SUMMARY OF LEARNERS
INTRO & VOCAB
Author's Note: The word 'Rapture' cannot be found in the Bible. A few biblical allusions reflect something like it—but not enough for praiseworthy prophecy. This is not serious biblical scholarship, but is abused as fantasy fiction and vicious wish fulfillment.
Jesus said the hour of His Return was unknown by Him and known only by His Father. He warned us of false prophets who would dare proclaim it (Mark 13).
Stage a train wreck and call it Good News; stuff as many innocents aboard as you can, to their doom. Whether you choose to play this dirty trick or not, you shifty fundamentalists, I choose this other.
“For that matter, life in Paris had picked up since Hugh Capet, who’d lived there while a mere Count, made it the seat of his household [after being crowned King]; its reigning hustle-bustle made a stay there much sought-after. All the same, toward the end of the 10th Century, a mourning veil seems to have shrouded the city, and great religious fervor arose, since a more or less prevalent popular belief pegged the year 1,000 as the end of the world.
“Historians of olden times affirm that, far from resisting this error, priests endorsed it with all their might. It was said in church councils: ‘It nears, the Advent of God in His terrible majesty, the Eternal Shepherd before Whom every pastor and his flock will be summoned.’ Chroniclers reported that sermons in Paris churches proclaimed the advent of that terrible day, which notion induced grim visions in imaginings of the gullible and the fervent. Likewise, so as not to be found unfit for mercy, the weak of spirit, cowards and those lacking a clear conscience, scurried off to seek divine indulgence by bringing all kinds of gifts to the Church, never asking what priests could do with such riches, once the year 1,000 had chimed in the last hour on Earth.
“Rich and poor, the great and the humble came running to give, ever fearful of appearing too stingy before The Eternal, and came back with more offerings suitable for the Sovereign Judge’s favor. And not only did they give, but they prayed all over the place, counting down the remaining days they could hope to live. An unspeakable trance paralyzed everyone; fear was everywhere and the contracts of the day bore this funereal headline in Latin, ‘The end-times draw nigh!’
“Priests who got ahold of gold, abbots and bishops whose holdings swelled with rich domains, exhorted great sinners attempting to expiate their sins and no longer upset by worries of the future, to let go of worldly things and often ill-got riches they did not need in order to die. ‘And monks waited for that fatal moment, in cloistered abstinence, in lonely grapples of the heart, amidst temptations, falls, remorse and strange visions’; because they, too, believed in the end of the world. And one might have thought that they hoped to defuse celestial anger by means of prayer and acts of kindness. And if some were brazen enough to target the credulous public with odious scams, many more must have shared a common viewpoint.
“Otherwise, one might
have thought that nature herself seemed to be preparing for a great
cataclysm. The three or four years prior
to the year 1,000 were rife with evils of all kinds: floods, famine and
pestilence, everything seemed to merge a bunch of disasters destined to ruin
mankind. Anyway, the millennium arrived and the world remained.
Once that fateful day had passed without keeping its grim promise, humanity felt
aroused and reborn. And it could be said that from then one, the clergy’s
real power began, since it wound up with substantial holdings, a great help in
securing its dominion over the world. Superstition reigned as every mind’s
mistress supreme.”
<http://www.paris-pittoresque.com/histoire/16b.htm>
Most of the Rapture lasted in about two weeks. Then it purred along as people Disappeared by ones and twos … here and there, now and then.
At first, it was only earsplitting preachers, televised evangelists and radio sermonizers who Disappeared. The New Year began on a Sunday. Most of the airwaves thudded into dead air time, as radio sermons and media preachers shut their traps mid-pomposity. TV test patterns quietly replaced nonstop pleas for more cash, bigotry and exclusion in the holy name of Jesus Christ.
Pulpits emptied in front of congregations who fled panic-stricken when their preachers Disappeared. Only later did they realize what they had fled from. Then they came back and prayed that much more fervently, despite their dwindling numbers. Many stayed and stayed, and prayed and prayed. That was worthless. Only a few were Chosen.
You see, you had to have special talents to be Chosen. First, you had to crow and preen your own salvation. Second, you had to dream of casting the rest of humanity into the deepest, darkest pit of Perdition without a second's hesitation or remorse. Thirdly, you had to foretell Christ’s nearing Return, which prophesy Christ said was impossible 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 man may deny Him.
Jesus said that God will forgive every sin except blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, the Comforter He left us pending His Return. What do you think that could be, but this denial? Only sociopaths (the sick of society, in Greek) could perform it. Fear and shun them.
