Reply #22: Another 'Stop it or you'll go blind' warning [View All]

[momster]

The whole 'Rapture' idea is a 19th century invention, based in part on some Scottish teenager's 'vision' (not unlike the hysterical fantasies that led to the Salem trials), conflated by a couple of second-rate preachers. They saw the wickedness and corruption of the world as too much for mortals to deal with so started threatening everyone with the imminent return of Big Scary Retribution Jesus. Though some fundies have tried to dig up early Church Father writings/teaching that seems to equate to the Rapture, none of the big names in Catholicism (just to name one group) ever mentions it, not even those who claimed to be in contact with God himself -- not Teresa of Avila, not Aquinas, not Augustine, not nobody.

I think the whole modern movement is rooted in xenophobia -- hatred of 'the other,' the 'stranger'. But the believer doesn't have to act out against the stranger because God's going to do it for them. I have a dear friend who believes that God's coming soon...she doesn't believe that there's going to be a future for the earth so she's not doing a darn thing to prepare for her retirement or any of her future needs. That, to me, is scarier than the whole 'tribulation' crap.