« »

#612. Worrying about the rapture.

September 4, 2009 in guest posts with 94 Comments

(Rob Stennett is a friend of mine and he is funny. When he told me about his most recent book, The End Is Now, a satirical thriller about the rapture, I asked him to do a guest post. He had me baffled at the phrase “satirical thriller” until he reminded me that the movie Scream was a satirical horror movie. I told him he could probably get Skeet Ulrich to star in the movie of his book. Since I rarely write about the end of the world and would probably just make puns about the REM song, it seemed fitting that he covered the final countdown. I’m a big fan of Rob and think you will be too.)

Worrying about the rapture
When I was eight years old my parents showed me a movie called A Thief In The Night. This movie was incredibly frightening to watch as an eight year old because it is scarier than 7 out of 12 Friday the 13th movies. If you’ve never been lucky enough to see it let me just say it is the ultimate rapture movie, the front-runner to Left Behind and The Omega Code, A Thief In The Night did for the rapture what The Godfather did for the mafia.

My parents showed me this movie because it was based on biblical prophecy, and because some if not all the events in the movie could really happen. I was sure they were right. I’d walk home from school, hear a marching band playing the background, and grow certain the Lord was warming up and the ultimate a trumpet sound would soon blare. I distinctly remember during a couple of sunsets looking in the distance and thinking I saw The 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse. I woke up a couple of times in the middle of the night thinking I was in heaven and wondering why it looked just like my bedroom.

But I’m not alone. Worrying about the rapture is another thing Christians have liked for years. And because Christians also like their sermons delivered in three points I will give you three examples of when Christians worry about the rapture:

1) Worrying about being raptured before a major life event.
When I was eight I was scared that I’d be raptured before I got a girlfriend. I’d never had a girlfriend; never even kissed a girl. Sure, I loved heaven and Jesus but I didn’t know if they allowed girlfriends and kissing in the afterlife. So, I wanted to make sure I experienced this before I was whisked away. But that’s just the beginning. Many Christians like to worry about being raptured before graduating high school, college, getting engaged, getting married, having their first kid, having their first grandkid, and most of all before seeing their favorite sports team win the world championship. (Ask any Cubs fan what needs to happen before they get raptured. Red Sox’s fans on the other hand are safe; they can be called home at anytime now.)

2) Worrying about signs of the rapture
Many Christians have a little of the Da Vinci Code’s Robert Langdon in them. They look at the world’s events and think each event is a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is the end of the world. A Middle Eastern country gets its hands on a WMD. There’s a piece, they’ll think. South Park is syndicated into prime time. Uh oh, this is getting really interesting. Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon all passing away within 48 hours—Houston we have a problem.

3) Worrying about how the rapture is going to unfold
This has got to be a top ten-debated topic in all of Christianity. For many Christians the worries are not linked to a question of when but how when it comes to Armageddon. Will the rapture happen pre-tribulation (that is before the antichrist, marks of the beast, and war to end all wars), mid-trib (somewhere in the middle) or post-trib (once the new earth and the thousand years of peace begin). For other Christians, they like to debate not how the rapture is going to happen, but if it’s going to happen at all. “How are you so sure that the passages in Revelation mean what you think they do?” If this question comes out between two people on different sides of this issue, well get your popcorn ready. This is going to be entertaining.

At the end of the day I’d like to think that worrying about the rapture is one of the biggest contributions Christian’s have made to Hollywood. Just look at the string of apocalyptic films that have been made in the last 10 years or so: (Armageddon, Deep Impact, The Day After Tomorrow, Knowing, 12 Monkeys, 28 Days Later, and anything starring Keanu Reeves.) Some would argue these movies are destructive and cause unnecessary fear, but that’s too pessimistic for this author. I like to think maybe this is not an entirely a bad thing. Maybe if worrying about the end of the world as we know it causes us to take stock in our life on earth, then this should continue to be one of things Christians like.