The Rapture

[struggle4progress]

Poll question: The Rapture

Will your car be whizzing down the road without a driver soon? Is it just a Freudian manifestation of people's wishes that they were anyplace else but here?

[codegreen]

1. it already happened; nobody qualified

[struggle4progress]

2. Now THAT'S credible!

[RawMaterials]

3. just an excuse for the neocons

new world order to kill 5 billion world citizens

[Blue_State_Elitist]

4. I wish the rapture would come

so us evil non believers could live in peace.

[LizMoonstar]

6. My friends and I want bumper stickers for our cars that say

"When the Rapture comes, driver will be stealing your stereo"

[struggle4progress]

8. Do you think people that put the "unattended in case of rapture" ...

... stickers on their cars should have to pay higher insurance premiums?

[lavenderdiva]

5. I believe in the Rapture.

I don't know when it will happen, but I am ready! O8)

[struggle4progress]

9. Is it critical to your religious beliefs?

[lavenderdiva]

10. critical? Hmmm... Integral, yes! n/t

[struggle4progress]

16. Essential? A linchpin? Or you don't know how to separate this ...

... from your other religious views?

[lavenderdiva]

17. critical, essential, or a linchpin to my beliefs? no

incorporated in my beliefs, yes.

[Dookus]

11. how many people will be raptured?

[lavenderdiva]

12. i don't know n/t

[Dookus]

7. it's an unbiblical

notion that's being used to defend short-sighted policies and practices that are destroying the Earth.

[arwalden]

14. Wh-wh-WHAT? Unbiblical? Can You Explain??

[Dookus]

15. An idea invented

in 1827 by John Nelson Darby.

[EVDebs]

13. Third Temple dispensationalists don't seem to care about "Left Behind"

Actually Third Temple dispensationalists, as most evangelicals would be classified, are in control of Bush's foreign policy. The Guardian mentioned this in an article

"Their beliefs are bonkers, but they are at the heart of power
US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy "

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,...1195568,00.html

and the implications of Third Temple beliefs are starkly evident in

"Impact of Millennium on the Holy Land" from PBS's site at
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/week319/cover.html

with the statement below :

""LAWTON: But there's a problem. The site is already occupied, and has been for more than a millennium, by Muslim holy places. Salomon says they must be removed, but he doesn't like to be asked how.""

What goes unspoken is that even if a Third Temple is miraculously placed back upon the Temple Mount/Al Aqsa Mosque site, the missing Ark of the Covenant would still have to be found to put in a rebuilt Temple...

Needless to say, dispensationalists don't seem to care about the hornet's nest they are stirring up, especially with the Islamic world. To make matters worse, Christians in the US don't seem to realize there is another point of view on all of this: see Gary Burge's "Christian Zionism, Evangelicals and Israel" at
http://www.hcef.org/hcef/index.cfm/ID/159
and consider that his opinions on Acts 7 and a non-geographic-centered Christianity are valid:

""But the most important critique (of dispensationalism) - and here I think we discover the Achilles' heel - is that Christian Zionism is committed to what I term a "territorial religion." It assumes that God's interests are focused on a land, a locale, a place. From a N(ew)T(estament) perspective, the land is holy by reference to what transpired there in history. But it no longer has an intrinsic part to play in God's program for the world. This is what Stephen pointed to in his speech in Acts 7. The land and the temple are now secondary. God's wishes to reveal himself to the entire world. And this insight cost Stephen his life. Such an understanding is a far cry from the views of Christian Zionists like Ed McAteer who recently commented, "Every grain of sand, every grain of sand between the Dead Sea, the Jordan River, and the Mediterranean Sea belongs to the Jews." Stephen would be alarmed.""

In the meantime, rapture-readied evangelicals don't seem to care about those whom they believe will be "Left Behind". They've become as geographically-centered a religion as the Muslims.

[davidinalameda]

18. Blondie song

:bounce: