Left Behind?

I am one of the lucky ones. I only thought I missed the rapture once. I’ve had friends who thought they missed it multiple times over the years. The Rapture, as it was explained to me, is an impending event that basically outlines the return of Jesus to take His believers with Him to Heaven while the unbelievers are stuck here on earth and subjected to all sorts of consolation prizes.  

I remember when my near miss took place. In my elementary school days, I would get off the bus after school and come home to my waiting mother, eat my snack, and begin the afternoon/evening routine. On one particular day, I noticed a fair amount of people missing from our normally full school bus ride home, including one or two of my good friends. When the bus reached my stop and I exited, I noticed that the bus driver was a substitute. I exited the bus and walked home alone, which was unusual.

I should mention that my Rapture fear in those days was not so high that I was concerned about the dead leaving the cemetery or the sky being rolled up like a scroll at this point. I was simply giving a bit of attention to the fact that my after school commute was a bit askew. When I got home that day, my mother was not yet home. This was not entirely unusual, as she was a teacher and was on a similar schedule as mine, yet it gave me pause.

Home alone, I popped my favorite Christian Rock CD in the family C.D. player, cranked up some D.C. Talk (look them up) and went about my business. Halfway through the CD, my mother was still not home. Most of the way through the CD, still not home. I don’t remember now when the switch happened, but I began to get very nervous, not for her safety or mine, but that she had been taken to Heaven, and I was left on Earth. 

Panic. I had lost the ability to form rational thoughts. There quickly became no question in my mind about what happened. I must have gotten in trouble at school, or in Sunday School, or back-talked to my mom, and that was it. I was out. My children’s church pastor was right the whole time! I had gotten saved dozens of times as a kid, each time just to make sure this didn’t happen. There were systems in place! Had I asked for forgiveness the previous night? How did it come to this?! 

I can trace my fear back to three distinct scenes that, to this day, play in my head with regard to the Rapture. All three are from a video that I was shown in Sunday School as a child. The first scene I remember shows two boys that were about my age at the time sitting in the front row of pews while a preacher was explaining the importance of “being saved” and the terror of being “Left Behind.” The boys were messing around, not paying attention, when what they ought to have been doing was ensuring their ticket to Heaven got punched. Ominous music played in the background. I have no memory of what happens to the boys later in the movie, but I resonated with them; they were my age. I didn’t particularly like church in my elementary school days, and was often labelled a talker or a trouble maker by various church leaders. Was I automatically out, then? The boys in the video, their role was to prove a point that the kids who screw around while the pastor was talking may miss their opportunity to get Raptured because they weren’t listening. How’s that for a set up?

The next scene I remember shows a man mowing his yard. The camera follows him as he walks, then pans up to the sky, holds for just a few seconds, then pans back down to a - wait for it - lawnmower with no one pushing it, still running! Of course, one must ignore the simple fact that, if the man had been Raptured, there would have been no one to continue holding the little bar that engages the throttle and keeps the lawnmower running, therefore, the mower would have, for safety reasons, shut itself off. I do wish that the director would have accounted for that, because it would make the scene a little more authentic.

The final scene from that film that is etched in my brain shows a number of people standing in line, waiting to see a dark and unkempt woman at a table. She’s giving everyone tattoos. An old man makes his way to the front of the line, and when he is asked if he wants the tattoo on the arm or the forehead, he bends down and proudly requests the forehead. She tattoo stamps his head and when she lifts the stamp the Mark shows 666.

Back in my living room, I used the memories of the Rapture movie to calculate my next steps as it was clearly too late for me now. If I remembered correctly, my next move was to flee to The Hills with the other wicked folk. The Hills, those are in Colorado, right? I thought I could walk it, and maybe along the way, I could hitch a ride with some of the wicked Kings of Men? And how bad was this 666 facial tattoo going to hurt? Would they make a 9 year old get that tattoo? 

I did have, in my prepubescent hysteria, the clarity of mind to call my dad. Dad was a pastor! If he answers, I’m overreacting. He didn’t answer, and that was about it for me.

I called my Grandpa, a Navy man who taught me by example the most appropriate usage of every profane word in the English language. He taught me my first dirty joke. He used the word “goddamn” to describe almost anything, even things that he liked. Yes, he went to church and talked about Jesus as a good thing, but there’s no way he got Raptured and I did not. He’d know what to do, I thought. He could drive us to The Hills. I felt immediately better while the phone rang and I waited for my Grandpa to answer, knowing that if I was forced to be eternally separated from God, at least I would get a nice long car ride with Grandpa. 

He didn’t answer. “Goddammit!” I said out loud. Who cares, it didn’t matter anymore, so I was going to let those words fly at will. I was becoming a hardened, apathetic member of the Damned, right before my very eyes. I turned off my Christian Rock because it didn’t matter anymore either. I stepped out the front door, thinking I’d see swarms of the Lost meandering down the street, but there was no one. I was alone. More people were Saved than I thought. 

I went inside to start packing a bag and I heard the garage door open. At this moment, I was so convinced of the End of Days, that it did not cross my mind that I could be wrong, and my mom could be coming home from work. I assumed that the Unholy were breaking into my house. Imagine my shock when I saw my mother, her usual bubbly self, with groceries in tow. I didn’t mention the Rapture to her, but I was skeptical for a minute or two. Not long after, my father called back and that’s when I knew I was safe. The whole ordeal lasted probably less than 10 minutes. 

When I think of my rapture scare and the propaganda film, it has recently made me wonder whether or not the fear of the Rapture was due to the frequency and gusto with which it was presented to me, or the fact that I was presented this information at an age in which I couldn’t yet critically think, appreciate allegory, or tie my own shoes. Were the adults in my church just as afraid, or did they understand that the pastor was just trying to hype up the crowd? I’m very slow to question the Rapture, because questioning the Rapture could cause the Rapture to get angry and finally reveal itself, if for no other reason, then to put me in my place and show me whose fucking real now. While I don’t fear it, I think I still respect it, just in case everything they taught me was true.