And also with you. Friends, I'm the Reverend Lizzie McManus-Dale. And I'm the Reverend Laura DePamfilo. Welcome to And Also With You, a new podcast on reclaiming an ancient Christian faith for modern Christian life. Hello, everyone. Hey. Hi. Hi. This is the Reverend Lizzie McManus Dale here with... The Reverend Laura DePamfelo. The Reverend Ethan Lowry. And today, special guest...
The Reverend Jonathan McManus Dale. McManus Dale? I've heard that before. Uh-huh. I'm familiar. Yeah. Friend of the pod. Wait, that's Ethan's title. Husband of the pod? Husband of the pod. No, just Lizzie's husband. No, no, no. Yes. Thanks for being here today. Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Aside from being Lizzie's husband, what are some of the other hats you wear in your life? I also am... dad to our two little girls.
And I'm also the priest for children, youth, and family at Good Shepherd Episcopal Church here at Austin, Texas. Which is the fifth largest Episcopal Church? I don't know. Whatever. I don't know what the exact number is. Yeah. So the top 10 largest Episcopal churches. So very large staff size parish and.
We work, we obviously both work in Austin and live in Austin, but like serve two churches that are equally beautiful, but like very different, very different contexts. Yeah. But you did not grow up Episcopalian, Jonathan. So can you give us like. The like one to two sentence summary of what church you did grow up in. Yes, I did not grow up Episcopalian. That is true. I didn't know what Episcopalian was when I was growing up.
But I grew up in the Free Will Baptist Church in eastern North Carolina. And the Free Will Baptist Church is very similar to the Southern Baptist Church. Most folks in the pews do not discern a difference. So conservative evangelical is how I grew up. So, Jonathan, we've invited you here today to answer the question, wait. The rapture isn't real?
So what are the Christian end times exactly? Which is a big, massive question. So thanks for having all the answers. Part of why we want to talk about this is... The rapture is not something that I've ever heard discussed in the Episcopal Church, except when you were preaching and referencing your childhood and your upbringing and growing up.
being taught to believe this in the pews of your church. And we also know that it can be very tender for many people who've come from other traditions into the Episcopal Church and or folks who are listening who are not Episcopalian at all, right? Because we have a lot of listeners from a lot of traditions.
So before we go any further, Father Ethan, you were going to share a little tender note for our listeners. I think it's just worth saying as the lifelong Episcopalian on the call that for a lot of... That for a lot of people, the rapture may not feel like that hot of a topic. Hot like temperature wise, not like popular.
But for as many Christians as there are that have not really talked about the rapture a whole lot, there are a lot more Christians that have and still do. And if you have come to this pod from... a tradition that talks about the rapture a lot or dangled it over your head as a threat, or if it still feels like it is a lot to you, that is very real.
And it may be that this episode does not feel helpful to you, or it may feel like too much to you. It may feel like... healing and helpful to you yeah we do not know the answer to that that's the hope um i think you know the answer to that and so just like hear from us like permission and encouragement to like be as present as you need to be or like Shut the pod off and go listen to Chapel Rhone. There's new Perfume Genius out. Go take a minute.
It's very real. And I think if you hear us sort of like laughing and ha ha, like it doesn't have to feel that way to you. I think, to just clarify, you mean the fear, the anxiety, the potential rapture OCD is real. But we are kind of here to say, as the title says, wait, the rapture isn't real? Yeah. And I hope we can share some laughter about it. Yeah, it's not real. It's not a real thing, at least in my opinion and in the opinion of many a reputable scholar of Christianity.
Okay, so hang on. Before we go any further, Jonathan, I've got to share a cute little story. So Jonathan and I have been together for 13 years. Wild. Our relationship is in eighth grade. Wow. That's crazy. And when we were first dating, there were many things that we talked about from our different religious. sociological backgrounds because they are very different. And you shared this story about how you would lose track of your parents in Walmart.
and be freaked out because of the rapture or you would see their clothes folded up on the couch and be freaked out because of the rapture and i finally like months in had to be like I don't know what that means. Because let me tell you, Catholic catechism, look, there's a lot of, there's a lot of weights that I had to carry with Catholic guilt. But I literally did not know what, quote unquote, the rapture referred to.
I did not know the difference between what you were referring to as the rapture from left behind from the people who were like, oh, the Mayan calendar runs out and the end of times. All of this was just some sort of vague. like high control, religious fundamentalist, like bad things are coming. But the rapture has its own like very particular function and very particular definition in how you grew up.
