- WHAT I THINK OF YOUR RAPTURE, PAL

Jesus never used the term Rapture anywhere in the Bible. Christ forbids Christians from praying in church and in public; see for yourself in Matthew 6-5. What are ‘Christian’ fundamentalists up to, flouting His direct instruction, perverting Christianity and turning potential believers away in disgust?

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LEARNER full text (2024) and chapters

All or nothing, PeaceWorld or death

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APPRENTI texte integral (2024) et chapitres

Tout ou rien, Le monde paisible ou la mort

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WORLD WAR COVID
From WeaponWorld to PeaceWorld
Learner, begin

- WHAT I THINK OF YOUR RAPTURE, PAL -

The word “Rapture” cannot be found either in modern versions of the Bible or in its ”original” versions, as far as I can tell. A few biblical allusions reflect something vaguely similar (like 1 Thessalonians 4: check out Paul’s typical murkiness) — but nothing clear enough for praiseworthy prophecy. It was never serious biblical scholarship. Yet a few fanatics have overblown it into vicious wish fulfillment to ambush the faithful.

“Rapture”: that sounds a lot like being caught up, the way raptors catch mice: in essence, what happens to innocent believers caught up in this BS. 

Jesus said He did not know the hour of His Return, only His Father did. He warned us of false prophets who would dare predict it (Mark 13). No-one can foretell His arrival until it’s obvious to everyone at once.

Stage a train wreck and call it Good News. Shove as many innocents aboard as you can, to their doom. Whether or not you favor such dirty tricks, you filthy fundamentalists, I choose another way.

Matthew 23 in the King James Bible 

…

36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

38 For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark,

39 And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

40 Then shall two be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

41 Two women shall be grinding at the mill; the one shall be taken, and the other left.

42 Watch therefore: for ye know not what hour your Lord doth come.

43 But know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched, and would not have suffered his house to be broken up.

44 Therefore be ye also ready: for in such an hour as ye think not the Son of man cometh.

45 Who then is a faithful and wise servant, whom his lord hath made ruler over his household, to give them meat in due season?

46 Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing.

47 Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.

48 But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming;

49 And shall begin to smite his fellow servants, and to eat and drink with the drunken;

50 The lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of,

51 And shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Much of the Rapture unfolded in the first two weeks. Afterwards, it purred along here and there, now and then, as people Disappeared by ones and twos….

At first, it was only earsplitting preachers, televised evangelists and radio sermonizers who Disappeared. The New Year began on a Sunday. Most airwaves lapsed into dead air, as radio sermons and media preachifiers fell silent mid-pomposity. TV test patterns quietly replaced nonstop pulpit rants for more cash, bigotry and exclusion in the name of Christ. 

Many churches emptied when their preacher Disappeared. Congregations fled in panic. Only later on did they realize what they had fled from. Then they came back and prayed with growing fervor but dwindling numbers. Many stayed and stayed, prayed and prayed; all in vain. Only a few were Chosen to Disappear.

You see, the Chosen had to have special tendencies. First, they had to preen and crow their own salvation. Secondly, dream of casting the rest of humanity into Perdition’s dark pit without a second's hesitation or remorse. Thirdly, foretell Christ’s near Return, which prophesy Christ said wasn’t possible even for Him, much less for some wolf in sheep’s clothing, some mortal blasphemer brandishing a Bible. 

Only God knows the time of His Son’s Return and only God can pronounce it. Christ spoke this truth categorically — no mere human can deny it.

Jesus told us that God will forgive every sin except blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the Comforter He left us pending His Return (could that be the knowledge of good and evil?). What else do you think that could be, if not this denial? Only sociopaths (the socially sick, in Greek) could contemplate such a thing. Dread their words and shun them.

As for the Exile of the Jews and their Return to the Promised Land: well, that had already come about many times in the past (BURNING LIBRARIES) and could do so again during the next few thousand years, God willing; or else never again. In either case, no dependable sign there, of His Return. 

False prophets! On your knees before your congregants and beg them forgiveness for your obvious lie strictly forbidden in the Bible! The rest of you, lambs of God, do not heed their blasphemy! Prepare for His Return at any time (like a thief in the night), but be never again deceived by empty clamor of His imminence.

It was difficult for most people to reconcile Jesus' injunctions to love your enemy, your neighbor as yourself and to die for your friends, with the idea that most eternal souls were expendable refuse. That kind of discrimination took pretentious vision, fanatical leadership skills, immense heartlessness and a giant ego: only a few had such extraordinary talents.

Churches were packed standing-room-only at first; long lines snaked around the corner. In the end, they fell vacant. Those remaining gave up and took their family home, as downcast as kids excluded from a pick-up a ball game. 

