Who is NOT Going to Heaven

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What comes after is potentially even scarier. And here's the thing. This is one of the most vivid. Detailed, terrifying, specific visions of the end of the world that human beings have ever produced. And almost none of it is where you think that it came from. The version that millions of people are waiting to happen, the sudden disappearance, the seven year clock, that whole sequence can be traced to a single guy in a single decade, less than 200 years ago. So how did this idea come to feel like the oldest apocalyptic prophecy in the whole world? Well, today we're going to find out. We're going to walk through this apocalyptic worldview step by step, breaking down the text in Revelation, walking through the rapture exactly as it's supposed to be. We'll get into the details of where this all comes from, why people believe it, and what specific Christians believe this. Because again, this is not something that I was raised believing, but who knows? Maybe there's some truth to it. We're going to dig deep into it today. Now, if you pick up an English Bible, and you flip to the back, and you're looking for the word rapture, you're like, alright, where's this rapture thing coming from? Where in the Bible is it? You're not going to find it. It's not in the King James. It's not even in most modern translations. Sometimes they'll put it in a footnote of a reader's Bible, where a rapturist will put it paired with a section. So I'm sure you're wondering, you're like, Mark, how does the most famous end-time event in modern Christianity, like this amazing thing where people just go missing one day, and they just sort of ascend into heaven with God. It's not in the book. It's not in the Bible. So where does this come from? Where do we get it? Well, it's not even from Revelation. The whole idea rests on a handful of verses in a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to a group of new Christians in the Greek city of Thessalonica. This is the book of Thessalonians. This was written around like 50 AD, and it's one of the oldest documents in the entire New Testament. It's the book of 1 Thessalonians. And their community had a problem, alright? So if you don't know, Paul was basically writing letters to all the churches, and he was addressing them and assessing what their specific problems were. And the problem with the Thessalonians is that some of their members had died, and the survivors were starting to panic, and they had been told that Jesus was coming back, and he was coming back when? Very soon. So what happened to the people who didn't make it? Like, did they miss it? Were they just gone forever? Like, if you died before Jesus comes back, like, what does that mean for their soul? So Paul writes back to comfort them. And in 1 Thessalonians 4, he paints a picture. When Christ returns, he says, "The dead believers will rise first, and then the living believers will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air." So he's telling them that the dead aren't at a disadvantage. Everyone who belongs to Christ will come back to life and will be gathered up all at once. And that phrase, that word there, "caught up," is the whole thing. Like, in the Greek, like, in the original sort of translation, like, in the actual sort of vernacular, the word is harpazo. It means to seize, to snatch, to, like, grab suddenly and, like, carry off. It's kind of a violent, fast word. My pronunciation is pretty good on that, right? Harpazo? Yeah, it's great. Thank you. It's the same kind of word that you would use for, like, like a hawk, like, flying down and, like, snatching, like, a little rabbit or something. You'd be like, "Yeah, he harpazo'd him." Right? So now when Christians in the early centuries are translating the Bible from Greek into Latin, they rendered the word harpazo as rapturo, from rapere, basically, to seize. And that Latin word is where we get the English word rapture. So the term everyone uses isn't directly in the Bible, right? It's like, okay, it's a word that's used in the Greek that gets transliterated and becomes a new word. So depending on, you know, if you're, like, very much like a literalist going through every little detail, you're like, well, technically it is. So that's where it comes from. It's an echo of the Latin translation of this Greek word for snatched away. And then Paul drops another hymn. Paul drops another hint on this whole idea of the rapture in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. He's basically describing this same moment to a church in Corinth. And he says it'll happen, quote, "in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye." The living transformed instantly, like, even faster than you can blink. And that's kind of it. Like, that's, like, sort of the raw biblical material as far as I was able to find. And all the believers snatching up into the clouds in an instant. To meet the returning Christ. But here's what's really important to take away from this section. And remember this for the rest of our sort of conversation today. In Paul's own words, he describes one event. Christ comes. The dead rise. The living are caught up. And everyone's together. One sort of, you know, returning and one gathering. But when Christianity talks about the rapture now. Like, if you go to, like, a very specific church and they're talking about, you know, the end of times. Like, you know, the rapture's coming. There are a few other little plot points that are kind of thrown in the mix that Paul doesn't really write about. And we'll get to those in a minute. Because, just because Paul doesn't describe it doesn't mean that this belief is unimportant or that it's untrue or that we should even discredit it. Because it is a huge part of a lot of modern Christians' theologies about the end times. So, perhaps it's not something that, you know, Catholics or Greek Orthodox are raised with. But there are a lot of Christians that do hold this dear to them. So, in the practice of operating good faith. We're going to accept it as, you know, possible. It's just, you know, not laid out in Scripture like maybe you would have thought if you didn't go and read it. It's kind of pieced together from, like, different parts of the Bible. So, what it comes down to is how you interpret certain texts. And that's what we're going to get into right now. Because there are