Rapture: The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind
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Authors: David B. Currie
Tags: #Rapture, #protestant, #protestantism, #Catholic, #Catholicism, #apologetics
David B. Currie
Rapture
The End-Times Error That Leaves the Bible Behind
SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
®
Manchester, New Hampshire
Copyright © 2003 David B. Currie
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Theodore Schluenderfritz
Biblical citations are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible © 1971 by Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America; all emphases added.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Sophia Institute Press
®
Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108
1-800-888-9344
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Currie, David B.
Rapture : the end-times error that leaves the Bible behind /
David B. Currie.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 1-928832-72-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Rapture (Christian eschatology) 2. Eschatology—Biblical teaching. 3. Catholic Church—Doctrines.
I. Title.
BT887.C87 2003
236′.9—dc21 2003006717
03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Part II: Terms and Ground Rules
3. Surveying the Present Landscape
Part III: The Scriptural Evidence
Part IV: Wrapping Up the Rapture
9. Why the Rapture Is Appealing
10. What Is an Honest Christian to Do?
2. The Masoretic
Silluk
in Daniel
4. Authorship and Dating of The Apocalypse
5. A Response to Hyperpreterism
Dedicated to
Colleen and our children:
Jonathan, Kathleen, Matthew,
Benjamin, Stephen, Alison,
Elisabeth, Daniel, and Mary:
Without their patience and love
,
life would be so gray
.
While I take full responsibility
for any omissions or errors,
I gratefully acknowledge the
assistance of the following people:
Matthew and Benjamin Currie:
Their cheerful assistance
helped eliminate errors
.
Thomas Howard:
His timely encouragement
enabled me to persevere
.
Todd Aglialoro:
His able editing
proved invaluable
.
By Scott Hahn
David Currie has written something remarkable here.
Rapture
is much more than its title suggests. It’s more than a topical treatment of a Fundamentalist fad. It’s more than a book of apologetics. It’s more than the refutation of an interpretive error.
I’m tempted to describe it as a virtual summa of apocalyptic texts and prophetic positions. In
Rapture
, Currie gives us a comprehensive collection of the biblical texts that Fundamentalist Protestants have commonly interpreted as end-times predictions. He subjects each passage to sane and sober analysis, correcting errors along the way, and establishing a range of reasonable interpretations, all in harmony with the Catholic Church’s living Tradition (see CCC, pars. 111–114; see
bibliography
for publication details and for a list of abbreviations for works cited in this book).
If Currie had done no more than survey all these texts, he would have performed an invaluable service. Not only does he treat well-known passages from the Book of Revelation, but he also considers many lesser-known important texts from both the Old and New Testaments. The compilation itself encourages a contextual reading.
The Church interprets any scriptural text in its proper context, which is the entire Bible. The New Testament writers had a deep knowledge of the Old Testament books, and they assumed the same in their readers. Thus, Catholics have always found the Old Testament revealed in the New, and the New Testament concealed in the Old. This is why we hear readings from both Testaments every time we go to Mass. This is known as “typology” (see CCC, pars. 128–130). The Pontifical Biblical Commission describes how the Church’s Liturgy makes this work: “By regularly associating a text of the Old Testament with the text of the Gospel, the cycle often suggests a scriptural interpretation moving in the direction of typology” (
The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church
, IV, C, 1).
The Fundamentalist tendency, however, is to read each biblical text in isolation from other texts and from the larger context of Sacred Tradition, including the ancient Israelite prophetic traditions. The problem, of course, is that the texts themselves were not written to be read this way. The biblical authors assumed that their readers would all share a common life, liturgical worship, and awareness of history. For all these things were catholic (that is, universal) and held in common. Yet these are precisely the things—sacraments, Liturgy, and Tradition—that modern movements such as Fundamentalism have rejected. Lacking these interpretive keys, they end up groping and guessing at what’s behind the locked doors of apocalyptic passages.
Currie applies sound Catholic principles to the many and various scriptural texts, treating them in their canonical order—and a wonderful thing happens along the way. Gradually, we realize that these texts are more than prophetic bursts of surreal images and shocking announcements. They actually present a unified, coherent interpretation of salvation history.
