Jesus is Coming and the Sheep are Horny
Rapture Porn and its Discontents
by Brent Sanders
So here we sit, watching a minority populace, juiced on fear and revenge, throwing its weight behind a goblin-peckered carnival barker in an effort to grease the skids of Armageddon, who don’t care because they think they’re going to be “raptured” and won’t have to face the horrors after, when the Antichrist will rule the planet and it will sink even further into war, disaster, sickness, and despair for seven long years, so fuck everyone else, until Jesus comes roaring back to earth, riding a cloud like a celestial Harley to throw the Satan into the bottomless pit and usher in a thousand years of Earthly paradise before he opens the pit, releases Saten, and defeats him, gathering his flock and whisking them off to Heaven after destroying the world in a fiery grand finale.
All predetermined no matter what we do, of course, but as these loud, professed “Christians” can’t resist playing a part in this weird, deific kayfabe, they’re gonna keep throwing gasoline on the current inferno so they can get the T-shirt for the upcoming big one.
Why? Because while they were decrying reefer, bikinis, and long hair (blame those damn Beatles) as demonic shapers of young impressionable minds, they were gorging themselves on the singular American idiom of Rapture Porn.
And, lo, it did fuck them up.
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Apocalyptic tales have existed since long before Jesus was born. One of the earliest comes from the musings credited to the Persian Zarathustra Spitama (of later Thus Sprach fame) known more commonly by his street name Zoroaster, who spoke of a final battle between the forces of Good (those who follow the will of Ahura Mazda, one of the first monotheistic entities), led by a messianic figure named Soshiant, and evil, led by Persian Boogey Man Ahriman. This would signal the culmination of a precise 12,000 year cycle, when the world would be purified by molten metal. The restoration would release the wretched, bound since death in Duzakh (Zoroastrian purgatory), from the bonds of Ahriman’s evil, and all would live in paradise under the gaze of Ahura Mazda.
Sound familiar?
Christianity, like most ensuing monotheistic systems, has a similar eschatology, although they added their own poetic twists, including the concept of an eternal Hell; as a means to steer the unwashed heathen from unwashedness and heathenism and make them pay their tithes, you really can’t beat the fear being surrounded by fire and brimstone while being forever corkscrewed in the ass by demons.
For almost two-thousand years, Christian eschatology, the study of the end times, was an esoteric discipline better left to scholars The primary Biblical depiction of such was the Book of Revelations, penned by one John of Patmos, an early Christian exiled for his beliefs.
Even by Biblical standards, with its talking snakes, flying saucers, and war trophy foreskins, Revelations is an Owsley two-step, a rambling, psychotic enigma. To read it as a skeptic is to be entertained and happily confused, but to read as a true believer is to have one’s synapses twisted and stretched to the point of fervor, panic, and spiritual orgasm. Powerful stuff.
Christians before the early 19th century tended to think of it as an abstract reflection on the awesomeness of Yahweh, a return to the tempestuous Old Testament God after the calm and promise of Jesus. A reminder that the covenant may be new, but God could still run out of fucks to give and woe be unto he who would test such an otherwise awesome empyrean dude.
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Eschatology comes from the Greek eschatos, meaning “last”. As such, Eschatos would be a more fitting nickname for the New York Mets mascot than Mr. Met. But I digress.
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Such was the state of Biblical prophecy as a study until the early 1800s. Enter John Nelson Darby, a British Bible scholar and a founder of the conservative Anglican offshoot Plymouth Brethren. Darby developed the concept of Dispensationalism, the idea that time, as dictated by God, was divided into different eras, each with a special purpose in God’s mysterious plan. One of the final dispensations was the Great Tribulation, a seven-year period of unrest and tragedy leading to the Battle of Armageddon. At the beginning of this period, Darby insisted, the Christian faithful would be taken up into Heaven, disappearing suddenly from Earth, igniting the Tribulation in one confusing swoop, while giving the faithful an escape hatch as a reward.
This was the first serious contextualization of “The Rapture” as a salient theological event. Though not mentioned in Bible as such, Darby, using Matthew 24:36-42 as a jumping point, turned this theory into a cornerstone of his theory.