So can you first offer us a quick definition of what we are talking about when we talk about the rapture? And can you talk about how you grew up with this in your context? Yes, I will do those things. So, yeah, so I grew up in the Freehold Baptist Church. We talked about... the rapture a lot. And the rapture is part of this whole theological... interpretation of the Bible called dispensationalism. But the rapture itself is referring to this event, right, where
Not fully all the way back to earth yet. This is at the end of times or near the end of times. And Jesus will call all the Christians. out of the world. So all the Christians will be raptured out of the world, like this sort of, like, I don't know. Beam me up Scotty moment. Vacuum cleaner. Beam me up Scotty moment. Right. Leaving their clothes neatly folded behind. Yes. At least that's the imagining of the Left Behind series, if you're familiar with that.
And so all the Christians in the world, all the true Christians in the world will be taken up to meet Jesus in the air and they will go back to heaven with Jesus. And after that. is when God will pour out God's wrath on the world in seven years, which is often referred to as the Great Tribulation. And then what happens at the end of the Great Tribulation? After the Great Tribulation, there is the Great Judgment, right? So that's when the whole world will be judged and Satan will be judged.
And the Christians will go away into eternal bliss. And everybody who is not, quote unquote, saved, doesn't believe in Jesus in this very particular, narrowly defined way. we'll go to hell, right? And then that sort of ushers in this thousand-year reign of Christ on earth. where it's bliss, it's good. And then after that thousand years, Satan is like judged again, finally and forever and goes into the pit. So that thousand years is called, called the millennium, right? The millennium of Christ.
At the end of this, this is all by the way, this is not, this is the theology as articulated. by this particular theory. This is not what I believe or think, right? This is the schema of this theory called dispensationalism. Okay. There are a lot of people who grew up in this way, including myself, and didn't know that. that there was another option right so In the church of my upbringing, right? And this is no shade to any of them, right? We were all operating with the assumptions.
And the theology that we had been given, right? I think we were doing the best we could with what we had and with the knowledge that we had. Most of my pastors did not have any. much or any formal theological training, right? Certainly not from – didn't have formal training. And so we were just, again, using the tools that we had been given. And the – The point that was made with the rapture growing up was there were several functions. One, it was like...
In addition to the threat of hell, if you didn't ask Jesus into your heart, well, there was also the impending, the coming soon. second coming of Jesus Christ. And you wanted to have your ducks in a row, spiritually speaking. so that you did not, one, either go to hell, and two, so that if Jesus came back to get the Christians out of the world,
You wanted to go. You wanted to be raptured. Okay. Because if you weren't, you would be left behind. If you were left behind, you'd have to endure the trials and tribulations of the great tribulation. because your parents would have been taken up to heaven with you.
Okay. That was my fear. Okay. Go ahead, Laura. Sorry. No, I was just going to add, I think there's a real sense of urgency in what they're saying. And you know what? I might want to come back to this at the end because like- Sometimes I miss that these days.
Right. But on the flip side of that, the urgency can be funneled into fear, like every single thing matters, which is still something I believe to this day. I do think everything we do matters to God. And also, but it matters in a way where there's. it's anxiety producing because if what I do is wrong, there are really big
eternal consequences there. It, it often feels lacking kind of some of the other things we know to, to be true about God, like love, grace, you know, all that kind of stuff. So maybe we come back to that at the end. But, um, what I hear you saying is. urgency that often leads to fear with this type of theology. Yes. And the way it functioned to, you know, speaking of that urgency, there was a lot of urgency and, and it made us take.
take things very seriously. And one of the things that we took very seriously was evangelism. Okay. Because, you know, if we had our ducks in a row, that was great, but what about everybody else? Right. And, and there was genuine love. I do believe in, um, In our motives for evangelism, with this kind of context of the rapture and wanting to prepare for the second coming of Christ, there was a strong emphasis on sharing.
at least as we articulated it at the time, with people who didn't know it or hadn't made a decision. for christ in this this again very particularly defined way um because we believe that one the more people that we could share the good news of jesus with the more people who had opportunity to hear about it the faster that these events of the end times could unfold. Because there's, I forget how it all happens, the sort of math of it all now, but like...
