The Daily Rapture — Wrap Party
By Pastor T, with @metgohnaJake
A serialized peek at Pastor T’s mailbag as he answers questions about the rapture.
I Thessalonians 4 17 Then we who are alive, who are left, will be suddenly caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will always be with the Lord.
Editing and curation by @metgohnaJake in a hovel, near a place of strong drink and non-domestic tobacco, far from salvation, somewhere in Macedonia. @metgohnaJake is a former marketer and tends to see the world in a cynical way, where every act is specious performance and all players have ulterior motives and all motives are self-serving. He learned this while making rich people richer, so we can’t really blame him, despise him though we might for his complicity in Pastor T’s snakey-eyed activities.
In each episode, Pastor T will address reader questions about the rapture. Pastor T has, he informs us, had the good fortune to ascend into heaven on a day pass and discuss the matter with the powers that be and so is qualified, ordained you might say, to speak on the matter.
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Pastor T is just as qualified to speak on the rapture as any other person on Earth. No one can say differently, and make it stick.—Pastor T
Here’s the CONCLUSION to the short-lived but lively as a rodeo-clown-with-diarrhea three-part series, “The Daily Rapture”.
Q: WHY not-so-anonymous ghostwriter Toews, why did you take the time to grind out this spotte-fest? Why bother? Do you have a shit-disturber disorder? What skin have YOU got in this game?
A: Here’s my list, in more-or-less random order.
Why was this rapture business not a big deal when I was a kid? I grew up in a God-fearing town, where Die Owlah’s vengeful nature was known and preached with some regularity—in homes and from the pulpit. Sure, there were some “end times” conversations and we all knew “Revelations” was not bedtime story material unless maybe your dad was the Marquis de Sade… But, other than that, the RAPTURE was not common fare among the religious set, within whose margins (and abodes, sometimes) I resided. I don’t know much about the growth of evangelical influence in respect of rapture preaching within Steinbach churches, but something tells me that the correlation factor would be high. For me, at age seven years (1962), when my Grandma Toews led me to Jesus’s warm embrace, I can guaran-damn-tee you I would not have gone if that rapture shiet was being tossed around like a live grenade! No way. Even back then, my trusty bullshit barometer would have been at ELEVEN on a scale of ten.
The Snake Oil Factor. Why, with any caricature in the wide world to choose from, would I have created a Main Character with the persona of the Hee-Haw host? (Minus the gitar-pickin’ skills.) Why not pattern “Pastor T” after a solemn student of scripture, an academic, ecclesiastical show-jumper with a pedigree a Molotschnan mile long? Eh? Well, I just felt like the rapture is more suited to the big-lunged revival tent gang: “COME TO THE FRONT, BROTHERS AND SISTERS… COME TO THE FRONT AND REPENT… THE BUSES WILL WAIT… COME TO THE FRONT! (We take VISA!)” You know the type.
The “Of Mice and Men” factor… As I alluded to in the third installment (“The Daily Rapture — Act Three”) I find it cruel and irresponsible to put a child or any person of diminished intellectual or emotional capacity in the line of rapture fire. What will the rapture message do to a person deep in the throes of depression? How will thoughts of the rapture allay despair? To hear that you yourself, or your loved ones, your more-sinful friends, or even just the wide world of random strangers (billions of people, according to a fast Google search) are going to be left behind to suffer the whole mess promised in the good book… Nah! C’mon man! If you want to circle dates on the calendar and scare the pants off of people, pick someone your own size, so to speak. [image error]
You get what you pay for. A problem I have is accepting the transactional nature of some teachings. (If it’s a transaction, where’s the faith?) Okay, in all of life on earth, actions have consequences. Mostly. You let your guard down at the water hole and, BAM! Your ass is grass. See you later, alligator. We are tempered by the harsh reality of physics, chemistry, and “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”—we’re taught that the world will kick your donkey if you’re not careful. Soooo, it follows then that our eternal address must be purchased, cash on the barrelhead, in advance, right? Like insurance or guaranteed seating at a concert? NO, I DON’T THINK IT DOES FOLLOW. I can’t swallow it…can’t believe that this much-promoted eternal entity made of pure light and love and blah-blah-blah is there at the wicket, handing out tickets like a carny huckster. I think the hucksters are the human beings who try to sell us on this tit-for-tat confidence game that the whole rapture biz is based upon.
The people I love have a brain, a big heart, and a firm spine. The misguided few who put up with my pap—especially since I started this whole Toews-prose shake-rattle-and roll in 2015—are people with whom I don’t always agree. They are individual members of a broad, diverse, and eclectic collective. While they might not agree with my personal take on the RAPTURE, they probably get why I might have some issues with it and some might even agree with me, at least in part. If they do or if they don’t, I’m certain their eternal fate will not change one bit, because that is my faith. In return, I pledge my friends and relatives my ongoing, unaltered friendship, love, and respect even if I disagree with their rapturous viewpoint. Like the staunchly adversarial disciples of Ford and Chevy, Coke and Pepsi, keto and carbs, etc.—we can disagree and still have a cordial (lite) beer together. And so…
It’s a free country—with one caveat. Everyone should believe as they wish, as long as no one else is harmed. Can this be a rule for religion? Can we agree to curb our fervour at the point where others are involuntarily involved?
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6.1 It’s a free country—not a magic country. I see prayer calls for people in dire straights… I get this and have no complaint—fill yer boots! This action comes out of caring and an honest desire for good; a human reaction to hardship. Empathy. Part of faith that can do no harm. (Well, except for gun violence, where prayer can supplant real, effective action, but that’s another whole case of huckleberries.) Another example: I see prayer calls for a nicer house, a pay raise, or for a certain motorcycle to pop up on the Buy & Sell and I am not impressed. That’s an easy one, right? Many people disavow this kind of shabby, picayune, bent-knee self-serve. I also see directives from influential clergy calling for their congregations to prepare for the rapture by modifying earthly activities as though the rapture was an absolute certainty with a specific date. Hmm. In light of all the prior FAILED FORECASTS, that is magical thinking of the highest order and it may well cause some harm. Harm for whom? The poor, the vulnerable, the marginalized in the flock. Not the preacher—he just pencils in a new rapture date and checks the Buy & Sell for that bike he wants to buy. What I don’t see are prayer calls to re-grow a severed arm or leg. Why not? Because, deep down, even the most devout and the most earnest and the most cynical can all appreciate the difference between faith and magic.
LAST: We are already in a period of rapture, with nature, if only we would recognize it and stop screwing it up.
“God doesn’t need to come down upon a mountain, for the mountain itself is the revelation. We only have to look at it and we will know how we should live.”-—John Moriarty
Disclaimer: No bonnets were harmed in the making of this spotte. The use of the phrase, “The Daily…” is purely random and coincidental and bears no relation, resemblance, derivation, kinship, or wolf-fur from any other internet phenomenon, past or present. It does represent admiration and writerly puppy-love of the non-Ewww! kind.
Spotte (schput): To deride, scorn, mock, scoff…
