The complexity of apocalyptic theory continues to astound me. Actually, I don’t know if complexity is the right word. Inanity, maybe? Specifically, let’s talk about the Rapture. The Rapture is a concept based off a single line in the New Testament: 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17:

For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first:

Then we which are alive [and] remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.

Anyway, this has been responsible for a whole bunch of assholes cooking up this half-witted theory about when Jesus returns, all the righteous Christians are going to be sucked up into Heaven, like God was wielding some immense vaccuum cleaner. (PS. Jeremy made an excellent Pop Tarot card on the Rapture).

So right, as if this weren’t a stupid enough belief, people take this and make it even more complicated. I couldn’t imagine a more pointless debate than this, but literalists like to sit around and debate exactly when the Rapture will come. Actually, no. Not exactly when, but relative to other events described in Christian eschatology (study of the end times). One other aspect of end-times tomfoolery is this idea of the Tribulation. The Tribulation is supposed to be a seven year period of intense suffering on earth. Since none of the canonical or non-canonical texts are meant to be read completely literally, they are all extremely vague. The Tribulation really is not even believed in by all Christians (because it’s stupid). Anyway, editorializing aside, there are three schools of thought which discuss when the Rapture will happen in relation to the Tribulation:

1. Pretribulationists believe that all Christians then alive will be taken bodily up to heaven (called the rapture or Parousia) before the Tribulation begins. Those who become Christians after the rapture will live through (or perish during) the Tribulation. After the Tribulation, Christ will return.
2. Midtribulationists believe that the rapture of the faithful will occur halfway through the tribulation, after it begins but before the worst part of it occurs.
3. Posttribulationists believe that Christians will not be taken up into heaven until Christ returns at the end of the Tribulation. In pretribulationism and midtribulationism, the rapture and the Second Coming (or Greek, paraousia) of Christ are separate events; while in posttribulationism the two events are identical.

To me, this kind of debate is of tantamount importance to sitting around and theorizing about what kind of underwear Jar Jar Binks wears: boxer, briefs, boxer-briefs… or bikini? And yet thousands of man-hours seem to be wasted on this. The most popular viewpoint nowadays seems to be Pretribulationism or “Pre-trib” as it is called for short. Sites like Rapture Ready say that the pre-trib Rapture is the only one which would be a complete and utter surprise. They call it “imminency” and act like it’s some kind of irrefutable fact - never mind (just for the sake of argument) if we did enter the Tribulation, we wouldn’t necessarily know it.

Anyway, this stuff drives me fucking bonkers. Here’s another exceptional quote from Rapture Ready which I think summarizes the poor quality of thought that goes into these types of arguments:

One of my key reasons for believing in the pre-tribulation rapture is the fact all other views are always trying to undermine pre-tribulationism.

What kind of argument is that? It’s laughable. That’s like saying that the reason I stabbed myself in the neck was because everybody said it would hurt me. GUESS WHAT! IT WILL! Sometimes (though not all the time) when everybody is criticizing what you think is right, there’s a good reason: it’s WRONG!

It’s also funny because in this same article, the author accuses other people of advocating the equivalent of a flat earth theory. And here they are, running a website about how people are going to be sucked up into the sky so Jesus can hug them! All this and then there’s an article elsewhere warning people not to get mixed up in dangerous cults. Hilarious!