Seeds of Deconstruction II – The Rapture Wars
A Deconstruction Observed — Pt. 17
After my last post you might be thinking, So, one book on evolutionary creation caused your worldview to collapse
No.
I didn’t wake up one day and say, “I think I’ll reexamine everything I’ve believed since I was a child and toss out things I don’t agree with anymore.”
For me, deconstruction was something like the story of the little Dutch boy who saved his village by putting his finger in the hole of a leaky dike. As the story goes he stayed there all night, plugging the leak until help arrived.
Deconstruction starts when you notice a leak and you plug it. But as you wait for help to arrive you notice another leak, so you use your other finger to plug that one.
Then a third leak shows up and you try to plug that one with your big toe.
And then you see another leak. But you can’t plug that one without falling down.
After that, new leaks keep springing, the dike weakens, and the flood that follows becomes what we now call deconstruction. For some people this happens relatively quickly, over a period of months or years. For me the process took decades.
The first leak came when I was a pastor. I went out to bring in the church’s mail and found a cheaply made little booklet titled, “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988.”
I rolled my eyes when I saw the title. At the time, I firmly believed in the rapture but I had no patience for date setters. I leafed through the book and tossed it in the trash, figuring it was just one more nut out to make money or a name for himself. I expected it would go relatively unnoticed in the greater Christian community.
I was wrong.
The book, written by a NASA scientist named Edgar Whisenant, took off like a firestorm–especially among evangelical Christians. In the months leading up to the predicted date (approx. September 12-14, 1988) Christians everywhere were gearing up for the Lord’s coming, some so convinced of the accuracy of Whisenant’s predictions, they even quit their jobs. Anticipation was high.
Until the date passed and Jesus didn’t come.
People were devastated.
I hadn’t bought into it, nor had anyone in the church I pastored. But many lives were upended and the faith of some shattered by the failed prediction. Laurel and I heard personal stories of shattered faith that saddened me. It bothered me that so many people were hurt by yet another bogus end-times prediction, but that wasn’t when the first leak in my theological dike sprung.
That leak came by way of a different rapture controversy. About the same time that Whisenant’s predictions were making the rounds a well-known Christian leader was forced to resign.
The reason?
He had changed his position on the rapture. He no longer believed in a pre-tribulation rapture.* Because he no longer agreed with the ministry’s position on the timing of the rapture, he was forced out.
Let me repeat that. He was not denying the rapture. He was just changing his opinion about the timing. But because of that, the organization’s donors applied pressure and the board of directors felt it was best for him to move on to another ministry.
For me, that’s when the first leak sprung.
I couldn’t believe it. Although at that time I was a firm believer in a pre-tribulation rapture, I didn’t feel that the timing really mattered. And it certainly didn’t seem to me like something someone should be fired over. But it seemed like, at least to some evangelicals, that belief in a pre-tribulation rapture was a test of orthodoxy.
Over the following months and years it seemed that more and more people were arguing—and severing relationships—over what I considered to be a secondary doctrine. Pastors who dared to question the timing of the rapture were losing their jobs. Christians were arguing about it. Polemical books were being written on all sides of the debate. Some Christians were even calling others heretics, based solely on their views of the timing of Christ’s return.
But here’s the point: It wasn’t the theological debate that disturbed me—that caused the first leak in the dike; it was the hostility, particularly of “pre-trib” evangelicals toward those who disagreed with them.
As far as my thinking went, the important thing was that Christ was going to return someday. The timing of that return was irrelevant. And yet some people were labeling their brothers and sisters in Christ heretics because they saw things differently.
A verse from the New Testament book of James summed it up well: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be” (James 3:9-10 NIV).
As I look back I see a sequence. The mean-spiritedness of some evangelical Christians toward other believers shook me. And that very attitude caused me to question my own belief in a pretribulation rapture. And so, a tiny leak sprung in the dike of my theological convictions, but because I was fearful of being labeled a heretic, I plugged it and didn’t think about it for many years.
Nevertheless, a question had arisen in my mind. And over the next twenty years or so that question and others grew. I wrestled with them and put some to rest—for a while. But just as my doubts about the Charismatic Movement grew, doubts about some of the other things I believed grew.
I suppressed them. Tried to keep the leaks plugged. And for the most part was successful. But when I left pastoral ministry in 2000 to focus on prison outreach, something changed.
I no longer needed to plug the leaks. Indeed, now that I was no longer a pastor, I was free to begin considering questions I’d long buried.
That’s when my thinking began to change.
(You can read all the posts in this series at my website: jamespence.com/a-deconstruction-observed)
*Note – Occasionally there will be times when I refer to specific doctrines or theological issues that might be unfamiliar to some readers. In the interest of keeping these posts brief, I’m not going to explain the terms. However, I will point you toward books that will be helpful in understanding what I’m referring to. In the case of the rapture, I’d suggest reading two books: Unraptured by Zack Hunt and The Rise and Fall of Dispensationalism by Daniel G. Hummel.