This is interesting ...

[Cow of Shame]

[quote name='tomasio127' date='Oct 8 2005, 10:39 AM']I'm still disapointed about not getting to believe in the Rapture anymore. I spent seven years waiting and hoping for it to come. It's like going all through school and finding out there is no such thing as graduation....
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seriously? how'd you end up eagerly anticipating it?

[Jedi_StClaire]

these people are crazy. Quite sad, really............do they think its Christian behavior to condemn Catholics because they don't understand the Church's teachings?


I know a girl who is a Christian and I know she's a rapture believing one (that's not good at all) because I read her blog one day and she wrote about her minister preaching about the "end times" and she's scared and excited or something like that........ makes me REALLY sad for her.

[Guest omnipresentbob]

I think the Left Behind is pretty anti-Catholic.
For example, within the books, it talks about how many (close to all) Catholics were left behind. Except for the pope, because he tended to be less orthodox in terms of Catholic or something like that. I think they were either referring to JPII, or just making a very rude comment.

[PadrePioOfPietrelcino]

OK, let me know if I got this wrong in the end.

First of all there are two kinds of rapture, depending on which protestant denomination you look at. The first kind is a Pre-tribulation rapture. this is what most people will be thinking of when they talk about the rapture. Like the left behind series it is the belief that those who are failful to Christ will be taken up to heaven befoe the tribulation as described in a literal interpretation of Revelation.

The Second kind of rapture that you find in Protestant faiths is a post-Tribulation rapture. This belief I have though somewhat aligns itself to Catholic Teaching. The post-tribulation rapture is also known as the final judgements when everyone the dead and living in Christ rise to heaven, and the evil one who don't get to heaven are cast into the lake of fire.

Now isn't it Catholic Teaching that Christ will come again, and the dead in Christ will rise again, and those still living in Christ will go bak with him? Jesus was the fist to concor death and recieve a glorified body just as we all will recieve glorified bodies.

So IF I have this correctly a "rapture" according to the second of the protestant interpretaions isn't completly off the mark, the difference is the Catholics don't believe in a tribulation as one would believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible.

Right? Wrong? I'm just tring to figure it out.

The really sad thing to me is you can't respond to the posts unless you have an acount with them, So in order to let these people know what the Church really believes, you have to pay them $30 a month so they can distort the truth some more. So you end up with a bunch of people with mis-information boosting each other's beliefsabout how wrong the truth is.

Please pray for these people, I was once among the worst of the worst of the anti-Catholic beliefs, I think Jack Chick would have been a good friend LOL, but none of us is outside of the reach of God.

Ben

Edited October 9, 2005 by PadrePioOfPietrelcino

[Guest T-Bone]

Pre-Trib Rapture = 3 comings of Christ our Lord

1. His ministry 0-30 AD

2. The Rapture (He takes up the faithful) unknown--per Jesus Himself, but preachers of this theory aren't shy about making predictions

3. The Judgment once again unknown

This is extreamly unbiblical.

[thessalonian]

PadrePioOfPietrelcino ,

The term Rapture is not a Catholic one, but I think you are correct in your first definition and in that it is consistent with Catholicism. I do think also that the Catholic Church has no problem with a final tribulation. Here is the section in the Catechism.

The glorious advent of Christ, the hope of Israel

673 Since the Ascension Christ's coming in glory has been imminent,566 even though "it is not for you to know times or seasons which the Father has fixed by his own authority."567. This eschatological coming could be accomplished at any moment, even if both it and the final trial that will precede it are "delayed".568

674 The glorious Messiah's coming is suspended at every moment of history until his recognition by "all Israel", for "a hardening has come upon part of Israel" in their "unbelief" toward Jesus.569 St. Peter says to the Jews of Jerusalem after Pentecost: "Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Christ appointed for you, Jesus, whom heaven must receive until the time for establishing all that God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old."570 St. Paul echoes him: "For if their rejection means the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance mean but life from the dead?"571 The "full inclusion" of the Jews in the Messiah's salvation, in the wake of "the full number of the Gentiles",572 will enable the People of God to achieve "the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ", in which "God may be all in all".573

The Church's ultimate trial

675 Before Christ's second coming the Church must pass through a final trial that will shake the faith of many believers.574 The persecution that accompanies her pilgrimage on earth575 will unveil the "mystery of iniquity" in the form of a religious deception offering men an apparent solution to their problems at the price of apostasy from the truth. The supreme religious deception is that of the Antichrist, a pseudo-messianism by which man glorifies himself in place of God and of his Messiah come in the flesh.576

