The Rapture Exposed
The Message of Hope in the Book of Revelation
Barbara R. Rossing, 2004, 236.9 ROS 2004
Harvard/Yale grad Rossing taught New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology of Chicago
Her goal for this book is to replace Left Behind distortion and bigotry with hopeful Christian ethics
p001 Ch01 The Destructive Racket of Rapture
p007 Interior Secretary James G. Watt "use it or lose it", chief preoccupation is counting down to earth's violent end.
p007 Anne Coulter's 'God:' "Take it. Rape it. It's yours.""
- p009 Genesis 8:21 "I will never again curse the ground because of humankind ... nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done."
- p010 The Bible's message is not that "God so loved the world that he sent World War III"
p012 "Beam me up" theology ... Manicheism
p013 Dwight L. Moody shipwreck analogy ... theology of despair
p014 Left Behind mentality ... only born-again individuals matter.
p016 Martin Luther: "If I knew the word were going to end tomorrow I would plant a tree"
- apocryphal, first quoted by Martin Schloemann(?) in the 1940's?
p017 Pliny the Younger to Trajan Christians "pledge themselves by an oath not to engage in any crime ... pay their legal debts'
p019 Ch02 The Invention of Rapture
p020 Rapture a principle invented 170 years ago, word not found in the Bible
- p021 "Most Christian churches and biblical scholars condemn Rapture theology as a distortion of Christian faith with little biblical basis:" Lutherans, evangelicals, Catholics, Presbyterians
p022 John Nelson Darby invented rapture and seven year tribulation, NOT BIBLICAL
p023 dispensationalism
p023 Cyrus I. Scofield Scofield Reference Bible with dispensationalist annotations and text changes
p024 dispensationalist Dallas Theological Seminary
- p024 dispensationalist bible rewrites claimed the only system making sense of contradictory bible passages
p026 The desolation and abomination in Daniel was a Zeus statue desecrating the Jewish temple in 168 B.C., Darby claimed it was future prophesy instead
- p027 a multi-kiloyear gap invented to insert Rapture prophesy into Greek or Hebrew texts
- p028 Dispensationalism directly contradicts Peter's scripture in Acts 2
- p032 Rapture is not the same as resurrection in Christian theology
- p032 ancient creeds declare Jesus will come again; none describe him returning twice or in two stages
p035 Tribulation is happening to God's people now, God saves us by being with us in this world
- p036 biblical Rapture chronology "unclear" because it was fabricated in the 1830s
p036 ref23 p189 Illinois Bishops' Statement on "Left Behind" Books and Videos
- p037 early Christians were the people who suffered the tribulations described in Revelation, not some fabricated seven year period thousands of years later
- p040 for decades, Lindsey "updated" John's vision to replace old contemporary events with new events
p045 Paul Boyer https://www.chronicle.com/article/john-darby-meets-saddam-hussein-foreign-policy-and-bible-prophecy/
p047 Ch03 The Rapture Script for the Middle East
- p051 No passage in the New Testament requires a Jewish state for Jesus' return
p060 Temple Institute tiny minority of Messianic Jews support temple rebuilding
p061 Gershom Gorenberg End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount
- p062 Palestinian Christians don't even exist for dispensationalists
- p064 they do not fit Darby's end-time prophecy
- p073 Zionists: God save us from these people
- p073 author's Evangelical Lutheran Church of America repudiated Martin Luther's anti-Jewish writings
p077 Mitri Raheb I Am a Palestinian Christian 1995 Multco Offsite
- p079 Revelation 22.:2 Healing Tree of Life, most powerful image
- p080 amazing vision of the tree of life and its healing for the world
p081 Ch04 Prophecy and Apocalypse
p081 apocalypse means "unveiling"
p103 Ch05 The Journey Begins
p109 Ch06 Lamb Power
p115 Ch07 Nonviolence
p123 Ch08 The Exodus Story in Revelation
p123 Ch09 Hijacking the Lamb
p141 Ch10 Rapture In Reverse
p159 Ch11 The Journey Outward
p171 Epilogue DEBUNKING THE RAPTURE BY VERSE