Rapture, Revelation, and the End Times - Conscious Evolution TV

obin-bobin Left Behind’s Vision of the End Times 39like the book of Revelation, were widely interpreted not asliteral indications of forthcoming events but as allegoricaldescriptions of spiritual development. The third-century Romantheologian Origen, for instance, argued that the establishmentof the kingdom of God would be a spiritual event that wouldtake place in the hearts and souls of believers, not in the realworld at any real time. Later, in the early fifth century,Augustine, whose work would become an important foundationof orthodox Christian thought, argued that Revelation wasan allegory and that the establishment of the Christian churchitself constituted the advent of the millennium. 3 Its continuedexpansion and hegemony was the culmination of God’s plan. AsMark Reasoner and Stanley Grenz explain in other chapters inthis volume, interpretations like these, asserting that these textsoffered metaphors for spiritual ideas, have remained popularand widespread throughout Christianity ever since and remainwidely accepted today.Despite opposition from the majority in the late Romanperiod, pockets of messianic or apocalyptic thought persisted.For instance, two important collections of prophetic writingsdating from 350 to 340 C.E.—the Sibylline texts (a collection ofJewish, Christian, and pagan works) and the First Letter of Johnin the New Testament—developed several apocalyptic themes,including the messianic role of Constantine as a warrior god,the Golden Age of the Roman empire, the conversion of Jews toChristianity, the notion of the antichrist, a great end-times battle,and the second coming of Christ.Such texts, however, represented only pockets on the fringes ofChristian thought, for the orthodox church, growing powerfulwith the blessings of the empire, had little need for stories of retribution.Focusing on the spiritual character of salvation, orthodoxyviewed the church as, if not the culmination of a divinehistorical process, certainly a significant event in the divine plan—an event that mitigated the immediacy of the second coming.Indeed, the establishment of the church rendered previous ideas ofthe end times obsolete, for with the church in place, Christ’s salvationcould focus exclusively on the spiritual condition of humansouls.robin-bobin