676 The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism,577 especially the "intrinsically perverse" political form of a secular messianism.578

677 The Church will enter the glory of the kingdom only through this final Passover, when she will follow her Lord in his death and Resurrection.579 The kingdom will be fulfilled, then, not by a historic triumph of the Church through a progressive ascendancy, but only by God's victory over the final unleashing of evil, which will cause his Bride to come down from heaven.580 God's triumph over the revolt of evil will take the form of the Last Judgment after the final cosmic upheaval of this passing world.581

[Didacus]

[quote name='White Knight' date='Oct 7 2005, 01:50 PM']Hey I wasn't making fun of you are anything, I was just asking if that article was Anti-Catholic or not, if I offended you, I appoligize. 
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\Sit back, relax man. Just joking. you mean to tell me I haven't been around long enough ofr you to know I'm catholic and sticking to it!?!?



No wonder I'm still just a phatmaser...

God bless.

[Didacus]

[quote name='tomasio127' date='Oct 8 2005, 10:39 AM']I'm still disapointed about not getting to believe in the Rapture anymore. I spent seven years waiting and hoping for it to come. It's like going all through school and finding out there is no such thing as graduation....
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I know what you mean. I was soooooo disapointed when the world didn't end on the year 2000! Been paying off my debst ever since!

[thessalonian]

I heard a guy named Les Feldick (not to be confused with Lettle Les) on the radio on Saturday say there will be so few people raptured in this pre-trib deal that he doesn't even think we will notice that they are gone. But the left behind books and movies have you thinking there will trafic jams and missing person reports all over the place. They don't really know which way is up.

[thessalonian]

Just had a look at the thread. I wouldn't spend the money to answer their nonsense. They speak in ignorance. They are brought up with a "tradition" of pre-trib rapture that clouds their thinking and blinds their eyes. It is sad really. Nothing to get upset about. You have the fullness of the truth and it is truth that sets you free. Not errant traditions that nullify the word of God, making men ride the wave rather than strive for holiness. False beliefs are dead ends to faith and worse subtract from God's grace working in our lives. Praise God for the truths of the Catholic faith . Pray for their dillusional souls.

[tojo]

[quote name='Cow of Shame' date='Oct 8 2005, 07:49 PM']seriously?  how'd you end up eagerly anticipating it?
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Most Pentecostals and evangelicals do, and I was each of them. You tend to get a sense of this world being a pretty bad place, and you anxiously hope that the day Jesus comes and rescues you will be soon.

[RC_]

Aren't the "good people" taken up in the rapture, leaving the Catholics, Jews, Mormans, etc. to suffer?

Is it still a teaching of fundamentalists that one of the joys in Heaven is to watch the suffering in Hell?

[tojo]

[quote name='RC_' date='Oct 10 2005, 04:14 PM']Aren't the "good people" taken up in the rapture, leaving the Catholics, Jews, Mormans, etc. to suffer?
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Sort of. You've got to understand, Fundies don't believe that they're good, they believe that they're right. Some think that Lutherans, and Presbyterians, and maybe even some Catholics might be close enough to right to make it, that's when you start calling those fundies "Evangelicals."

[Didacus]

[quote name='tomasio127' date='Oct 10 2005, 02:35 PM']Most Pentecostals and evangelicals do, and I was each of them. You tend to get a sense of this world being a pretty bad place, and you anxiously hope that the day Jesus comes and rescues you will be soon.
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I see what you mean; you anticipate the end as a relief of present suffering.

I do believe this is very common, even in Cahtolics. I think everyone in general has had such a sentiment sometime in their lives.

[thessalonian]

The pre-trib rapture is basically a denial of "take up your cross and follow me". The wicked people go through tribulation. Not God's people. Well then how come the Apostles were martyred except for John. Why such persecution of the early Church? Persecution brings holiness. God tests like Gold tested in fire. To what end does he test? To death if need be, and he will give us the grace to pass that test if that is what he askes of us.

Heb 12

[1]
Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us,
[2] looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
[3]
Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted.
[4] In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

The call to holiness is what Christ is about for us. And this is denied as well.



Blessings

Edited October 11, 2005 by thessalonian