People just Disappeared. First, they’d be there, spouting vicious nonsense; then, they’d be Gone. They might scowl as if seized by heart attack; some would gasp as if to scream… then they’d be Gone. Witnesses reported a vague popping sound as atmospheric pressure filled the void as they were Swept Away. Then something that smelled vaguely sulfuric, as if a cap pistol had gone off … 

They reported the Chosen seemed more at ease when they disappeared at high altitude. People Caught Up in aircraft smiled and Disappeared — or so surviving passengers reported. Some planes crashed when everyone on board was Swept Away. Runaway Lear Jets became commonplace. Most civilian flights landed safely, flown in by shaken copilots and emergency volunteers.

People in tall buildings Disappeared with fewer problems, as did mountaineers. Cities like Denver, Lhasa, La Paz, Cuzco and Quito became favored spots for Departure. By now, fervent evangelicals were gathering up their belongings and heading out to the hills. Many never came back. All the best ones did, crestfallen since they’d been Left Behind. Others got wise and began camping on rooftops. No one could talk them down and few tried. Eventually, some were Gone ; the rest, the best, were left behind.

In a few days, the Right Wing was amputated from National and State Legislatures. The Republican Party was reduced to a shambles; the Democratic, not much better. Forty-five remaining Congresspeople met in emergency session to nominate temporary replacements. Half the Supreme Court was Gone, as were most Federal Judges: all certifiable reactionaries. The Oval Office went vacant, as did the plush offices of political appointees and lobbyists. 

Under emergency regulations, an Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services took the oath of Presidential office pending crash elections. The doctor was an outspoken agnostic by the name of Dean, about to be fired by the prior incumbent. She had made too many waves about family planning, universal health care and corporate-sponsored malnutrition and pollution. Nobody was left senior to her, and no one complained. She was elected President soon thereafter and turned out to be quite good at her new job, much better than the last dozen.

The military snapped to DefCon 1, but couldn’t find anyone to nuke. Many missile command bunkers and Pentagon offices were vacant. A few cadets rattled around the military academies; the Coast Guard, NOAA and Merchant Marine schools were not much busier. Most private military schools turned into ghost towns. The few cadets Left Behind had never been comfortable in those places anyway and went home. Warships sailed home with a skeleton crew; fighter-bombers fell from the sky like sparrows over an active volcano. The American military, what was left of it, came home from overseas. That operation took two months and concluded without a single loss to combat. Trigger-happy thugs were gone from both sides.

Fox News abandoned the airwaves, as did other news affiliates. AM radio commentary was Gone. Media executives and talk-show hosts Disappeared (guess which ones). Newspapers went out of print for a while; they had to find new sponsors and senior staff. Nobody was left to invoke “journalistic balance and objectivity” and thus pay due reverence to evil. 

Basically, if you spouted lies and ranted loud enough in favor of hate crime and greed, you were Gone. If you were afraid enough of the Other to want his death, you were Gone. If you killed, starved and tormented people other than by accident, you were Gone. Persist in doing so by accident … you get my drift.

In their fantasy world, many of those Swept Away had already sacrificed everyone but themselves and those near and dear to Armageddon on Earth and to eternal damnation thereafter. High quality mass education? Ecological sanity? Peace and justice for helpless foreigners? Why bother! Wasn’t the Earth God's ashtray? Couldn’t He purify, in His own good time, the filth and horror of teeming humanity that Christians had induced on purpose to hasten His Return? As far as they were concerned, those excluded from the Rapture were not worth rotting garbage. 

Even though they were right about being Swept Away, it turned out that everyone Left Behind and the Earth itself drew great benefits from their Departure. Sure, a few disasters and potent signs in the heavens sputtered along for a while, wars and rumors of war — as they had always done for thousands of years; nothing prophetic in that. But with surprising ease, the fate of the remainder improved significantly.

What became of those Caught Up in the Rapture? Who cares? Good riddance!

What was most funny? It wasn’t just fanatical Christians who Disappeared, but Muslims, too. Those who Disappeared had complained that there wasn’t any real Islam any longer ; that they were the last True Believers in Allah. All their neighbors were filth-loving, pro-Western heretics fit for nothing but execution by jihad. Those who Disappeared tended to cling to Wahhabi, Salafiya and other devout tyrannies that preached mass mayhem for the greater glory of Islam. 

Whether Texan or Saudi, all those big talkers and all their big talk Went Away. Papers drifted unnoticed across dusty Taliban madrassas and fundamentalist Christian campuses whose students wandered home when their Bigotry 101 coaches Disappeared. 

The same happened for Hindus and Buddhists. Rabid nationalists, mosque wreckers, library torchers, lynch mob leaders, all Disappeared. No one was left to blame a local minority for every social problem and solve that problem with ethnic cleansing. 

