In the article Who Gets Left Behind? the folks at Christianity Today suggest the Rapture Ready have got it all back the front, that its the unrepentant who get taken away on the Day of the Lord and that its the repentant who get left behind. Drawing attention to Matthew 24-25 they highlight how Jesus himself indicated as such when speaking of Noah. I’ve long thought this goes a long way towards explaining the different environmental leanings of different Christian traditions.
A bit slow to the party here, but it is a given that your eschatology shapes the rest of your theology, especially your attitude to God’s Creation and all that it contains. If you really tink that the goal of life is to escape “this vale of tears” then caring for the world is irrelevant at best and a waste of time at worst. If, on the other hand, you believe that Jesus meant it when he said “the Kingdom is at hand” and that the image in Revelation of the New Jerusalem coming down to Earth shows that this world will ultimately be fully transformed into the Kingdom of God and of his Christ, then anything we do to care for the Creation is Kingdom-building.
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