There's certain, I would say, faulty interpretations of prophetic texts. A certain number of people have to hear the gospel. A certain number of people have to be reached before, you know, X, Y, and Z can happen and Jesus can come back again. Right. Be the second coming. Wasn't there something about a window, the like 40-20 window or something? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The 10-40 window. We wanted the people in the 10-40 window to be.
reached. Okay. Because I have not heard, not have not heard that phrase in many years of my life. Okay. But you know what I'm talking about? Oh yeah. Wait, tell us for those of us who don't know. Yeah, Episcopalians right in. Okay, so 1040 window is latitude and longitude. You know, so I think and I think it's that that particular intersection is in the global south, right, where there are all these unreached people groups. I'm making quotes with my fingers, right? Unreached people groups.
where they haven't had a chance to hear about Jesus yet. And often, at least as it was articulated to us. These are folks that didn't have access to radio and print media. all this sort of stuff. And maybe they were like sort of isolated. tribes of people it was all very colonial and oh yeah in that way yeah and by a little scary i mean a lot scary right but anyway so i remember there was like a big emphasis on
getting radio up and going in those communities, right? So that getting radio towers set up and built so that we could beam in. The message of Jesus. So we could get as many of those people reached as quickly as possible. Because then. Second coming could happen quicker. Yeah, all these things are kind of wrapped up together. It's not like you can really untangle. The rapture from theology of evangelism and all of this stuff.
It's all kind of related. Is that that kind of like accelerationist theology that like people are also a little bit happy when like wars happen? Cause they're like, yes, the, the, the sign it's the signs, the signs are happening. Yep. Yes. Yes. Yeah, it's exactly. Yeah. The faster these things can happen, including things that are bad, right?
Like known to be bad, right? It's not like Christians who operate within this logic are like, yeah, war is a good thing. They're like, no, war is bad, but it's a good thing that this bad thing is happening because it means Jesus is going to come quicker. Getting closer. Right. There's sort of a cost-benefit analysis where the cost of war ultimately has this benefit of Jesus coming faster. So we'll get to this.
millennium of christ this thousand year reign where you know the good christians get to live happily ever after and the rest are eternally punished yeah i was talking to my my buddy uh the reverend brian fox uh this morning on my drive in and shout out checking my my new shout out my New Testament facts because Brian knows his New Testament stuff. He reminded me of a quote by Pastor Mark Driscoll, loosely. I'm amazed you put pastor in front of that.
I know. I say, well, that's, that's, yeah, maybe we put quotes in that too. But, but he's like famously quoted as like, well, I drive a big diesel truck because I want, you know, the environment to. to go to trash as quickly as possible, because that means... you know, that, that will be closer to the second coming too. Right. So there's a sense in which like care for the environment, like none of that matters. What matters is getting our stuff.
together spiritually sharing the gospel so that when the rapture happens we can be taken out of here and the world can go to hell in a handbasket right um That feels like so viscerally upsetting to me that there's like such rampant, like disposable earth theology. Yes. Out there. A hundred percent. And it's not just that too, right? Because not only is there this sense of You know, we want to reach people to save them from hell.
which has this kind of love arc to it, right? There is love. Yeah. There is love to it. It's not what I would say is the most liberating, compassionate, Christ-centered love, but there is. I've known a lot of missionaries. I've known a lot of missionaries who... in this very twisted way, are really trying to care for people. Right. And they want to reach people because they also want to save them from what is the greatest threat that they understand to be, which is eternal torment and hell.
Right. And so there is this like cost benefit of like, well, short term, bad, long term good. Right. So there's that. But there's also this tension of like. Yeah, we want the world to be damned because the world is already damned. So we just want to see that it's already damned. And this also connects in one way, Jonathan, can you just speak briefly?
to how this connects to Christian Zionism, because it's all connected. The disposable earth, young earth, climate disaster is a good thing, and Christian Zionism, it's all connected in this. wanting the rapture to happen theology yeah yeah yeah let me let me zoom out real quick to talk about like um dispensation dispensationalism as a theory because that's what this is that's what this is the rapture the tribulation the millennial reign of christ these are all features
features of this overall theory called dispensationalism. Okay. And we'll get I can talk about the history of that in a minute. But the dispensationalism says that God works in different ways throughout history. Right. In different dispensations or. So dispensationalism. It's God's bad era store. It's God's bad era store. Okay. So. All the heirs are reputation and tortured poets department. They are all bad and sad. They are all bad and sad in this.