Most weren’t buying it. It signaled a departure from previous thought, and the scripture, according to some theologians, wasn’t scripturing. His concept never took hold in mainstream British Christianity.
Americans, however, were a little more open to the idea. The Third Great Awakening, starting around mid-century and ending around the time of World War I, was the fruition of an American populace drunk on Manifest Destiny and religious fervor. The standard Protestantism was splintering into more eccentric brands. Mormonism, Christian Science, Quakers, Shakers, Adventists, and Pentecostals joined the Christian community, few welcomed with open arms, creating organizations ever more exclusionary, isolated and quirky. Pentecostal and Holliness churches, with loud demonstrations of faith and evangelical zeal, eased seamlessly into the mainstream toward the end of this period, especially in the South and urban areas of California. All practiced a brand of Fundamentalism, hewing to the Bible as the literal and divinely inspired authority, with each sect believing they, and only they, possessed the key to interpret the baffling text into righteous dogma.
In 1818, William Miller, self-styled layman-turned-minister, preaching a mashup of Baptist thought and deism, and using some pidgin numerology, decided the time and place of world’s end would be between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. Many sold their homes, gave away their possessions, and waited.
On March 22, 1844, Miller announced a new date of April 18. When nothing happened, Miller told his flock “I fucketh up, but hangeth tight, long it will not be”. One of his adherents re-calculated and got a few to believe the date would be October 22, 1844.
Nope.
Most of Miller’s followers left, but several streams of Adventism trace their roots to this time and exist today. Most of them, though, hold no stock in a pre-Tribulation rapture.
Enter Cyrus Ingerson Scofield, a late-19th century minister and theologian who went by the far less lyrical C.I. Scofield. In 1909, he published the Scofield Reference Bible, a King James translation side-barred with his own interpretational commentary. Taking Darby’s idea a step farther, he pimped a pre-Tribulation rapture less as a metaphorical concept than a cod-lock eventuality.
Over the decades, fundamentalist churches have come to accept this idea as gospel, not realizing it’s a recent concept that would’ve made Jesus ask “WTF?” and remind himself to make that next batch of water-into-wine a little weaker.
Maybe a dry white.
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Simultaneously, secular ‘murica was being swept by the forces of reason, fueled by science, technology, and the challenge of Darwin to religious cosmology. As seen by events like the Scopes trial, this created caustic “us vs. them” religious subculture, a rabble leaning on myth and Hell-bent on validation, comfort, and revenge.
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Then came the song that glued it all together.
Fundamentalism and charismatic movements were strong in areas of California but differed somewhat from their rural Pentecostal cousins in the South. For one thing, it was more self-centered and money-grubby than the simple churches in Appalachia, where concepts of expression and transcendence meshed easily with those of charity and shared morality. The Holy Roller churches didn’t just jump pews and speak in tongues as a way of grasping divine consciousness; they did so in integrated services in a segregated south. It was a statement of spiritual purpose.
California? Here we find the early strains of “prosperity theology”, the idea that God wants you to be rich, hip, and with it. Smoother and more telegenic than their Southern correspondents, the pastors in California, from Amee Semple McPherson through guys like Chuck Smith, Charles E. Fuller, and Carolina-born Billy Graham, soft-soaped the fire and brimstone.
Most, however, still hewed to Dispensationalism/Pre-Trib Rapture as a core principle.
From this environment springs Larry Norman.
Known as a pioneer of Christian rock, Norman was raised in a Pentecostal church and played in church and secular bands throughout his adolescence. A young man of fierce conviction, he saw Christianity as a force for social justice, and rock music as a conduit for his faith. With his backbeat, leather pants, and long, blond hair, Norman caught flack from the mainstream ministers at the time, who preferred their music less intense, their pants polyester, and their hair hot-waxed.
But the Christian coffeehouse set loved the young street preacher, as later did many secular artists; the Pixies’ Frank Black and U2’s Bono (as opposed, I guess, to some other Bono) openly eulogized him, Black spending time with him before Norman’s death in 2008. Bob Dylan is reported to have been a fan. Sex Pistol Steve Jones recorded with him, and Paul McCartney was (perhaps apocryphally) said to be an admirer.