a few different distinct ways to read apocalyptic literature in the Bible. And each of them gives us a slightly different story of what the end of the world will look like. Now, we did an entire episode where we walked through it. An episode where we walked through the totality of the book of Revelation. This revelation of John of Patmos. And we go through, like, beat by beat without really telling you what any of it means. So, if you haven't seen that, you should go check it out. Because here we're kind of doing the opposite. We're going to talk about this specific line and what people actually do with it. Well, we're talking about what people do with just one part of it. Because the book is massive. And there's so many different things. And we could do breakdowns for literally weeks on this one book. But the book of Revelation is the last book of the Bible. And it is wild. And it doesn't necessarily come with an instruction manual of, like, here's what it all means. It's very mystical. And it doesn't always tell us explicitly what it represents. Like, it's a lot of kind of apocalyptic literature is sort of weird. It's kind of a fever dream. Which means that for nearly 2,000 years, Christians have been reading the same book. And many of them got different things. and kind of different meanings and different ways that they should conduct their lives. Broadly, there have been four major ways to interpret it. And real quick, the reason we're going on this little side quest here is because the idea of the rapture doesn't appear in all the ways to interpret Revelation. But I want you to know which readings of the book you can find it and then we'll get back to the rapture itself. Do you have a friend that buys gold instead of crypto because he doesn't trust the internet? That's a power move. You got a buddy that has a backup generator and a bunch of canned food and somehow knows that a blackout's coming before the power company does? That's a power move. And do you have a friend that hired Morgan & Morgan? Well, guess what? That's a power move. Yep, Morgan & Morgan is America's largest injury law firm with over 100 offices nationwide and over 1,000 lawyers. They've recovered over $30 billion from more than 500,000 clients. In Florida, they secured a $644 million verdict after the defense argued that the victim and his wife should get nothing. That is a power move. So if you are ever injured, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. And their fee is free unless they win. Go to forthepeople.com slash Gagnon or dial pound law. That's pound 529 from your cell phone. That is forthepeople.com slash Gagnon. This is a paid advertisement. So some Christians are preterists. They read Revelation as if everything it's describing already happened. Like back in the first century, it was really about the Roman Empire persecuting early Christians and the beast was Rome and 666 was, you know, Gematria for Nero. And the whole thing is basically like a historical allegory. But some are historicists and they think Revelation is a coded timeline of all of church history unfolding century by century. And you can actually match the symbols and the imagery to real events across 2000 years. So it's like half historical, some of it's in the past and half of it is prophetic or futuristic. And some of it's happening right now, if that makes sense. And we are in the timeline. And then there are idealists. They think it's not a timeline at all, but more like kind of a poem, basically, like this recurring spiritual pattern about good and evil that plays out in every age, not like a literal sequence of events past and future. It's sort of a metaphor for whatever time you're currently living in. And then some are futurists. They think most of Revelation hasn't happened yet. It's a prophecy. It is a proper preview. It is a revelation to John about the future and the end of the world. Now, most Christians throughout history leaned toward reading Revelation either symbolically, like as a poem about the ongoing struggles that humanity faces, or they interpreted it as being something that was already fulfilled, kind of a, a preterist kind of, you know, this is something that happened in like the first centuries of the church. The idea that it's a literal chronological minute by minute forecast of the future, that is a, that is a, that is a, that is a preterist kind of, you know, this is something that happened in like the first centuries of the church. The idea that it's a literal chronological minute by minute forecast of the future, that is a, that is a, that is a more recent interpretation, the futurist one, where it's like, hey, this is coming, Armageddon's gonna happen. And it's the futurist interpretation that allows room for this idea of the rapture. Now, there is one other really important factor that plays into all of this. And it's about a single phrase in Revelation 20. And it's this thing of the thousand years, we call it the millennium. It's a period where Christ reigns and evil is basically bound up and tied and sort of squashed for a period of a thousand years. And it's a period where Christ reigns and evil is a thousand years. And Christian theology is super divided here. You talk to a Lutheran pastor and a Baptist and a Methodist, and they might all tell you like different understandings of what this millennia, millennium is. So one belief about the millennium says that Christ returns after a golden age, ushered in, basically gradually by the church. Another says that this thousand years is symbolic and that we're actually spiritually inside of it right now. And still another, the one we're actually talking about today, think Christ returns before a literal future thousand year kingdom on earth. Now that one's the most fun one. And the last group that I just mentioned are called premillennialists. So Christ basically comes back and then this millennium, this thousand years of Jesus reigning, this new kingdom on earth is what happens. So I know this is kind of confusing. So let me try to kind of wrap it up. There are four different major ways to interpret the book of Revelation. And historically, they interpret it one way. And now there are sort of more kind of interpretations. And within the book of Revelation is this line about the millennium, which people also disagree about. And there are a few different ways of just interpreting that one line, just that idea of the