Unraptured: How End Times Theology Gets It Wrong

the ironic thing about learning. The more you know, the more you realize how much you don’t know.

The New Jerusalem isn’t a goal as much as it is a way of life that is about to dawn on earth.

Jesus can also be considered a prophet, as well as folks like John the Baptist and even the John who wrote the book of Revelation. Biblical prophets weren’t fortune- tellers. They were prophetic because they called on the people of God to repent and demanded justice for the oppressed.

Myths have a power to convey truth that literal events don’t always have.

apocalypse is fundamentally about truth-telling, not fortune-telling.

Augustine and the Jewish tradition regard Genesis as true. How can that be? The answer lies in liberating ourselves from the need for something to be literally or historically true in order for it to convey or contain truth.

having the same mind as Christ doesn’t mean believing the exact same ideas as everyone in the pew next to us. It means pursuing the same way of life, the same sort of faithfulness to God’s calling that Jesus embodied.

We’re called to love people more than we love being right, but being right theologically rather than being in right relationship with our neighbor has become the defining identity of the church.

Here lies the ultimate problem with end-times theology: it values prophecy more than people.