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- [00:00]
A
I would also argue Americans have a particular disposition towards conspiracy theories because, to be frank, your nation was founded on one.
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B
Here it comes from, from the Commonwealth guy. Okay. I am here with Mike Bird, who is zooming in all the way from down under in Australia. It's early in the morning. Mike, thank you for giving us your time today for this. And Mike Erie, who is zooming in from Nashville, Tennessee.
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C
Tennessee. Yes.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Okay.
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C
Where it's, it's sort of down under.
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B
It's not early in the morning.
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C
It's down under Ohio.
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B
It's not a different time zone you're in, really. It's more of a different era.
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C
Yes, yes, we would. Yes, we love the 50s.
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B
So I mentioned this earlier. You're both Mike's. So for clarity's sake, I'm going to refer to you guys as Bird and Bald. So when I have a question for Mike Erie.
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C
Hurtful.
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B
That is going to the bald guy. For Mike Bird. It's going to the Bird guy.
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C
Do you think, hold on a second. Do you think they'll be able to tell our voices apart? I'm just, I'm worried about that because we have very similar, similar.
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A
I get, I get a. I get confused with Americans all the time. You know, although I, I tell people I'm basically a cross between Conan o' Brien and New Jackman.
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C
That. Oh, wow. That.
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B
Oh, wow. Disturbing. That's a little.
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C
Where's the, where's the Hugh Jackman part? I'm trying. I can see the cone.
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A
If I was to take my shirt.
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C
Off, I didn't know if it was like a body.
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A
I realized I was fair chestnuts.
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B
Okay.
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A
All right.
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B
We're already making me wish. You're already making me wish for the Rapture, so let's get into it. So, as you guys know, I did a video came out, I don't know, two weeks ago, an explainer video on where the Rapture comes from in the Bible or doesn't come from in this case. Last time I looked, we had about, I don't know, 400,000 something views between Facebook and YouTube. A couple thousand comments. I've given up on it. We're going to respond to some of those comments, but I want to begin with just your thoughts on rapture theology in general. And let's start with this one. Why has this doctrine or pseudo doctrine had such a hold on American Christians?
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C
Bald here looking to Bird for. I love, I love how it looks from a non American point of view. Is it the same. Is the set. Does it have the same energy in Australia, this sort of doctor doctrine, or does it seem like it's a North American thing?
- [02:54]
A
Oh, no, it doesn't. It doesn't have the same visibility that there is a little bit of it. Or I think there was particularly out of the influence of American books in Australia and some famous American preachers, and that kind of was a tradition like, you know, Dallas Theological Seminary, which was, you know, one of the main education place, is one of the main instruments for disseminating dispensational theology that does have a global reach in many ways for good, but it's also been a great exporter of dispensational theology. So you do get it a little bit, but it's nowhere near as prevalent or ubiquitous as it is is in parts of American evangelicalism. And, and importantly, I would also argue, and possibly for the better, it has absolutely no input or influence on our politics. No one's thinking about our Middle east policy. And you know, looking at, I don't know, let's. Let's check out our footnotes from the, from the King James Bible. Let's see where dar. But let's see what Darby would do this or that's the SCO or the Scofield Reference Bible. Let's have a look at that. No one's thinking about policy on the world. And with respect to that kind of theology.
- [04:17]
B
Yeah, that's one of the things that even in the comments as people reacted to the video, most people don't realize how geographically and chronologically limited this view really is. This is not the view of Christians throughout the world, and it's certainly not the view of Christians throughout history. It's very localized in our era, in our country. So Mike, to you. Why do you think Mike. Bald Mike. Sorry.
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C
Okay, first of all, we can do Bird and Beautiful if we want to do that. That's fine.
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B
Hey, I, I can call you bald. I've got the same condition.
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C
That's fair. That's fair.
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B
Why do you think this has had such a hold?
- [04:57]
D
Here's.
- [04:57]
B
Let me put it to you this way. I, When I was doing this video, I was thinking back to my formative years in the church and hearing sermons and my time in college with you, to campus ministry, even my years in seminary. And I'm 48 years old, almost like I have literally never heard a sermon on the Rapture. Never. And yet it has a massive hole on virtually every Christian community I've been a part of in, in my life. So for my, in my case, it was not because Pastors were preaching this in local pulpits and pushing it. It was something. So what about you? Did you hear this a lot growing up? Was it preached in your church communities? And if not, where did it come from?