millennium. And how you interpret the millennium really affects whether or not you believe in the rapture at all. So for our interpretation of Revelation that we're talking about today, the one that believes in the rapture, it is a futurist reading of Revelation, plus a literal future millennium, plus the belief that the, rapture is a separate event from the second coming. So you get all of these beliefs and these interpretations and they stack together. And that package has a name. And it's called dispensationalism. Now I know that that word is big, and it's maybe confusing. Don't freak out. It literally just translates to the future divided up into acts. That's it. And that makes it pretty simple to understand because that's essentially what this whole theology is the belief that the end of the world will go down in the future. This is the lens, this is the system that takes all of these scattered kind of puzzle pieces, Paul's letters to the Thessalonians and Daniel's, you know, ancient prophecies and Jesus's warnings and all the apocalyptic stuff and Revelation and then assembles them into a continuous chronological story. So you have the rapture, and then the tribulation, and then the Antichrist, and then Armageddon, then Christ returns, and then the Millennium, which is the 1000 years of the reign of Christ. And once you have that lens, the whole layout falls into basically like a blockbuster. It is a it is a fantastic movie. So let's just break it all down. Let's walk through the end of the world exactly the way that dispensationalists would see it. So it begins without a warning. There's no final war, there's no announcement, no countdown that everyone's aware of. Christ descends partway to earth into the air. Paul describes a shout, the voice of an archangel, a trumpet blast that sounds across the entire world. And according to Paul's letters that are in the Bible, the dead believers rise first, then in the twinkling of an eye, like I said, the living believers are transformed and basically snatched upward to meet them. And then they're gone. Every genuine Christian on the planet in the same instant is removed. The people who are still on earth have no idea what's going on. They're not aware of what's going on. They have no idea what just happened. There's no divine voice that explains it. There are just gaps. There are empty seats. There are missing co workers. There are maybe family members that you know that are just gone. And if you're still there, it's a little scary. The world suddenly is short a bunch of people with no explanation. And as a result, who knows what happens governments might scramble. You might have a you know, like a faithful politician, which I doubt not to get on my political soapbox. But how many of these politicians are going to heaven? Right? Pick your side of the aisle. Slim Piggins. That's all I'll say. Lindsey Graham is somewhere right now. He's somewhere. You know, RIP. Pour one out for him. Who knows? Now, all that to say, cars might crash, planes might fall, surgeons might disappear. And in this worldview, the confusion is kind of the point. God is using the disappearance, the sudden, unexplained on purpose. Now, again, not all of this is like written out textually in the Bible. This is interpretations of a bunch of things. But it's not all of this. It's not all of this. It's not a bunch of different verses kind of put together over time. Now, at this point, the church, literally like the body of believers of the Church of Christ that worship Christ as the Lord is gone. And with the church gone, now the clock starts. And the world doesn't know it yet. But it has just entered into the tribulation, a seven year period of catastrophe. And there's more catastrophes that come after another and it gets even worse. Now, where does the number seven come from? Well, once again, it's not from Revelation directly. It's from an ancient prophecy in the book of Daniel, written centuries before Christ, about 70 weeks of years, basically, which, you know, the last of which in the system gets detached and dropped into the far future is like a final seven year week. It's sort of confusing, but you split in half and then the second three and a half years become what believers call the Great Tribulation. This is the worst of the worst. It's chaos. And in all of this chaos steps a man. And this man is brilliant. And he is charming. And he arrives. With exactly what a terrified and confused and unraveling world is begging for. He's going to come in and offer peace and order and security and answers. And he's going to broker deals that no one else could broker. He's going to solve conflicts that are unsolvable. And people are going to love him. And everyone's going to love him. And odds are you're going to love him. And he's the Antichrist. Whoa, plot twist. Oh, I would love to be like a, like a preacher in the South in like the 1800s. Right? Oh, man, I would, I would deliver the heck out of this. I'd be like, yeah, you guys are gonna love him. And he's actually the Antichrist. I'd love to be one now. Now, now, come up to the altar. Let's get some testimonies. I would, I would crush it. Now, this Antichrist, this is the beast that is described in Revelation 13. This is the figure that Paul calls the man of lawlessness. We did an entire episode just on the Antichrist within Christian eschatology. You should absolutely check it out. And in this timeline, the reason he's so dangerous is not because he's a man of lawlessness. He's a man of lawlessness. He's super evil. And, you know, as terrifying and scary, it's precisely that he doesn't look dangerous at all. And he actually looks like a savior. That's the point. point. He is the anti-Christos. He is Christ, but opposite. And you look at him and you're like, oh, this guy's basically Jesus, but he's not. He's here to lead you astray. But then at the midpoint of all this, three and a half years in, the peace shatters. And the world leader that everyone trusted reveals what he actually is. The promises of order start to turn into tyranny. He starts demanding worship and loyalty to him basically becomes the only way you can live. And in the famous image from Revelation, no one can buy or sell anything without the mark of the beast. And the number is 666. It's not just like a barcode or a chip necessarily. I mean, maybe it is. I mean, this is kind of the thing that people will say, like if you're