No one was left, in all of India and Pakistan, who cared passionately whether Kashmir became independent. On a gorgeous afternoon typical of that beautiful country, the Kashmiri raised their new state flag in front of the government complex in Srinagar. No one fired a shot, not even in celebration for want of fire discipline. The same thing happened in Sri Lanka: pistol-wavers Disappeared and peace broke out in their absence. From one end of the Indian sub-continent to the other, there was peace. People agreed to disagree; they even agreed to agree with one another every once in a while.

Jewish settlements on the West Bank, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem turned into ghost towns. Intercultural bomb factories, video production facilities and infiltration classrooms emptied. Attack helicopters crashed unmanned before they could launch more Hellfire missiles into civilian crowds. Armored bulldozers stalled, no driver at the controls in their bulletproof cabin. On Friday evenings, few worshippers returned from the Wailing Wall or the Temple Mosque. Busses resumed their quiet rounds, and street life, its natural whirl of cooler evenings. The Wall was quietly reduced to highway paving mix; all the grim checkpoints were torn down. The Palestinian State became a sovereign reality, just like that. Everyone went home and learned to forgive past wrongs. Life went on, regardless.

Besides, no one was left to fantasize about turning Jerusalem, Beirut, Alexandria, Cairo, Amman, Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, Aleppo and other cradles of human civilization into punch bowls of boiling radioactive glass. No longer did right wing Jews, Christians and Muslims pray that nuclear hell should crash down on everyone else. There were no more paranoid-schizoid, Book of Revelation fanatics. No U.S. Administration was crazed enough to twist those hate-filled nightmares into reality.

There was no more hatred shared between Sunni, Shiite and so-called “heretical” Muslims. Live and let live. Obey the Quran and live together in Peace. Just like Mohammed said. Period, return.

Many Orthodox and Conservative Rabbis Went Away, as did most of the neo-Zionists. Remaining Jews had to settle for Reformed Rabbis, so few of the others remained. Fattah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad? Ancient history. The Vatican residency emptied (except for the Pope and his guys), as did the greater part of the College of Cardinals. The Catholic priesthood was Cut in half. The leadership of the Southern Baptist Conference Vanished, and rural evangelical churches became things of the past. Christian Orthodox hierarchies? Buddhist ones? Protestants? None were spared.

Atheists got off no more lightly. The Chinese Central Committee became the Chinese Central Nothing. Peking and other Chinese cities were Swept clear of political police and paid informants. Tiananmen Square became a vast Agora where any passer-by could stand tall on a soapbox and speak up as if in London’s Piccadilly Square. It turned out the Chinese were superb democrats, once left to their own devices. It turned out everyone Left Behind was hard-wired for democracy, once the thugs were Pulled off their back. 

The entire politico-military leadership of North Korea Disappeared. Its people finally got enough food shipped to them as quickly as cargo ships could offload. They blew up their munitions, wrecked their weapons and nukes and filled in fortifications, smiling all the while. South Korea disarmed in the time it took to destroy the landmines along the border and build superhighways and rail lines across it. Determined grandmothers guarded the border, shaming soldiers on both sides into going home. That job wasn’t hard.

Every Khmer Rouge Disappeared without exception. Vietnam liberated itself from its liberators. Colombia and Venezuela discovered how pleasant peace could be for a change. Africans and South and Central Americans let out a deep sigh of relief and got to work rebuilding. Gunfire was no longer heard in Congo jungles, around the Great Lakes, or in deserts whose spread slowed down. Government buildings emptied in Khartoum, as did the international bureaus of their petroleum-fascist financiers. A Sudanese mother could walk home in perfect safety after seeking water and fuel for her fire. No gun-toting “technician” was left in Mogadishu and far fewer firefights anywhere else.

The same thing happened all over the ex-communist world where thuggish tyrants had thrived like maggots. Violent fanatics, drug lords and kleptocrats, all of them Disappeared from Party headquarters, torture chambers and prison blocks. They Vanished, regardless of stripe and creed, whether they were political insiders, mafia muscle, police on the take, snarling Nazi skinheads or guerilla hooligans. To be a confessed Nazi was to be Gone.

Swept away, all those personally responsible for financing and organizing complex disasters listed above, then justifying them in the Media. 

Though most of their inferiors of blood, institution, or conviction suffer simple identification by personal confession freely given, the mercy of the court, then institutional re-incorporation in gradual stages of accession to the commons. Bar the violent exceptions hunted down by their pairs turned into hunters but neutral otherwise because rich. Psychopathes rejoice of wealth more powerfully than they resist punishment. The innocent took advantage of that fact.

Within a few months, the Earth turned into a Very Different Place. 

In the United States, gay marriage, abortion on demand and robust equal opportunity initiatives were quietly legislated, enforced and then forgotten. No one questioned them. You could burn the flag or fly it proudly; nobody cared enough to violate your civil rights. Campaign finance reform was swift and draconic; it passed both Houses of Congress without debate. 

