From Rapture Ready

JetLeg

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http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=89793

Edited by prewitt81: 
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Interesting post, isn't it? This is what Christians are supposed to be like. Gandhi said "I like Christ; I don't like Christians", and it seems that this person is different.
 
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Rapture Ready is a sick, sick site to delve into. Forumites longing for the End Times, posting about how their children cry and long for the end as they can't stand this world anymore... beyond disturbing.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Rapture Ready is a sick, sick site to delve into. Forumites longing for the End Times, posting about how their children cry and long for the end as they can't stand this world anymore... beyond disturbing.
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Have you read something besides the title? :boggled:
 
This post is pretty interesting and it leads me to conclude that if this person persists in these types of thoughts, that they will eventually reject that flavor of Christianity. How can Heaven be Heaven if you're there and yet know that all the ones you love are burning in hell? Doesn't seem so heavenly to me. And how could it be heaven, if the essential you has to be remade so that you don't care about these people anymore?

I know a lot of Christians find ways to deal with this cognitive dissonance, but this one seems to be exploring these issues in a little more depth. If Christianity is such a benign, loving religion, why would the acceptance of it lead such people as the poster to such fear and distress? If one of your children didn't believe, I guess you would consider them lost to you. But would you stop loving them? Would you not feel anguish that they are suffering? But there's no anguish in heaven. Does heaven just amount to a brain wipe and reload?
 
What I find disturbing about this is that the bible seems to imply that people in Heaven can actually communicate with people in Hell. You've been in Heaven one billion years and your family has been in hell for the same length of time what would you tell a loved one burning in said hell?
 
I think it's a post that shows how terribly bad the cognitive processes of this kind of believer can be. Rather than question the set up that leads to such obvious injustice, the guy will persist in his certainty of all this believe and be saved and otherwise be damned to eternal punishment. If anything that certainty might lead to other very strange behavior (not just the "take me instead" approach) where any method of getting people to believe (lying, coercion, enticement, etc.) is justified. I think it's very very similar to the sort of thing that motivated the Inquisition, witch hunts, and conversion at sword point.
 
The part of the quote in the OP that strikes me the most is this:

Rapture Ready Poster said:
If I were to stop loving my father, mother, brothers, and uncle, all unsaved, I would cease to be me. Then, it would be as if I had died after all, and the real "me" will not enter heaven, but a strange new caricature.
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Based on the various descriptions of heaven (or really, any type of afterlife), I have always felt this way. Sure, something may persist, but it ain't "me".
 
How much of an article of faith is the rapture to Christians? I can read in the Nicene Creed (as amended in Constantinople, 381CE), "We Believe...we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come." This much can be derived from Acts and various of the epistles that talk about the second coming, but most of the current belief in the end times seems to be derived exclusively from the Book of Revelation, which was only very slimly favored at the time the canonical Bible was voted on; it could have been left by the wayside easily enough, and then where would the belief be?

For Catholics this would be pretty simple; most don't generally believe in it literally just as they don't believe in the bible generally as literal. For evangelicals, who assert the truth of the Bible literally, then I guess it's going to be the way John described it, 7 of this and 7 of that. From the wikipedia,

Protestant founder Martin Luther at first considered Revelation to be "neither apostolic nor prophetic" and stated that "Christ is neither taught nor known in it",[6] and placed it in his Antilegomena. John Calvin believed the book to be canonical, yet it was the only New Testament book on which he did not write a commentary.[7]

In the 4th century, Gregory of Nazianzus and other bishops argued against including this book in the New Testament canon, chiefly because of the difficulties of interpreting it and the danger for abuse.[8] Christians in Syria also reject it because of the Montanists' heavy reliance on it.[9] In the 9th century, it was included with the Apocalypse of Peter among "disputed" books in the Stichometry of St. Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople.[citation needed] In the end it was included in the accepted canon, although it remains the only book of the New Testament that is not read within the Divine Liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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I might note that it is also not used within the catholic readings of gospel and epistles in the mass. It would seem to be at least as fringe a belief as Pentecostalism, for example.
 