The sacred authors saw history in covenantal terms. The covenant revealed a consistent pattern of how God would deal with His people in every age. Through the covenants, Israel was established as God’s family, first as a nation (Moses) and then as a kingdom (David). Accordingly, the fatherly terms of each covenant included rewards as well as punishments: “I set before you this day a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments … and the curse, if you do not” (Deut. 11:26–28). The covenant, then, is what helped make sense of the events, both pleasant and painful, that befell Israel and their surrounding gentile neighbors.
From age to age, God’s dealings with His people follow a consistent covenantal pattern of fatherly faithfulness, judgment, and mercy. That is why the prophets of ancient Israel could discern and describe God’s future acts of deliverance in terms that reflected and amplified His saving acts in Israel’s past. For example, God’s future restoration of the Davidic kingdom is announced in terms of a New Exodus, by several prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Hosea). As Jean Cardinal Danielou once stated, “Prophecy is the typological interpretation of history.”
The biblical writers did indeed use cataclysmic imagery and cosmic figures to express world-ending events. For the world will surely end one day. But before the definitive end of the world, many worlds will come to an end. The Babylonian world came to an end, as did the world of the Pharaohs. The Israelite world came to an end, as did the world of the Second Temple Jews.
Indeed, the same pattern appears to continue on into the New Testament age. For the Roman world, the Byzantine world, the North African world—all these great worlds, great civilizations, came to an end, as will our own little world someday. Human history itself will eventually come to an end; we know neither the day nor the hour. But, until the absolute and plenary End, it will end many times over, as it were, on the installment plan. Thus the biblical apocalypses are timely for every age, and not just the last.
This is an important principle for us to understand, because the Bible’s authority grows weak without it. Critics of the Scriptures like to point out that Jesus and the Apostles seemed to expect things on earth to come to a hasty conclusion. Before a generation had time to pass from the scene, the world was supposed to pass away and make room for the Kingdom of God.
Currie shows us that a world did indeed come to an end, and indeed it was forty years (exactly one
genea
, or generation) after Jesus had made His prediction. For in 70 A.D., Jerusalem was destroyed, and with it the Temple, which had been God’s dwelling on earth. An end did come; it just wasn’t
the
end that so many Fundamentalists project onto the biblical writers.
The New Testament writers and their first-century Christian readers were not Fundamentalists, and neither were the Jews who lived in the centuries before Christ. Our ancient ancestors expected a world to end, and their expectation was fulfilled. They took Jesus at His word, and He kept His word.
The destruction that God brought down on the Temple was a fulfillment of prophecy, but it was also itself a prophecy. The Temple was a piece of sacramental architecture that embodied the world as a microcosm. The destruction of the Temple was a prophetic event that pointed to the cosmic Temple’s destruction at the end of history. And the judgment of Jerusalem is an object lesson for all other worlds until then.
Currie makes these difficult matters abundantly clear. His treatment is ambitious in that he always strives for a complete picture. He tries to present every text and consider every interpretation. Yet the book is, at the same time, modest to an almost miraculous degree. Although Currie has pondered the various interpretations as deeply as anyone has—and although he obviously has his favorites—he never puts forth his readings as the only interpretive possibilities. He recognizes that the Church permits plenty of liberty in this area. Put another way: Currie is dogmatic in the best sense. He respects the authority of defined dogma, but he never claims dogmatic status for mere interpretive opinions.
It is the same combination of holy ambition and intelligent modesty that gives this book its air of calm. I must say that this quality is unusual in books that discuss apocalyptic texts, which tend themselves to be fevered and passionate. But such calm is especially unusual in these troubled times, when the daily news serves only to feed apocalyptic hysteria.
Currie keeps a steady, charitable, clear voice through it all. There is nothing defensive about this book. Currie is not out to pick a fight or accept a dare; he’s out to speak the truth. Nor does he hold Fundamentalists in contempt, for he once counted himself among their number. Instead, like St. Paul, he affirms “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious” (Phil. 4:8) in his opponents, even as he shows them where they go astray.
We can all learn much from David Currie, not only from what he says, which is wise, but from how he says it, which is Catholic and Christian.