rapture

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In a religious or mythological context, the term rapture denotes the phenomenon that a person is physically transferred from the earthly, concrete world of appearances into a heavenly sphere. In the Old and New Testament more of these events are described.

In a figurative sense, the term is also used for a state of “mental distance”, such as in intoxication , in dreams , in meditation or in trance .

Greek mythology

This article or the following section is not adequately provided with supporting documents ( e.g. individual evidence ). Information without sufficient evidence could be removed soon. Please help Wikipedia by researching the information and including good evidence.

The Greek legends tell of Elysion , an "island of the blessed", to which those heroes were raptured who were loved by the gods and to whom they wanted to bestow immortality . Raptures in rivers have also been reported.

Germanic mythology

According to Bächtold-Stäubli , the rapture, especially the mountain rapture, is also documented in the Germanic faith . It is taken up again in the Kyffhauser saga.

Old testament

In the Old Testament, a rapture of Enoch ( 1 Mos 5,24  EU ; Heb 11,5  EU ) and of Elijah ( 2 Kings 2,11  EU ) is reported. Both were accordingly taken away by God and into heaven because of their faith . One imagined staying in constant proximity to God (cf. Paradise ), in which the raptured were withdrawn from death.

The prophets Isaiah , Jeremiah and Ezekiel also describe raptures in connection with the respective divine calling .

Rome and Byzantium

Emperor Nero was believed to have been raptured and to return as an Antichrist . The late antique legend of the dormouse is also an example of a rapture, here in a cave.

Islam

The following important information is missing from this article or section:

In Islam there are many accepted raptures of charismatic and especially Shiite leaders.
Help Wikipedia by researching and pasting it .

The scriptures of Islam describe numerous raptures, beginning with the ascension of Muhammad , which is described in the Koran , in hadiths , in the exegesis of the Koran and in Islamic historiography . In addition, the idea of ​​the rapture in believing in the Mahdi plays a central role.

Christian rapture teachings

In the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition, pseudo-Ephraem represented a concept in the 4th century that set 3½ years between the rapture of the Christian community and the second coming of Christ ( Parousia ). He said the tribulation would last so long. Fra Dolcino († 1307) taught the rapture and the temporal return of Christ to earth. Dolcino believed that only his group of the Apostle Brothers would be raptured.

The Baptist Morgan Edwards published a book in Philadelphia in 1788 in which, like pseudo-Ephraem, he taught the view of the 3½ years between the rapture and the second coming of Christ.

Rapture in the dispensational teaching system

In the 19th century, the doctrine of the rapture was formulated in the course of dispensationalism . He teaches a premillenarian eschatology in which a 1000-year reign of Jesus Christ over the earth is expected. This rule is preceded by a Great Tribulation in which the Antichrist rules over the earth. Christians would be raptured from the earth before, during, or after the tribulation. An illustration in the Old Testament is the picture of Enoch, who was raptured before the great judgment ( Flood ). Biblical references are 1 Cor 15.23.51.52  EU , Lk 17.34–36  EU and above all in 1 Thess 4.16f. EU consulted. According to the dispensationalist interpretation of these passages, from one moment to the next all believing Christians will disappear from the earth in a kind of ascension . The underlying Greek verb harpazo that with rapture was translated, means , usurp rob .

Up until the 19th century, the rapture played only a marginal role in Christian teaching and was mostly seen as a detailed description of the second coming of Christ. It became especially popular through John Nelson Darby , who in the 1830s spread the doctrine of a future time of tribulation with reference to Mt 24 and Mk 13. This so-called Great Tribulation was seen by the church fathers and reformers such as Martin Luther or John Calvin as an event of the past that was connected with the destruction of the temple in AD 70 and the subsequent persecution of the Jews . Part of the neocalvinist movement still believes this. Since Darby, the interpretation has spread in large parts of the evangelical movement that the rapture is at the end of world history. A discussion ensued as to whether the rapture - now seen detached from the second coming of Christ - would occur before, during, or after the Great Tribulation, with the pre-rapture being the most widespread.

From 1995 to 2007, the influential American Evangelical Baptist pastor Tim LaHaye and author Jerry B. Jenkins published a popular series of novels, Left Behind , which dealt with the rapture and its aftermath. Despite the widespread distribution of the series, evangelical critics accuse him of interpreting the biblical book of Revelation and other biblical texts selectively and thus creating a kind of timetable in the form of American pop end-time literature .

The Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar Nicholas Thomas Wright , whose books appear in German in evangelical publishers, criticizes the dispensationalist system, the populist doctrines of the rapture and the interpretation of 1 Thess 4:16 et seq. EU hot. Dispensationalism spreads a one-sidedly pessimistic, worldly averse form of eschatology, which caricatures the Christian hope for the transformative renewal of creation through God's saving act, which should already now be fragmentarily anticipated through cosmopolitan and social engagement. He understands the passage from Paul's letter as an echo of the ancient practice of visits by a ruler ( parousia ), during which one hurried towards the ruler in order to move into the city with him. So the passage does not designate a rapture from earth into heaven, but the solemn entry of Christ onto earth, in which heaven and earth would be united and newly created.

Time of the rapture

Based on Jesus' statements that only God knows the time of Jesus' return ( Mk 13.32  EU ), and that Jesus' followers are not entitled to know this time ( Acts 1.7  EU ), it is part of common theological doctrine that the exact time of the rapture cannot and must not be calculated. However, many authors commit themselves to a certain chronological order of the events announced in the Bible. Mark Hitchcock has discovered four different main models in the Christian literature: The rapture before the Great Tribulation, after 3½ years of the tribulation estimated at seven years, after the Tribulation or after 5½ years within the Tribulation. The latter thought model is less common; it assumes that the rapture will take place before the opening of the seventh seal ( Rev 8,1  EU ). There is no mention of the rapture in Revelation itself.

“Christians may disagree about the timing or events that will precede his coming, and some do not recognize the various stages of his coming. But everyone agrees that he will come again to raise and judge the dead before leading them into eternity. "

Folklore

The folklore distinguishes between kidnapping and rapture. Rapture here means the permanent translocation of a living person into the hereafter , whereas abduction means a wonderful transfer of a person from one place to another, which is limited in time. It is not entirely logical that legendary rulers who wait in a mountain and return when the fatherland is in danger are called remote from the mountains . The dying British King Arthur is brought to Malory by his half-sister Morgan le Fay on the mythical island of Avalon , from which he will one day return as the "future king" ( rex futurus ).

Media processing

TV / movie

Books

See also

literature

  • Fritz Rienecker ; Maier, Gerhard (Ed.): Lexicon for the Bible , R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal 1998.
  • Gerhard Maier : It will come. What the Bible says about the second coming of Jesus , R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal 2001.
  • Lothar Coenen (Ed.): Theological glossary of terms for the NT , R. Brockhaus Verlag, Wuppertal 1993.

Web links

Wiktionary: rapture  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Hanns Bächtold-Stäubli (Hrsg.): Concise dictionary of German superstitions , de Gruyter, Berlin 1987, vol. 2, p. 851 (unchanged reprint of the 1930 edition).
  2. ↑ Mark Hitchcock: Could the rapture happen today? Christian Media Service, Hünfeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-939833-13-0 , p. 116.
  3. ↑ Mark Hitchcock: Could the rapture happen today? Christian Media Service, Hünfeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-939833-13-0 , pp. 118f.
  4. ↑ Mark Hitchcock: Could the rapture happen today? Christian Media Service, Hünfeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-939833-13-0 , p. 120.
  5. ↑ Hans-Werner Deppe: Review of the book Die Entrückung (CV Dillenburg 2004)
  6. ↑ Blog Pilgrims March 24, 2010
  7. ↑ Betanien-Verlag, Augustdorf ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.glaube-aktiv.de
  8. ↑ Jürgen Moltmann: The end times have begun. Why many Americans read the Bible as an encrypted road map of world history . In: Die Zeit , No. 51/2002
  9. ↑ Florian Niedlich: Facets of Pop Culture: About the aesthetic and political power of the popular. Transscript, Bielefeld 2012, p. 212
  10. ^ NT Wright: Surprised by Hope. Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church , New York 2008, p. 118.
  11. ^ NT Wright: Surprised by Hope. Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church , New York 2008, pp. 130-136.
  12. ↑ Mark Hitchcock: Could the rapture happen today? Christian Media Service, Hünfeld 2008, ISBN 978-3-939833-13-0 , p. 58f.
  13. ↑ Tim LaHaye: The Rapture. Who Has To Go Through The Tribulation? Christliche Verlagsgesellschaft, Dillenburg 2005, ISBN 3-89436-459-9 , p. 102.