When we lived in Texas, we commonly saw cars bearing the bumper-stickers saying, "In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned." (And very occasionally we would see cars belonging to the 'loyal opposition,' whose bumper-stickers read: "In case of Rapture, can I have your car?") A visiting English friend, who happens to be a noted New Testament scholar, asked us what "all this Rapture business" was all about. Pointing her to various biblical texts upon which those with an apocalyptic bent rest their convictions, she exclaimed, "People don't really BELIEVE that, do they??!" Thus spake the Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity of the University of Cambridge.
Lady Margaret Beaufort 1442-1509
But, mainstream New Testament scholars notwithstanding, the end of the world is big business. The recent reboot of the Left Behind film made $6.5 million on its debut weekend (October 3-5, 2014) http://www.leftbehindmovie.com/about/, and the the original series of 12 Rapture-related books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (Tyndale House, 1995-2007) has exceeded $75 million in sales, not counting the royalties on its various spin-offs: video games, graphic novels, children's books, and music collections.
Predictions of the precise date and time of the final apocalypse, signs by which one might identify the Anti-Christ (Barack Obama? The Pope? The United Nations?), and the fate of those who will be 'left behind' when Christian Believers are taken up bodily into heaven are matters that occupy the minds of a particular subset of American Christians. And they seem to be willing to part with substantial amounts of their hard-earned dollars to have some sense of certainty about their ultimate fate and about the signs by which they can identify the approach of the End Times.
But for most of us, the eschaton, Armageddon, the Rapture and the various predictions surrounding the Final Conflagration are simply human socio-religious curiosities. Despite the efforts of millennialists to scare the living daylights out of us (or perhaps more aptly, to scare the hell out of us), we are just not, as the new catch-phrase goes, "Rapture Ready." If we wish to be, however, there are numberless books, websites, videos, televangelists, and chat-lines that will help us prepare.
But even those who are convinced that they are "Rapture material" have certain post-Rapture needs, and a whole service-industry has gown up to meet these needs. As an animal-lover, my favorite Rapture-related service is meant to deal with Left Behind pets. After the Rapture Pet Care. ("After the Rapture, who will care for your pets?") http://www.aftertherapturepetcare.com/ is a service that identifies "Christian-owned pets," and provides a network of non-Christians (those, obviously, not destined for life everlasting) who "have agreed to rescue and care for our members’ pets if we all disappear."
Sharon Moss, who is the brains behind this service, says that she was motivated by the need for her Raptured clients to have the peace-of-mind of knowing that their stewardship of their pets will continue after they disappear. She also offers a range of rapture-related merchandise through her site to spread the word about the need of pet-related Rapture-readiness.
After the Rapture has endured a fair amount of mocking commentary since it was first established: from Believers who argue that Rapture-ready people should be spending their time trying the convert the non-Rapture-ready, not worrying about pets, and from non-Believers who claim that what Moss is doing is simply scamming the gullible. But I am not about to join in with the mockery, because Moss seems to be a happy anomaly in the world of Rapture-ready Christianity.
In Texas, where nearly 60% of inhabitants think that Jesus is returning in the near future and that they will be taken bodily from the earth before the final Tribulation, we provided foster-care for Golden Retriever Rescue, a non-profit breed rescue society that re-homed abandoned, abused and neglected dogs. http://goldenretrievers.org/
We we were up to our eyeballs in maltreated Retrievers. And when I asked myself why that should be so, it occasionally occurred to me that if you really believe that your future and the future of your children and grandchildren is not an earthly one, then your duty of care to dependent animals (as the After the Rapture Pet Care website says "It’s true God loves all animals, but there is nothing Biblical about pets being raptured.") will be diminished.
The same principle likely applies to the environment: what does it matter if the water is polluted, the air unbreathable, the ice-caps are melting? Very soon, the Raptured just won't have to worry about any of it, because they will be extracted from the Earth, leaving it to burn in the final conflagration. Neither is the plight of the poor likely to be a high priority. The Believing Poor will be Raptured; the Unbelieving Poor won't be, so what's the problem?
