Rapture, Ressurection, Heaven and Hell
These are suggesting ressurection-only afterlife, all on earth, at the 2nd coming (1st ressurection; saints in Christ) and the post-millennial ‘white throne of judgment’ (2nd ressurection; all other dead). The ressurection involves a new heavenly body. No traditional hell. Only ‘grave’ and ‘lake of fire’. But Satan does exist. They are also ‘no rapture at all’. I checked the context of some of the bible citations (but not all) and they seem alright. There a lot of same-sentence book-jumping and the interpretations are a much more complicated (requiring more intellectual capacity), but still fairly literal interpretation.
In the “What will happen to me after I DIE? part 2 ” article, I checked some of the verse bible. Context seemed good, but some have a lot of inter-translation translation inconsistency. Lots of room for mistakes and decpetion with all this book jumping and translation inconsistency (especially with the OT books of the prophets), but I’m open to the fact that I may already be deceived by (likely unintentional) falseness. The references in the article are strictly KJV. Isaiah 65:20 is a big example of inter-translation inconsistency. There is a lot of further interpretation based on this inter-translation inconsistent verse.
I can’t really give an opinion. I’m still fairly immature in the word (Bible) and I don’t handle metaphor well and I can’t handle idioms much at all. And I haven’t listened to the Pastor’s Rapture series (4 audio CDs; master CD copy made in 1994) despite having already ripped the CDs and put them on eMule (eDonkey network client; P2P File Sharing; I use the MorphXT mod, which is optimized for uploading/releasing) and it having 2 complete uploads already (simple UL – total transfer/ file size) in 1 day (I released it yesterday and checked this morning), much better (in terms of uploaded bytes average per day) than my copyright legal audio bibles (FireFiIghters for Christ, AudioTreasure.com) and Chuck Smith (Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa) c2000 series Bible commentary sermons.
The church I go to now, Calvary Chapel Tri-City (Tempe, AZ), my ‘growing up’ (my mom making me go in late 1991 @16 to being saved in mid 1992 @17 to mid 1997 @ 22) church, Christian Faith Fellowship Family Church (Middletown, NY; formally downtown; now in a ‘detatched patch’ of Middletown next to the northeast block of surrounding suburban-sprawl with the majority of the congregation not from Middletown anymore and the old downtown building sold and/or abandoned), and also two web sites that I like, RaptureReady.com and Tribulation.com (Rapture Page) are all pre-trib rapture (Jeremy Higgens, appears to be the most supportive of the pre-trib rapture stuff I hear at the calvary tri-city church).
But then again, another site called ‘Daily Bible Study’ (keyway.ca), seems to be in agreement with the BibleStudy.org site.
But the above two fails to splice well with the ressurection and ascention into the heavens of the two witnesses or the snatching in the 3rd-to-last paragraph article Watch! article (unless the snatching context refers to the flood instead but that doesn’t make sense either):
These references, which I found myself (via study aids), involve Jesus ascending into heaven. I don’t know how relevant this is to the whole ‘rapture vs ressurection’ thing though.
Here are the bible references for Enoch and Elijah’s ascension into heaven. The BibleStudy.org site article “Where is Enoch and Elijah? Did God take them to heaven or did they die a natural death?” says they were merely transported elsewhere on the earth and died later. Acts 8:26-40 has Phillip being teleported by the spirit of the Lord (a dead-literal interpretation would have the method of teleportation similar to a ‘Wing of Wyvern’ or a ‘Return’ Spell in the Dragon Warrior 1-4 NES Games), but the the identification of teleportation and the destination was specified within the same 2-verse contextual block. Would they say the same with Jesus and the two witnesses – being teleported and then dieing naturally later without the specification of teleportation and teleport destination in the same contextual block of text?
There are concrete examples that correlate with the ‘pause’ between death and ressurection (christ return or great white throne) from science-fiction sources that puts a person into complete suspended animation or ‘cold-sleep’, whether CyroStasis (JasonX Movie; GURPS Bio-Tech) or NanoStasis (most other sources, especially GURPS Bio-Tech). Older sci-fi sources like 2001/2010 and Aliens just use ‘hibernation’ or ‘cold sleep’. The time in cyro or nano-stasis is literally a ‘blink of an eye’ for the sleeper between the start of stasis and the end of stasis. Stasis emulates death without actually killing the person in order to need hardly any life support (food, water, air, waste disposal), to the person. The sleeper may perceive maybe a few seconds for every decade of stasis, a dead person would perceive absolutely no time at all according to some insights from Ecclesiastes 9:5-10, as no conscious thought occurs within the grave. Even billions or even trillions of years of time passage will be a ‘blink of an eye’. According to the studies above, it will not be millions, billions, or trillions of years though in all the perception is the same.
For a basic and vague idea, but no means exact insight on our new ressuretcted bodies, watch the movie ‘Cocoon’ or play the game Alpha Centauri (Transcendance victory; transcend elite citizen) game (Firaxis games). If there is any conflict with the bible and the movie/game description, by all means use the bible’s description. These are just for insight for the ability to imagine it a bit. 1 Corinthians 15:35-58 gives some description. There are scatter description all over the gospels of angels in ‘dazzling clothes’ (which I don’t think are brightly colored conventional polyester or nylon dazzle cloth) suggests something like cocoon, but with the descriptions of the ressurected Jesus, especially with the holes in the hands and side suggest some form of shapechanging ability, but I need to study that better as the ‘dazzle’ is largely assigned to angels and the ‘ressurected’ that looks quite human is assigned to Jesus.
Now I really should listen to Pastor John Higgen’s Rapture CDs and see if he agrees with keyway.ca (Daily Bible Study) and BibleStudy.org , because he is pretty hardcore bible too and may actually agree. In all it is all so confusing.
Updated 2007-04-02 – Added two more bible references for Enoch’s Rapture