Okay. Okay. How does this work? Yeah. So God works in one way in the Old Testament or through the different covenants that God made with different figures in the Old Testament. Abraham, Noah, Noah, Abraham. So on and so forth. And then, and so God, God is working out God's plan of redemption, salvation. whatever, specifically through Israel, through the nation of Israel, right?
working in different ways in different times. And then when we get to Jesus, right? Dispensationalists, as do Christians, see Jesus as being the fulfillment of all of these hopes. Right. But then see the emergence of the church. as this sort of thing that is beside the point of the main storyline, right? So the main storyline is about Israel and the nation of Israel and what God is doing in and through Israel, right?
we as the church get to sort of be part of it for a little while, right? And then we're taken out of it. at the rapture, right? The church era over vacuumed up into heaven, vacuumed up into heaven. Then God does the tribulate. God does this whole tribulation thing in hopes that Israel might be saved. Okay. That, that more that people.
That Israel might be saved by like coming to believe Jesus is the Savior, praying the sinner's prayer. So there's this like very – it's not actually about Judaism. It's not actually about – Palestinians. It's not actually about people who live there. It's about fulfilling this very narrow view of the Old Testament slash Hebrew Bible coming to believe in a very narrow view of Jesus. Right. Like a mask. Is that correct? That's right. That's right. That's right. So different, different.
dispensational theorists have have seen have seen in different interpretations of prophecy in Scripture. The founding of the modern nation state of Israel. Right. This is not the this is not biblical Israel. This is the modern nation state of Israel as being. part and parcel to the fulfillment of these, this sort of checklist of things that need to happen before Jesus can come back. Right. And so they saw the founding of Israel post-World War II.
founding of Israel as like a major step toward us being a lot closer to the end times, which is why there was such. Like within a couple of generations, these theorists thought after the founding of the nation state of Israel, the second coming of Christ would happen. So that's, that's my childhood, right? That's like, we grew up with this. I mean, dispensational has been a thing for. 100 150 200 years or so um it's not old i'll make that point it's not old um but
With the founding of the nation instead of Israel, there was this real sense that like this thing is going to happen really soon. Right. Which was scary to me and to many of my friends and colleagues and people. And even though, as I'll say, like, even though I had a sense, you know. After I was, you know, when I was six years old and prayed the center's prayer at the power team performance, like I knew I was going to go to heaven, or at least I strongly suspected I would.
But I also wanted to have a life. Yeah, I had a lot of youth who believed this, who were like, yeah, I'm really afraid that Jesus is going to come back before I get to go to college or before I have my first boyfriend. And I won't get to experience all these things because Jesus is going to come back. And like, I know that's good, but I'm sad that I'm going to miss out on stuff.
Things that I heard in progressive UMC Episcopal Church's youth saying, because this is like so pervasive. I do think, Lizzie, that feels so wild to hear. And it's calling me back to some of the like early sociologists of religion that I read when I was in seminary who talk about like. Sometimes one of the big effects of religion on people's lives, certain kinds of religion in people's lives, is like an alienation from your own life.
Or like an alienation from your own sense of self or from your future or from whatever. And we see that have at times really insidious effects on people. Where does this theology come from? So glad you asked, Ethan, because I think it's really important to understand that this is not early church orthodox. By orthodox, I mean like...
what the church has generally believed as a consensus generally throughout history, right? This is not that, okay? This theory of dispensationalism was first articulated by this guy named... John Nelson Darby, who lived between 1800 and 1882. He started life as an Anglican priest Well, he didn't start life that way. I guess he started life as a kid, but he became a priest at a certain point.
It sort of renounced his priesthood and helped found the Brethren movement, interestingly. I think it's interesting that John Darby... articulated started to articulate this theory of dispensationalism after he fell off his horse about halfway through his life so i don't know not saying there's a connection not not saying there's a connection
But he came up with this. He was like God's heiress tour is the fulfillment of Israel and trials and tribulations are coming. We're all going to be raptured up into heaven if we believe in Jesus. Like he's the guy who came up with all this. He came up with all this. Exactly. He came up with it after he fell off his horse. Yes. Yeah. I'm harping on the horse thing because I'm just like sort of beaming that back to like a preteen kid preteen Jonathan who was worried about like.
Being able to have a life, you know, and I'm like, okay, this is maybe the result of a head injury. So anyway, that's all that to say. So. That happened. And then we come to the American context. This was in England. Well, in England, Ireland. that Darby lived. Some people believed in it. Most people were like, okay, whatever, dude. But then we get to the American context and this particular study Bible called the Schofield Reference Bible.
became widely popular in the American context. Between 1909 and 1917, it was like the most popular version of the Bible that you could get. What's interesting about the Schofield Reference Bible is that Schofield took Darby's theories about dispensationalism, the rapture, the tribulation, all this sort of stuff. and filled the commentary notes at the bottom of the page with this kind of theology, right? And it would kind of connect different prophecies in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament.
