It’s Not Just War, it’s Rapture
EndTimes for Trump and the GOP
BY BRENDA PETERSON, author of I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth
While most reporting on the Israel-Iran war is political or military, many white evangelicals greet this Mideast war as a sign of “End Times.” They fervently cheer on the bombs, the nuclear threats, the broken cease-fire as the final fulfillment of Biblical prophecy from the bogus “Left Behind” beliefs that dominated America’s duck-and-cover drills and still inform Far-Right believers.
Called “pre-millennialists,” these Christians believe that after being swept up with God in the Rapture, those left behind will endure seven years of Tribulations. Then Christ will return to earth to bind Satan and establish a literal kingdom to reign in peace for one thousand years. In Rapture prophecy, particularly Ezekiel 38 and 39, “Persia” (Iran) will align with “Gog” (Russia) to invade Israel, hopefully triggering Armageddon.
Growing up in the South in a Far Right tradition that expected, even longed for, the “Rapture,” I didn’t expect this Left Behind prophecy would find me in liberal Seattle. But as I sat with my neighbor, George, on our backyard beach, he caught me off guard.
“WITH 9/11, the blessed countdown for the Rapture has begun,” George informed me almost casually.
George and I sat perched on driftwood keeping keep watch on the vulnerable pups as part of our Seal Sitters citizen naturalists.
“Hmmmmm,” I whispered. “Hand me the binoculars, will you?”
This pup was about two feet long, round and robust, its speckled fur camouflaged against the rocky beach. It was breathing regularly, with no yellow discharge from its mouth or nose — all good signs. Suddenly, a foghorn moaned in baritone blasts, and the seal pup shuddered. He lifted his head, his tiny ear slits opened wide, listening.
“That’s how it’ll happen, you know,” George said quietly. There was a note of triumph in his tone. “The trumpets will sound, and we’ll be lifted up far away from here.”
For a moment I considered not engaging in this loopy, no-exit dialogue. But we had a lot of time and a seal pup on our hands. After a particularly chill and rain-soaked winter, spring seemed a resurrection with its blizzards of cherry blossoms along our boardwalk, its tulip trees and bursting purple and scarlet rhododendron bushes. God on acid.
“Listen, George” I began. “Why are you so . . . well . . . cheerful about the end of the Earth?”
This gave him a moment’s pause. Then he said, with some chagrin, “You can’t blame us born-agains for wanting at last to get our heavenly rewards. We’ve waited thousands of years.”
His dark eyes flashed a familiar fire I’d seen in preachers’ faces at the summer tent revivals of my childhood. “Why would you want this world to end, George? What’s the hurry?”
I could see that my neighbor was now studying me as if I were the seal pup, as if he had already passed me in the slow sinner’s lane on the freeway to the Apocalypse. “The hurry is that right now we see signs and wonders proving that the End Times are upon us,” George insisted. “We’ve got holy wars, globalization, Israel’s military power, Iran’s nuclear bomb plans, and even global warming.” This last sign he pronounced brightly, as if our global climate was gleefully graduating into a hot time in the old world.
I wanted out of the conversation. I felt claustrophobic in the tight grip of my neighbor’s End-Times intensity. Oddly, I wondered if my restlessness was like the anxiety white evangelicals seem to feel about the whole world, as if they are trapped by the original gravity of their sins. Perhaps to the Rapture hopefuls, the Earth’s fall into global warming signals that our world has become what they always suspected — hell, the “fire next time.” Perhaps their Rapture prophecy is a kind of biblical lullaby to calm their environmental terrors. As one of my relatives assured me, “There are no drowning polar bears and melting ice caps where I’m going.”
It struck me that being “raptured” out of this world trumped the insecurity of living and the surrender of dying. No bodily indignity. No suffering. One is simply whisked off with the fellowship of the believers, the Rapture gang, to a heavenly and just reward. In the twinkling of an eye, they say, the righteous will ascend, dropping golden dental work, nightgowns, and perhaps some spouses. Unless you count losing the Earth and billions of unfortunate sinners who cling to it, getting raptured is a blast. Who wouldn’t want to escape the prophesied plagues of locusts, pandemics, an Earth overwhelmed by tsunamis, nomadic legions of the unsaved, and environmental evacuees?
