![]() ![]() This, Jesus seemed to believe, was an event within space-time history, not one that would end it forever. The parables about a returning king or master (for example, Luke 19:11-27) were originally about God returning to Jerusalem, not about Jesus returning to earth. The gospel passages about “the Son of Man coming on the clouds” (Mark 13:26, 14:62, for example) are about Jesus’ vindication, his “coming” to heaven from earth. Jesus himself, as I have argued in various books, never predicted such an event. It is Paul who should be credited with creating this scenario. What on earth (or in heaven) did Paul mean? The dead in Christ will rise first then we, who are left alive, will be snatched up with them on clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so we shall always be with the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17). This dramatic end-time scenario is based (wrongly, as we shall see) on Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, where he writes: “For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of an archangel and the trumpet of God. hold the belief on which the popular series of novels is based: that there will be a literal “rapture” in which believers will be snatched up to heaven, leaving empty cars crashing on freeways and kids coming home from school only to find that their parents have been taken to be with Jesus while they have been “left behind.” This pseudo-theological version of Home Alone has reportedly frightened many children into some kind of (distorted) faith. ![]() Seen from my side of the Atlantic, the phenomenal success of the Left Behind books appears puzzling, even bizarre. The American obsession with the second coming of Jesus - especially with distorted interpretations of it - continues unabated. Little did Paul know how his colorful metaphors for Jesus’ second coming would be misunderstood two millennia later.
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