The Rapture:
Vanities of vanities
In 2015, Michael Pompeo, a representative of the United States Congress, stood up in a church in Wichita, Kansas and gave a speech to a Christian congregation about God and country. In closing, he said, “We will continue to fight these battles. It is a never-ending struggle … until the Rapture. Be part of it. Be in the fight.”11
Two years later, Pompeo became director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and in 2018, the secretary of state for the U.S. government.
A 2022 survey reported that 39 percent of adults in the United States believe we are in the end times, and the popular novel and TV series Left Behind, based on the Rapture may have heightened that belief in recent decades.12
The premise of the Rapture is, at some point in the future during the end times after Jesus’s return to earth, God will come and snatch him away to heaven, followed by his Christian followers. The Rapture idea dates back to the 1830s, when John Nelson Darby, a Bible teacher from Bournemouth, England, interpreted Paul’s “First Epistle to the Thessalonians” as a forthcoming event. It reads: “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead In Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever. Therefore encourage one another with these words” (1 Thess. 4:16–18).
On October 1, 1916, John commented on a Church sermon Padgett had attended. As was often the case, the apostle was critical of the preacher’s words. He said he had had misinterpreted the “end of the world,” just as people have misinterpreted “end times” and “last days” prophecies since his time:
“If humanity would only understand that the world that was lost by the disobedience of the first parents was the world of man’s immortality and happiness,” he wrote, “and not the physical world. … The material world is not involved in the plan of man’s salvation, or in Jesus’s mission, or in the declarations of Jesus as to the coming of the end.
“Men will continue to be born, live a short time, and die the physical death. … All men at some time will have to die, then why should it be necessary to include the destruction of the material world in the plan of God?”
John was saying that the “end of the world” is the end of a thought process in which humans continually wage war against each other and nature. When souls are filled with love rather than fear, “this world” will end and be replaced by a heaven on earth—although heaven on earth is not the ultimate plan.
He continued: “Jesus is not seeking to establish a kingdom on earth … but is working to lead men to the New Birth of the spirit … to cast sin and error from their hearts … so that love to God in the divine sense, and love to God in the created sense and brotherly love will cover the whole earth. …
“Such a condition may be called the kingdom of God on earth—but it will not be the kingdom which Jesus came to establish. That is the Kingdom of Heaven. This kingdom has its seat and abiding place in the celestial spheres.
“Let mortals know that Jesus has already come to earth and is among men … teaching them the way, the truth, and the life.”
On the Rapture, John wrote, “Let men study the prophecies … calculate the time of the end … predict the near approach of the Master’s coming in the clouds … yet they will find that all these things are vanities of vanities. Only as each individual passes beyond the veil of flesh will he realize the end of his mortal world has come. …
“So I say to men, prepare not for the passing away of the heavens and the earth, but for the passing of themselves … for as they sow, so shall they reap—a certainty that is never changed.”
During his term in office, Pompeo was seen by many as a war hawk. Evidently, he felt he was doing God’s work and was possibly hoping that when his time comes, he won’t be one of those left behind.
