There is an odd theory among some Christians called "the Rapture". With no solid basis in Scripture, some think that, as the End approaches, suddenly the "saved" will disappear. The rest of us poor souls will be left in this vale of tears to endure the nasty tribulations that follow.
Some of these rapturites have figured out yet another way to make money off this error.
After all, as Rahm would say, we ought to be able to profit from a disaster. Right?
Thus, we find the site… and I am not making this up: After The Rapture Pet Care.
Yes, you too can have your pets taken care by some unlucky loser who didn’t have the foresight to be "saved" and thence raptured.
We have created a database structure that is stored on multiple secure servers, with multi-location online and offline password-protected backups. While I don’t intend to be here when the Rapture occurs, we are building a network of non-Christians who have agreed to rescue and care for our members’ pets if we all disappear.
Yes, it seems funny at first. But, if you believe there is a coming Rapture, and you love your pets, it becomes serious. And that’s what we are – serious about the safety and care of your pets, as well as your peace of mind.
There is a registration fee of course.
Okay… I admit it. I am a little jealous. I wish I had thought of this. But I digress.
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The sin of usury is, in essence, to sell something that doesn’t exist.
I would think this gets very close to usury.
This is pretty funny. A pretty clever scam…
There’s also a service I blogged about where they have a database that, when the rapture happens, will email all your unsaved relatives in order to give them a final message from you urging them to accept Jesus. –> http://philangelus.wordpress.com/2009/01/27/your-money-got-left-behind/
My personal opinion is that if Jesus really does return to Rapture all teh good people, the good people would rather be like Jesus and stay here to minister to the ones who will need them most during the time of tribulation. :-)
How about an After the Rapture Feeder Feed?
After passing _Left Behind_ off as actual literature for over so long, nothing surprises me now when it comes to Dispensationalist Premillennialists.
This explains why the local Megachurch is now advertising a kennel.
Well, not to be outdone, I suggest that the Knight of Columbus establish a trust fund for His Holiness’ cat, Chico! Move over Leona Helmsley.
I do not believe in the Rapture, but I have always struggled with understanding Matthew 24:40-41 “Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.” Can any readers help explain this verse to me?
Carl Olsen wrote a book on this topic “Will Catholics Be Left Behind”, issued by Ignatius Press. His website is http://www.carl-olson.com/Site/Welcome.html
I am blessed to have very little in common with the Wiccans. However, I did express some desire for a bumper sticker one of them had “Come the Rapture, can I have your van?”.
Lynne at HB, Good one! LOL!
Check your Schofield Reference Bible. It appears Darby didn’t say anything about pets or livestock.
Salutationes omnibus.
Smad0142–I always thought that simply meant the kingdom of God is in our midst, and some will have accepted it, and some will not…Judgment reveals what has been all along, in a sense…also, the attrit rate for getting to heaven is pretty darn high!
What happens to the cryonically frozen?
On RealCatholicTV.com or the Vortex if you pay for the premium service ($10 a month) in their Basic training/Apologetics Micheal Vores(spelling) gives a very good explanation on how this strange teaching of the Rapture came about along with a number of other peculiar believes.
For real???
:D
I should go ask a Southern Baptist where the word “Rapture” is in the Bible.
(Had better not, that would be mean. :( )
“Pet Peeves” though a bit obvious, a good one Father Z! “I must admit, I am a bit jealous..
” …Hillarious!! Who says trads have no humor. Those would be the whiney “..But they (really, we) won’t be able to (slightly dipping voice, underbreath and rising) ‘UNderSTAANNND’ those new big words” crowd. Not naming names, but the ‘kind that you catch and fry right away on the campfire’ -man type.
I will have to come up with something similar for us Catholics and our Three Days of Darkness!!! ;-)
Nora’s bumpersticker comes to mind when I see those “This car will be unmanned when the Rapture comes” stickers, too. I’m always struck by the presumption and lack of humility that is evident in those statements.
A further thought occurs: if all this rapture stuff comes about, and all hell actually breaks loose, do these people really expect that those “left behind” are going to rush out and start adopting strange pets? Stocking up on canned goods and shotgun shells would be a more likely course of action.
RE: smad0412:
You quote Mt 24:40-41 where “one is taken and one is left.” If you look at the context, step back a few verses, you’ll see that the analogy is to “the days of Noah” (v. 37). At the time of the flood, those who were taken were the ones who died in the flood! Those who were left were the ones saved on the ark.
In this verse the rapture idea fails.
Catholic doctrine does not believe in the Rapture. This was invented by Protestants. There is a sort of amusing event called the “The Great Disappointment” connected with a non-Rapture event in the mid-19th century.
The American entrepreneurship in the above ad is mad, as well as dishonest.
ONLY Americans could come up with this sort of thing, if the subject wasn’t so serious I’d be laughing, heck I’m snigering just watching the video, ahhh dear I love our heretical friends, they do come up with the madest ideas!!
How about instead of ebay.
Rapture Bay
The Hottest deals left behind. Bid before your gone.
That the Rapture is risible I agree. Yet let’s not ignore our own mistakes. A good rule: Where reputable theologians and Bible scholars fear to tread, fools rush in. For example, make The Holy Spirit the stepchild of the Trinity — something that may date back to the rejection of the Montanists — and the Pentecostals, the Charismatics, and the Holiness Churches will fill the void, complete with holy rolling, pseudo glossia, and an assortment of bizarre hand gestures.
So with Eschatology. Ignore it, make your religion just about “How me, myself, and I get saved and go to Heaven”, and you get the Dispensationalists and their Rapture filling that void.