As for the Exile of the Jews and their restoration to the Promised Land: that had already taken place twice in history and could repeat itself another dozen times in the thousands of years to come, should God will it; or else never again. In any case, not a dependable Sign of His Return.
False prophets! Go to your knees before your congregants and beg them forgiveness for your evident lie, carefully forbidden in the Bible! The rest of you, the lambs of God, take no heed to their blasphemy! Be at all times prepared for His Return (like a thief in the night), but never again deceived by the empty clamor of His imminence.
It was difficult for most people to reconcile Jesus' commands to love our enemy, our neighbors as ourselves and to die for our friends, with the idea that most eternal souls were expendable refuse. That kind of discrimination took grandiose vision, fanatical leadership skills, immense heartlessness and a giant ego: special talents only a few possessed.
At first, churches were packed standing-room-only; long lines snaked around the corner. Eventually, they went vacant. The rest gave up and took their families home, as mournful as kids skipped over during a pickup ball game.
People just Disappeared. One moment, they’d be there, spouting vicious nonsense; then the next, they’d be Gone. They would grimace as if suffering from a heart attack; some would gasp as if to scream… then they’d be Gone. Witnesses reported hearing a vague popping noise as atmospheric pressure refilled the void left by those Swept Away. Then they sniffed something like a cap gun going off, vaguely sulfuric …
They reported that when the Chosen disappeared at high altitude, they seemed to be more at ease. People caught up in aircraft smiled and Disappeared―or so surviving passengers reported. Some planes crashed when everyone aboard 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 more easily, so did mountaineers―or so it was reported. Denver, Lima, Grenoble and Quito became favored Departure spots. By now, fervent evangelicals were gathering up a few belongings and heading for the hills. Many never returned. All the best ones returned, crestfallen at having been Left Behind.
Some people who had climbed ladders down from a rooftop, left a foot, an ankle and half shin a bone and fibula behind, neatly severed, along with the corresponding shoe, sock and pant leg. Evangelicals got wise and started camping out on rooftops. No one could get them down and few tried. Eventually, some were Gone. The rest, the best, remained.
Within the next few days, the Right Wing was amputated from Congress and from every State Legislature. The Republican Party was reduced to a shambles; the Democratic, not much better. Forty-five remaining Congresspeople met in emergency session to appoint temporary replacements. Half the Supreme Court was Gone, as were most Federal Judges: the most dependable reactionaries. The Oval Office went vacant and so did the offices of most political appointees.
Under emergency rules, an Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services took over the Presidency, pending crash elections. That doctor was an outspoken agnostic by the name of Dean, about to be fired by the Administration. She had made too many waves about family planning, universal health care and corporate-sponsored malnutrition and pollution. Nobody remained, senior to her. No-one complained and she was elected President shortly thereafter. She turned out to be quite good at her new job, much better than the last dozen or so.
The military snapped to DefCon 1, but found no one to nuke. Many missile command bunkers and Pentagon offices were empty. A few cadets rattled around the military academies; the Coast Guard, NOAA and Merchant Marine ones were only slightly more crowded. Most private military schools became ghost towns; those few cadets Left Behind weren't comfortable there in any case, and went home. Warships sailed home with skeleton crews, and fighter-bombers fell from the sky, like sparrows off an active volcano. The American military, what was left of it, was recalled from overseas. That operation took two months and concluded without a single combat casualty. 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). The main newspapers went temporarily out of print; they had to find new editors and sponsors. No one was left to invoke “journalistic balance and objectivity” and thus pay due reverence to evil.
Basically, if you had spouted lies and ranted loud enough in favor of hate crimes and greed, you were Gone. If you had been terrified enough by the others to advocate their murder, you were Gone. If you had killed, starved and tormented people other than by accident, you were Gone. Persist in doing so by accident … you get my point.
In their fantasy world, many of those Swept Away had already sacrificed everyone to Armageddon on Earth, and then to eternal damnation from Heaven. Quality mass education? Ecological sanity? Peace and justice for helpless foreigners? Why bother! Wasn’t this planet God's ashtray? Couldn’t He purify, in His own good time, all the filth and horror Christianity might consider necessary to hasten His Return? As far as they were concerned, those excluded from the Rapture were no more worthwhile than rotting garbage.
While they were absolutely right about being Swept Away, it turned out that the Earth and everyone Left Behind gained tremendously from their Departure.
What became of those Caught Up in the Rapture? Who cares? Good riddance!