It’s easy to see why. He has the cred, sharing bills with the likes of Janis Joplin, the Who, Jimi Handrix, and the Doors, among others. His music rocked in a way that few “Christian Rock” bands ever did, could, or would, and his music has a similarity to Van Morrison, another artist with whom he shared both a stage and similar spiritual bent. It has a mystical quality that burns rather than smothers, and a lyricism that delivers, even if some may be turned off by the religiosity of it.
He wasn’t afraid to use secular venues to offer his message or use sacred venues to demand social justice from a Christian audience that had become a breeding ground for narcissism and self-enhancement.
In 1969 he released Upon This Rock, considered the first Christian Rock album (certainly the most overt to that point), backed by members of the Wrecking Crew, the LA-based studio collective, and mixing a stew of Southern California influences like the Byrds and the Beach Boys with Van Morrison, the Band, and his own spiritual vision. Worth a listen.
Almost hidden on the album, four songs into side two, is I Wish We’d All Been Ready, a bare-boned, folky song, the lyrics a stark, cinematic, and chilling meditation, describing in spare but vivid detail the moment and immediate aftermath of the Rapture, and lamenting the horrors that must be faced by those non-Christians left behind.
Before the year was up, the recording was being played on Christian radio and church coffeehouse and performed by congregants in youth groups throughout the country.
This was a watershed event, turning what had previously been an abstract concept into something more tangible.
And terrifying.
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Evangelical churches had long preached on Christ’s return to Earth as being foreshadowed by “signs”. Taking cues from the Gospel of Matthew 24. Pop open and cold one and dig:
1Jesus left the temple and was walking away when his disciples came up to him to call his attention to its buildings. 2 “Do you see all these things?” he asked. “Truly I tell you, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
3 As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately. “Tell us,” they said, “when will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”
4 Jesus answered: “Watch out that no one deceives you. 5 For many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and will deceive many. 6 You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. 7 Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. 8 All these are the beginning of birth pains.
9 “Then you will be handed over to be persecuted and put to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of me. 10 At that time many will turn away from the faith and will betray and hate each other, 11 and many false prophets will appear and deceive many people. 12 Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
15 “So when you see standing in the holy place ‘the abomination that causes desolation,’[a] spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand— 16 then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains. 17 Let no one on the housetop go down to take anything out of the house. 18 Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak. 19 How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers! 20 Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath. 21 For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again.
22 “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened. 23 At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘There he is!’ do not believe it. 24 For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 25 See, I have told you ahead of time.
26 “So if anyone tells you, ‘There he is, out in the wilderness,’ do not go out; or, ‘Here he is, in the inner rooms,’ do not believe it. 27 For as lightning that comes from the east is visible even in the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. 28 Wherever there is a carcass, there the vultures will gather.
29 “Immediately after the distress of those days
“‘the sun will be darkened,
and the moon will not give its light;
the stars will fall from the sky,
and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’[b]
30 “Then will appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven. And then all the peoples of the earth[c] will mourn when they see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory.[d] 31 And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of the heavens to the other.
32 “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. 33 Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it[e] is near, right at the door. 34 Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. 35 Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away
36 “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son,[f] but only the Father. 37 As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 38 For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; 39 and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. 40 Two men will be in the field; one will be taken and the other left. 41 Two women will be grinding with a hand mill; one will be taken and the other left.
42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.
45 “Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? 46 It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. 47 Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions. 48 But suppose that servant is wicked and says to himself, ‘My master is staying away a long time,’ 49 and he then begins to beat his fellow servants and to eat and drink with drunkards. 50 The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. 51 He will cut him to pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
Put a rhythm section and run a guitar through a fuzz box and phase shifter, and you’ve got a pretty good Pink Floyd song.
The passage works as an eschatological Cliff Notes. End-times theologians had long been tying their ideas to Old Testament prophets, as well as The Book of Revelations. Daniel and Ezekial are favorites, written during times of Jewish captivity and no less fiery than the later works of John of Patmos. Daniel’s rep as a prognosticator lent some serious cred, and the world has always been not unlike the shitstorm described, so armchair mystics for centuries have insisted the scripture applies to their era.
