Seriously. As ABC News reports, a 49-year-old supermarket shelf-stocker from Cape Cod has come up with a brilliant idea: A website called Youvebeenleftbehind.com which enables the saved to store e-mails and documents that will be sent to up to 63 e-mail addresses six days after Jesus returns in glory in the rapture.
As a convert to Catholicism who was raised on films like the 1972 classic, “Thief in the Night,” I am sensitive to this story, knowing that as a Catholic, I am toast, but also resenting the fact that I didn’t think of this idea first. In fact, I’ve always resented the success of the Tim LaHaye-Jerry Jenkins “Left Behind” series and the fact that the “Thief in the Night” folks and Moody Bible Institute got nuthin’. They came up with it first. Well, after the Darbyites.
But this also raises serious questions: Like, is the website’s inventor, Mark Heard, premillennial, and so he’s giving his friends and loved ones a second chance? Or is he postmillennial and just engaging in a bit of born-again schadenfreude? It appears to be the former, as he bills this as the last chance to “snatch them from the flames.” Or have I got those end times scenarios mixed up? (No wonder I had to convert. Transubstantiation is easier.) What about the simpler problems. Like, what if you are a poor soul without an internet connection? Or, God forbid, dial-up? Or what if your server blocks the email as spam?!
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posted June 26, 2008 at 10:06 am
It’s even funnier because Rapture Theology isn’t the predominant teaching for most of the world’s Christians. So, only American Evangelicals will probably take it seriously. Amillenialists will just snicker at how ridiculous the concept is.
But, kudos for a clever gimmick.
posted June 26, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Well, in a certain sense, isn’t this guy really banking on a universal human urge that is previous to all theological questions? Yes, that’s right. The urge of all those whose views have been dismissed over the years to say “I told you so!” Because really what is there to say after the rapture? “Wish you were here.” ?
posted June 27, 2008 at 4:09 pm
I grew up Catholic & was an altar boy for years, back in the days of Dominus vobiscum. I’m no longer involved in any religious activities , but I have good memories of caring & respected priests , & Latin Masses we could whip through real fast on a hot day !! I think it is important to keep in mind the fact that from all the myriad theologies throughout history , there is only one verifiable truth. It is summed up nicely in the verse “Remember man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return.”