Sure, there would be disasters, potent signs in the heavens, and wars and rumors of wars―just as there had been for thousands of years; nothing prophetic in any of that. But with surprising ease, the local situation got a lot better for humanity.
What was most funny? It wasn’t just fanatical Christians who Disappeared; Muslims did, too. Those who Disappeared had complained, quite loudly, that there wasn’t any real Islam anymore, that they were the last True Believers in Allah. All their neighbors were just filth-loving, pro-Western heretics fit for nothing more than execution by jihad. Those who Disappeared tended to cling to Wahhab, Salafi and other brain-fried fanaticisms that preached mass murder for the greater glory of Islam.
Whether Texan or Saudi, all those big talkers and all their big talk Went Away. Papers drifted untended across empty Taliban madrassas and fundamentalist Christian campuses whose students wandered home when their Bigotry 101 coaches Disappeared.
The same thing happened to Hindus. Rabid nationalists, mosque wreckers, library torchers, lynch mob leaders, all disappeared. No one was left to blame Indian Muslims and Untouchables for every social problem. No one was left, in all of India and Pakistan, who cared passionately whether Kashmir became independent.
On a gorgeous afternoon typical of their beautiful country, the Kashmiris raised their new state flag in front of the government complex in Srinagar. No-one fired a shot, not even in celebration. The same thing happened in Sri Lanka. All the 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 awhile.
New Jewish settlements on the West Bank and in Jerusalem became ghost towns. Palestinian bomb factories, video production facilities and infiltration classrooms emptied. Empty attack helicopters crashed before they could launch Hellfire missiles into civilian crowds. Armored bulldozers stalled, no driver left in their bulletproof cabins. On Friday evenings, few worshippers returned from the Wailing Wall or the Temple Mosque. Busses made their quiet rounds, and street life resumed its normal Israeli whirl of cooler, festive evenings. The Great Wall was quietly reduced to highway paving mix and all the checkpoints were torn down. The Palestinian State became a sovereign reality. 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 and other cradles of human civilization into boiling cauldrons of radioactive glass. No more right-wing Jews, Christians and Muslims praying that nuclear hell would crash down on everyone. No more paranoid-schizoid, Book of Revelation fanatics. No more U.S. Administration crazed enough to twist those hate-filled nightmares into reality.
A few Orthodox and Conservative Rabbis Went Away as did most of the neo-Zionists. Many remaining Jews had to settle for Reformed Rabbis, so few of the others remained. Fattah, Hamas, Islamic Jihad? Ancient Palestinian history. The Vatican residency emptied, so did most of the College of Bishops. The Catholic priesthood was Cut in half, the leadership of the Southern Baptist Conference Vanished, and rural evangelical churches were things of the past. Christian Orthodox hierarchies? Buddhist ones? Protestants? None was spared.
Atheists did not get off any more lightly. The Chinese Central Committee became the Chinese Central Nothing. Peking and other Chinese cities were Swept clean of political police and paid informants. Tiananmen Square became a political forum where any passer-by could speak long, loud and clear, standing tall on a soapbox, just like in London’s Piccadilly Square. It turned out the Chinese were superb democrats once left to their own devices; it turned out every human being was hard-wired for Democracy, once the thugs were Pulled from their backs.
The entire political apparatus of North Korea Disappeared. Its people finally got real food shipped in as fast as cargo ships could unload. They blew up munitions, wrecked weapons and nukes and filled in fortifications, smiling all the while. South Korea disarmed in the time it took to destroy every landmine along the border and build superhighways and rail lines across it. The border was guarded by determined grandmothers who shamed 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 discovered how nice peace was for a change. Africans and Latin Americans let out deep sighs of relief and got to work rebuilding. Gunfire was no longer heard in Congo jungles or around the Great Lakes. Government buildings emptied in Khartoum, and international petroleum-fascist financiers disappeared. A Sudanese woman could come home in perfect safety after having collected water and fuel for her fire. There wasn’t a “technician” left in Mogadishu and far fewer firefights there or anywhere else.
The same thing happened all over the ex-communist world, everywhere thuggish tyrants had thrived like maggots. Violent fanatics, drug lords and kleptocrats 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 of Nazi confession was to be Gone.
Within a few months, the Earth became a Very Different Place.
In the United States, gay marriage, abortion on demand and robust equal opportunity initiatives were quietly legislated and then forgotten. No one argued against 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. Military subsidies were slashed by 99%, as were its industrial expenditures. Somehow, we were more secure than ever before.