watching, you know, YouTube videos. But in the deeper meaning, it represents total allegiance to an anti-God world order. So you're either in and, you know, life is pretty good. You can buy stuff and you're sort of cohabitating or allowing this anti-God world, world order, or you're cut off from it. And you basically have no food or economy or a job or your life. And the chaos throughout the tribulation gets even worse. So Revelation describes them in waves. So you have seals, like not like SeaWorld, like, like stamp seal, you guys get it. And then you have trumpets, and you got bulls. And you know, they're striking the land and the sea and the sky and the water and there's human health that's falling apart. And the whole structure of civilization is basically, like literally coming undone. The world is basically ending. And meanwhile, there's another story happening at the same time in this theology, which again, is not all Christians. It is a very specific subset of specific Christians, might I say, mostly Protestant. In this theology, some of the people who were left behind in Act One actually become Christians during the tribulation. And they are called the tribulation saints. These are the people who missed the rapture the first time around. But, you know, turn to God in the middle of a nightmare, usually at the cost of their lives. And they are now saintly. So even the left behind world isn't beyond hope. It's just a, it's gonna be a longer road for y'all. All right. And then the armies of the world gather together for a little chat, we could say they all kind of, they gather around and they just want to, they just want to hash it out. And this is called Armageddon, which you think is the name of the city. And it's thought that in the original translation, the name comes from Megiddo. It is a real hill in northern Israel that sat over many ancient battlefields. And the vision in this specific vision, all the powers of the rebellious world assemble there for one last stand. And who's leading the rebel armies? The Antichrist. And this is the moment that pre-tribulation theology has been working towards. I mean, the moment that it gets to kind of separate from the rapture. Now, back then at the beginning of the seven years, when the rapture happened, Christ came back quietly in the air for his people. But now he comes publicly and visibly and loudly to the earth itself with all the people he took up with him. So Revelation 19 gives us this image. Heaven opens up and Christ appears riding a white horse. His eyes are on fire. He is crowned, bearing the titles faithful and true and king of kings. And this is not a, you know, the gentle shepherd that maybe you've seen in like a, like a Sunday school mural. This is not, you know, a, you know, just a poor man from Nazareth going into town on a donkey. This is a conqueror arriving to end an unjust war. And oh boy, it ends fast. The Antichrist and all the bad guys, they get destroyed. And the world system built on this beast collapses. And a long rebellion of history against God. Is over. And it's not some drawn out, long, arduous battle of going back and forth in a stalemate with a trench and a line that doesn't move. It's an instant. Satan himself is finally seized and bound. Now, this is the good part of the movie. Now the millennium begins within this specific perspective. Propel Fitness Water. With Gatorade electrolytes, zero sugar, and vitamins. What propels you? Of eschatology. Christ gets to reign on earth for a thousand years. In this literal reading, if we're going with that, it's an actual kingdom, like a literal golden age, and it is the fulfillment of every ancient prophetic hope. It's a world finally ruled the way that it was supposed to be ruled. Roll credits. That's the greatest movie ever. Oh, skirt. End credit scene. It's not done. No, still not over because at the end of that thousand years, Revelation says that Satan coming back up for one final boss fight. Yeah. And unbelievably, he's still able to gather another rebellion and people are still following him, dude. That's how good the Satan guy is. I mean, not good, but cunning, can we say? Deceptive? Sure. The great deceiver, right? As they say, the adversary. So people still go with Satan. They're like, you know what? Let's give this Satan guy one more spin on the wheel. I think he might got it this time. It's almost a I mean, if you look at it from a kind of a metaphorical perspective, like a commentary on human nature, that even after there's already been a war, even after a thousand years of paradise, and everyone sees how bad things were and how great things are, some people are still going to choose Satan and fight against God. What's wrong with this, right? Now, this last uprising, guess what? Crushed instantly. Bang. That's it. And then comes the final scene. This is the great white throne. Everybody, I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not going to lie to you. In all of history, every single person who has ever lived and died, raised again from the dead, and then died again, shout out Lazarus, which is funny. When we talk about Lazarus, the guy died twice. We never talk about that. Lazarus died, went to heaven, and God was like, you're not going to believe this. There's a sequel. Sent him back down to earth. Bang. Wakes up. Jesus is there. He's like, wait, I was just talking to you. He's like, shh, don't tell anyone. And then Lazarus goes on for like another couple of years and then dies again. And then Jesus cries at his death. Interesting story. Is it because he's the only one that hasn't risen twice? Wait, who? Lazarus is stealing Jesus's thunder. Oh, a little bit. A little bit. Well, if you think about it, right? Elisha never even dies. And if you're Catholic, neither does Mary. Ascended to heaven. Don't know who either of those two people are, but. We're getting lost here. All right. So everyone in all of history comes back and they're basically judged. Evil is sentenced for the last time and death itself is thrown out. No more death. People don't die anymore. And that part of human, the human cycle, right? Of death being a punishment of Adam and Eve. It is done. Now what's left at the end of revelation is basically the opposite of everything that came before. Not fire, not disappearance, not terror, not chaos. It is a new heaven and a new earth, a city, the new Jerusalem coming down. God also pulls up and