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As I Wish We’d All Been Ready was percolating Larry Norman’s head, a Philadelphia advertising hack and US Navy veteran named Salem Kirban was cooking up something different. After a newscast showing the coffins of innocent children and young men who had died in Vietnam, where his son was stationed, Kirban had a spiritual awakening. Described previously as a perfunctory church member, observant but not fervent, Kirban saw in the images a manifestation of the “end times” sermons he would occasionally hear in the evangelical church his family attended. He was convinced and set to work on his own Dispensational framework. In 1968, he published How the World Will End: A Guide to Survival. “When this happens-and if you still remain-then READ THIS BOOK...” screamed the wording on the cover, with “Guide to Survival” in stark oversized text resembling blood smeared on a concrete wall. It laid out Kirban’s pre- and post-Trib timelines and functioned as the instruction promised.
And as events like the Vietnam conflict, the godless counterculture, runaway technology, and the violence and riots of 1968 unfurled, Kirban caught the zeitgeist and rode it. The book took off in Evangelical circles, selling in mostly Christian Bookstores and passed around from believer to believer looking for a thrill.
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We need to take into consideration that to believers, those raised in churches where this was presented as looming inevitability, this was not just an abstract concept. It was tangible. The thrill was acute, terrifying to some, anticipatory to others, but an assured reality to deal with. Kirban’s daughter stated in a later interview that as a child, she knew she would not live to be eleven years old in her earthly body, because Jesus was coming before then.
I well remember one Wednesday night Bible Class, when I was twelve or thirteen, when the subject came up, and discussed as matter-of-factly as one would an upcoming vacation or birthday party. When questioned, one of the older kids, all high school wisdom and blind confidence, said these events would occur soon. “It can’t be any longer than two years away” was the calm declaration.
Fuck you up, that would.
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In 1970, Kirban published the novel 666, a narrative of the events he’d predicted in Guide to Survival. It was filled with photos of chilling violence and creepy technology allowing the antichrist to implement the Mark of the Beast and destroy the remaining souls who now saw the light. One illustration showed a guillotine set up with water-filled aquarium set up to catch the disembodied heads of the faithful, while a steepled-church sits calmly in the background. The text was clumsy but serviceable. One critic described the writing as “so bad it works”.
It became the “Stranger in a Strange Land” of the bible-thumping set. Kirban went on to write similar books, few remembered today. Unlike some who came after Rapture Fever took hold in the mainstream, Kirban was more in line with the progressives of his day. He protested Vietnam, thought the proliferation of guns was a spiritual as well as physical danger, and considered the disregard for the environment to be one of humankind’s biggest sins. Like Larry Norman, he considered social justice a responsibility of his faith.
Fuckin’ Libtard.
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Digging into eschatology has always been a rabbit hole, full of arcane prophecies and sideline indicators. Multiple temples, red heifers, Gog and Magog, the two prophets, fig trees, all kinds of spin-offs one can grab and use as one’s own personal revelation. You, dear reader, are encouraged to dig in. It’s a hoot, but it’s far too detailed and complex to deal with here in any real detail.
But the basics of Dispensationalism are commonly known. Bad stuff happens, Rapture, chaos, more bad stuff happens, Antichrist comes, Jews come back to Jesus, they and the Tribulation converts get slaughtered, Jesus comes back, dead rise, big war in the Vally of Megiddo.
And why is this known? Primarily due to one of the best-selling books of the seventies.
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Hal Lindsey (played in this article by Nick Offerman) did the dirty work. A theologian with a bent for drama, he (with the help of a more polished writer with the adorably alliterate assignation Carole C. Carlson) published The Late, Great Planet Earth, an eschatological bombshell that became required reading for believers and a surprise mainstream bestseller. It has sold over 28 million copies to date, been translated into over fifty languages, and spawned a primetime TV special, a feature film narrated by Orson Welles, and hundreds of shitty prog-rock albums.
The Late, Great Planet earth was the Fanny Hill of Rapture porn, and Hal Lindsey brought it into the mainstream.
