Pulled from the christianpost.com… (This moderators take? After reading the Bible every day for 35+ years, I still have not found the topics and ideas presented in those books…. As we been researching with honest exegeses, what is popular is not necessary Biblical. What is best? Just read the Bible yourself and not what people who do not read the Bible to tell you how to think what it says or tell you what it says…. BTW, what Revelation really teaches is far more powerful and impacting…..)
“This doctrine is not really found in the book of Revelation. If you read the book of Revelation, you won’t find any mention of the rapture there,” said William Craig, a Research Professor of Philosophy at Talbot School of Theology and Professor of Philosophy at Houston Baptist University.
“If you compare what Paul says there to what Jesus says about the End Times, Paul uses the same vocabulary, the same phraseology. I think it’s very plausible that Paul is talking about the same event that Jesus predicted, namely the visible coming of the Son of Man at the end of human history to usher in his kingdom,” said Craig. “But proponents of the rapture view, say that Paul is not at all talking about the second coming of the Christ there. What he’s really talking about is this invisible preliminary secret return of Christ to snatch believers out of the world before the great tribulation occurs. I think there’s no textual warrant for that at all.”
According to Craig, the rapture became a popular theory about the End Times due to the influence of the Scofield Reference Bible, which was published in the early 20th century and promulgated John Darby’s mid-18th century’s views on the rapture. Later, Christian institutions, among them Dallas Theological Seminary, and churches began teaching the validity of the rapture.
“A good many Bible-believing Christians absorbed this view as their mother’s milk as it were and have never thought to question its Biblical credentials,” said Craig.
Craig affirmed that it was completely possible for Christians to watch the upcoming “Left Behind” movie or read the series, but they should resist taking its claims seriously.
“It could be maybe good fiction. It would be say like reading science fiction or fantasy novels like The Lord of the Rings. Just so long as you’re not deceived into thinking that represents biblical eschatology,” said Craig.
Craig, who leads Reasonable Faith, an apologetics organization that equips Christians with the resources to speak about their faith in an “intelligent, articulate, and uncompromising yet gracious” manner, called upon Biblical scholars, pastors and other church leaders who also refute the rapture to speak out about their position.
“It is astonishing, if I’m correct about this, American evangelism is very widely misled, that it has departed from the historic Christian position about the second coming of Christ. That’s really rather sobering, because if we’re wrong about this, what other things might we have misinterpreted?” he said…..>
BREAKING NEWS: The longtime No. 1 pretrib rapture teacher, Dr. John Walvoord of Dallas Seminary, believed that the “Left Behind” books and movies have a NON-BIBLICAL foundation! If you doubt this, Google “The ‘Left Behind’ Rupture” which was aired on Joe Ortiz’s “The End Times Passover” blog on August 12, 2014. (For more shocks Google “Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty,” “Pretrib Rapture Pride,” and “Pretrib Rapture Stealth.”)