dwells directly with humanity. All these souls of humanity sort of reunited with their creator in perfect communion with God. And there's a promise. It's pretty plain. No more death, no more crying, and God will wipe away every tear. There will be no more pain. I mean, how awesome is that? It's not pretty sweet. The old order, the empire, the suffering, the evil, the death and the crying, it's gone for good. And that is the map of this specific dispensationalist philosophy. From the moment of the rapture to seven years of increasingly harder and harder tribulation to chaos and Armageddon to the return of Christ to a world made new. It is a fantastic story. It is cinematic. It's got everything you want. There's a hero. There's a, you know, a great sage, you could say. There's a trial. There's a moment of no return. And then a transformation where we've learned something. That's the hero's journey, my boy. There's a villain. Of course, there's a villain. I can't forget that. I mean, we're basically, we're describing every great story ever. We're talking about Harry Potter right now. But it all comes back to the Biblio. Now, millions of people believe that it's the literal future of the planet. That's pretty wild. Maybe it is. I don't know. But there's something that almost nobody who believes in the rapture actually knows. That for roughly the first, I don't know, 1800 years of Christianity, the version that we just walked through didn't really exist. So, let's say you got dropped into like, I don't know, like a church in Rome in like 700. And you told them about this thing. You're like, hey, the rapture, right? Jesus coming back. We're going to go. There's going to be a war and all this stuff. They would be like, maybe we've heard parts of that, but they would be a little confused. So, if you go all the way to the beginning, the apostles, the early church, the martyrs in the arena, they absolutely believed that Jesus would return. That was like in the deal. Last supper, like, hey, I'm coming back. Don't worry. They believed in judgment and in resurrection and in a final conviction runs straight through the whole story. Like, don't get me wrong. As a Catholic, I believe Jesus is coming back. As a Greek Orthodox, you 100% think Jesus is coming back. You got pictures of him all over your house. You can't wait until he shows up and you get to take a picture off and be like, no, not even close. My bad. Turns out he's Arab. I've got his name. You got it. Literally, Christos. You're going to look at him and be like, this is so funny. My name's also Christos. And he's going to be like, no way. How do you spell it? And you're like with an O at the end. He's like, oh, that's so funny. Mine's not. Anyway. So, the specific thing, like a secret separate rapture that quietly empties the church out of the world before like the seven-year tribulation. the disappearance and like the left behind survivors and the cars with people missing the two-stage sequence of return you will not really find it laid out anywhere in like the early church teaching as far as i'm concerned not in the medieval church it's not even in the reformation like martin luther's not really even talking about this and then 1830 not bc i'm talking 1830 like like recently 1830 like mark twain 1830 when was mark twain alive i think it was the end of the 1800s that's all you know but you got what i'm saying civil war 1830 but now we're getting closer it appears the man at the center of this whole thing is an irishman named john nelson darby was i close on mark twain he was born in 1835 oh i'm on it with that dude i was that was i think i kind of nailed that you were talking about middle age mark twain yeah exactly not newborn no yeah no i'm talking you know roughly the time right now sorry this guy john nelson darby he's a lawyer and then became a priest in the church of ireland and he grew you could say uh disillusioned in his practice and so as most uh fervent believers that are disillusioned with sort of the bureaucracy of a big church he joins an intense movement called the plymouth brethren now darby don't be wrong was brilliant and also a little uh anxious and was convinced that the mainstream church had lost the thread of prophecy entirely so his one big move the idea that everything hangs on was a hard split between israel and the church yeah god he argued had two separate peoples with two separate destinies you had an earthly people israel and a heavenly people the church aka like believers or christians and once you divide them that cleanly a gap kind of like cracks open in the prophetic timeline so again at this point in the 1830s israel as a nation doesn't exist this is sort of talking about like the biblical idea of israel so just to be clear the leftover 17th week of daniel that we talked about it gets shoved into the future as the seven-year tribulation and the church being heavenly has no business being on earth for it so the church gets removed first they get evacuated because they're believers they're raptured out before the earthly drama begins that's the seam where the second coming quietly splits into two sort of smaller second comings right now where darby actually got this is kind of a scandal in its own right so there is a centuries-old claim that he didn't derive it from careful study at all now this is a claim it's difficult to verify these things historically so this is what sort of circulates online that people have discussed but basically it goes like this that in 1830 a 15 year old scottish girl named margaret mcdonald in a state of religious ecstasy had a vision containing the seed of a two-stage coming which darby then heard and kind of borrowed and kind of spread and systematized really without credit now is it true it's disputed defenders will go through mcdonald's actual words and argue that there's no clear rapture in them there's no like two-part second coming but then critics said the timing is like really kind of uh you know too neat to be a coincidence so it is not settled by any means i'm not going to weigh in on uh 1800s drama but to be fair a few scattered earlier figures like an obscure 18th century baptist named morgan edwards and a handful of others seem to kind of gesture at something rapture-ish before darby but those are fragments that were kind of sort of assembling in retrospect no one had ever assembled them into a full kind of worldview schematic until darby