with this theory and different references throughout Scripture. He would connect it to this, seeing it through this dispensational lens, right? And people just sort of took it. took it whole scale, right? They read it as a scripture. They read it as scripture. They took Schofield's notes right along with the words of scripture as gospel and as completely true. And so it really pervaded. certainly fundamentalist and more conservative evangelical.
in North America. And right after World War I. So when people had seen a real old way of warfare die and a new way of warfare be born, and a lot of people had died in really grisly, gruesome ways. So they're like, yeah, trials and tribulations are coming. I mean, that kind of tracks socially. We've seen them, right? Yeah. Exactly. There were lots of... hard scary difficult things happening around this time right and so and also this sort of failure of um of
of prevailing theories at the time. You know, one of the prevailing theories of how God's kingdom would be ushered in and like sort of the end times would come about is that we as human beings would just progress. progressed to the point that God's kingdom would come, sort of with some help from the divine, but also just sort of as a product of
the progress of human history, right? That's kind of a progressive way of thinking, right? Like that we're going to just be better and better. Every generation is going to be better. And eventually by our own understanding and merit, we'll be so good that we will be God. That we'll found that the kingdom of God will arrive in our midst because things are that good, right? That's a high view of humanity coming on the heels of a really brutal war. Yeah, no wonder people...
It was World War I really that sort of shattered that illusion. of like, oh, we've used our human progress and scientific knowledge to create weapons that can kill many, many, many people very quickly. That feels parallel to today in a lot of ways. Okay, so the Schofield Bible and the rapture thinking gets really popular because people are sad and the world is bad. Fair enough. And this continues to build and spiral into the Left Behind series, which is just like one.
fictional book series that becomes a tv series that becomes a movie series that crystallizes this thinking but popularizes it because it's like a swashbuckly fantasy novel for people not allowed to read harry potter right yeah yeah so you've got like you've got this dispensational
You've got this theory of the way things work that's sort of out in the world, right? And then you've got the founding of Israel in 1945, and then there's this sort of big resurgence of it. You're just like, oh my gosh, this thing actually happened. Israel was founded again. So we're getting close. We're getting close. And then people started to continue to write.
fiction and fan fiction around it. Right. So there was like how Lindsay's late great planet earth in 1970. And then there was the left behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. in the late 90s and early 2000s. And these are fictional, imaginative... this dispensational theory. That's where we get the thing about, you know, people be raptured and their clothes would be neatly folded at a pile, you know, and while they'd be sucked into heaven.
You know, there was, I remember people would have bumper stickers in their cars, all their cars were like, in case of rapture, this vehicle will be unmanned or whatever. And so, you know, kind of all that comes from that. stuff. Okay. So there's like this popularizing fiction stuff, but to kind of pivot us to the last part of our discussion here.
So we've traced the theological history. We've traced the sociological history. But let's talk about the Bible because it's kind of easy to write this off as like some dude fell off his horse, rode it up, and then a Bible disseminated it. But there are actual scriptural passages that seem to support this argument. I don't think it would hold water just with this theological history and sociological. So like, what?
And we all prepared for this conversation some... texts to like reference but like What do we do with the passages in the Bible that talk about the end time? and talk about this, one will be taken, one will be left. Like one will be working in the field and one will be taken, right? Like there are some sort of portents and signs that give this some water. So what do we do with that?
So, Lizzie, what you were just what you were the little pieces there that you were just quoting are from Matthew 24, which is a text that often gets gets cited in support of. dispensationalism or whatever. It's called Matthew's Apocalypse, right? It comes near the end of Matthew's gospel as Jesus is nearing the end of his life. And what's interesting about this is... that this is historically situated.
Most New Testament scholars think that the Gospel of Matthew was probably written around the year 80 CE. And if you think about what was happening around this time... It was the fall of Jerusalem, right? In 70 CE, Rome sat. put images of the emperor in the ruins of the temple, right? So that bit about the desolating sacrilege, right? That's probably what that's talking about, right? But Rome completely took over.
Jerusalem and surrounding areas had been ruled by Rome by proxy for many, many years. But in 70 CE, they came in and conquered Jerusalem. And the destruction of the temple, I mean, it's hard to overstate just how much of a... apocalypse that would have been for people, right? This would have been really scary, scary times. And so this bit about, you know, We find it exactly where's that quote of like, one will be taken and the other left. And we pray that God would shorten the time.
