Rapture and why I'm not bothered by it / Missu

Our imaginings is correlated to our world view.

The thought of the elect being lifted up to heaven to be met by the heavenly host is a powerful image for the Christians. This is what the elect hope for; this is the eschaton, the final event in the drama, the climax, the be and all of the faith, to be judged and to be deemed deserving of Heaven and all its glory and reward. Immortality! To infinity and beyond!

I have been looking forward to the rapture since I was converted, but upon becoming an adult, the excitement fizzled. Since then I have not lost sleep over it. As a child who was bombarded by eschatology at a young age, like most church kids, I guess,  rapture became one of those things that may not come in my lifetime like the millions other Christians who have died in anticipation of the second coming from 33AD to the present, 2017 CE. 

I have come to the to the conclusion that when it happens, it will happen, no need to lose sleep over it. Relax and plant apples as Luther advised. It’s like an earthquake (the biblical analogy is thief but there are burglar alarms and CCTV now, so an earthquake is better) if it will occur, it will, nothing we can do about it, but we can prepare for it or if one is rich enough he/she can can go live in a space station where there's no earthquake, but better be prepared for radiations. 

But it is easier to prepare for the rapture than for an earthquake. There's a formula: have faith, pray the "prayer" with tears if possible, go to  church, be a model citizen, etc., the whole ethics thing. I'm talking about the method, as to the execution, I mean, from experience, waking up on Sundays to go to church is one hell of an ordeal. 

Anyway...

I mean, this is an alternate take on it.

Another things is the idea of exclusivity. If the Roman Catholics believed that they are the elect and it so happens that they are, doesn't bother me a bit if they all go levitating towards the heaven. I'll be happy for them, maybe I'd catch a Jimi Hendrix performance with 99% people condemned to hell.

I mean, there a lot of us who will be left behind like the Mohammedans, Buddhists, Hindus, Pagans, Baptists, Methodists, etc. It could go other ways, anyways, like maybe it's the INC, or the ADD, or the Baptists, the evangelicals which ever way. But exclusivity dictates that only a group will go to heaven and to meet the Creator in rapture. If the heavenly plan is to save the world but  only about.001% of the world's population responded to the call and the 99.99% condemned, doesn't bother me at all. What is bothering is to see children dying because of wars, poverty, catastrophes, terrorism, religious fanaticism or fundamentalism, global warming, etc. 

Anyway...

We are in the information and communication technology age
an update of the image of rapture would be in digital format.

My imagination runs wild whenever the idea of rapture is mentioned behind the pulpit. Would the elect be literally or physically lifted up to heavens in flesh and blood? How about those who are inside buildings, wouldn’t the roof prevent them from hovering up?  Their faces being squashed by the levitating force versus the solidity of the ceilings , etc.

Of course it could be that elect will become porous like Flash who has the ability to go through walls by vibrating his molecules at a certain frequency blah, blah, blah This could very well be, the atom of elect's physical bodies' vibrating through some mystical divine physics are able to pass through material obstacles, even lead lined ceilings like in nuclear missile control centers, there are elects there, surely.

Or the elect could be teleported a la Star Trek. Picture you are talking to friend, who is an elect (of course you already know that because he belongs to a certain church), and then the rapture occurred, suddenly he is disintegrating before your eyes as molecules and atoms in binary bits vaping into God knows where. I guess the heavenly host could use quantum entanglement principle in using this method.

I am not making fun of any doctrines here but these are the actual thought process that happens in my head during sermons. I try to turn it off but there’s no switch.

But has anybody theologized or theorized about the rapture methods? Naahhhh…I guess it’s useless to speculate about these things.

Of course to the reverends, these are childish stuffs because for them what the Bible says, is what the Bible say. I mean they are not enamored by the idea of splitting atoms and manipulating the time-space fabric. They are more into the adult and spiritually important matter like splicing the soul from the spirit.

By the way, I'm a Southern Baptist, I just like to make fun of these things. Hehehehee

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Okay. Read the analyses and have even given my own take on the Q and A to add to the multitudes of armchair beauty experts, like me. I guess it’s easy and natural to analyse and give opinions about what happened in hindsight, it’s easy to fault Maxine, our Miss Universe bet. But after the initial moments of disappointment, when the smoke cleared up, she is still our Miss Universe and she did her best. If I were in her shoes, I would be still thinking about the last words of the question, my head still conjuring up thoughts and words to express them, I think I would have only said “Bonsai” before the timer rang.