The very idea of the church abandoning the world in its time of need is endemic of an American Christianity that is more focused on the self than the needs of the other, more gnostic (concerned with right ideas and escapist hatred of the world and flesh that God created and called "good") than actually Christian, and hyper-focused on the hereafter to the detriment of the here and now.
I’m sorry Left Behind fans, but there is no such thing as the rapture.
The idea of a rapture never even appears on the church’s radar until it was invented in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
You would think that such a pivotal moment in the life of the church would get a least a brief mention by someone like Luther or Calvin or Aquinas or maybe Augustine. But there is only silence.
Why? Because the term "the rapture" never appears in the Bible and - most importantly - the very idea of the rapture is antithetical to the narrative of scripture. The Bible is a story about a God who journeys with people through hard times. He doesn’t pluck them out of danger.
Perhaps the most important thing to remember is that the Bible is not a road map to the future. It is the declaration that justice will be granted to the oppressed, and all things will be made new.
The full article is available here
