Orthodox, not Rapture-ready

This short e-booklet is a criticism of the belief in the Rapture, and by implication also of premillennialism. The author is a member of the Orthodox Church in America, and the criticism is therefore offered from an Eastern Orthodox perspective. John Peck and Barnabas Powell argues that neither the Bible, the Nicene Creed nor the Church Fathers mention the Rapture. Nobody believed in such a thing until the 19th century. Therefore, the belief quite simply must be wrong. While the authors are probably right that Paul didn't teach a “secret Rapture” of the kind popularized by modern Protestant fundamentalism, they runs into other problems. Thus, they quote the Church Father Irenaeus and clearly regard him as a legitimate source of authority. Yet, Irenaeus believed in the millennium, a viewpoint Peck and Powell regard as heretical! Here we see the problem with the Orthodox view: there simply isn't a united “tradition” to begin with. And since there isn't, it's not *completely* out of the question that something forgotten for centuries might have been rediscovered by 1812… That being said, I nevertheless give this short exposition three stars, since it gives a good overview of what I take is the official Orthodox position on the matter.