Rapturous Times

I believe it's today that's been slated for the Rapture.  Of course we're in a different time zone, so it may take a while.  But one must always beware of Julius Caesar's smugness---

The Ides of March are come....
Aye, Caesar, but not gone!


If, indeed, 144,000 or so extremely righteous people have been snatched up to heaven today, who are we to second-guess God?  I mean this is such a small percentage of the world's population that we might be forgiven for not noticing.  I mean, serial killers function unseen in our neighborhoods, nabbing victims and eating their livers ... and there's nary a blip on our radar.

What if all the truly righteous people in the world could be found amongst outcasts and the homeless, the unseen people who live at the periphery of society?  After all, many of them talk to God all the time and any army of psychiatrists won't convince them otherwise.  Didn't Jesus himself point out that the last should be first?

Is it possible that our friend the big American televangelical star has predicted the Rapture correctly, but arrogantly assumed that he was one of the raptured ... when he is simply too high-profile to qualify?  Pride cometh before a fall, does it not?

God works in mysterious ways.  That is a given.  "Invisibly" certainly qualifies as a "mysterious way."  Therefore it is entirely possible that the Rapture has taken place, that the real righteous, all living in total purity and utter obscurity in various hovels, caves and abandoned subway stations, have all left already for the great homeless shelter in the sky.  The rest of the world is of course now in hell, for what is hell but the absence of God?

Anyway, I'd like to believe that it came and it went, and that no one saw, and that a hundred years from now there'll be a few clues here and there to tell us happened ... a lightning scar on a tenement wall ... a wisp of cloud still clinging to the antenna on a skyscraper ... a smear of unconsumed manna on a dingy carpet ...

Of course, the Rev Camping could be wrong, and by midnight the rapturites might well be decamping.  But I don't want to abandon the idea of a divine sleight of hand.  I mean if a hunk of bread can simultaneously be the living body of a divine being, surely a normal-looking planet can also be an apocalyptic wasteland  in its spiritual essence.

I'm starting to convince even myself....