Zack Hunt - Unraptured: How End Times Theology Gets It Wrong

[A] piquant debut.... Hunt, who has a masters degree in Christian history from Yale Divinity School, demonstrates scholarly expertise on the apocalypse, but also makes the book accessible to the lay reader through his personal stories, sense of humor, and casual, conversational tone. Readers eager to learn more about biblical prophecies for the end times will appreciate this informed take.

Publishers Weekly

Thoughtful, entertaining, carefully researched, and rapturously (sorry) readable, Unraptured manages to be both personally edifying and culturally relevant. With some of the most powerful people in the world making decisions based on speculative end-times theology, we need better stories about what it means for Gods will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. Zack Hunt is the perfect storyteller for the moment.

Rachel Held Evans, author of Searching for Sunday and Inspired

Zack Hunt leads us on a behind-the-scenes tour of the apocalypse industry, with its many failed predictions and false promises. Thankfully, he also leads us back outside, raising significant questions about the Bibles teachings and prophecies. Unraptured is an important book that is going to spark some overdue conversations among religious Americans. Read it now so you wont feel, well, left behind!

Jonathan Merritt, author of Learning to Speak God from Scratch and contributor to The Atlantic

Zack Hunts exploration of evangelical Americas obsession with the end times is a wake-up call for believers to break free from their doctrine of rescue and embrace a faith that resists the excuses, limitations, and assumptions that come with bad theology. Hunts skill as both a writer and a theologian shines in Unraptured , an offering thats as important as it is entertaining.

Matthew Paul Turner, author of When God Made You and Our Great Big American God

To those unfamiliar with conservative evangelical culture: be prepared to be thoroughly entertained by the idiosyncrasies of this subculture and gain an accessible breakdown of why many obsess over apocalyptic prophecies. To those of us who did grow up in this culture: you will both laugh and cry over our shared shenanigansblissful catharsis awaits you. Woven through the humor is a poignant faith story and a hopeful retelling of the rapture mythology that is sorely needed for this time.

Cindy Wang Brandt, author of Parenting Forward

I feel so seen, Zack Huntand understood, exposed, challenged, awakened, and invited. Thank you for writing this book. Hopefully everyone who holds it in their hands right now will be as transformed as I was.

Carlos A. Rodrguez, author of Drop the Stones and founder of HappySonship.com

For almost a decade, Ive watched Zack Hunt use wit, humor, and common sense to poke and prod the church toward action. I cant count how many times I slow clapped while reading this book!

Jimmy Spencer, founder of Glocal, a social impact marketplace

This is an apocalypse book, and this is a prophetic book. But this is not an apocalyptic prophecy book, and thats a very, very good thing. Zack Hunt writes with the perfect combination of scholarship, personality, and humor. Set aside your color-coded end-times charts and pick up this book instead.

Jason Boyett, author of Pocket Guide to the Apocalypse and other books

Ive never read a book thats so warm, smart, funny, wise, and relatable to my own fear-filled experiences growing up in evangelical subculture. If I had a DeLorean time machine, Id ship Unraptured back to my younger self, knowing itd save me from so much of the fear and self-doubt thats still nestled in my chest today. This is an absolute must-read for anyone trying to make sense of end-times theology.

Caleb Wilde, author of Confessions of a Funeral Director

Zack Hunt could have been an honorary general in the tribulation force. Instead, he has vulnerably and humbly shared his journey from an end-times know-it-all to a theology nerd guided by the peaceful kingdom of God. Readers who grew up with the anxiety of the end times will find Hunt a delightful, winsome guide to a book of the Bible that can be perplexing. Never forsaking his Nazarene roots, love for theology, or penchant for a solid punchline, Hunt offers a disarming insider critique of end-times theology by pointing to a more hopeful and indisputably less terrifying explanation of the end times.

Ed Cyzewski, author of Flee, Be Silent, Pray

Zack Hunt has brilliantly put to words the stories of so many of us who grew up in a part of evangelicalism that was obsessed with being ready for the rapture. He has given voice to why many of us have left behind that theology for something more hopeful and biblical. May those who read Unraptured be enraptured in Gods love, revealed by Revelations slaughtered Lamb!

Kurt Willems, lead pastor at Pangea Church and resource curator at TheologyCurator.com

Herald Press

PO Box 866, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22803

www.HeraldPress.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Hunt, Zack, author.

Title: Unraptured : how end times theology gets it wrong / Zack Hunt.

Description: Harrisonburg : Herald Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical

references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018045972| ISBN 9781513804156 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN

9781513804163 (hardcover : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Rapture (Christian eschatology) | Eschatology.

Classification: LCC BT887 .H87 2019 | DDC 236--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045972

UNRAPTURED

2019 by Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia 22803. 800-245-7894.

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018045972

International Standard Book Number: 978-1-5138-0415-6 (paperback);

978-1-5138-0417-0 (ebook); 978-1-5138-0416-3 (hardcover)

Printed in United States of America

Cover and interior design by Reuben Graham

All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in whole or in part, in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without prior permission of the copyright owners.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture text is quoted, with permission, from the New Revised Standard Version, 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America.

Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.

Scriptures marked (KJV) are from the King James Version.

23 22 21 20 19 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Kim,
who opened my eyes to a bigger and better world
than I ever could have imagined on my own

Foreword

I t would happen at sunset: of this I felt certain.

My childhood home sat atop one of those little speed bumps of a mountain just outside the city of Birmingham, Alabama. Our front porch offered a premium view of I-59, the Birmingham airport, and, I believed, the impending rapture. I always imagined Jesus appearing in a glorious sky of pink and orange, flanked by a row of angels whose trumpets would herald his arrival so loudly it would shake the ground. My family would dash out of the house to the front porch just in time to see the bodies of all the Christians in Birmingham floating toward the clouds like untethered balloons. Then a flash of light would take us with them to heaven.