{"id":761,"date":"2011-01-04T21:27:00","date_gmt":"2011-01-05T02:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/faculty.bbc.edu\/mstallard\/?p=761"},"modified":"2011-01-04T21:27:00","modified_gmt":"2011-01-05T02:27:00","slug":"are-pre-trib-rapturists-no-good-for-this-world-part-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/2011\/01\/are-pre-trib-rapturists-no-good-for-this-world-part-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Pre-Trib Rapturists No Good for This World? Part 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here I would like to pick up again my critique of an article by Tom Kratttenmaker in August 2010 entitled “What if the end isn’t <\/em>near?”\u00a0 His article is a criticism of Christians who hold to a pre-trib rapture.\u00a0 Those of us who hold that view, according to Krattenmaker (as well as others),\u00a0are too focused on the future and not willing to work on problem-solving in the present world. So we are not good for this world — that is the way I am saying what he means.<\/p>\n

The particular issue I want to raise in this post is the tendency of overstatement that I found in a few cases in the article.\u00a0One particular statement that needs to be highlighted is the following:<\/p>\n

Those enraptured by the rapture tend to view current events through the lens of biblical prophesy [sic], reading everything from the Obama election to the oil disaster in the Gulf Coast as fulfillment of one or another cryptic passage from Revelation.<\/p>\n

It is not clear what he means by “those enraptured by the rapture.”\u00a0 Does he mean all pre-tribs?\u00a0 The gist of the article gives that impression.\u00a0 If this assessment is correct, then he is saying that the pre-trib camp on the whole interprets all things, including\u00a0current political events\u00a0through prophecy.\u00a0 I certrainly have run across pre-trib folks who do this.\u00a0 However, such sensationalists do not mark the movement as a whole.\u00a0 You will find very few, if any, professors in the schools that train pastors for pre-trib churches that would hold and teach such an approach.\u00a0 As I speak in pre-trib churches across the country, most of them under-dose on prophecy and end times.\u00a0 They are interested in Bible teaching about other things such as financial freedom and how to have godly marriages (certainly good things).\u00a0<\/p>\n

The final reference in the statement mentions reliance upon cryptic passages in the book of Revelation.\u00a0 But the book of Revelation says a lot more about the coming tribulation period than it does the rapture of the Church.\u00a0 The word cryptic<\/em> no doubt is meant to suggest that it is impossible to understand passages in the book, something that in my opinion is overstated.\u00a0 No one suggests everything in the book is crystal clear.\u00a0 However, if you follow a literal interpretation, texts are easier to handle.\u00a0 All in all, the words of Krattenmaker appear to be overstated.\u00a0 The portrait of pre-trib believers as overly fascinated by current events in light of prophecy does not describe the reality that exists in the average pre-trib church.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here I would like to pick up again my critique of an article by Tom Kratttenmaker in August 2010 entitled “What if the end isn’t near?”\u00a0 His article is a criticism of Christians who hold to a pre-trib rapture.\u00a0 Those of us who hold that view, according to Krattenmaker (as well as others),\u00a0are too focused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[25],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/our-hope.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}