The basics were the same as previous, but Lindsey brought a wrinkle. Previous writers on the subject were academic, often dull. Kirban’s books were stiff and sober. Lindsey took a different approach. While hardly laugh-a-minute, he wrote in a more conversational style. As someone who’d been active in college ministry, his phrasing was more in tune with younger people. Not exactly hip, to be sure, but hipper than most. While Kirban looked at events-to-come as a trial and preachers slobbered fire-and-brimstone, Lindsey wrote excitedly about “taking the ultimate trip”.
The message was contemporaneous; based on his studies, and with an emphasis on the “this generation shall not pass…” section of Matthew 24, things were winding down. The State of Israel, established in 1948, was the key. The Israelites were returning home, and we had no more than forty years or so, roughly until 1988, before people start flying up into the sky. He was cagey and/or devout enough not to get caught up in date prediction, citing the Biblical declaration that “no man knows the hour”. But, he winked, it ain’t gonna be long.
Lindsey went on to a career as an “End-Times Analyst” that lasted long past the expiration he forecast. No bother. Just readjust the Dispensational calibration, maybe figure a generation is seventy or eighty years, or more. You know, God and mysterious ways and all. Just tune in again next week and catch a new tingle.
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Joining this pop-culture avalanche in 1973 was A Thief in the Night, a low-budget church basement movie and a cheese-ball classic that wormed its way into the psyches of church youth groups across the land.
Considered a complement to The Late Great Planet Earth, it tells the story of Patty, who awakens to the news that millions of people around the world have suddenly disappeared. A shadowy, UN-like world order is formed to deal with things, and Patty flashes back to the warnings her friends gave her about the inevitability of such things. Now, she must deal with life during tribulation.
Standard Christian movie tropes now, but this was the first movie to tackle the Rapture and tribulation. As a film inspired by The Late Great Planet earth, with dramatic elements of Salem Kirban’s 666, and a title track featuring The Fishmarket Combo warbling an almost-in-tune version of Larry Norman’s I Wish We’d All Been Ready, the film terrified the impressionable youth and gullible non-youth, sending them to their knees to beg for forgiveness less they endure Patty’s nightmare.
The film, made for $68,000 (and looking like it was made for about a quarter of that), grossed over $4,000,000, some of which came from rental and licensing, but much in tax-deductible donations. It has been seen by an estimated 300 million people and spawned three sequels. Director Donald W. Thompkins suggested it contributed to the conversion of 4 million souls to Christianity. Thompkins continued to churn out similar films for the next two decades, and copycats churned out dozens of similar low-budget productions.
The Thief series, as well as many of the other films, are available for viewing on YouTube.
Go ahead. Make it a movie night.
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A fundamentalist “Born Again” movement gained traction in the mid-seventies, and a genuine Evangelical (although not apocalyptic) former governor of Georgia initiated a quixotic run for the Presidency. In the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and the Nixon resignation, Jimmy Carter stepped into the Presidency in 1977, with a focus on Christian concepts like charity, grace, and human rights. Though his beliefs inspired his ideas, they were not central to his policies, and he was an ecumenical sort for whom tolerance and understanding was of more concern than religious purity.
To a segment of the population who constantly conflated morality and their own warped version of “American values”, always open to conspiracy theory built on personal bias and mind-whipped by the Rapture Porn now part of their diet, this was simply not acceptable. The South, since the Reconstruction a hotbed of anti-government and racist sympathies and often nicknamed the Bible Belt, as much for its citizens willingness to use the Bible as a validation for their baser instincts as for their faith, were disenchanted with their regional favorite-son President. The rural Midwest, as schooled in cross-burning as their southern counterparts, was cynical and unimpressed. Western states and Texas, with their fleet of self-important blowhards who trumpeted their “independence” while remaining afloat on government grants and federal dependence, were similarly unimpressed.
For them, the gentle Christianity of President Carter would not do. This was not a political issue, or even a secular existential crisis; to a populace wallowing in self-inflicted victimhood, this was a spiritual affront. The seventies, bookended by the Manson Family murders and the mass suicides/murders at the Jonestown compound, both built on spiritual exploitation, revealed a soil ripe for dark leaders to take hold and a voting populace ready for a fire-breathing prophet of the Old-Testament God to break out the wrath, stonings, and heathen-smiting.
