Rapture Ready

I grew up among folks who reckoned that Christians would be "raptured", ie disappear into the sky to meet Jesus at his Second Coming. Then the folks left behind would suffer seven years of "tribulation", ie really dystopian times with lots of death and pain. There would be a huge battle in Israel, and Jesus and the Christians would return in triumph and kill everybody but 144,000 lucky Jews who would be "saved". Or something like that. The folks who believed this did so mainly on the basis of commentary in their Scofield Bilbles and because this eschatology fit right in with their personalities. The world was doomed, doomed, doomed, and there was no point trying to make it any better. It was fun for them to ponder current events in the light of Biblical prophecy much as some folks do with the quatrains of Nostradamus. The "King of the North"? Russia, of course. The "King of the East"? Red China. At least that's how they were reading things back in the seventies. Nowadays, who knows? The King of the East is probably Iran now.

I am reading Garry Wills' "Head and Heart; America's Christianities", a history of faith and politics and culture in America, and I'm up to the part about the "rapture" expectant faithful. I did not know that Ronald Reagan was himself a rapture ready loon who figured that his own geopolitical activities were laid out in prophecy. GW Bush might be rapture ready, and it would explain a lot if he were. The rapture ready folks are ripe for political manipulation, especially when it comes to international affairs. All you have to do is make a Scofieldesque case that your policy will hasten the end times or that it comports with prophecy. It's easy to do because the rapture ready are willing to believe. You worry that your policy is, say, crazy or stupid or both? You won't be able to sell it? No worries as long as it can be plausibly connected to prophecy!

If John McCain wants to endear himself to the rapture ready, he could do no worse than by claiming to be the AntiChrist. They'd have to vote for him to hasten the day of trial. You never hear the GOP calling the opposition the AntiChrist because the rapture ready would get behind the opposition!

Why would a rapture ready candidate run for president? For no other reason than that he believes that he will be able to carry out policies that will cause most of his constituents to suffer horrible deaths as soon as possible.