I wrote the following post on May 22, 2011.
These two dogs have been at this gate all day long.
The dogs belong to my next door neighbor, Mary, and her new husband, Chris. My neighbors are very religious people.
Now most of you know I am not religious. I answer to "agnostic" or "atheist" or "lapsed Catholic". I was brought up Catholic, but we all know that Catholics don't really read the bible, so I never really gave a lot of credence to this "Rapture" business in the first place.
(In fact, I thought the word "rapture" was used exclusively to describe something about one's sex life until very recently.)
But now I'm a little concerned. I have not seen hide nor hair of Mary or Chris all day. Their cars are in the driveway. The dogs have been standing at the gate forlornly since we got up this morning.
I realize that the predicted earthquakes and such have not occurred, at least not as of now. There was a blip on the screen today about a volcano getting ready to erupt in Iceland and that could be related, but I'm not sure. There were also exploding watermelons in China last week if memory serves and that also could be a sign that things are getting ready to pop, so to speak.
Mary has spoken to me about the Rapture in the past. I did have to tell her that I really wasn't religious so it wasn't a concern to me. Sweetly, she offered to pray for me and for Alex too. (He may even be more of a heathen than I am, by the way.)
I have seen all of my other neighbors around today, but most of them are relatively sinful people as far as I can tell. Actually, I have no way of knowing how sinful they are or aren't, but I'm just projecting my own failings on to them. I'm not proud of myself for wondering if I could help myself to Mary's gorgeous sterling tea service if she's gone. I mean, it would be a sin to have it just sit there in an empty house, wouldn't it?
I wonder if I should go next door and feed those dogs.
And did they vome back? Are the dogs fed? How is that tea service?
ReplyDelete/ Good Blog, Linda. See this? It was spotted on the amazing web. /
ReplyDeleteCatholics Did NOT Invent the Rapture !
Many assert
that the "rapture" promoted by evangelicals was first taught, at least
seminally, by a Jesuit Catholic priest named Francisco Ribera in his
16th century commentary on the book of Revelation.
To see what is claimed, Google "Francisco Ribera taught a rapture 45 days before the end of Antichrist's future reign."
After seeing this claim repeated endlessly on the internet without even
one sentence from Ribera offered as proof, one widely known church
historian decided to go over every page in Ribera's 640-page work
published in Latin in 1593.
After laboriously searching for the
Latin equivalent of "45 days" ("quadraginta quinque dies"), "rapture"
("raptu," "raptio," "rapiemur," etc.) and other related expressions, the
same scholar revealed that he found absolutely nothing in Ribera's
commentary to support the oft-repeated claim that Ribera taught a prior
(45-day) rapture! (Since the same scholar plans to publish his complete
findings, I am not at liberty to disclose his name.)
Are you
curious about the real beginnings of this evangelical belief (a.k.a. the
"pre-tribulation rapture") merchandised by Darby, Scofield, Lindsey,
Falwell, LaHaye, Ice, Van Impe, Hagee and many others?
Google
"The Unoriginal John Darby," "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," "X-Raying
Margaret," "Edward Irving is Unnerving," "Walvoord Melts Ice," "Thomas
Ice (Bloopers)," "Wily Jeffrey," "Deceiving and Being Deceived" by D.M.,
"The Real Manuel Lacunza," "Roots of Warlike Christian Zionism,"
"Pretrib Rapture Politics," "Pretrib Hypocrisy," "Famous Rapture
Watchers," and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty" - most of these by the
author of the 300-page nonfiction book "The Rapture Plot," the highly
endorsed and most accurate documentation on the long hidden historical
facts of the 182-year-old pre-tribulation rapture theory imported from
Britain during the late 19th century.