Rapture Panic

Fundamentalists believe that someday Jesus will come back and take all of his followers to heaven and leave everybody else on earth. When you hear about this all the time, it’s really scary. And if you come home and no one is there you think, “Maybe Jesus came back and I missed him! Maybe I’m not saved.” So the standard protocol for the fundamentalist is to call someone who they think is really holy and super religious and if they answer then you know you’re ok. The rapture hasn’t happened. It’s amazing how long it can take before you realize that’s not a healthy thing. They really kept hammering away at this, though, in my church. We watched movies about it. It was a whole series about the rapture happening and then what would happen on earth when the anti-christ comes to power. Recently, they made a series of movies with Kirk Cameron about the rapture. So if you go home one night and there is nobody there then call Kirk Cameron. If he picks up, everything’s fine. The rapture hasn’t happened yet. The anti-christ won’t come until Kirk Cameron is gone. Really, Kirk Cameron is the only thing keeping this world from breaking into chaos, which is comforting.