, picking and choosing. These people are just Cultists and the MSM doesn't understand that that there is no difference here between most of these people and any other fringe cult. They are certainly not "mainstream christians".

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They are SO afraid of death, in spite of their "faith", that they hope to short-circuit the process.

In other words, they are cowards and not really Christians in the slightest.

And they will kill anyone who disagrees with them.

They are a cult -- and America has a long history of cults and strange religious beliefs.

I am most familiar with the US version of the . . . Jesus comes to take the faithful to heaven . . .

The date was set after studying Daniels and Revelations -- as 1844. On the appointed night the believers when to hill tops to wait the coming of Jesus and their journey to heaven with him. But this never happened.

What is amazing to me is that disappointment should have eliminated the churches that believed in the rapture -- but no there was a core group that decided they were merely mistaken about the date -- the rapture was still going to happen.

And so 161 years later and 6 or 7 generations later the mythology has evolved and new cult members are recruited.

Now how many of us would want to live FOREVER with the cult members who are surrounding T.S. in her final hours of being undead? That sort of heaven for us would be HELL.

The mentally ill are running this country -- and I don't mean to insult people here who have various mental illnesses. But what I am saying is the untreated mental cases are in control/in power in the US.

Ironic isn't it that these same mentally ill people want to test everyone for mental illness?? THEY think we are mentally ill -- because we refuse to follow them blindly, without question.

Because he had too much sympathy and softpedalled his handling of the nihilists some comfort is given to the anti-Gospel tendency to lunacy. In the end though he did what Jesus seems to have done. Absorbed and transformed the enthusiasm completely away from the common dialectic that ALWAYS arises from such mindsets no matter what religion or sect. Even Buddhism and Islam have their outbreaks of the "Apocalyptic Messiah" emerging from similar social breakdowns as Moyer describes which can also be applied to the whipped dog slaves of the Roman Empire.

Deviation from even Jesus is relatively easy when the common popular pressure is brought to bear. He was not too successful bucking the popular misconceptions of decadent religions of fantasy and despair. In fact, he lost that battle which then would be waged again and again in the Church. So it isn't a unique social disease but a disease that really could be treated in its root causes with patience. Only the kingdom of lies is a complex greater disease and application of social reforms, education and democracy cannot proceed unimpeded at all.

Stop looking to the sky, the kingdom is within you. Angels and spectacles and avoiding of the cross(besides escaping death completely) are not part of the Founder's life, message or meaning. The sole message of Jesus and revelation is that evil cannot win, is not equal to God and will not prevail. Added is a condemnation of those who claim to know that almost puts Jesus at odds with the optimistic writer of the last book. The fact that some of (natural)things happening to Rome never ended in the Second Coming is a cautionary tale all its own for those signs were clear keys to OLD events long long past. Only the worst pride can think symbolic literature can be twisted to their own self-importance when the "Elect" in these times are a pitiable spiritual lot by any comparison to the Church of the martyrs or Jesus Himself. Would Jesus or Paul have preferred success and no execution? You bet. It is the intransigence of humanity that guarantees the opposite and makes Apocalypticism a laughable cop-out. And modern adherents dumber and more spoiled than Roman house slave by assiduous effort and denial of truth in general.

The "apocalypse" is a writing that was popular with some sects of Jews, including early Christians, from about 200bc to 150ad. It is symbolic, and the imagery is intended to be seen as describing an internal, highly personal event. The Randall Terrys of the world are teaching a false doctrine that betrays their lack of mature insight. The Kingdom is within you, and it is everywhere else, too. It is NOW. Always NOW.

"Some day, humanity will be mature enough to step into the future without
the security blanket of religion to protect it from the unknown."

Jesus disappointed everyone by not destroying the world immediately after his death. It's the concept of Millennialism and it has a long and spiritually shady past
See for a good discussion
http://www.religioustolerance.org/millenni.htm

I was never much of a Blondie fan, but Debbie Harry's band broke some boundries with that song. It introduced the mainstream world to Fab 5 Freddie and......ummm...

OK. I missed the point of this thread, didn't I?