Definition of Irony: why “end times” believers might actually trigger the end times

 "If we believe the world is getting progressively worse until the end comes, we will be a people who start behaving that way. If we start behaving that way, we’ll stop investing into long-term multi-generational ways to improve society. If we stop investing into the future and capitulate to our own crappy theology, well… We might see our belief come true."

September 11, 2013 

Benjamin L. Corey, a theologian/missiologist, writer, and commentator.

http://www.formerlyfundie.com/end-times-believers/ 

Like many of you, I grew up as an end-times believer.

I mean pre-tribulation rapture, antichrist, battle of Armageddon, and the whole nine yards.

While other kids were thinking about where they were going to go to college, I was worried that the rapture would come before I had sex.

Or worse, that I would actually have sex but that the rapture would happen while I was having sex… and well, that would certainly be disappointing and awkward all at the same time.

Thankfully, none of that happened. Even better is the fact that it’s not going to, because the rapture is a hoax.

Walking away from a belief in the “end times” and all the baggage that comes with it wasn’t easy. Strangely enough, it was actually quite frightening to let go of such a pessimistic view of the future in lieu of a healthy, optimistic, eschatology. You’d think such a trade would be easy, but it wasn’t.

Back in 2007, my wife took me on a weekend get-away to Boston because she wanted me to meet her friend Joe who had done two master’s at Gordon-Conwell and was getting ready to do his PhD in Theology at the University of Aberdeen. She was hoping that introducing us would gently prod me into going to seminary, but at least temporarily, the plan backfired.

The conversation with Joe went great, until he started talking about the rapture being a joke. I still remember walking back to the car when we left dinner, telling my wife what a heretic the guy was… shocked that she would have friends like that. I mean, he was only a theologian who went to one of the top seminaries in the world, and I was a punk who went to Word of Life and Liberty University… so what did he know? (flash forward: he’s now one of my best mates)

The world was ending and the rapture was imminent, I steadfastly believed.

Until I didn’t anymore.

When I ended up in seminary, no less than a week went by before I realized that end-times believers were actually the minority in Christianity and believed an entire worldview that wasn’t in the Bible (go look– there’s no falling planes, no taxi cabs going off the road, no scenes where millions of people missing… it’s NOT there. I can’t even refute a passage about it, because there aren’t any passages to refute.)

Ultimately, I realized that while everyone else had been busy improving the world, I had wasted my time...READ MORE