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C
Yeah, great question. It came from two places. One, there was a movie called A Thief in the Night that. I don't know if you've heard of this movie, but we were shown it in youth group at a very, very young age. And an unbelievable, unbelievable fear mongering of, of, you know, this is what happens if you don't, you don't know, acknowledge Jesus in the face of persecution and this is what happens if you do so. So that became, it became a motive for holy living because Jesus could come back anytime and if he caught you doing whatever you're doing, that could be a problem. The other thing in, in I, I Came of age with you, sky, and the late great Planet Earth, that was just before the Left behind series. There was a, there was a series, I don't remember the one that hit when I was in college, but it fed into kind of American Exceptionalism. Michael Gorman wrote a book called Reading Revelation Responsibly. And in it, one of his critiques of this version of dispensational theology is how American centric it is. It makes America the hero when there's nothing remotely in the text that shows, you know, anything to be of that kind. And then the big shocker, I don't know, you know, for you, Mike Bird, but when I actually read Revelation and realized, as you point out in the video, sky, there's no reference directly to it, the, the, the, the distinction between how much weight it was given versus how limited, if any, it's actually referenced in the text means that there's some other function the rapture's playing in the evangelical system. And, and for me, the way I experienced it was just basic. The reason you need to come to Jesus because there's, there are really bad things that can happen to you if you don't. So it was, was, it was on the basis of fear, it was on the basis of his beauty on hope, on the good news, it was, here's the bad news and, you know, pray to Jesus. So you avoid it.
- [07:36]
B
Yeah. When I first encountered this idea, I'm probably a high school student, maybe even earlier, it felt a little bit to me like we would popularly preach the gospel as a way of avoiding the tortures of hell.
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C
Right, Totally. Yes.
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B
And rapture theology kind of wrote on those coattails by saying, oh, and by the way, the There may be a more immediate kind of hell that if you don't follow Jesus, you could be left behind in the rapture. And then you're going to have to put up with the tribulation and terrible things. So it was a. It was kind of like icing on the fear cake of hell's bad enough, but the tribulations, more maybe sooner than even hell, you should worry about the tribulation. So it ramps up the urgency and the fear. And I think people found that effective on some level.
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C
Well, and we love cons.
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A
I think it has two further functions in the American context, from what I've observed. First of all, it allows people to claim they have a privileged perspective on the current geopolitical circumstances. So, you know, when, when there was 10 nations that formed the European Union, people say, ah, that's the 10 horns on the beast.
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C
Right.
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A
And then they added 11, 12, 13, 14th, and it got bigger. They kind of blew it out. But it enables you to say, well, you know, the beast, it's the Soviet Union, it's Saddam Hussein, it's Osama bin Laden, it's China. It allows you to claim privileged knowledge on what's going on around the world, the secret perspective. And it also lends itself then to, to not only American exceptionalism, but a kind of chosen nation status that there is the secret struggle against the forces of evil. And in particular, Christian America will have the definitive key role.
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C
That's right.
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A
In feeding it. So I think it's, it's. At one level, it does feed into the kind of fire insurance type of Christianity, but it also gets people to claim that they've got the secret knowledge of what's really happening in the world. And, and it feeds into a little bit of religious patriotism as well.
- [09:47]
B
Yeah, Bert, it sounds like what you're, you're describing is the broader appeal of dispensationalism, but if you, if you pull the rapture thread out of that larger dispensational tapestry, the whole thing falls apart. So you have to keep it in there, otherwise you don't get all those other fringe benefits of dispensational theology that you're talking about, that conspiratorial. I was just listening to a psychologist talking about why, why are people drawn to conspiracy theories in. And he talked about how when people are under stress and they're afraid, they become more susceptible to conspiracy theories because it gives them that secret knowledge. You're talking about where, okay, now I have a sense of control because I know what's really going on so I don't have to be terribly afraid. And that serves that function in this case, doesn't it?
- [10:36]
A
I'd add to that conspiracy theories are how people without power critique people who are in power. And I would also argue Americans have a particular disposition towards conspiracy theories because, to be frank, your nation was founded on one.
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B
Here it comes from, from the commonwealth guy.