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After a failed bid for the Republican Presidential nomination in 1976, Ronald Reagan, a former Roosevelt New Dealer who took a heel-turn into Conservative activism and rode it to the Governor’s Mansion in California, decided to try it again. A minor Hollywood personality, Reagan understood the science of playing to the rubes. A weak-kneed and shallow man, he understood that playing strong and smart was more successful, in terms of public image, than actual being strong and smart, and looked at electoral politics as just another audience to win over. He didn’t need to know, for instance, how to train a chimp in his film “Bedtime for Bonzo”, he just had to avoid the flying poo and smile for the camera.
In a popularity contest, an affable goober will best a serious intellectual with a visible self-righteous vibe every time, and at a time when mass media was bringing a Presidential campaign into homes as a form of entertainment, he knew what to do.
Reagan, who rarely crossed the threshold of a church and understood little taught there but knew to what tie to wear when he did, was able to play the part of a Simple Messenger of Christian Values.
And the suckers bought it.
Dog-whistling his way through a campaign with allusions to welfare queens, government overreach, and a Deity ready to send his boy back to Earth to rescue the faithful, he stumped on a simple message: by God, we need to show him we’re faithful by laying waste to all this equality and tolerance and charity bullshit the pointy-heads are forcing us into.
It was nuanced, never crossing the civility line. He wasn’t stupid enough to burn a cross, but the old pitchman knew that waving a book of matches would get his point across just fine.
It worked.
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Reagan was the first President (and some would argue, last, as well) of a modern conservative movement spawned by writers like William F. Buckley, Russell Kirk, and Irving Kristol. One would think his administration would follow the lead of such men, and he certainly paid them lip service and used their work when necessary. One would think their concepts would be the most influential in the implementation of national security policy by the Reagan administration.
One would be wrong
From Crawford Gibbons’ breezy tome Evangelical Millennialism in the Trans-Atlantic world, 1500–2000:
The Late Great Planet Earth exercised enormous influence inside Reagan's White House, and a number of cabinet members, including Attorney General Ed Meese, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, and Secretary of the Interior James Watt, shared the president’s dispensational views. Significantly, it was in a speech to the National Association of Evangelicals (1983) that Reagan made his apocalyptic reference to the 'evil empire' of the USSR. And The Late Great Planet Earth was central to this emerging political–theological platform. Lindsey appears to have briefed staff at the Pentagon, as well as military intelligence committees and staff at the State Department and the American Air War College, and there is evidence that some in the military elite were attracted to his analyses.[2]
Dispensational belief held sway.
He showed he could talk the same language and respect the “old ways” as better, not regressive.
Willing to exploit the inherent xenophobia and racism of Christian Nationalists, under the new marketing handle “Moral Majority” (it was rarely the former and never the latter), and riding an economic upturn (a short-term benefit of his ultimately corrosive “supply-side” hustle), Reagan bulldozed the field to win a second term by an electoral and popular-vote landslide.
Now viewed by some as a golden era (“It’s morning again in America…”), a strong apocalyptic undercurrent ran through the country, still squirrely in the waning days of the Cold War, during Reagan’s term, and Reagan made use of that fact. He soft-soaped the message somewhat and entertained compromise with Cold War adversaries, but he never let go of the live-wire rhetoric that put him in the White House.
His Vice-president George Bush succeeded him, although Reagan never fully embraced him as the Keeper of the Reagan flame. Bush was less willing to pander to the Bible-Thumper crowd, who showed him tepid support. When the Berlin wall fell and Communism collapsed under its own weight, it took away their villain; many thought the Antichrist, due to some monkey-bone interpretation of eschatological scripture, would be a leader from the Communist bloc. When that was taken from them, they had to find another one.
And they found it from within, in the form of a draft-dodgin’, baby-killin’, whore-mongerin’ Arkansan.
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In spite of his protestations of the Vietnam War, Bill Clinton was hardly a leftist. His economic views were closer to Reagan than they were to Roosevelt, and he had a War Hawk streak in him that was closer to neo-con than pacifist, but that never mattered to the newly re-christened Christian Coalition. In addition to his other sins, he was a little too friendly with the coloreds and refused to rein in his wife, who was in their eyes, a socialist and a peacenik and probably a lesbian.
