Prepare Again: Rapture is Coming

The money made telling the imaginary story of the Rapture has supported an army of preachers, authors and pundits. Every year or two someone has become famous by stating the year or day the Rapture will happen. When it did not, the money collected was not returned.

Now, a popular preacher is lampooning those who predict the date of the Rapture. But he sees $ in talking it up anyway. Why should we believe Jesus will float down and his faves will float up with him? Because, the link author says, it gives people "hope."

Hope? Hope for what? As time moves along the "what" is guaranteed in the Bible gets a little more vague. Back a few years, the dead body needed to be buried complete because otherwise how would one's relatives recognize the person in heaven? Now that's no longer a thing. Apparently now every soul has a bar code so you will know which souls singing in heaven are your dead relatives. Which reminds me to ask, do the souls singing in heaven have separate parts the soprano, alto, tenor and bass?

The entire thing about the afterlife keeps moving around in the conservative part of Christianity. At the highest levels of religious study, such as the Departments of Religions at large universities, the afterlife has, so I understand, has left the building. I remember being surprised so 40 years ago to read in the Wall Street Journal a comment from a professor of religion. He said no department of religion in any major university teaches that there is a literal afterlife.  

The Rapture and the afterlife, however, remain technics to play with the minds of the vulnerable. Religion in the U.S. is a business and getting people to part with their money is what business does.