Sci-fi novel about people missing the rapture

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must ... post ... cartoon ... again .....
no don't do it .....
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Yah, the pre-trib view of the rapture, even by the standard of the verses they reference, isn't even consistent. The "rapture" is just a short hand of the gathering of the flock in the air that's described in several passages.


Matthew 24

"30And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.

31And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. "

Now when does the son of man return in context to the tribulation?

Revelation 11

"The Seventh Trumpet
15 The seventh angel sounded his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, which said:
“The kingdom of the world has become
the kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah,
and he will reign for ever and ever.”

16 And the twenty-four elders, who were seated on their thrones before God, fell on their faces and worshiped God, 17 saying:

“We give thanks to you, Lord God Almighty,
the One who is and who was,
because you have taken your great power
and have begun to reign. "

So, if you look at the Matthew passage in context to Revelations, the gathering up of the elect (rapture) doesn't happen till the seventh trumpet is sounded, well into the tribulation period.

The pre-trib view is really popular but doesn't hold much water by biblical standards. If anything, it just makes the people who believe it more passive to the state of affairs in the world since they have it worked out in their minds that they won't have to live through the hell storm.





Nonetheless, I'd like to find this sci-fi book. It sounds trippy.

this,

its fiction it can have any premise the writer wants.

It's a short story. It's also fiction. It's meant to explore some high concept, not be prophecy.

And it's not clear that anyone was forgotton. They may have been intentionally left behind. It's not even clear that it was really Jesus who took them. It might have been something masquerading as Jesus, which they discuss at one point. It would also be unusual by the standards of christian theology for Jesus to take absolutely everyone on the planet, which is what happened in the story.

Last edited by simon_says on 11 Feb 2012, 1:19 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I am glad you did.

ruveyn

How can a book that not only denies science (are you talking about the Left Behind Series?), again, unlike Star Trek or the Space Odyssey trilogy, but presents it as fact (which it must be taken as due to it being in the Bible, so long as the reader is a Christian), be science fiction? It is, however, still a type of speculative fiction, much like Lord of the Rings.

Sure, a Bronze Age Collapse-level catastrophe could certainly occur with our vast amount of nuclear weapons and our problems with failed states, world instability, irrational degrees of militarism, &c. but this could easily be science fiction, while nothing taking the Christian rapture seriously could be called science fiction. But the rapture has about as much evidence supporting it as ancient aliens.

Whats the actual title of this book?

Unlke the OP, and everyone on this thread, you actually seem to have read the book and know what its about!

Which is good because this fills in the missing piece of the puzzle.
ITs not about the Rapture- its a mystery story about what APPEARS to be the aftermath of the rapture.

So the storyline is not quite as ret*d as the OP described.
In fact it might be a cool story.

Maybe it turns out that it wasnt Jesus, but aliens who beamed up the whole human race and took them away to an unknown place and fate.

But maybe the aliens left that book behind for the returning astronuats to find.

You know.

The one entitled "To Serve Man".

"Hmmmnnn.. 'To Serve Man' ".

"Gasp!"

"Its a COOK book!"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_re ... ce_fiction

i know theres a well known catholic sci-fi author called stephen baxter, i havent read any of his stuff but his name just popped into my head.
so id guess that this is the book?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manifold:_Time

It's a short story called "Judgement Passed" by Jerry Olton. It's not really a great story. It's ok.

In the story they found old newspapers and video of it. "Jesus" came back and gave everyone six days to sort out their business and then hauled everyone away for judgement on day seven. The astronauts spend their time debating if it was god and if and how to contact him about being left behind.

Less, actually. Given what we know about the universe it is reasonable to suspect that alien life exists somewhere in the universe, and from there it isn't a big leap to say one of those possible cultures could be "ancient" by our standards.

No concrete evidence, but it makes logical sense.

^ Ancient aliens is the theory that Aliens influenced on ancient cultures.

First they came for the communists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

That's easy. It wasn't Jesus.

That's probably painfully true...kitty can now haz chezberger!

I would have no idea why the author would think it would matter to God omnipresent where anyone was in this material universe, but apparently they seemed to have gotten it into their heads for some reason. Perhaps as some vain scare tactic to discourage Christians who have never read the Bible from considering becoming astronauts or some other crappy reason. I can't imagine that they'd seriously think such things, but they may well just anyhow and in such a case it's probably due to them only having heard only preachings about the rapture and only preachings about "space" being "Heaven" and some such other weirdness theology that existed in some churches prior to the Gemini and Apollo missions. I don't know for certain though, I've not read the novel but only heard about it from a member here once in response to a thread I made a while back.

Maybe, but I can't tell for certain from the plot description.