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A
Yeah. Read the, Read the Declaration of independent. Read the Declaration of Independence. It's a conspiracy theory that king George has a secret plan to enslave America and us wealthy land owners are the ones who know all about it. And we're going to launch a war to set the people free from the secret conspiracy theory, which was not actually what happened. The problem is parliament would not let the American colonies expand. They appealed to the king. The king said, I'm not overruling parliament. And then the colonists started criticizing the king because he wouldn't give. Trying to tackle stuff because that's seven years. It's. No, it's not what happened in Hamilton. It's. There was. There was far less American history and less rapping.
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C
That's American history.
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A
Oh, yeah, okay.
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B
I mean, that. That bird needs to come back for another conversation about a commonwealth point of view on the American revolution. But I mean, he. You do have a point. You do have a point. And it is worth remembering that the Confederacy in the American south was largely founded on conspiracy theories.
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A
All of these same, same thing.
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B
All these crazy ideas of what's going to happen if Abraham Lincoln's elected or what the north wants to do. And they, they really ginned up these theories, these crazy conspiracy theories in the south which led to secession.
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C
So.
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A
And then when Lincoln was assassinated, there were more conspiracy theories.
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C
Yes.
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B
This is a very American thing.
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D
Very American.
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C
It's great that that's not happening these days. So it's, you know, we matured beyond that. I don't know if you know that, Mr. Bird, but we've matured beyond that, so don't worry.
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A
Taylor Swift is planning to bring down the U. S. Government.
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C
She. Yeah, well, that's real. That's real. That's real.
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A
Yeah.
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C
You know, one of the things that, that the rapture promised was.
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A
That.
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C
That the church would be exempt from the suffering of. That would be common to the unbelievers or the. The renewal of the age, or however you would say it. And the picture you get in Revelation when you actually look at it is of the church martyred. The church not exempt from the suffering of the age. Rather, the church having suffered because of the powers and the principalities of the age.
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B
So.
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C
So that. Yeah, go ahead.
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B
No, beautiful bald Mike.
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C
The.
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B
We're going to get. We're going to get into that in a few minutes because it's one of the critiques that came up a lot in the. The video is this whole thing about, well, the church can't really be here for the tribulation because of all these different reasons. And so we're going to get into that and why that argumentation may not be. Let's pivot to talk about some of the critiques that have come in about the Rapture video.
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C
I'm shocked that there are any.
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B
Disclaimer there. Like I said, like 4,000 comments. I have not read them all. I've tried to keep up with them at the beginning. Mike, our producer, has been through a bunch of them. Another Mike, not bird, not ball.
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C
You're surrounded by goodness. You're surrounded by goodness.
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B
And so he summarized some of the critiques. So I want to walk through these and have you guys answer some of these or agree with them. Maybe there's some really legitimate critique here. So first one easy, I think, to deal with. But it was. Honestly, this was probably the most common comment, at least in the first week of the video. Early in the video, I say that there's a number of things that we assume about the Bible that aren't really in there. Like that the fruit in the Garden of Eden was an apple. It's never identified as an apple.
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C
What?
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B
I know that there were three wise men. The Gospels never specify how many wise men came after Jesus birth. And I said the Bible never says it was a whale that swallowed Jonah. Well, that just triggered people. That freaked people out.
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C
That was the thing.
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B
That was the thing.
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A
Please tell me. Dissing the drama boy. You went dissing the drama boy?
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B
No, no, no. They didn't care about the magi or the wise men. They cared about the whale.
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C
The whale.
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B
And I had so many people say, what about Matthew 12:40, the King James Version? Jesus says it was a whale that swallowed Jonah. And everybody's thrown this again and again. Again, this guy doesn't even read his Bible. He doesn't know what he's talking about. You can't believe anything he says about the Rapture because Jesus said it was a whale in Matthew 12:40. Okay, I have my response to that. Do either of you want to take this one, this softball question?
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A
I'd have to look at the great text of Matthew 12:40.
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B
I have looked at the Greek text of Matthew 12:40, as well as the book of Jonah.
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C
And it's not whale, and it's not whale. I can tell you that right now.
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B
Most English translations say great fish.
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A
Yeah.
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B
I believe the Greek word means either large fish or sea monster.
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A
Yeah, that sounds about right.
