Rapture

The term Rapture is referred to in a mythological or biblical context, the phenomenon that a person is bodily displaced from the ground - concrete phenomenal world into a heavenly sphere. In the Old and New Testaments more of these events are described. In a figurative sense, the term is also used for a state of "mental distance ", as in the noise or the dream, meditation or trance used.

Greek Mythology

The Greek legends tell of Elysion, an "island of the blessed " to which those heroes were caught that were loved by the gods and which they wanted to give immortality. Also raptures in rivers have been reported.

Germanic mythology

The Rapture, especially the Bergentrückung is occupied in the Germanic faith after Bächthold - Stäubli.

Old Testament

In the Old Testament is a rapture of Enoch (1 Mos 5.24 EU; Heb 11.5 EU ) reports and Elijah ( 2 Kings 2.11 EU). Both were taken accordingly for their faith by God and away into the sky. This one turned out to stay in constant nearness of God (cf. Paradise) in which the raptured were deprived by death.

Christianity

In the New Testament 12.5 EU is spoken by the rapture of a child in Revelation. This child is equated mainly by the Catholic Church with Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the described therein woman as Mary Mother of God ( cf. crescent Madonna) is interpreted.

Evangelical Christians reject this interpretation partly on the grounds that the revelation which was written in the year 70 AD, future events treat and contains no retelling of the Nativity. In addition, take care of the context in which this birth is described, not the historical situation of the time of Jesus.

Rome and Byzantium

From Emperor Nero was assumed that he had been caught and would return as the Antichrist. The late antique Seven Sleepers legend represents an example of a rapture, here in a cave.

Earlier rapture teachings

In the Byzantine apocalyptic tradition Pseudo- Ephraem took a concept that between the Rapture of the Christian Church and the Second Coming ( Parousia ) ansetzte 3 ½ years in the 4th century. He said that the Tribulation would take so long. Fra Dolcino († 1307 ) taught the rapture and the time it settled return of Christ to earth. Dolcino was of the view that only his group of Apostolic Brethren 'll raptured.

The Baptist Morgan Edwards published a book in 1788 in Philadelphia, where he taught as pseudo - Ephraem 's view of the 3 ½ years between the Rapture and Second Coming of Christ.

Rapture in the dispensational teaching system

In the 19th century the doctrine was formulated by the Rapture in the course of dispensationalism. This teaches a prämillenaristische eschatology, in which a 1,000-year reign of Jesus Christ is expected over the earth. This rule go ahead a Great Tribulation, in the reign of the Antichrist on the earth. The Christians would before, during or after the tribulation of the world caught up. An illustration in the Old Testament is the image of Enoch who was raptured before the great judgment ( Flood). As biblical citations are 1 Cor 15,23.51.52 EU, Luke 17.34-36 and EU f mainly in 1 Thessalonians 4:16 EU used. According to the dispensational interpretation of these sites are in a kind of ascension from the earth to disappear from one moment to the other, all believing Christians. The underlying Greek verb harpazo, which was translated as rapture, is in itself fails, rob.

Until the 19th century the Rapture of the Christian doctrine played only a marginal role and was usually seen as a detailed description of the second coming of Christ. Popular it was mainly by John Nelson Darby, the doctrine of a future tribulation period with reference to Matthew 24 and Mark 13 is widespread in the 1830s. This so-called Great Tribulation was seen by the Church Fathers and Reformers like Martin Luther and John Calvin as a past event, the AD and the subsequent persecution of the Jews stand with the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 in context. Part of the neocalvinistischen exercise is still of this opinion. Since Darby the evangelical movement has spread in many parts of the interpretation that the rapture lie at the end of world history. A discussion ensued as to whether the rapture - which has now been seen in isolation from the second coming of Christ - before, during or after the Great Tribulation will occur, with the Vorentrückungslehre is the most widespread.

The Anglican bishop and New Testament scholar Nicholas Thomas Wright, whose books are published in German in evangelical publishing houses, the dispensational system and the interpretation of 1 Thess 4,16 f criticized EU sharp. The dispensationalism spread a one-sided pessimistic world-denying form of eschatology, karikiere the Christian hope in the transformative renewal of creation by God's saving action that should be anticipated by world- facing and social commitment already fragmented. 1 Thess 4,16 f EU sees it as an appeal to the ancient practice of visits of a ruler ( parousia ), where you hastened the ruler to feed with him in the city. So the place does not denote a rapture of the earth to the sky, but the solemn entry of Christ on the earth, would be combined and re-created by heaven and earth.

In the evangelical movement, the view is widespread that Jesus Christ will come back together with his previously raptured church at the end of the Tribulation and before the Millennium on the earth.

Timing of the Rapture

Based on Acts 1:7 it is part of the EU common theological doctrine that the exact timing of the Rapture can be neither calculated nor may. However, many authors commit yourself to a particular chronological order of the events announced in the Bible. So Mark Hitchcock has been discovered in the Christian literature four main models: the rapture before the Great Tribulation, after 3 ½ years of the estimated seven-year tribulation period, after the tribulation period or after 5 ½ years in the Tribulation. The latter school of thought is less common in the literature; it assumes that the Rapture will take place before the opening of the seventh seal Rev 8:1 EU.

" Christians may disagree about the time or about the events that will unfold to be coming around, and some do not recognize the various stages of his coming. But all agree that he will come again to raise the dead and judge before he leads them into eternity. "

Folklore

The folklore distinguishes between kidnapping and rapture. Rapture here means the permanent translocation of a living human to the afterlife, kidnapping, however, a wonderful displacement of people from one place to another, which is limited in time. Not quite logically be legendary rulers who are waiting in a mountain and come back when the fatherland is in danger, called the mountain caught. The Dying British King Arthur is brought in Malory of his half-sister Morgan le Fay to the mythical island of Avalon, from which he will return once called " future king " ( rex Futurus ).