The Origins of the Rapture

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I grew up a Southern Baptist, with this rapture ideology. I was blown away when I learned how new the idea of the rapture actually was. Evangelical Christianity is about as much of a new religious movement, distant from historical Christianity, as Mormonism.

As a Christian, with an insane dad who obviously never read the bible he claimed to quote, the rapture was a source of trauma for me all the way up until the point that I actually read the bible and saw that it wasn't in there. My understanding of Christianity changed SO MUCH when I read it myself and stopped letting other people tell me what it was about. But I will NEVER forget the amount of fear in my heart when my dad was saying the rapture was right around the corner any time anything in the world happened.

My father always called the rapture his retirement plan. His belief that he would be raptured before death led to bad financial decisions. This is an dangerous aspect of rapture thinking that is seldom talked about.

Growing up, immersed in the matrix of the tribulation/rapture ideology, I was a very depressed kid. I fully expected to be dead by 16 or at least 17 due to the pervasive doom story. I had a "bucket list" by age 11 and went through a profound depression when I turned 13. However, Im still alive, decades later. Dont raise kids with a doom narrative - they will turn out nihilistic and with lifelong depression. Im much better now, but its taken years of psychological help.

As a somewhat elderly person, I remember "The Late Great Planet Earth", by Hal Lindsey, which was the bestselling paperback book of the 1970's. Mr. Lindsey predicted that the Rapture would take place before 2000. And, having moved the goalposts, he is still asserting in 2023 that the Rapture is just around the corner!

From a preacher I listened to years ago at the Bethlehem church, all I can say is this: don't worry about the world's end...worry about your own. It doesn't matter what happens to the world so long as you take care of yourself spiritually. You can save no one's soul, but your own.

What worries me is the many powerful people who believe this, want this, and put their vast resources into making it happen.

I remember my grandma used to say "if" and not "when I die". She said "if" for years and even though I was brought up in churches that preached the rapture, I always felt it was weird she did that. She finally started saying "when" about 5 years before she died and although I no longer believed in the rapture or much of the bible by that point, I did feel kinda bad for her that she had given up after believing since the 70s.

Honest to god the rapture basically is what caused so much religious trauma for every person I knew growing up. I knew people who contemplated suicide, thought about putting down pets so that the pets wouldn't starve without them, or just have trauma from being forced to live in an apocalyptic family making them extreme nihilists. Why care about anything if the world is going to delete itself at any second? Why make friends outside of your religion if you know they are going to suffer after you leave? Soooooo much trauma...

I've learned so much about religion and humanity's experience from this channel. It's one of my favorite educational channels of all time.

Wow this was a solid breakdown! Been struggling with the rapture most of my life as it didn’t make sense but was shoved down my throat in several churches. Glad this video exists to break it down into digestible material

As an atheist who’s seen alot of content talking about religion, it’s kind of refreshing, to me, how neutral your delivery feels. Despite the subject matter didn’t feel a heavy bias toward the validity or lack thereof of the stories in question.

Left Behind is like if God picked M. Night Shyamalan to write a twist ending for the Bible.

As someone who grew up in a catholic country (help!) and studied in a religious school, I never heard of the rapture. I remember hearing it mentioned in popular American media and not knowing what they were talking about.

I was getting to know our new youth minister when my children were young. I’m not a scholar so I don’t always get words like pre millennial, so when he asked me if I was a premillennialist or a post millennialist I answered that I was a pro millennialist, I didn’t know what was gonna happen but I was all for it. But my eschatology is limited to ‘The Lord could come back at any time, so eat dessert first.’

When I start seeing terms like “biblical scholars” and “in the Greek it really means this”, it fortifies that my belief in the Blessed Hope is correct.

Growing up in Italy, you are exposed almost exclusively to Catholic beliefs. So I always find fascinating the number of doctrines (sometimes cults) that have been originated in the US, from Mormonism to those who "play" with snakes

I grew up in a Southern Baptist family that deeply believed in the Rapture. I definitely had a few terrified moments when I was the first one home in the afternoon, thinking my family had been taken up, which made me think deeply about my sins. I didn't know any of the history behind the belief till now. This video is so packed with interesting info, I had to watch it twice 👏🏻

"And the Truth shall set you free"