The fact that she was far from any of these things mattered little to rubes; she looked the part, and they needed someone on which to focus their simmering hate.
The Antichrist as a Power Couple. Who Knew?
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Tim LaHaye had religious wingnut bona-fides. A Baptist Evangelical pastor who rose in the ranks from church in Pumpkintown, SC to a mega-church/Bible college in Southern California, he was also member of the John Birch Society and an early supporter and member of the board of the Moral Majority.
Definitely not a fan of the Clintons.
He was also a writer of Christian self-help books, mostly dealing with standard pastoral counselling subjects like marriage and mental wellness, including The Act of Marriage: The Beauty of Sexual Love, a thundermug of “Christian” concepts like female submissiveness, gender roles, and the holy utility of the missionary position.
What, you were expecting Christian Cunnilingus by Reverend Tim?
His head already swimming with dime-store conspiracy theory and influenced heavily by Jack Chick’s tracts on such matters (another subject for another time, but Chick’s comic tracts were 5” x 3”, perfect for sliding under the windshields of reprobates, and frequently presented the Pope as the Antichrist), Lahaye, with the help of a professional writer of Christian subjects named Jerry B. Jenkin, dipped a toe into the fiction waters, and came up with a bucket of gold.
The Left Behind series, named after the inaugural book in the series, is one of the best-selling series of books of all time, with multiple sequels, a young adult series, spin-offs, and graphic novels. The concept is pretty much a serialized adaption of films like A Thief in the Night, a preachy, post-trib adventure series he sprawls out over sixteen novels. Taking place in a world in which the government is complicit in promoting the Antichrist, it engendered a more pointed attack at the implied sinfulness of those in charge.
The Evangelicals needed a foil for their manufactured rage, and the Clintons were there. It was at this point Fundamentalism began to draw political lines, with Republicans being the “Christian” party and more-inclusive Democrats being the party of secular humanism. The opposition to the Clintons took on religious undertones, which Bill further fostered by getting an extramarital hummer in the White House and being caught lying about it. A cadre of pious Republicans put on their Pharisaic robes and started the stone-tossing, despite many of them having a carnal rap sheet to rival Clinton.
Using God was a marketing ploy is old hat, but these folks weaponized it in a way not seen since the antebellum era, with similar far-reaching and calamitous results.
Jenkins’ pulpy fiction was perfect for the time. Wackjob Christians, casual Christians, and even non-Christians devoured the books, some joining survivalist cults and hoarding supplies for the coming day when life would imitate bad art.
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In 1998, with the end of the Clinton era in eyesight, Cloud Ten, a Christian film production company, released Apocalypse, the first of a cheapie four-film, straight-to-video series that follows the exact same dispensational structure as the Thief in the Night movies and the Left Behind books. Even with more professional production values and the presence of D-list actors rather than youth group amateurs (Gary Busey, Margot Kidder, Howie Mandel, Mr. T, Corbin Bernsen), the film sold 3,000 units in the United States, turned a solid profit, and made Cloud Ten a player in the Rapture Porn game.
In 2000, the titans joined forces, with Tim Lahaye optioning the motion picture rights to Cloud Ten. With an unheard budget of $17,000,00, Cloud Ten promised “the biggest and most ambitious Christian film ever”.
Big and ambitious, maybe. Good? No.
The film was released on home video on Halloween of the same year, with a theatrical release in February of 2021, in some odd marketing strategy that apparently only theologically adept can understand. The only D-list actor was its star, former sitcom adolescent Kirk Cameron, who’d found Jesus while starring in the series Growing Pains and forsook secular acting for preaching his divisive brand of Christianity.
The movie was a critical and a commercial bomb, so of course, sequels were made, each more insipid than the last.
In 2008, LaHaye, dissatisfied from the start with the production quality of the three films in the series, and Cloud Ten, who had resumed cranking out more of the same garbage they peddled before the Left Behind films.
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In 2000, George W. Bush, who, unlike his father, proudly voiced his Evangelical bent, was elected President, and things seem to settle down a bit on the Christian front with a Republican returning to the White House. When two jets, hijacked by Muslim extremist suicide bombers, crashed into the twin towers of the World Trade Center, and another into the Pentagon, the Holy War seemed on at last, and a Christian fella was in charge of our side.