The taken and the left thing, I think a lot of people are like, oh, the one taken is going to be raptured and the one who's left behind is left behind. Well, that's not really what it's talking about. You know, the one taken. could have been taken off to slavery, right. Or, or taken to be, to serve the empire somewhere, or maybe just wouldn't survive. Right. Because anytime we have these sort of disasters in, in history.
We don't know who's going to make it through. Right. And so there's this sort of sense of foreboding. Right. And there's this really strong language in Matthew 24 and in other texts like this, because. what people were experiencing and trying to make sense of was a very intense, traumatic experience. And actually, this is, again, a Shout out to a conversation with Brian Fox before this. He's going to love this so much. He's such a big fan of this pod. There's real pastoral concern.
Right. Like, here's all these terrible things that have happened, but Jesus is still Lord. Right. And we don't know how all this is going to play out. Even in the midst of all these terrible things, we do believe that Jesus will come back, and we do believe that Jesus will come to judge. And Jesus will come to judge. these things and structures and powers that have oppressed us. Right. So there's that, that hopeful pastoral turn of like, there will be a vindication. Right.
That's what that's what this talking about. Yeah. And then it's another one to think about, too, which is. Certainly the one I think that has the most like rapture-y language is in Thessalonians. Thessalonians 4. Let's see here. Let's see here. Let me just read a little bit.
Yeah. So 1 Thessalonians 4. verse 13 and on but we do not want you to be uninformed brothers and sisters about those who have died so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died.
For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of God's trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive. who are left will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air. Okay. I mean, I can see where people get rapture from this. Right. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
Therefore, encourage one another with these words. Okay, wait. That's the big passage that I've always heard connected to the whole. That's the big one. Yeah. So what do we do with this? And like... The like the choreography of it seems very rapture, right? Like there's the the the the trumpet call and then the dead in Christ rise first and then. We who are left will meet Jesus in the air with them. So, you know, I see where people get it.
But that's not what this is talking about. So what is it talking about? well i'm gonna tell you um you're in luck you're in luck um This is talking about the general resurrection, right? So when we talk about eschatology, eschatology is the fancy theology word for the last things or the study of the last thing. Right. So in the end times. And so when we talk about eschatology, we talk about...
There's Jesus's resurrection from the dead, right? And we see Jesus's defeat of death and Jesus is rising again to life. as a kind of example of what will happen to all of us one day. at the general resurrection, right? So that, that God will, that the second coming will happen and, and we will all be raised from the dead. right body our bodies will be raised from the dead um there's this real sense of of of materiality of that we're not just sort of floating spirit.
That God's concern for how all things will be restored and put to right is just about these floating spirits. No, God's concern is for the redemption of all things. And all people, right. Stuff, the material stuff of our bodies and our lives included. Right. And so that's what Paul is.
the community, the Pauline community is talking about here is this general resurrection. And what was happening here is that the author was being pastoral because there was a concern that Throughout New Testament writings, you kind of see this wrestling with the second coming, with Jesus coming again. In Paul's writings, for instance, early on, you have the sense that Paul expected Jesus to come back.
soon real soon right in his lifetime right um so there's a sense that that jesus is going to come back really soon well as paul got older and as more things happen right Paul got this. Well, maybe, maybe not just yet. Right. Maybe not just yet. And so what happened in the churches that Paul... had planted where the people, some people died, you know, grandma died, grandpa died, aunt Ma died. And, um, and they were like, well, does she get to.
Do they get to meet Jesus? They died. So are they going to be able to see Jesus when he comes back to get us, you know, to make all things right? Not rapturous, right? To raise us into newness of life. And Paul's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're going to be all right, too. Actually, Jesus is going to raise them from the dead first.
And then we will all be together with Jesus at the second coming, right? It's not that, oh, that's lovely. Yeah, isn't that lovely? So there's sort of a pastoral element. to this it's not it's actually not meant to actually be comforting not not scary I'm wondering with the time that we have left, for this episode, if we could share some scriptures together that have helped inform our own theology of the end of times and how we interpret.
none of us really know how the end of times are going to happen because it hasn't happened yet. So there sure is a lot of speculation out there of what things will look like. And scripture does. offer us different pictures. But even in scripture, our authors are trying to wrap their minds around something that hasn't happened. So they don't know either exactly how things are going to shake out. In the Book of Common Prayer, one of the scriptures that is appointed as an option for funerals is...
is one that I just hold so dear. And I think theologically, I was thinking about it, Jonathan, while you were sharing, because I find it to be very pastoral as well. So I hope it can be a good word for all of us today. In John chapter 14, well, if you take a step back and look at what's happening in John chapter 13, Jesus is washing his disciples' feet. He's talking about his upcoming betrayal. He's giving them the new commandment. He's talking about Peter's denial. Okay, pretty intense stuff.
that Jesus is preparing his closest followers and friends for. He's trying to get it all out. He's saying, guys, things are about to get rough. So he's giving them the words that they are going to need to endure. the worst things that they've ever seen. And so here we come to John chapter 14, and he says to this group of guys who are pretty anxious, he says, Do not let your hearts be troubled.