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B
Right. But it's not specified to be a whale. And I'm guessing because in ancient Greek, as well as in ancient Hebrew, there wasn't a differentiation between a large whale, sea mammal, like a whale, and a large fish. They were just big fish. So maybe it was a whale, maybe it wasn't. But the word itself doesn't say whale. It wasn't specified. So. But what was very clear is a lot of these people who commented that way have no understanding that the New Testament was actually written in Greek and translated into English. And we did not receive the King James version directly from the lips of Jesus.
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C
So.
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B
Okay, let's get that.
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C
Go ahead, Michael, what were you gonna say? Yeah, do you want to add anything to that? I mean, it's. You probably are an expert on whales because you're, you know, from down under.
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A
And there was a story of that guy who got swallowed by a whale. Now, and between that and the King James. Yeah. I mean, that kind of seals its guys. So you're up against the King James Bible and like contemporary news in the last few years, it's hard. It's hard to beat that.
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B
I'm not saying he wasn't swallowed by a whale. I'm not saying Adam and Eve didn't eat an apple. I'm just saying the Bible doesn't specify. That's all I'm saying.
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C
Yeah.
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A
Okay.
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C
Well, let's go on to more.
- [17:17]
B
So much meaningful stuff.
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C
Okay. I was just going to say, so much of the Rapture, the comments that I saw on your YouTube channel are. Are missing the distinction we make between a literary understanding of a text versus a literal understanding of a text. Text.
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B
Yes.
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C
And. And so, you know, I don't know if we want to get into that nuance at some point, but I think that's really important because people haven't been taught to read their Bibles. They just read them flatly. As you know, there's no differentiation between what you're reading in Genesis versus what you're reading in Samuel versus what you're reading in Revelation. And I think that's. That goes a lot to the fact that people so feel like something's under attack if we point out that the word isn't whale, it's big fish. That could be translated whale. But could be something else. I get why people feel like we like. Okay, well, they can't trust then, because I can't trust my English translation. And that's actually not the case. So sitting behind, a lot of this is going to be how it is. We understand texts.
- [18:18]
B
Exactly. Which takes us to this next most common question or critique. And this gets into the Greek again. So, Bert, I don't know if you want to go here, but the title of the video was the Rapture is not in the Bible. And a lot of people responded with, well, wait a minute. In 1st Thessalonians 4, where it says that we will be caught up in the air, that that word in Greek, harpazo or harpazo, is that the right one is where you get the translation of rapture or caught up. And so, sky, it is in the Bible. It's right there. It's just, you're not.
- [18:56]
A
I think if. I think if you go to the Vulgate, the Latin Bible, I think it. It may use the word raptors. Yes. That may be where it comes from. I haven't got the Vulgate in front of me, but I'm sorry, I have it memorized from the Catholic Bible in the Latin version. So you name the Catholic translators for introducing rapture language. Exactly.
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B
So the argument is the Greek word harpazo gets translated into Latin as rapture, essentially, and then that's where it comes from. But it's. The argument is, sky, you're wrong. The Rapture is in the Bible. It's in First Thessalonians 4, where we are caught up in the air. And that's where I spent most of the time in that video.
- [19:38]
A
I think I kind of like, busted that myth pretty well in the video, explaining it's not like the Second Coming, part A that takes away the church. Yeah. It's kind of people going up to meet the. The dignity of the royal dignitary and then company accompanying him back. So maybe watch the video.
- [19:56]
C
Sorry, go ahead. Well, one response I would. I would add is that it's the combination of the Greek words, not just pulling one out and saying, hey, this one, you could translate this Rapture. It's, It's. It's next to, you know, the idea of what it is to meet and what it is, the coming, the parousia. And so it's. It's the combination of words that is at issue. It's not just pulling out the one and saying, hey, you could translate that rapture. It's like the whale argument.
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B
Yeah.
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C
You could Translate, great fish, whale. But that it. But in context, it's making, you know, the, through the combination of words, it's saying something different than just drawing out the meaning of one word and saying, oh, this is what defines the whole thing. So my understanding was it was the combination of coming to meet and caught up. That three word combo is the idea of a royal meeting. It's not just the one word. And so even if caught up means something like violent, like some of your questioners were bringing up, that still doesn't preclude the interpretation that we're offering, namely that, yeah, we're caught up in a procession to meet the dignitary.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And I think that's exactly the problem is when you read first Thessalonians 4, yes, we're caught up in the air, but the way we have popularly understood the doctrine of rapture is it's to be caught up in the air with Jesus and then taken away from the earth to escape the tribulation. And that's not what this text talks about. The metaphor I was thinking about using is if you have a guest who's coming to your house, you can open the front door and they can walk in and you can greet them in the, the entryway of your home, or you can open up the front door and you can go out and meet them on the front stoop or the deck or the driveway, whatever it might be. And essentially that's what 1 Thessalonians 4 is saying is Jesus is coming to the Earth and we're going to go out and meet him outside the house and then walk with him in through the door into the front foyer. But nobody would say we're being raptured away from our house because we met the guest outside. Right. That's not the rapture we're talking about here. Okay.
