The Last Day?

May 21 is Coming.

"I am worried at the ways in which so many North American Christians are wedded to particular views of the second coming and find this so dominant a question, while other central and vital areas of Christian, and Gospel, thinking are marginalized."
Bishop NT Wright

This has been an issue I've been paying attention to ever since I saw a segment on 60 Minutes about Christian Zionism back in 2003.

Before that, I hadn't really taken the time to formulate my own views on eschatology (a $2 word that means end times). My own attitude is that God will do what God wants to do, in effect: it's not my job. I can't stop it or hasten it.

When I saw the piece on 60 Minutes, my eyes were opened. Here was a movement afoot in North American Evangelicalism with a growing amount of political power that was trying to hasten the end of the world. Now if that meant that they had to go around and try to convert everyone to Christianity, I wouldn't have a problem with that. Or if their script called for everyone to pitch in to help the poor and oppressed around the world through service and sacrifice, I wouldn't have a problem there either.

But their interpretation of the script for the end of the world required the modern state of Israel to provoke its neighbors into World War III, a new temple to be built on the Temple Mount, and a sacrifice of a red calf.

And their views involved not a re-joining together of heaven and earth as it was in the beginning, but a disembodied future for the human race. A pastor at a church I attended in Mississippi liked to say that we are not physical beings that have a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings that are having a physical experience. I used to quote that (along with lyrics like "I'm only visiting the planet.") With what I have learned in the interim, I think that's wrong. Heaven is not our eternal home, the renewed Earth is. Heaven is the place where we wait for resurrection. I am making all things new != I am making all new things.

I think Christianity has been poisoned by the lie that it will be defeated. "We're getting out of here to spend eternity in heaven while this place burns." That's not the end of the story.

Many of Jesus' sayings about the future have been misinterpreted (see Chapter 8 of my book Jesus and the Victory of God). The "rapture" is a misunderstanding of Paul in 1 Thessalonians 4, a misunderstanding which then is projected onto Mark, Revelation, and other passages." 
Bishop NT Wright - From an interview on Beliefnet

Once upon a time, I read through the first several Left Behind books. No one taught me that the concept of the rapture was a fairly new theological construct that very well may be a total misinterpretation.

So now we have Harold Camping predicting that tomorrow is the day that the faithful will meet Jesus in the air. He's not the first to set a date, and he won't be the last.

There's so much to read on this subject, but this short excerpt from a very short article is a good start:

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.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. 
... 
Paul’s description of Jesus’ reappearance in 1 Thessalonians 4 is a brightly colored version of what he says in two other passages, 1 Corinthians 15:51-54 and Philippians 3:20-21: At Jesus’ “coming” or “appearing,” those who are still alive will be “changed” or “transformed” so that their mortal bodies will become incorruptible, deathless.This is all that Paul intends to say in Thessalonians, but here he borrows imagery—from biblical and political sources—to enhance his message.Little did he know how his rich metaphors would be misunderstood two millennia later. 
NT Wright - [Farewell to the Rapture[Farewell]