The Sinner: Eschatological Rapture, Hell & Heaven

The Sinner, a fictional Christian character in search of answers on the nature of the last things in 20^th and 21^st century I created, seeks the nature of the rapture and the final state of righteous and unrighteous. This article concisely presented two different answers the Sinner will get from N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, and The Mission of the Church (2008) with Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave in Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (1983).

On Rapture

Interpreting 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18 and 2 Thessalonians 2: 1-3, Duffield and Van Cleave adopted a face-value literal approach. They would inform the Sinner that on Christ Jesus’ second coming, she will raptured (1983: 527- 30), transported from earth to heaven, to be with Christ Jesus.  Wright would strongly disagreed with Duffield and Van Cleave’s reading. Wright argued that there is no rapture because heaven is going to come here on earth. It is not the Sinner who is going to be with Christ, but Christ  “com[ing] back to us” (2008: 124). Wright argued,

“When Paul speaks of ‘meeting the Lord in the air,’ the point is precisely not—as in the popular rapture theology that the saved believers would then stay up in the air somewhere, away from earth. The point is that, having gone out to meet their returning Lord, they will escort him royally into his domain, that is, back to the place they have come from” (2008: 133)

Parable of the Sinner & The Eschatological Hope

The Sinner, in my re-modification of Nietzschean Parable of the Madman¹, ran up to the place called Golgotha, and cried incessantly: “I seek Life! I seek Life!” As many of those who did not believe in the accuracy of a mocking but ironically true description, ‘This is Jesus the King of the Jews’, placed above the head of a Nazarene hanged on the Roman cross, laughed at the insanity of the Sinner’s words.

“Where is Life?” the Sinner cried; “I will tell you. We have killed Him – you and I. Death have finally and victoriously won. Hope is lost. It stung and killed Life at the cross. Men forever lost. Wretched men that we are! Who will rescue us from this perishable body of death?”

The theological study of last things presents an eschatological hope to the Sinner. The death of Life at the cross was the death of Death. It was impossible for Life to be held by Death. The resurrection of Life was the confirmation that the Sinner and the Church, who are found in Life, would also put on the imperishable body of life. Life has already but not yet rescue His Church. Death was swallowed up in victory by Life. The Sinner and the Church can now rejoice with a new song: “O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”

This two parts article sketchily and theatrically compared the eschatological hope of N. T. Wright in Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, and The Mission of the Church (2008) with Guy P. Duffield and Nathaniel M. Van Cleave in Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (1983) would provide the Sinner, a fictional Christian character in search of answers on the nature of the last things in 20^th and 21^st century, I created.

Next: Parable of the Sinner: Eschatological Rapture, Hell & Heaven

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[1] From Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Gay Science (1882, 1887) translated by Walter Kaufmann (1974) New York: Vintage, 1974 p. 181-82)

Duffield, G. P., & Van Cleave, N. M. (1983). Foundations of Pentecostal Theology. Los Angeles, CA: Foursquare Media.

Wright, N. T. (2008). Surprised By Hope: Rethinking Heaven, The Resurrection, and The Mission of The Church. San Francisco, CA: HarperOne.

When Bell Robs Bells of Hell

Plurium Interrogationum, Latin, meaning many questions also known in Critical Thinking as Loaded Question.

Times: Rob Bell

A loaded question is a question that carries a false or questionable presupposition, posed to trick a person into implying something which was not intended.

In the book, Love Wins, A Book About Heaven, Hell and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, one encounters many rhetoric questions loaded with emotional and false presuppositions. I will address only few important questions:

Emotional Loaded:

Does a loving God really send people to hell for all eternity?

Emotional words in this question are: “love” and “really”. Undressing these words from the question helps a reader to ponder the question without the authors presumptions namely God cannot be loving if he sent people to hell for all eternity.

Removing the emotional wording, the unloaded question appear as

follows:

Does God send people to hell for all eternity?