PRINT ADS

Here’s a dilemma for you Christians awaiting the rapture: How are you going to leave instructions for your less-religious next of kin?

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, the “rapture” is a concept shared by many fundamentalist Christians that one day, with no warning whatsoever, Jesus will return from the heavens and gather all the true Christians up in the air and take them to heaven.

It will happen in an instant and those of us left behind will be baffled. “Where did everyone go?” we will ask. That is, we will ask such a question if we’re fortunate enough to be left behind on the ground. If we’re unfortunate enough to be in an airplane flown by a Christian pilot, we’re in big trouble, indeed.

The whole idea is based on a passage in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, in which he says that, when Christ returns, “the dead in Christ will arise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.”

Those who don’t fly away will remain in a world tested by the rise of the Anti-Christ and, finally, by the Battle of Armageddon.

If you are a Lutheran, a Catholic or an Orthodox Christian — meaning, for the most part, if you live in Southern Wisconsin — you might believe in the rapture, but your church doesn’t. So you will have to decide whether to stake your salvation on the teachings of your church or the warnings of books like “Left Behind” and “The Late, Great Planet Earth,” each of which have sold millions.

What brings all this to mind is an announcement this week of a new “Rapture e-mail service,” which promises to send a message to your unsaved loved ones a few days post-rapture.

Customers of You’ve Been Left Behind (www.you’vebeenleftbehind.com) will pay $40 a year for the service. For that, you get a mailbox with a lot of storage space for documents and personnel messages.

“The online site is run and programmed by Christians. It employs a ‘dead man’s switch’ to automatically send e-mails after the Rapture of the Church has taken place.”

So, if you truly love your unsaved spouse or child, you can send a post-rapture e-mail telling him where the key to the safe deposit box is located, the password to your credit card account and a message urging him to accept Christ while he still can.

Think this is a little silly?

The rapture is what all the recent controversy about the Rev. John Hagee, whose endorsement was rejected by Sen. John McCain, was all about. Hagee is an end-times scholar whose negative views on Catholicism and positive views toward Israel are all based on what will happen pre-and post-rapture. My guess is that McCain, who was an Episcopalian before he became a Baptist, never had a clue about the rapture when he sought Hagee’s endorsement.

There are millions of people around the world who take the idea of the rapture seriously. And there are millions of people around the world who think Paul was speaking poetically.

I confess, I’m not a rapture believer, so I’m not going to shell out $40 for the e-mail service. After all, if I’m wrong, I’m still going to be around to find my own key to the safety deposit box.

Contact Bill Wineke at bwineke@madison.com or (608) 252-6146.