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C
Jesus. Jesus. Oh, I'm sorry, go ahead. I was, I was going to quote a little Josephus, but Josephus tells a story of, I think it was Caesar coming through and collecting tribute. And he uses the Parisian word to, to talk about the delegation of the high priest, I don't remember the high priest's name, who brought, who prepared gifts and prepared the population to go out and meet Caesar and escort him in. And it's the word that, you know, we're referencing here. So it's not just, this isn't just being made up out of thin air. This was how the word was commonly used in the ancient world.
- [22:44]
B
Okay, this is where we're going to spend a little bit more time Going back to what you'd mentioned earlier. Bald, beautiful Mike. And that's a lot of people. A lot of people. Because in the video, I say there's no mention of the Rapture in the book of Revelation. It's just not there. And a lot of people took issue with that, and they brought up all kinds of different texts. I'll feed you guys a few of these, and I'd love to get your. Your input on them. One person said, Revelation 3:10 is the rapture because Jesus says, because you've kept my word about patient endurance, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the world. So they say because of that, there must be rapture. Other people said, I don't think there's any mention or use of the word church in Revelation. After chapter three, maybe chapter four. After four, after chapter four. And so there. There's the Rapture because the church is never mentioned because the church is not on the earth anymore. And I mean, the simple way to just wash all these things away is they're all inferences.
- [23:47]
A
Right.
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B
But I'd love to hear each of you kind of talk through how either how you have heard people try to find the Rapture in Revelation and then why that's a bad reading. Okay.
- [24:01]
C
Mr. Bird is raising his hand. Yeah.
- [24:03]
A
On the Revelation 3:10, where it says, you know, because you kept my patient word, I will keep you from the hour of trial that is coming on the whole world to test the inhabitants of the earth. This is the weird thing about the dispensational reading. They treat the letters to the seven churches as allegorical or symbolic, and then they treat the rest of the book, the visions, as literal.
- [24:31]
B
They get it exactly backwards.
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A
They literally get it the wrong way around. Yeah. I think the letters to the seven churches are literally letters to the seven churches.
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C
That's right.
- [24:41]
A
Dealing with their particular circumstance. Okay. Where the rest of the book really does pile metaphor upon metaphor uses a lot of biblical and Greco Roman imagery to talk about the persecution of the church, the different hardships. But in the case of the church in Philadelphia, I think there is some sort of crisis that's going to come on the habit of worldwide, Whether you want to call that the Roman Empire or Asia Minor or they're part of. I mean, this language can be used in a somewhat exaggerated sense. The whole inhabited world where they're really thinking, you know, maybe the Roman east or that part of the Mediterranean. So I think this is specific to the church in Philadelphia. The fact that the word church is not used in the rest of the book. Well, there's a lot of other language used, like the saints, you know, that kind of a language. And you know, you've got to be very careful about, you know, demanding one particular word that would be used. You know, Paul can talk to the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians, chapter 8 to 9. He can talk about money without actually using the word money at all. And he's talking about the collection he's taking up for Jerusalem. So I wouldn't use the absence of one particular word as indicative of our whole system of theology, as if this is like Sherlock Holmes saying, yes, but the dog did not bark, or something along those lines. It's a pretty thin wedge to hang a whole system of theology on.
- [26:12]
B
Well, similarly, I mean, there's so much imagery and symbolism and revelation. When John turns and he sees a lamb that was slain, are we supposed to believe that that's not Jesus? Because it doesn't say Jesus, it says a lamb. Of course not. We know from the scope of scripture it's a reference to Jesus, so to speak, of the saints, the holy ones of God. Like those are his redeemed people. That's the church.
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C
And to and to separate the seven letters from the imagery that follows is to introduce an artificial distinction the text doesn't make. In fact, if you look at don't.
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D
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