Rapture-readiness is not just a personal theological choice; as a life-stance it has very real consequences, personal, local, and global. On a national scale, where Rapture-ready politicians and opinion-makers are advocating public policy based on their extractionist eschatology, it bears the seeds of real disaster.
I'm not a political animal, but it does seem to me that we should be thinking about these matters when we decide who will get our votes in November. And as for Rapture-readying our pets: it is a kindness, and not to be despised.
But, mainstream New Testament scholars notwithstanding, the end of the world is big business. The recent reboot of the Left Behind film made $6.5 million on its debut weekend (October 3-5, 2014) http://www.leftbehindmovie.com/about/, and the the original series of 12 Rapture-related books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins (Tyndale House, 1995-2007) has exceeded $75 million in sales, not counting the royalties on its various spin-offs: video games, graphic novels, children's books, and music collections.
Predictions of the precise date and time of the final apocalypse, signs by which one might identify the Anti-Christ (Barack Obama? The Pope? The United Nations?), and the fate of those who will be 'left behind' when Christian Believers are taken up bodily into heaven are matters that occupy the minds of a particular subset of American Christians. And they seem to be willing to part with substantial amounts of their hard-earned dollars to have some sense of certainty about their ultimate fate and about the signs by which they can identify the approach of the End Times.
But for most of us, the eschaton, Armageddon, the Rapture and the various predictions surrounding the Final Conflagration are simply human socio-religious curiosities. Despite the efforts of millennialists to scare the living daylights out of us (or perhaps more aptly, to scare the hell out of us), we are just not, as the new catch-phrase goes, "Rapture Ready." If we wish to be, however, there are numberless books, websites, videos, televangelists, and chat-lines that will help us prepare.
But even those who are convinced that they are "Rapture material" have certain post-Rapture needs, and a whole service-industry has gown up to meet these needs. As an animal-lover, my favorite Rapture-related service is meant to deal with Left Behind pets. After the Rapture Pet Care. ("After the Rapture, who will care for your pets?") http://www.aftertherapturepetcare.com/ is a service that identifies "Christian-owned pets," and provides a network of non-Christians (those, obviously, not destined for life everlasting) who "have agreed to rescue and care for our members’ pets if we all disappear."Sharon Moss, who is the brains behind this service, says that she was motivated by the need for her Raptured clients to have the peace-of-mind of knowing that their stewardship of their pets will continue after they disappear. She also offers a range of rapture-related merchandise through her site to spread the word about the need of pet-related Rapture-readiness.
After the Rapture has endured a fair amount of mocking commentary since it was first established: from Believers who argue that Rapture-ready people should be spending their time trying the convert the non-Rapture-ready, not worrying about pets, and from non-Believers who claim that what Moss is doing is simply scamming the gullible. But I am not about to join in with the mockery, because Moss seems to be a happy anomaly in the world of Rapture-ready Christianity.
In Texas, where nearly 60% of inhabitants think that Jesus is returning in the near future and that they will be taken bodily from the earth before the final Tribulation, we provided foster-care for Golden Retriever Rescue, a non-profit breed rescue society that re-homed abandoned, abused and neglected dogs. http://goldenretrievers.org/
The same principle likely applies to the environment: what does it matter if the water is polluted, the air unbreathable, the ice-caps are melting? Very soon, the Raptured just won't have to worry about any of it, because they will be extracted from the Earth, leaving it to burn in the final conflagration. Neither is the plight of the poor likely to be a high priority. The Believing Poor will be Raptured; the Unbelieving Poor won't be, so what's the problem?
Rapture-readiness is not just a personal theological choice; as a life-stance it has very real consequences, personal, local, and global. On a national scale, where Rapture-ready politicians and opinion-makers are advocating public policy based on their extractionist eschatology, it bears the seeds of real disaster.
I'm not a political animal, but it does seem to me that we should be thinking about these matters when we decide who will get our votes in November. And as for Rapture-readying our pets: it is a kindness, and not to be despised.
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