Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires.
(Romans 13:11-14, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)
We had a bit of a Rapture “scare” a few months ago.
Some Christians believe in a point-by-point re-enactment of the scenes depicted in Revelation, the final book of the New Testament. Their version of the second coming of Christ also incorporates bits and pieces from other parts of the Bible, including some of Paul’s first message to the Thessalonians. “For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first,” Paul wrote. “Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will be with the Lord forever.” (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17)
Believers connect those two sentences to Jesus’s description of the coming of the Son of Man: “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken, and one will be left,” Jesus warned. “Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken, and one will be left.” (Matthew 24:40-41) Once God has gathered the faithful into heaven, their story continues, the “Great Tribulation” will begin, as the Antichrist claims dominion over those left behind.
From the Bowyer Bible, 1795.
Anyway, at the beginning of the summer, a South African preacher named Joshua Mhlakela convinced himself this would happen on September 23 and shared his prediction on YouTube. From there, the notion spread, gaining a lot of traction on TikTok. September 23 came and went, with no mass disappearances; Mhlakela, deciding God must have used the old Julian calendar, moved the date to October 3. That day, too, came and went, and we haven’t heard much from Mhlakela since.
Many of us had a good laugh at all this as it unfolded in the news.
Throughout history, people have tried to frighten the masses into believing the world will end, plunging us all into eternal torment (unless we do exactly as they say, which frequently involves giving them our money). I’ve lived through several announced Raptures that failed to occur. The first one I remember clearly happened—or, rather, didn’t happen—in 1994, predicted by a radio broadcaster named Harold Camping. (Undeterred by his error, he announced the immanence of the end times again in 2011.) The “end of the world” has happened so many times now that even people who believe in the divinity of Jesus treat it as a joke.
As far as I can tell, though, Quakers tend not to play a significant role in any of these false Raptures. In the United States and the United Kingdom, we might attribute that absence to a significant shift away from Christ-centered theology over the last century or so. Yet even Friends whose faith remains grounded in Jesus seem to avoid getting caught up in such fervors. How can we explain that?
I think we need to go back to the earliest Quakers, who experienced the “Living Christ” already present among them, speaking directly to their spiritual condition. These Friends had no need to anticipate Jesus’s second coming. He had already returned to guide them through the turbulence of their seventeenth-century world.
They knew what time it was, and strove to live accordingly.
As the first Christians lived under the shadow of the Roman Empire, the earliest Quakers faced oppression from the Puritans who had seized control of the British government—and continued to suffer persecution for some time after the monarchy returned to power. The ruling forces of today’s world may not target Quakers as fiercely as their predecessors; they don’t throw us in prison or execute us for our faith. But they still do their best to discredit that faith—even if they don’t attack Quakerism directly, think of how often you’ve been told about the futility of nonviolence or the sinfulness of empathy. If they cannot seduce you into complicity, they will settle for reducing you to despondency. They want to put your soul to sleep.
Wake up. Throw off the works of darkness. Refuse to play their game. Continue listening for Spirit, and allow its wisdom to nurture your soul. When you find others traveling the same path, band together. In this way, we can build up a beloved community that will flourish in empire’s ruins.
If you read the earliest writings and testimonials of the first decade or so of the Quaker outpouring, you will find many proclamations about “the acceptable year of the Lord” or similar references to the apocalyptic messages of the NT. I seems clear that they were expecting the fulfillment of these prophecies, in at least some manner, in their times. This did not involve the intricacies of “the rapture” as now preached in some circles, but clearly a sense that the fulfillment was imminent. There is both Power and danger in this expectation. As in the early Quaker movement, it may motivate us to share the Good News with urgency, as time is short and as many as possible need to be awakened before the great and terrible Day of the Lord arrives. We do this out of love and care for our sisters and brothers. The danger is that, as we so often observe around us, that it may lead to obsession with ones personal or in group salvation at the expense of “others”. There is only one somewhat cryptic and circular account of the Good News that Jesus preached at the beginning of Mark: “The Time is NOW (is fulfilled), the Kingdom of Heaven is very near, repent (see with new eyes, be transformed, wake up) and believe the Good News.” There is something about the urgency of time fulfilled and the Kingdom being at hand that gives strength and power to the movement. This is not the same as proclaiming a day and hour for the “rapture”, but should not be dismissed. It is one of those impossible but possible challenges to live in the imminent coming and the long march at the same time; but it is clear to me that that is how we are called.