Something was amiss. David was used to his mother greeting him from the kitchen when he arrived home from school. Being ten years old, he knew his responsibility: find Mom and let her know he got home okay. Then he was free to play outside. After checking for her downstairs, he checked the bedrooms upstairs, poking his head into every room and calling, “Mom?”

“Where is she?” he wondered aloud. He rushed down the winding stairs to the laundry and storage rooms in the basement. But Mom never answered his calls. He charged outside to check the yard, but she was nowhere to be seen.

All of a sudden, a horrible thought popped into his mind. “I’ve been left behind!” Panic was right on the heels of that thought. He knew what that meant.

He had been taught in church that there would come a moment in the near future when the true believers in Christ would silently, mysteriously, and unexpectedly disappear in an instant. This was called the “rapture,” and it would be followed immediately by seven years of “great tribulation.” As David raced back into the house, he tried to reassure himself that he was, in fact, a true believer. But his ten-year-old mind found reasons to doubt his salvation.

Suddenly it struck him that even his sisters were nowhere to be found. They should have been home from school as well! He was truly alone in the house. The entire family had disappeared without a trace!

“I can call Dad at work,” he reasoned in the midst of his panic. But he knew that would be pointless. Dad was a true believer just like his mother and sisters. Dad would have been raptured along with the rest of the family.

No, he was left behind in the rapture, and it was his own fault. He had come to his senses too late.

The elderly missionary spent many a night weeping on her pillow. It had come as such a shock when the Chinese communists overran China. She had spent most of her life in China attempting to explain the gospel of Christ to the Chinese people. She had helped start a small Protestant church for fellowship. But she was weeping not just because of the abruptness of her departure from her Chinese friends. She was mourning her message. Because she had been taught in Bible school that Christ would return at any moment and rapture His true believers away from the Great Tribulation, she had never prepared her new converts for substantial persecution. No need to prepare for trouble; Christ had suffered on the Cross to save us from both earthly suffering and God’s wrath.

With agonizing clarity, she saw how wrong she had been. Although her Chinese converts may not have been living through the Great Tribulation, it made little difference to their daily experience. They were being systematically hunted down and persecuted by a godless government intent on breaking their faith. For many of them, this tribulation was their own personal great and final one.

Now she could do nothing for her friends to correct the errors she had so meticulously taught them earlier. She regularly wept in her pillow because she knew that it was too late.

Mitch and his wife, Linda, converted to Evangelical Christianity when they were in college. She had been raised a Catholic, and he had been raised a Lutheran. But neither of them had taken their faith seriously as a child. Of course, neither did anyone else in their families. When they got “saved” in college, spiritual things became fascinating to them. Like so many other converts, they were taught about the “end times.” After they were married, Linda stayed home with the children, and Mitch did very well in his profession.

When the opportunity to move presented itself, they decided not to buy a house. After all, they had been taught in church that Christ could come back at any moment, probably within the next few years at the very latest. They knew that it had been almost a generation since Israel had been established in 1948. They had been taught that, according to the prophecy of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, the rapture must occur within a generation of that event. They were the “generation of the fig tree.” Their rapture would surprise the world at any moment. The Great Tribulation would immediately follow the rapture for the next seven years, but they would be safely taken up out of the carnage by Jesus Himself.

If the end was imminent, why invest in a house? So they moved in with Linda’s mother. It might put a strain on their family, but better to give more to their church, in the hope that more people would hear the gospel before it was too late.

Don and Rose, too, had been taught that the rapture was about to occur at any moment. So they decided to stop having children. They already had three boys whose care took a great deal of time. They reasoned that if they had any more children, it would distract them from their ministry. Wouldn’t it be better to use any extra time to try to win souls for Heaven before the rapture? After all, once that event occurred, the world would be thrown into chaos and sin by the antichrist, and for those left behind, it would already be too late.

Dave’s college grade-point average qualified him to enter any seminary he chose. But the older ministers whom Dave respected told him to not worry about getting a higher degree: “Jesus is coming. There is not much time before the rapture. Better to get involved in winning souls right now and take only those courses you feel are necessary for that ministry.” So Dave made the decision to enter full-time Christian service, while enrolling in a nearby seminary on a part-time basis. A degree seemed so unimportant, almost selfish, in the light of the imminent return of Christ. He certainly did not want to be the reason even one person did not hear the gospel until after the rapture, when it would be too late.

Ann believed that abortion was fundamentally irreconcilable with her Fundamentalist Christian convictions. She did not know whether she would be very good at it, but she wanted to get involved in the effort to reverse Roe v. Wade. Her Christian friends, however, counseled against it. “Why polish the brass on a sinking ship?” they asked. “Why not spend your time evangelizing your neighbors? Jesus is coming back to rapture the true believers at any moment. Abortion is wrong, but evangelizing the lost is more important. Share the gospel with unbelievers before it is too late.

The year was 1950. Stephen and his wife, Beth, had always wanted to spend their lives serving God. But now they became aware of the significance of the year 1948, when Israel had been re-established as a sovereign state. Theologian friends convinced Stephen that this meant they were living in the end times. Based on the words of Jesus in the Olivet Discourse, this young couple was taught that they were in the final generation before Christ would rapture His Church. They decided to attend seminary. They built their lives around promulgating this message to anyone who would listen. It became the issue that defined them and their ministry. No sacrifice was too great when it came to getting the message out before it was too late.