Truth be told, the New Testament (and much of the Old) is immanently about the Eschaton and the Parousia. “My soul getting to Heaven” has a few verses in the NT, but there’s a lot more about the End. NT Scholars have known this since Schweitzer. N.T. Wright has taken up Schweitzer’s argument. See, for starters, his latest: Justification.
A certain professor of Catholic theology in Regensburg back in the 70s was wiser, actually writing a book entitled Eschatology, Ratzinger by name.
ROFL!
Of course, in California they have “Emergency Rooms” and Ambulances for pets only!
If there’s a breach of contract, the pet owners aren’t around to sue (presumably).
Very bad theology. Very clever marketing.
Jack Hughes,
I hate to burst your patriotic bubble, but I was under the impression that a Scottish Protestant,named Irving, came up with the modern idea rapture from the Quakers, who were an English sect.
smad0142: the rapture is entirely unbiblical and require mental gymnastics to fit in to it. The verses you quoted are simply a reference to the fact that sinners will be separated (by going to hell) for the pure. Lapide in his commentary says “Meaning: In the day of judgement Christ will separate companion from companion, neighbor from neighbor[…] The one who has lived justly and piously He will take up with Himself to glory in heaven.”
The rapture was invented by an American father and son called Increase and Cotton Matther – Cotton (the son) was one of the “ministers” involved in the condemnations at the Salem witch hunts. It was largely due to his input that all of the innocent women were murdered.
supertradmom
What I meant is that ONLY American protestants could come up with the idea of post-rapture pet care, if anything it testifies to the inginuity of your countrymen when it comes to their entrepenerial skills.
That reminds me of this:
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/old-glory-insurance/229049/
For only $4 a month, you can achieve peace of mind in a world full of crime and robots. There is always someone ready to sucker the gullible.
I’m thinking I need to start selling Rapture automobile insurance. What happens if you’re on the road with a van full of reprobate passengers and suddenly…whiff? Peace of mind.
The poor Protestants. Even the good ones are sooooo confused.
Three Days of Darkness Grocery Runners, Father? lol!
@Jack Hughes:
Check out the story of the Plymouth Brethren – it started in Dublin and got moving in Plymouth, England.
You’ll need to look elsewhere for the reasons behind its persistence.
Greetings.
Is this from “The Onion”? I can’t believe it’s serious. This is some kind of parody. Especially with the dog looking forlornly out the window at the ascending shadows.
I have a friend who’s a Baptist. I caught him in a contradictory statement once. Then he comes up with something I’ve never heard a Protestant say: that there are 3 types of belief in the rapture, which, I think are mis-understandings the first Epistle of St Paul to the Thessalonians, coupled with the quote given earlier about 2 at work, where one is taken, and one is left. Anyway, the 3 beliefs are the pre-tribulation rapture, the tribulation rapture, and the post tribulation rature. That last one has me puzzled, as I thought, according to Protestants, the whole reason for the rapture is to avoid the tribulation.
@Nora: “I am blessed to have very little in common with the Wiccans. However, I did express some desire for a bumper sticker one of them had ‘Come the Rapture, can I have your van?’”
Make up a couple hundred of those with St. Peter’s Keys on them, and I’ll pass them out at church! I love it!
@gambletrainman: The point isn’t so much to avoid the tribulation, since some of those who go through it will be saved at the end. Rather, the point is to compare Revelations against the daily news and prove that the End Is Near. Good Bible-reading Christians that they are, I wonder how they manage to miss all the places where the authors use the “thief in the night” simile to describe the Second Coming.
Ha! This is great.
I suppose, Father (all tongue-in-cheek, of course), that the Catholic way would be to set up a site to sell indulgences for pets?
‘Come the Rapture, can I have your van?’
I so want one of those stickers, LOL!!
So with Eschatology. Ignore it, make your religion just about “How me, myself, and I get saved and go to Heaven”, and you get the Dispensationalists and their Rapture filling that void.
Comment by Sid
There is Universal Eschatology and Individual Eschatology.
UE concerns the nature of history and the end of it, IE personal salvation and the end of life.
And so the former deals with the nature of Time, various concepts of history (Pagan, Jewish, Progressivist), and the role of Israel in history (which includes Dispensationalism)
Perhaps Darby would have approved of “after Rapture” animal care–after all, he had become a non-conformist.
Salutationes omnibus.
On the subject of pets someone told me today she had baptised all her cats – and she was not joking.
pelerin: Since demons abhor Holy Water, when I suspected that my wife’s cats might be possessed I gave them all a good dousing. Judging from their reactions, I’d say my suspicions were confirmed.
How do we know there is not a protestant sect which believes cats and dogs are raptured? Growing up, I saw that there were four protestant churches on each corner of two cross streets in our town. We called it the “four-cornered church street”. Each one had broken off from the other, like Garrison Keillor’s funny history of the “women’s pants” heresy. I could see break-off denominations from this. And sometimes, I throw holy water on my cats…Here are some possible names…
The Church of the Rapture; the Church of the Rapture with Pets; the Church of the Rapture with Dogs, not Cats; The Church of the Raptureless.
pelerin-before I put my beloved Jack Russell terrier/hound mix to sleep, I put Lourdes water on her head, touched her [again on the head] with a hand crucifix, and read the “Prayer for My Pet” from a holy card I bought at the Catholic shop I worked at…with tears in my eyes, I might add!
It wasn’t really a ‘baptism’; but a friend in New Mexico put Lourdes water on the head of one of her dogs before it was put to sleep [hate the word ‘euthanize’].
Rob in Maine-‘a trust fund for His Holiness’ cat, Chico’. Oh, that’s funny!