Family planning was subsidized across the planet, unlike the current practice of forbidding it at the command of people (Congresspeople) who’ve raised stupidity to new heights of genius. Can you believe that no world organization has been commissioned to set up family planning clinics around the planet, only charity-driven talk shops like ZPG, Zero Population Growth, as luxuriously spendy as they are inconsequential? 

Military subsidies were slashed by 99%, as were public expenditures on welfare for corporate and special interests. One way or another, we were never more affluent and secure.

Praying in school was something to be done quietly in one's head, in a civilized way. Jesus had replaced prayer in public and in church with quiet repetition of Our Father at home in a closed room. His words from Matthew 6 were fully obeyed, now that wayward theocrats had Left, who’d given Christ a bad name and turned almost everyone off His Way, now obvious to everyone. 

America rebuilt itself into a 21st Century powerhouse: a brilliant showpiece of environmental, Learning and infrastructure development, after generations of inexcusable neglect. 

Tell me: we are living in the Third Millennium AC, right? Not trapped in a perpetual Dark Age under the control of sadistic know-nothings? 

Not surprisingly, much the same thing happened elsewhere. The poorest regions on Earth boasted a healthier, more just and comfortable standard of living than the richest ones had before the Rapture. A Golden Age of Learning… Public schools beckoned everyone, everyone, and got more than enough funding to fulfill their mandate. 

People wondered what the problem had been, since solutions were so obvious and simple …

Prisons emptied. Either you had had to serve time in one — at which point, you were Gone; or (the case for most prisoners) your victimless “crime” had never really called for a prison sentence. At which point, the human monsters who had set you up were Gone and you were free to go home. A few petty larcenists and the best of their guards formed ex-prison communes and grew smoking herbs.

All those gathered up by the Rapture added up to a few million at most: much fewer than one in a thousand human beings. Normal people with normal strengths and weaknesses and a normal range of sins had nothing to do with it. Only exceptional crackpots got Caught Up. Nonetheless, the world’s population dropped dramatically during the next few decades, by universal consent. Every newborn child became a rare and welcome addition — not as ordinary and neglected as dust.

Most people turned into Judeo-Buddho-Hindu-Christo-Muslims: a cooperative amalgam of those creed's best elements, the obvious path for those who wish to practice their faith but hate the organized strife of mass religion. 

After all, God could manifest as Allah, Krishna, every God and none of Them, and Nothing, and Everything, and Anything Else anybody could fantasize — all at the same time, with hands tied behind the back. God is big, you see; not small, musty and cramped like an average fundamentalist's vision. No-one Left Behind would argue about that nor want to. 

Fundamentalists would have fought to (someone else's) death so that nothing of the kind could happen, but they were out of the picture now. Nobody was left to exploit faith and divert charity for personal gain, preach bodily mutilation for the salvation of souls and thus give religion a bad name. 

Atheists, too, had a hard time generating enthusiasm, since something must have caused the Rapture. Eventually, people discovered their part in the love of Jesus Christ — in a manner the fundamentalists could neither foresee nor share honestly. (See Matthew 6-5).

All the mega corporations collapsed, their MBAs, CEOs and CFOs Disappeared. People only bought what they needed and sold what they needed — no more and no less. Product quality was no longer a race to the bottom of cheaper substitutes at higher prices; the point of honor became artisanal mastery. Most advertising vanished along with its cash flow. 

Television became interesting, all of a sudden. Imagine that: smart TV programming nonstop on every channel! The planetary IQ doubled overnight. You could listen to fine music for hours on end, or thoughtful dialog and instructive lectures on every topic — not useless patter about nothing important, interrupted by the occasional trash-pop ditty and relentless commercial blather. Even MTV stopped babbling and started playing high quality music again.

That which mankind never accomplished (spouting the excuses of an empty heart), God alone made happen. During this ultimate Revolution, the tyrants were Sent Packing and the meek inherited the Earth — bloodlessly, on time and as promised. Everyone rejoiced in newfound grace, prosperity and freedom. Nobody missed the dearly departed fanatics except, perhaps, their mothers and children, those few remaining.

Even now, I fear I have not differed enough from those Chosen, to be spared their Fate. I, too, condemn fellow humans I despise and fear. I, too, count on God to grant me the salvation I deny them. 

Please, merciful Lord, do not make me spend the rest of eternity in their company! Once I die, this time around, May I never cross paths with another Repugnant again! This loathsome world under their dominion is but a momentary torment; that other setting would be true Hell. 

God's justice must surely…

[Notes found on an abandoned rooftop].

IN FRENCH

…

COMMENT?  markmulligan@comcast.net