you know they're whatever the spark was darby was the engine and his idea crossed the atlantic so through the 1860s into the 1870s darby was touring the united states preaching to protestant audiences that were hungry for this kind of like confident literal bible centric sola scriptura detailed reading a prophecy and oh boy a colic wildfire but it was just one teaching amongst many but what made it unstoppable was a book specifically a study bible yes this is what i was referencing before these uh sort of like reader bibles that will have like the text and then like an interpretation of the text sort of next to it to kind of help you understand so in 1909 an american named cyrus scofield published the scofield reference bible through oxford university press and it did something uh pretty clever it printed the beloved trusted king james text that was read all through the anglican sort of medicine world and it is the actual words of scripture for many christians and most people don't really dispute it and wrapped in the book are scofield's own footnotes and commentary right there on the same page and those notes were kind of pure reminiscent of darby it talks about the israel church split the pre-tribulation rapture the entire architecture that we've just laid out and it was presented not as one guy's theory or it has an interpretation of this but like hey if you're reading this this is obviously what it means it's sitting right there next to the sacred words of scripture like i'm not making it up this is like god's word and then like you know the fan fiction of god's word that's like they're kind of saying is god's word it's a little you know it's a little uh you get what i'm saying right it kind of he's like yeah it's the same it's like when you like you have like a restaurant and like another restaurant right next to it that has like similar branding and people kind of get confused i'm not saying it's wrong i'm just saying that's how it sort of spreads so for millions of readers of the scofield bible there was suddenly no real distinction between the bible and the footnote like obviously they didn't claim like also this is the bible but people reading it on their own after church they got a little confused and also the story is so good it's like if you're reading the bible and you start reading this you're like i forgot the bible i mean he's talking about seals and bowls like let me read about this crazy like cinematic end of the world so if it shared the page with the word of god in the same sort of authoritative type it kind of felt like the word of god now the scofield bible was a hit i mean this we're talking harry potter numbers this was selling in the millions and it became one of oxford's best-selling books ever literally and as a result it trained generations of american christians as well as american christian pastors to read darby's 1830s rapture tribulation system schematic as if it was kind of on par to any other sort of christian theology and then of course pop culture takes it and then cemented it into the brains of christians around the world so in 1970 a preacher named hal lindsey published the late great planet earth this was a fun little paperback kind of kind of deal basically wiring cold war headlines directly into revelation so like it's it's basically like hey we're in the height of the cold war well it turns out the cold war is a part of revelation and people were like what so it became a best-selling non-fiction book perhaps the best-selling of the entire decade we're talking tens of millions of copies even a film that was narrated by none other than orson wells and then came the 90s and 2000s this is my generation this is the stuff i was on left behind so you got tim lahaye and then jerry jenkins and they take a novel that becomes a massive hit about basically kids that are left behind and you know the rapture happens they got to like deal with the chaos and then that basically turned like darby's timeline into like a page-turning thriller and the series was 16 books there were tens of millions of copies sold and then what do you do with a good book turn to the movie and it opens exactly where we open this episode the moment after the disappearance like piles of clothes the car with like an empty driver's seat and that is why the image is in your head not because it's like you know like written out word for word by paul to someone it's like you know because a 19th century irish guy really laid out an awesome interpretation that got printed next to the king james text they got packaged into a 70s bestseller that they got turned into like a fictionalized like religious novel that then got turned into a movie and through that sequence it was basically made the uncontested truth of the protestant christian idea of the end of the world fellas this episode is sponsored by blue chew look life is about preparation you got to prepare for a camping trip for your job for a podcast and you got to prepare for all of the things happening in your life and you know sometimes when the vibe is right everyone's you know being an adult you're on the same page sometimes people forget to prepare for the bedroom and that's why you need 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more details and important safety information thanks so much blue chew let's get back to the show now the truth is every single one of the materials in this story is ancient paul really did write about being caught up in the clouds 2 000 years ago and all the christians going up with the dead daniel's 70 weeks that's in the bible revelations beasts and the mark of the beast and the battles and the trumpets and you know that day happening like the twinkling of an eye those texts are real and verified and very old and they have plagued christians minds for millennia funny right yeah see what i did there maybe two millennium right maybe three maybe three but the arrangement so like the disappearing cars the countdown the sort of chronology of everything the two-stage vanishing act and like people sort of ascending and then all that stuff that's younger than like i mean the 1830s like the when did the telephone happen alexander graham bell i think it was before that like the the telephone happened and then this version of the rapture happened after i'm almost positive telephone was invented in 1876 oh okay so roughly around the same time took us 100 years from independence to