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supercorgi said:
This post is pretty interesting and it leads me to conclude that if this person persists in these types of thoughts, that they will eventually reject that flavor of Christianity. How can Heaven be Heaven if you're there and yet know that all the ones you love are burning in hell? Doesn't seem so heavenly to me. And how could it be heaven, if the essential you has to be remade so that you don't care about these people anymore?

I know a lot of Christians find ways to deal with this cognitive dissonance, but this one seems to be exploring these issues in a little more depth. If Christianity is such a benign, loving religion, why would the acceptance of it lead such people as the poster to such fear and distress? If one of your children didn't believe, I guess you would consider them lost to you. But would you stop loving them? Would you not feel anguish that they are suffering? But there's no anguish in heaven. Does heaven just amount to a brain wipe and reload?
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Good points, Supercorgi (even though I am more of a cat person).

Cainkane1 said:
What I find disturbing about this is that the bible seems to imply that people in Heaven can actually communicate with people in Hell. You've been in Heaven one billion years and your family has been in hell for the same length of time what would you tell a loved one burning in said hell?
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If I passed you these marshmallows would you toast them for me?
I presume you are referring to Jesus's story about the rich man and the poor man at his gate. If one takes the story to be literally describing how things are then you are right. On the other hand maybe Jesus was just using a story to make a point.
 
shadron said:
How much of an article of faith is the rapture to Christians?
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Indeed, it is not an article of faith to the majority of Xtians. However there is a minority, especially in America, who seem to think that the dire Left Behind series is a theological treatise.
 
I'll tag on to this thread to raise a "concern" I have wrt to flying off to heaven on death or being resurrected when JC returns. Which is it? :confused:
 
Mr Clingford said:
Good points, Supercorgi (even though I am more of a cat person).
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I won't hold it against you. I have (had) 3 cats. I've also had rabbits, ferrets, mice, hamsters, turtles, snakes, and even chickens. I love animals! And not just because some of them taste good. :D
 
JetLeg said:
Have you read something besides the title? :boggled:
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I have

Its called Luke, a book in the bible, and it purports to document the words of the christian messiah... words that are out of whack with the quote in the OP

Luke 14:26 (King James Version)
26 If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.
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OP said:
RR's KingdomSeeker said:
Someone told me that we Christians will have our love and worry for the unsaved washed away, so that we will say that these loved ones deserve hell. That troubles me. If I were to stop loving my father, mother, brothers, and uncle, all unsaved, I would cease to be me. Then, it would be as if I had died after all, and the real "me" will not enter heaven, but a strange new caricature.
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I have long posed this question about hell and wish I could get a decent answer but so far nothing.

If you are saved and go to heaven, how can you reconcile that the people you love will go to an everlasting torment?

It is my contention that no one gets to go to heaven. When you die you die and a ringer gets your place in heaven. Some say it is your soul, but then the soul must be a foreign part of you, a part that does not carry the memories of the self.

It is the same as being on a sports team. You try your hardest to make the team, train hard to develop your skills, show up at every practice and contribute to the team, and when the big tournament day finally gets here, the coach says your name and sweater will be given to a professional player friend of his to ensure that the team will win.

If heaven is a place of perfection then it cannot accept you if you are imperfect.
 
jimmygun said:
...If heaven is a place of perfection then it cannot accept you if you are imperfect.
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This is a reasonable point and one where Protestantism is weak IMO. This becoming perfect (called theosis) is more explored in Catholicism and the Orthodox. The Orthodox contend that some people do indeed become like God in their nature and Catholicism has the idea of Purgatory where one works through one's failings so that one becomes perfect, like God. No-one knows but I find some merit in these non-Prot approaches.
 
Mr Clingford said:
This is a reasonable point and one where Protestantism is weak IMO. This becoming perfect (called theosis) is more explored in Catholicism and the Orthodox. The Orthodox contend that some people do indeed become like God in their nature and Catholicism has the idea of Purgatory where one works through one's failings so that one becomes perfect, like God. No-one knows but I find some merit in these non-Prot approaches.
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It follows that if you have your compassion for those who are suffering for eternity washed away then that compassion must be a fault rather than an attribute.
 
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