Is the Rapture a form of Liberation theology?

[shackleton]

I don't mean in the strict sense. I mean in the sense that Christ will come save us from out troubles. From what I understand the idea of a rapture went along with the idea of dispsensationalism and that Christ comes to "Rapture" up his people just before a 7 year tribulation where God dishes out his wrath of mankind. I heard that it was big with the poor and uneducated who needed some sort of "liberation" from their troubles and this idea along with the baptism of the Holy Ghost was very appealing, it got their minds off of their problems and onto a way out of them by way of escaping earth via the rapture.

Everyone I know who believes in the rapture usually precedes it by talking about all their problems about too many kids not enough money, too much debt, too much suffering of any kind and then say, "Well hopefully the RAPTURE will take place and I won't have to worry about any of this any more!"

 

[RamistThomist]

Sounds more like charismatism. Most hard-line dispie rapture people won't be favorable to pentecostal theology and baptism holy spirit.

It is not like liberation theology in the Marxist sense of the word. But yes, sort of, to your question.

 

[Presbyterian Deacon]

I can remember many sermons from back in the days when I was a "Dispensational-pre-tribber" preached on (1 Thes. 5:9 )"For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,...", with the main emphasis being that the rapture will keep us from the wrath of God outpoured on the world during the tribulation period.

So, yes...I would say in that sense, it is a type "liberation theology." I remember hearing one who said that he was a pre-tribulationalist because he knew "...God loves me too much to put me through all the trouble..."

What twisting of Scripture! Fact is I Thessalonians 5 has nothing to do with a "secret rapture."

 

[DMcFadden]

Sort of a liberation theology for poor white foloks?

I would stay away from the association. The use of a negatively tinged marxist suffused system to describe pre-tribulationalism strikes me as unfair.

In the "sense" that you use it, redemption is a form of "liberation theology" in that we are set free from the penalty, power, and (eventually) presence of sin.

The pre-trib rapture is mainly an extrapolation from a particular form of literal hermeneutic. While some, such as Bob Gundry, have defended post trib views using dispensational assumptions, most people see the dispensational hermeneutic leading to the pre-trib eschatology.

I suspect that if you take a literalistic futurist view of Revelation, the rapture becomes a way of dealing with the unhappy outcome of God's people seeming to suffer the wrath of God along with the world. Those of us in the historic premill camp accept the judgment themes utilizing the Jews in Goshen prior to the Exodus when God was judging the Egyptians.

 

[SolaScriptura]

Erick -

No, pretribulational premillenialism is NOT a form of Liberation Theology.

The only way to identify a dispensational eschatology with Liberation Theology would be to so completely gut the latter of its meaning that all you'd really be left with is the name that you arbitrarily choose to keep.

Liberation Theology fundamentally redefines "sin" and "salvation" in a way that is completely contrary to any remotely legitimate biblical definition.

However flawed pretribulational premillenialism may be in terms of the position itself, the a priori theological commitments, and the hermeneutical methodology employed, Dispensationalism (of which their eschatology is simply a part) is NOT driven by a desire to escape the difficulties of life - after all, dispensationalists readily affirm that believers are persecuted and that gross injustices exist in the world... indeed they eagerly and faithfully recruit missionaries knowing full well the possibility of them losing their life. Do dispensationalists believe that God will graciously spare the Church from the difficulties of the tribulation period? Yes. But they view that act of sparing as a gracious promise of God to deliver them from the wiles of the devil and from God's own wrath. That is radically different from seeing sin as social injustice and "salvation" being the process whereby society becomes less and less unjust.

 

[danmpem]

Erick -

No, pretribulational premillenialism is NOT a form of Liberation Theology.

The only way to identify a dispensational eschatology with Liberation Theology would be to so completely gut the latter of its meaning that all you'd really be left with is the name that you arbitrarily choose to keep.

Liberation Theology fundamentally redefines "sin" and "salvation" in a way that is completely contrary to any remotely legitimate biblical definition.

However flawed pretribulational premillenialism may be in terms of the position itself, the a priori theological commitments, and the hermeneutical methodology employed, Dispensationalism (of which their eschatology is simply a part) is NOT driven by a desire to escape the difficulties of life - after all, dispensationalists readily affirm that believers are persecuted and that gross injustices exist in the world... indeed they eagerly and faithfully recruit missionaries knowing full well the possibility of them losing their life. Do dispensationalists believe that God will graciously spare the Church from the difficulties of the tribulation period? Yes. But they view that act of sparing as a gracious promise of God to deliver them from the wiles of the devil and from God's own wrath. That is radically different from seeing sin as social injustice and "salvation" being the process whereby society becomes less and less unjust.

That very point is talked about in Johnny Mac's series "Seven Characteristics of the Coming Savior". It's a fairly recent sermon (about a year old). I think it's still on his podcast.

 

[bookslover]

...a "secret rapture."

I've always laughed at this phrase. When this happens:

For this we declare to you by a word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, so we will always be with the Lord. (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17, ESV)

it will be probably the least "secret" thing that ever occurred.