Believe in God. Believe also in me. In my father's house, there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And he talks about how... a place for them for us and it just I think a lot of times when people tell us calm down, get over it, whatever. It can feel a little insensitive. But I think Jesus is speaking in this moment, saying the most loving and caring thing he could possibly say to these anxious people. He's saying, I have...
It's sorted. I have a place for you. And Thomas gets anxious. Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way? And he says, I am the way. Follow me. And I will, and I will show you the way. And it's like, Jesus answers this question in a big eternal sense. Maybe it wasn't the most satisfying in that moment. Like he's saying, show me exactly how I, how I get there. Right. Like me.
And, you know, I find this such a pastoral addition to this conversation because I think it's totally founded that a lot of us would have anxiety, even if you're not coming from a tradition that... I think it's totally reasonable that you might have anxiety about if you're going to be.
with Jesus eternally. I mean, it's in the water of our culture, at least to have that anxiety and fear. And I, and I returned to these words over and over again, because in a moment of great anxiety, Jesus looks at his friends and he says, I, I got you. You know, I have a place for you. I love you. I've prepared it for you. To anyone who was raised in an evangelical tradition, you know, he really says,
There's a big, big table with lots and lots of food and a big, big yard where we can play. Play football. Play football. But my father's house is one with many rooms and there's so much room for all of us. And so for anyone who has anxiety about if there's enough. space for you or if it's prepared for you, Jesus literally says, there's a lot of room. It's a big house. I've prepared it specifically for you and you will be there. And I just, I love this.
scripture at a funeral because I think, wow, that is the hope that I cling to. Definitely. What other scriptures do you guys look at when you think about this? I pulled from Matthew 25, which happens right after Matthew 24, which is where so much of the rapture language comes from.
Matthew 25 for me is one of the passages that feels like it says... the whole bible in one passage um where it sort of encapsulates the whole message um and whenever i sort of like tell the story of matthew 25 I tell the part that feels sweet, but I sometimes forget that there's like the... the second coming element. And so this is from Matthew 25, starting at verse 31.
When the son of man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, he will sit on his glorious throne. All the nations will be gathered before him and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goat. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. Then the Father will say to those on his right, Come you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in. I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me. I was in prison and you came to visit me. And then he addresses the people on his left and says, hey, you didn't actually do any of those things for me. And they say, like, hey, we never saw you. Right, right, right. And he says.
Well, whenever you didn't do this for the least of you, you didn't do it for me. And I think there's this sometimes feeling about the rapture that it feels like there's an element of randomness. Like if you think the wrong thought or look the wrong way, you suddenly end up on the bad list. And one of the sort of like axes of differentiation is like.
In this passage, how well did you care for the people among you? And that's the separation. And I think the thing that gets my goat, as it were, or maybe gets my sheep. With that, The pastors who are the loudest teaching you that you are on God's naughty list. are in many cases the worst offenders of this sort of Matthew 25 call to care for the least among us. Yeah. And I think, again, like I always sort of have the sociologists in the back of my mind, but like...
If part of what theology does is shape our lives and part of what preaching does is teach people how their lives ought to be shaped. than the people who are following very few of these rules. are telling you to follow them so that your lives can be shaped in such a way. that sometimes benefits people rather than benefits God or benefits the people who are doing well already rather than the people who are the poorest among us.
So the pastors that have private jets are telling you that you could be raptured at any minute. But they don't seem very worried about being raptured in their plane. Or feel able to look past the instruction from Matthew 25 and say, well, I will be fine because I believe the right way or because I get the right amount of attention. in their own ways, maybe shaping their lives the way that they hope that you will shape yours.
so that they get money from you or so that they get respect from you or so that they create fear in you or whatever. So I think, you know, there is a little bit of the like separating sheep from goats element in this story. But also, I mean, if you look through that to what it says. God is saying it is like the highest stakes thing that I teach you that you care for the least. Among you. Yep. The way that you would care for me. Which is very different than saying.
