Next Resurrection Post Up at Wineskins: The Rapture

Posted on April 20, 2015 by Jay F Guin

emptytombPart 5 of the series on resurrection is up:

Resurrection, Part 5: The Rapture

For those just now catching up, the earlier posts are —

Resurrection, Part 1: A Definition.

Resurrection, Part 2: The early church fathers; Asking better questions.

Resurrection, Part 3: Bodies in the afterlife?

Resurrection, Part 4: 2 Peter 3:10-13: The heavens will pass away

About Jay F Guin

My name is Jay Guin, and I’m a retired elder. I wrote The Holy Spirit and Revolutionary Grace about 18 years ago. I’ve spoken at the Pepperdine, Lipscomb, ACU, Harding, and Tulsa lectureships and at ElderLink. My wife’s name is Denise, and I have four sons, Chris, Jonathan, Tyler, and Philip. I have two grandchildren. And I practice law.
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3 Responses to Next Resurrection Post Up at Wineskins: The Rapture

  1. Dwayne Phillips says:
    April 21, 2015 at 6:58 am

    The article on the Rapture begins with the assumption that Paul’s writings are a metaphor and not literal. The article doesn’t address the fact that many Christians for centuries have assumed the opposite. And I have attended Churches of Christ all my 56 years and have always heard about the Rapture.

  2. John F says:
    April 21, 2015 at 10:58 am

    We likely would not have so much a concern and potential misunderstanding if Darby’s dispensational view had not been so widely adopted. The “rapture” so popularized by the “Left Behind” thinking is pretty well “ruptured” by careful exegesis rather than eisegesis. In my study to date, I believe the partial preterist amillenial view holds water the best (A. Campbell not withstanding).
    One great day of judgment (not limited by time — God is outside of time). If we “Meet Him in the air” literally, we perhaps are allowed to see the redemption of the broken world in process (Rom. 8). If this means that “summer and winter, spring and fall” are no more and the tilt of the earth in no more, as Eden is restored, if the mountains “melt into the sea”, if once again we are called to “care for the garden”; it will be a beautiful thing as the abode of God is with man.
    I really do not spend much time pondering the resurrected body — God will take care of that. I saw a cartoon the other day — a butterfly driving a car was showing his driver’s license to a policeman. The picture was of a caterpillar. The butterfly says, “I’m sorry. It’s an old picture.” Something like that for us? I don’t want to keep this old, worn out, broken down, cut up, and weak body I now have. Whatever God has in mind, it will be PERFECTLY suitable.

  3. Jay Guin says:
    April 21, 2015 at 5:14 pm

    Dwayne P writes,

    The article on the Rapture begins with the assumption that Paul’s writings are a metaphor and not literal.

    Really have to disagree with that statement. I disagree with the interpretation that the damned are left behind to live and clean up the mess resulting from the Rapture. I don’t see that in the text. Rather, read quite literally, the damned are damned at the same time the saved are resurrected.

    The conclusion of the article, from NT Wright, is that the resurrected saved do not meet Jesus in the sky and then fly off to heaven. Rather, it’s like greeting a visiting dignitary in the First Century. The resurrected saved meet Jesus to welcome him back and escort him to the earth, where he will join his Father in the new Jerusalem in a renewed heaven and earth, in which heaven and earth are joined just as God and his people are joined.

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