figure it out that's actually really impressive we put it that way that's wild like someone was born during like the american revolution and then in their lifetime they were like hello wait they got prank called someone was hanging with george washington they got prank called think about that yeah but it took 100 years to go from wooden teeth to telephone and we're getting off topic not wooden teeth actually they were human teeth and you don't want to know where they came from that's a little dark history for you google that anyway it feels like it was like when i remember hearing it as a kid i was like oh this is like this is they didn't teach us this in catholic school this was carved into the foundation of christianity it wasn't exactly and the effect of the theology runs so deep that at the height of its popularity and culture some protestant churches were holding rapture drills i remember 2012 people were like hey 2012 my calendar's up rapture time people are like pranking people with rapture stuff like their super christian dad they would like leave their clothes around or like they would just like drop a cup of water and then like everyone in the house would like hide and they'd be like oh the rapture there were like literal rehearsals the same way like a school would run like a fire drill or something congregations and christian schools would practice for this moment of disappearance like what would the faithful do what would the world look like you know the instant that it happened like if your parents get raptured and you don't like what where's the faith you know the instant that it happened like if your parents get raptured and you don't like what where should you go children raised in this context of teaching described coming home to an empty house and feeling like the terror like it happened i got left behind i wasn't a true believer i didn't love jesus enough i was a sinner and everyone else left and i'm here alone that's how deep it went i knew people that were on this wave they were like hey the rapture is gonna happen and i'm going and if i don't go i'm gonna go later whenever you know the chaos happens then they didn't make a threat really but it kind of sounded like i was about to say right honestly that is it's kind of a fear thing that kind of drives the whole thing it's like hey knock knock all of a sudden the one who knocks comes and you better hope that he takes him with takes you with him because if you strip away the timelines and the footnotes and all the details the pre-tribulation rapture is answering a simple question am i going to make it when jesus comes back and says hey all the good people all the straight a students that love jesus you're coming with me and that's really at the bottom line that's like what all the people that really believe this or even flirt with this are hoping like hey i'm i'm gonna make it right and it answers with a very clear lines drawn right down the middle of the human race the saved and those that are left behind but remember many christians read the exact same verses and they don't see any reason to believe any of this they say like hey this is symbolic this is theater turmoil that human beings are dealing with it's not a literal schedule like we've become too literal with apocalyptic literature it's a poem about like faith surviving evil not like a countdown to like a a plane of fire and falling out of the sky because the pilot was christian which if you're gonna be in a plane and you believe in the rapture you better hope your pilot's not christian right why because what if he gets raptured and then the whole plane crashes dude it's a good point you want to be like hey guy are you buddhist hindu muslim jewish great we love that you believe in god you want to live you love humanity but when the rapture happens you're going to be here for another seven years like if you're one of these people that believes that you don't want a christian you're going to be here for another seven years that's going to be terrifying now the reason we can't look away from this is like hey what if they're not wrong like what if maybe they're right what if maybe we're the ones that are misinterpreting it so there you have it there's the road map according to dispensationalism and the dispensationalists i hope i did a good job of representing it in uh the most honest and and and truthful way that i could truly maybe i made some jokes here and there i don't mean to disparage anyone's uh beliefs about the end of times i just did go to protestant school for a long time and it's just kind of fun to poke fun of my christian brethren now there are four different interpretations we only talked about one of them you know the millennium the tribulation all that stuff so this is not the totality of what christians believe it is just a sliver so now just in case you show up at your house and everyone's gone and all your christian friends are nowhere to be seen and you're still here with all the sinners at least you know what happened and that ladies and gentlemen is a brief synopsis about dispensationalism rapture theology like i said it's a wild story it is fun to go on the ride as a catholic it's not really something we got down with super hard you know again jesus is coming back we love jesus is you know lord and savior saw my necklace shout out to him right saved all of humanity god sent his one only son so we might not perish but have eternal life that's what we believe all christians are on that wave but the rapture end of time people flying out of cars and clothes left behind going up to heaven butt naked that's propel fitness water with gatorade electrolytes zero sugar and vitamins propel hydrates better than water to help you get the most out of your workout and get back to your best self what propels you propel with gatorade electrolytes so it's tough for me to like really get on board i'm like it just seems like it just seems like we're maybe interpreting uh very sort of strange apocalyptic literature that's kind of poetic and symbolic maybe maybe a little too literally which is rich coming from a catholic that believes that the last supper was literal and not symbolic and protestants we just flipped it like protestants will be like no no the last supper that was that was a symbol that's not literally his body that's bread it's not literally blood it's just wine this is a symbol but then at times i mean that's literally