I’m what you’d call “religious”. I’m Lds, and despite the screaming coming from some christian corners, I have a firm belief and love of both the Bible and the Book of Mormon. In fact to prove to myself which understanding of the Bible was correct, I studied many interpretations of it, I don’t just “accept” what I was brought up with. I believe that at some point, every person has to be “converted” to what they believe, this is a life long process and it has many twists and turns. But at this present stage, I’m a Mormon and have a love for the bible, so when I see the bible being flagrantly mis-used for the benefit of someone who is just paroting what they have been told to say, it get’s a little tiring.

What started this whole rant off was an e-mail sent to a wiccan mailing list. I have several friends who are wiccan and when they told me about this, I asked to see it. The entire e-mail looks like a copy from a rapture brochure. It starts off with the normal “Jesus is coming and you better get ready cause when the rapture hits and your not included man are you going to be sorry” bit, however it then degraded itself by then turning into a post-rapture perspective. As if the rapture had already happened. I guess the idea is that a person reading this is supposed to be scared into accepting Jesus because they then will have to live through the Tribulations. I have several opinions on this whole matter, not the least of which is READ YOUR SCRIPTURES!

The mainstream version of the rapture is one of the most hypocritical, self-righteous doctrines to come through the dark ages. The man resposible for the currant view of the rapture (who’s name I keep forgetting) formalized this idea so that he would not have to come up with a date for the end of the world. As I understand this doctrine, the general belief is that at some point before the Tribulations start all the believers of Christ will be taken from the earth and protected while the earth is “cleansed” and prepared for the millenial reign of Christ.

The rapture that exists within the pages of the bible, however, is an event that takes place at the last darkest moment of Armageddon when Christ returns to the earth to save and prove to the Jews that he is the Messiah. Those who will be counted as Christ’s elect will then be taken up, if dead they will be resurrected first, and join the Heavenly Host as Christ returns to start His millenial reign. Christ and the Heavenly Host are going to be on this earth. As one can see, those who are taken up return to earth rather quickly. And since Armageddon is going to happen after the Tribulations, the rapture that is spoken of doesn’t spare anyone from the Tribulations that this earth will go through as it is prepared for the 1000 year reign of Christ. The whole point of all this being in the scriptures in the first place is so that Christ’s followers can be prepared so that they can live through the crisis.

The second point I want to address in this really long post is what I term the “believe or burn” concept within the pages of the bible. Alot of really shallow christian just love spouting this stuff to non-believers in order to try and scare them into Christ. Of course as anyone who is turned off by this can agree, why would an all loving God destroy someone just cause they don’t mouth his name. While the concept of believe or be damned is in the Bible, when you consider who was being talked to within the pages of the Bible, you begin to understand who was held accountable by this doctrine. The Prophets and Apostles who’s books and letters are collected within the Bible were written for the instruction of the people who believed in God. These people were partakers of God’s authority, they were taught about his Nature, and they understood that nature. They understood the plan of salvation and they understood and were resposible for overseeing the organization of God’s chruch on this earth. That is a great deal of responsiblity and for those of us who hold that responsiblity, for those of us who qualify as “seeing the unseen”, “knowing the nature of God” and a host of other qualifications that are within the bible, for us there is only two choices: Believe in what we know to be true, or Turn away from what we know to be true. The only time God truely damns someone is when they fall under the “turning from what one knows to be true”. The term hell in the bible means many things, and only one of which means that final hell. Often the term hell refers to recieving lessor glory then the glories that God would wish you to recieve. Those people who were reading the words of the Prophets and Apostles were not your average Joe who has no idea if there is even a God, those letters were written specifically to the membership of God’s church. And it is the membership of God’s chruch who are under that caution.

Much of this knowledge was abused by the chruches of the dark ages so that they could control the poor people who could not read the scriptures for themselves or were not allowed to read them as in the case of the 1000 years where reading the scriptures was illigal if you were not a high priest. I find it a shame that many people still would rather listen to someone tell them what to believe then to actually read the scriptures for themselves and learn what they are supposed to believe. However studying the bible is not always easy, because the people being written to belonged to the chruch, they would have understood many of the references that confuse people today. I challenge you guys who are studying the bible to compare the different interpretations of the bible. Find out for yourself who has the correct background information to really understand those references that most religions have to just shrug their shoulders at and ignore because they can not understand them.

Well that’s my religion rant for the day, I hope I didn’t make too many people mad. (chuckle) I don’t believe anyone should force their beliefs on another, however if someone is interested then you should answer their questions, but if their life experences have sent them into another direction, condemning them is not going to teach them anything, it only alienates and creats bad feelings. Something that Christ would not do to another person.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2003 at 2:56 pm and is filed under Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.