Teach the least of these, the sinner's prayer so that they can go to heaven. Right. That's not what, that's not what it says. It says to feed and clothe and, and. I love that. I think that's a really good point, Ethan. that take up dispensationalism or other kinds of things like that, are very concerned with teaching people how to become Christians, right? And telling people they should become Christians.
but not much time teaching people how to be Christians, right? And I love that in this, that in Matthew 25, the judgment, right, which we think of as sort of this apocalyptic thing. takes place in this situation of a real life material ethical teaching right how we treat each other the welfare of the community is what what god is cares about um and that's that's really powerful I think to bring us home, to land the piloted plane. There you go.
I want to offer two thoughts. One, no one thought the first coming of Christ was going to happen the way it did. There were little clues, right? Like you, Bethlehem, are not least among the land of Judah. But the way that Jesus... comes into the world is very disarming and shocking and powerful in its subversion of power.
And the other thing is, is that it is always, even in the most spicy passages, I think still wrapped up in love. And so the passage that I picked, which I won't read in fullness, is Revelation 7, which we should honestly do a whole episode on. what is revelation? Cause I think we we've like danced around it. Right. But I just want to pull this. quote, which is talking about those who've been bathed and washed in the blood of the lamb. It's like the most insane unhinged passage.
But it's one that I always offer in every funeral is like one of my first choices because of how it ends. For this reason, they are before the throne of God and worship him day and night within his temple. Remembering that the temple was destroyed, that feels really powerful, just as a little side note. And the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.
They will hunger no more and thirst no more. The sun will not strike them nor any scorching heat, for the lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd. and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes. That's what we hope. And I think when you're presented a theology that... doesn't lead you to that, you should be suspicious.
You should wonder. Because even here it says protected from the scorching heat, tears wiped away, wrapped in the love of God. And they're the ones who've come through the ordeal. And I don't know, that just feels... I do believe that we are held accountable. I really do, actually. I say that in my book that I'm not willing to say there is no hell. I know that's kind of the fashionable thing right now. And I don't mean that pejoratively. I think there's a lot of really good...
unraveling of hell. But I do believe that accountability is never, ever divorced from God's grace or goodness. And that matters. And matters in this conversation. Because I believe that God judges the things that... The things and the parts of us, the parts of us as people that hinder humans. Which is not wearing a mini skirt or kissing a person consensually.
Those are not the things that hinder human flourishing. The emperor destroying temples and putting up pictures of the emperor, aka the king, aka the person who claims he is god, that hinders human flourishing. Genocide hinders human flourishing. War hinders human flourishing. There are things that God does care about and holds accountable. I don't think it's the 13-year-old wanting to have a boyfriend who's the problem. Yeah, yeah. Can I say one quick thing as we close? Yeah.
So dispensationalism was this sort of reaction against this sort of failure of human progress, that human progress did not actually bring in the kingdom. two world wars right um and nuclear proliferation etc right It's not to say that the ways in which we are moving to be more inclusive and equitable in human society is not good. That is good. It is good to be more inclusive. All those things that certain kinds of progressivism teach.
But human progress will never usher in the kingdom of God by itself. We are co-workers with God in the vineyard, right? We get to gracefully participate in the coming of. the kingdom of God on earth as it is. But there is this sense that it's something that God has to do. We're never going to get it. We're never going to get there on our own. No matter how... good we think we might be or how much our intelligence might advance. or how pure our ethics are.
we're never going to fully usher in the reign of God. And so there's a sense in which I want to hold on to. The second coming of Christ and the mystery of that. Mystery, right? Not a math equation of when it's going to happen. or a roadmap for how it's going to happen, but the mystery that the possibilities for God's redemptive future. are greater than what we think we have to work with as human beings. God who created creation, the universe out of nothing, breathed it into existence.
can, will redeem everything, all the lost things of value, all the things in our lives that. we think can never be redeemed. God will redeem them. God will redeem us in the fullness of time. And that's something to hope for, something not to dread, and something that is... Not going to rob us of life. Because God's desire for us is life and abundance of life. Thank you, Jonathan, for sharing that and for bringing your expertise.
into this place and maybe some of your childhood trauma. Yeah, exactly. And so grateful for this conversation. We'd love to hear from our listeners. We know that this has kind of opened up a whole can of worms, you know, revelation, urgency, end times, right? We've just, this is probably not the last time we're going to have a conversation like this.
So we'd love to know what your other questions are. Feel free to call in our hotline and ask. But in the meantime, thank you, Jonathan. Thank you, Ethan and Laura. So y'all, the Lord be with you. And also with you.