gonna happen and the catholics were like dude the end of time stuff you guys are crazy that's literally a metaphor but this bread is literally jesus it's kind of funny how we do stuff right aren't we just so cute with our little fights right right protestants right guys don't hate me anyway chris what did you think what did you learn about the rapture today i learned that it's terrifying and that i don't want a christian pilot that is true you don't well maybe a little christian you want to be like a bad christian you want to be like raised in the church he loves jesus but you know he's got temperance but not right now kind of saint augustine vibes drinks heavily not on the job not on the job but outside we're getting very specific with our pilot sort of classifications here maybe i can't imagine if god does the rapture he's just going to make the planes crash i'm sure he's going to be like knock on the window like hey great news you're getting out of here but you got to go into o'hare right now like maybe it's the diversion put it on not a pilot yeah you can do autopilot which i mean pilot i feel like jesus just hears the name pilot and he's like oh this guy again i've dealt with you once i wonder if he does anything with pilots end of times like you think if you go to heaven and you see jesus you're like yeah where's pilot and he's like where do you think you're like yeah oh you want to know where pilot is and you're like where's hitler and he's like oh hitler actually repented right at the end you're like wait what that's crazy where's jane goodall and he's like oh she wasn't christian you're like no what jane goodall's that's crazy that's gonna be crazy i can't wait to get to heaven and find out what's going on it's like gonna be like i wonder if there's gonna be like a week of gossip if i know anything about my family oh there's gonna be a lot of gossip we're gonna get to heaven we'll be like did you see the neighbors didn't make it now we're friends but you seem sure that you're going i mean i feel like i feel like god's gonna see this podcast and be like hey you you you looked into it i'm going to purgatory probably that's another catholic thing when was the last time you confessed i confessed actually not that long ago funny you mentioned this yeah i confessed right before my sister's funeral which was like nine months ago and then i confessed like four months ago yeah i like confession to be honest with you was it in the booth or always in the booth dude really yeah you got to cut it up with the homie in the sauna you got to pop in there drive-through window be like father it's been x amount of days it's also embarrassing to go in there and you haven't been a confession like five years he's like when was your last confession you're like i think obama was president he's like whoa and like i know it's been a minute i'm i'm going through it right now how much time you got and you can just tell he's like oh my gosh i was gonna get out of here in two minutes my literally you're my last guy you haven't been in here since obama you got here in like early facebook days like this is crazy how many hell marys were you told that's the thing it kind of depends on the priest that's sort of fire you go to a priest and like sometimes he'll be like i'm one time he's got i got prescribed a podcast it's a priest homie of mine was it the priest's podcast no imagine that he was like check out this podcast also use the promo code use the promo code jesus it really helps out the show but i went to a priest friend and i did confession he was like your penance i'm going to send you a link just check this out it's gonna really kind of answer a lot of stuff for you i click a two hour long podcast with ads it's very modern though the audacity ads on a jesus podcast edit that out i don't know i was just like all right so that was cool and then sometimes you go in i've told i've told the priest like the darkest secrets and he goes two hail marys i'm like what you didn't think i brought it by the way can i talk about this on my podcast yeah it's a little offensive like i come in here i spill the beans i'm like dude i did this bad thing i did this bad thing this this this and this and he goes it's like two hail marys like what's the exchange rate on sins to hail marys like i feel like a hail marys that much that's awesome i assumed it'd be like pesos i assumed he'd be like yeah 10 000 hail marys get started right but goes a long way save your hail marys today all right happy sunday anyway hope you enjoyed the episode i hope you learned something about the rapture if you are a dispensationalist tell me if i got anything wrong truly i have no uh conviction here i'm not trying to like prove anyone right i just want to represent all the ideas as best i can so drop a comment let me know if uh you're not a dispensationalist maybe you're not even christian maybe you don't believe that jesus christ is the lord what do you think about this how does this fit with your end time story if you are muslim jewish hindu buddhist whatever you are i would love to know what you're thinking so please drop a comment i read all of them even if i don't get to all of them i might not respond but someone will it'll be nice you know conducive to the to the community just be nice and kind and kind and kind and kind and kind about it right we got a nice little vibe going and i don't don't mush the vibe that's all i'm asking all right also if you like history content great news we have history camp if you like deep dives on mysteries conspiracies all sorts of craziness happening in the world today great news we have camp ganon that is the main channel where everything goes down i do interviews with people way smarter than me it is a great time and if you just like to rock with the religious bible great news you are in the right place this is religion camp we do these every single sunday make sure you subscribe it really helps out the show and i'll see you next sunday go to church or good war or the mosque or the synagogue or wherever you want to go and just believe something all right life is better with belief that's my thought anyway god bless you all peace be with you have a blessed sunday and i'll see you next week peace i didn't like what you said odin pauses about the future this is the love story of real hinge couple odin and edward written and read by me curtis garner listen to the free audiobook now