In the late nineteenth century, William E. Blackstone wrote about the rapture in the book Jesus Is Coming. It became a bestseller and was one of the first books in the United States to herald this new view of Christ’s return. A successful Chicago businessman, Blackstone used his influence to lobby President Harrison in favor of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. He believed that a Jewish homeland and a rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem were necessary prerequisites for Jesus’ return after the rapture.

Blackstone put his money where his mouth was. He bought hundreds of Bibles and placed them in caves throughout Palestine. He believed that after the rapture, Jewish people would flee into the Judean hills during the persecution of the Great Tribulation and would be forced to hide in the caves to survive. Once there, Blackstone hoped they would discover his hidden Bibles. After reading them, these Jews in the middle of the Great Tribulation would come to realize the truth of Jesus’ claims. Blackstone spent enormous amounts of money to store these Bibles safely in remote caves before it was too late.

General Orde Wingate’s name is memorialized in Israel on street signs and historical markers. Knowledgeable Israelis know this Scottish military leader who trained much of the original Israeli guerrilla forces as the “gentle Gentile.” Some of his students, such as Moshe Dayan and Yigal Allon, would become legendary through the use of Wingate’s guerrilla tactics. It is generally agreed that Israel would not exist today without the commitment he made to share his unique abilities with those men.

But what motivated Wingate to embrace a people who were scorned as troublemakers by his fellow British officers? Many do not know that it was his Christian Fundamentalist upbringing, including a firm belief in premillennialism. He believed that an ethic Jewish nation would once again become the focus of God’s spiritual program here on earth for precisely one thousand years. But he believed that this would not—indeed could not—occur until the modern state of Israel was founded. For Christ to return for His Church in the rapture, the Jews must first win the guerrilla warfare of the 1940s and reinhabit their ancient land. Wingate knew that this window of opportunity would not last forever, so he taught what he knew best, guerrilla warfare, before it was too late.

Peter grew up in a devout Catholic family. In college, he encountered a group of very persuasive Protestant students, led by a dynamic young Evangelical couple. They loaned him a novel, The Late Great Planet Earth—destined to become the biggest religious seller of all time, excepting only the Bible. The book was interesting, but, more important to Peter, it was very scary. It predicted the coming of an antichrist, a secret rapture of born-again believers, a Great Tribulation, and a final battle between Christ and Satan.

Peter was frightened at the prospect of suffering through the Great Tribulation, because he did not know for certain that he was born again. According to these Evangelical Protestants, the Rapture could occur momentarily. Although the Temple might be rebuilt first, and the antichrist might appear on the world scene at any time, there was nothing to prevent the secret rapture from occurring without warning. Peter prayed the prayer of salvation, was rebaptized, and started to fellowship with these dynamic Evangelicals.

He eventually married one of the nice young Protestant girls he met in the group, and they started a family. For years he was thankful that he had heard about the rapture and Great Tribulation, giving him the opportunity to get saved before it was too late.

These are true stories about real people. I have known every one of them (except for William Blackstone and General Orde Wingate, both dead, but I have met Blackstone’s descendants and Wingate’s son, Colonel Orde Wingate). And yes, I am the little boy in the first story (I eventually did find Mom, who was at the neighbor’s house).

These stories illustrate how this popular theology is of more than just academic significance. Every one of these individuals made decisions—some drastically life-changing—based on their belief in an imminent, secret rapture. But is this rapture theology a truly biblical way of interpreting the relevant Scripture texts? Catholics should further wonder how this theology squares with Church teaching.

The stakes are high. If the rapturists are correct, then those who count themselves as Christian, but are not Evangelical or Fundamentalist, are in for a very difficult time of seven years, a tribulation that could start at any moment without any warning. But if the rapturists are wrong, then people are making decisions based on skewed priorities, and some of those decisions have the potential to ruin their lives. What we believe makes a difference in how we live.

Having grown up in the rapturist movement, I can assure you that it makes a monumental difference in the way the world is viewed. Most of the people in this movement believe that they, or at the very least their children or grandchildren, will see the end of the world. They feel certain that history will not extend so long that they might be forgotten before Christ returns. As a Catholic, I now understand that even my grandchildren’s grandchildren may easily be dead before Christ returns. I now know that there is no reason that history will not continue until the very memory of my name and my family’s name are entirely forgotten. That is a very different mindset.

But more important than any one person’s life, truth is at stake. Either the rapture, the Great Tribulation, the Millennium, and eternity will unfold as rapturists claim, or they will not. Although no human can peer into the future to give us absolute certainty, we can and should study the teachings of divine revelation to determine what is really revealed there.

Further, truth is vitally important when raising children. Untold thousands of young Catholics have left the Faith after being exposed to rapturist ideas about the end times. Knowing the truth about biblical prophecy will enable parents and children to be prepared for the rapturist challenge when it comes. And it will come. The frenzy over the end times is running hot, and—if the success of the Left Behind books is any indication—it looks to continue for some time.

“Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
Paul

2 Timothy 2:15 (KJV), first century

“What, pray, can be more sacred than this sacred mystery of the Scriptures?… What honey can be sweeter than to learn of God’s wise plan … and gaze on the mind of the Creator? Let the others, if they will, have their wealth, and … bask in popular applause.… Our delight shall be to meditate on the Law of the Lord day and night, to knock at His door when it is not open, to receive the bread of the Trinity.”
Jerome

Epistle 30 to Paula, fourth century

“Study. Study in earnest. If you are to be salt and light, you need knowledge. Or do you imagine that an idle and lazy life will entitle you to receive infused knowledge?”
Josemaría Escrivá

The Way, twentieth century