“Sandwich, George?” I rummaged in my backpack for a pimento cheese sandwich.
My neighbor shook his head. His hunger was spiritual. Not to be put off, he told me, “I’m afraid you’ll have a rough time of it here during the Tribulations.”
“Don’t you love any of us who will suffer in those tribulations?” I asked. “Those of us you leave behind?”
George took my arm a little too tightly. “But you could come with us, you know.” George was closing in, just as surely as the tide was rising, surf coming closer to our seal pup’s small, whiskered snout. I politely disengaged. Excitedly George pulled his laptop out of his backpack.
“I’m sending you this link,” George said. “It’s the home page for the non-raptured.”
Squinting in the morning marine light, I could barely make out the computer screen, which read: “Inheriting from the Raptured.” A very official last will and testament followed: “Contact your saintly friends now. Offer to let them use the convenient form below to keep their fiscal assets from slipping into the hands of Satan’s One World Government agents.”
“But, George,” I protested, “this site isn’t serious.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s joking,” George insisted, “it will still work.”
I saw that the will had blank signature lines marked “Infidel Witness #1” and “Infidel Witness #2.” “
George was completely serious. Then I remembered I had seen his car boasting a new bumper sticker: “In case of Rapture, this car will be unmanned.” I had wanted to tell him that I was going to get a new bumper sticker too: “In case of Rapture, can I have your car?”
Now here he was, my dear neighbor, actually signing me up to inherit his worldly possessions — his world. I was strangely touched. With a pang I realized that while some End-Timers may not have the stamina and constancy for compassion, for “suffering with,” many, like George and my family, feel real concern for the infidel loved ones they will abandon. And watching George’s expectant face, I reminded myself that his spiritual stewardship, like that of some other evangelicals, did include other species and the natural world.
“Oh, look,” George exclaimed in a whisper and snapped shut his laptop. “He’s up!”
George and I tracked the seal pup’s every move — and now there were many. Repeatedly, he lifted his head and hind flippers to scan the waves and beach, then scratched, scooted, rolled over, and gave a long, leisurely yawn. Was the pup certain his mother would return? Was George this sure of the Second Coming?
“Anytime now,” George murmured, “the mother will return. That’s my favorite part.”
And then I understood something about my neighbor and about myself. All of us know what it feels like to wait for someone to call, to finally come home, to recognize our love, to reunite with those of us who long for something more, something greater than ourselves. Maybe it will come in the night, in that twinkling of an eye. Maybe it will save us from a lonely beach.
As if in answer to our longing, a glossy head popped up far out in the waves. The seal pirouetted to find her pup on the beach. George and I sat absolutely still, hardly breathing. A soft cooing call from the mother. The pup fairly leapt up, flippers unfurling like wings.
“Ah, you’re safe now, buddy,” George sighed, as the seal pup slipped into the waves and swam as fast as his tiny flippers could carry him back to his mother. There was tranquility in George’s face, a sweet calm.
“You’re a really good neighbor, George,” I told him. “We would all miss you so much if you zipped up to heaven. We’d all say, ‘Well, there goes the neighborhood!’”
George took the compliment in stride. Along with seal sitting, he also participates in our neighborhood block watch. He is someone I might call upon in an emergency, unless, of course, that emergency was the Rapture.
“I’ll miss you,” George admitted, “and . . . and all this, too.”
“You know George,” I said softly, “I really want to be left behind.”
My neighbor looked at me thoughtfully and then fell quiet as we watched another harlequin float past, bright beak dripping a tiny fish. Happy, so happy in this moment. The great blue cawed hoarsely and stood on one leg in a fishing meditation. Wave after bright wave lapped our beach, and the sunset glowed on our faces. We sat in silence, listening to waves more ancient than our young, hasty species, more forgiving than our religions, more enduring. Rapture.
Bio: Brenda Peterson is the author of over 20 books, including Duck and Cover, a New York Times “Notable Book of the Year,” the memoir, I Want to Be Left Behind: Finding Rapture Here on Earth and her new book, Wild Chorus: Finding Harmony with Whales, Wolves, and Other Animals, just awarded a gold medal from Independent Publishers Program for “Save the Planet.” This essay is adapted from her memoir and was excerpted in Orion magaine. www.BrendaPetersonBooks.com