Praying in school was something one did quietly in one's own skull, in a civilized way. Jesus had explicitly forbidden us to pray in public and in church. His words from Matthew 6 were fully obeyed, now that disobedient theocrats had Left, who’d given Christ a bad name and turned almost everyone away from His Way, the Only Way now obvious to everyone.
America rebuilt itself into a 21st Century powerhouse: an environmental, educational and infrastructure showplace, after generations of inexcusable neglect.
We are in the
21st Century – Am I
not mistaken? – and not stuck in the Middle Ages,
ruled by ignorant barbarians?
Not surprisingly, the same thing happened everywhere else. The poorest regions on Earth boasted higher standards of living than the richest ones had before the Rapture. A Golden Age of Learning… Public schools welcomed everyone, everyone, and got more than enough funding to fulfill their duty.
People wondered what had been the problem, since its solution was so obvious and simple …
Prisons emptied. Either you had really needed to serve time in one—at which point, you were Gone. Or (the case for many prisoners) you had never needed to, really—at which point, the human monsters who had set you up were Gone and you could go straight home. Most prison communes grew smoking herbs tended by a few remaining petty criminals and the best among their guards.
All those Gathered Up by the Rapture added up to a few million at the most: less 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 within the next few decades, by universal consent. Every newborn became rare, precious and welcome—not as commonplace, cheap and neglected as dirt.
Most people turned into Judeo-Buddho-Hindu-Christo-Muslims: a cooperative and eclectic amalgam of each creed's best elements, the obvious path for those who wished to practice religion but hated its organized strife.
After all, God is Allah, is Krishna, is every God and None of Them and Nothing and Everything anybody could ever fantasize—all at the same time, with hands tied behind His/Her/Its/Nothing’s back. God is big, you see; not small and musty and cramped like your typical fundamentalist's mind. Nobody Left Behind could argue with that, and nobody wanted to.
Fundamentalists would have fought to (someone else's) death so that nothing of the sort would ever happen; but they were out of the picture now. No one was left to exploit faith and divert charity for personal profit, preach bodily mutilation for the salvation of souls and thus give religion a bad name.
Atheism became a very difficult belief to get enthused about, since something must have caused the Rapture. Eventually, everyone discovered the love of Jesus Christ—in a manner the fundamentalists could never have foreseen, foretold or shared honestly. (See Matthew 6-5).
Most large corporations folded; their MBAs, CEOs and CFOs Disappeared. People bought only what they needed and sold only what was needed—no more and no less. Most advertising vanished and so did its revenues.
All of a sudden, television became interesting. Imagine that, smart television programming! The planetary IQ virtually doubled overnight. You could turn on the radio and listen to fine music for hours on end or thoughtful dialog―not endless patter about nothing of importance, interrupted by an occasional trash-pop ditty. Even MTV let go its endless succession of commercial babblers and started playing good music again.
Slowly but surely, people began replanting Eden. They discovered you could plant groves of Scotch Pine (Pinus sylvestris) in the bare laetrile soil of strip-mined, tropical ex-rain forests. Those groves would attract birds and animals and their seed-filled dung; then the jungle would grow back spontaneously. Millions of such groves sprang up, brainchildren of the Gaviotas community.
Industrial applications of terra preta replaced chemical fertilizers in agriculture and began restoring the quality of the soil. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100810122030.htm.
Clean, safe Thorium reactors replaced every dirty and dangerous Uranium reactor.
Across the world, the poor discovered that they could build dependable, cool-in-summer, warm-in-winter, earthquake-resistant housing from sunbaked earth-brick Domes of Rumi, on your own, very cheap. No one had to go homeless, now that all the house wreckers were Gone and Nader Khalili had shown us the right way to do it.
Anywhere on Earth, a weary traveler could knock at any door and expect to receive welcome, a good meal and clean water. Everywhere on Earth, a good farmer could farm his crops with good clear water never tainted by human violence.
What Man never managed to accomplish, God alone made happen. During this ultimate Revolution, the tyrants were Sent Packing, and the meek inherited the Earth―bloodlessly, as promised and right on schedule.
Everyone rejoiced in their newfound grace, prosperity and freedom. No one missed the dearly departed fanatics; except, perhaps, for their mothers and children, those few who remained.
Even now, I fear I do not differ enough from the Chosen to be spared their Fate. I, too, condemn fellow human beings whom I despise and fear. I, too, count on God to grant me salvation while I deny it to them.
Please, most merciful Lord, do not condemn me to spend all eternity with them! That would be true Hell. God's justice must surely…
[Notes found on an abandoned rooftop].
LEARNERS: On the Move from WeaponWorld
to PeaceWorld