Seven years later, having lied to the American people about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and decisive wars dragging on there and in Afghanistan, as well as an epic economic meltdown, a Democrat was swept into office and proceeded to clean up the mess left behind; putting the economy on the road to recovery, killing the planner of the 9/11 attacks, withdrawing from Iraq in 2011, engendering healthcare for all, and eventually leaving office with a purring economy and even a long-coveted nuclear treaty with Iran.
Evangelicals hated him from the start, and their disdain increased with every success he had.
Why? Well, a brand of White Christian nationalism, under the cutesy-poo name of the Tea Party, had replaced the Christian Coalition as the political hate group du jour. Named after the Boston Tea Party, and considering themselves true keepers of the American flame as defined in 1776, they had somehow worked things out in their feeble, little brains that Barack Obama, being both black and having a funny name, must be a Marxist, and there’s nothing more demonic than a Marxist, especially when they champion marriage for gay people and dare to wear a tan suit, and is maybe, probably, bearing, as he does, the curse of Cain, most assuredly the Antichrist come destroy our Christian nation from within and leave us unprotected.
He wasn’t. of course. But political parties are determined by demographics, not ideology.
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Rapture Porn, like any dopamine-engendering act or substance, curls the brain into a Sisyphean hill in search of the next high. If Obama didn’t bring about Armageddon, by God, then the Republican party, saturated as it was by a generation of Christians strung out on their chosen strain of arousal, would regain political control through someone who would.
Enter Donald J. Trump.
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The son of a New York slumlord who rode Daddy’s business into a shitpile and had since been reduced to earning his dollar by branding his goofy name on everything from vodka to steaks to a reality show that shot his name recognition (if not his wallet) into the stratosphere, he frequently spoke of Presidential aspirations.
He didn’t actually want to BE President, of course. He wanted the attention, the brand building opportunity, and maybe a chance to give a grubby, little finger to those snooty Manhattan socialites who kept his shyster ass at arm’s length.
Like any good snake oil peddler, he knew a mark when he saw one. Seeing the undercurrent of Christian nationalism inn the Tea Party, he threw his fugazi pearls to the swine, and Oh, How They Wallowed.
Claiming to be a Christian, even though he stated he had never felt the need to seek forgiveness, he presented himself as a messianic figure, flawed and sinful, yes, but touched by Jehovah to lead the world into the chaos of the end Days. Picture King Saul with a ridiculous comb-over.
His first moves were attempts to destroy his successor’s legacy, first through a failed attempt at dismantling Obama’s signature domestic policy, the American Heathcare Act, then successfully withdrawing from the multi-nation Treaty with Iran that had somewhat stabilized relations with that country.
His acolytes, rebranded as MAGA for the caption on red made-in-China by slave labor trucker hats he peddled at his rallies, swallowed hard, egged on by televangelists and megachurch pastors who latched onto the grift and congregations who all but pulled it out in church and tossed one off.
It wasn’t just that he promised to rid the country of gays, Muslims, and brown people who didn’t know their place; he also swore fidelity to Israel, whose leaders could spot a mark as well as Trump could. As well as Trump played the rubes, the Israeli warlords played Trump better.
By the middle of his first term, an unintelligible conspiracy theory called QAnon morphed into a quasi-theology involving secret governments, a mysterious elite class drinking the blood of children, human micro-chipping, and Kennedys coming back from the dead.
No shit.
Surely all this would hasten the coming of Jesus.
Not so fast. After a plague of Biblical proportions swept the Earth (“YET ANOTHER SIGN OF HE END!”), he was unceremoniously voted out of office.
And in the dessert, he dwelt for four years.
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In his absence, MAGA Christian hearts grew meaner, and QAnon grew into a full-blown religion. When Trump decided to make his comeback, his followers felt stronger that scripture was being fulfilled.
And when he returned to office, one of the truly amazing political comebacks of all time, there was no doubt, to the rubes, that prophecy was being fulfilled.
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As I write this, we’re a year-and-half into the second Trump administration. We’re embroiled in a losing conflict with Iran that will end only with catastrophic death or immense financial cost, and maybe both. Russia and Ukraine are engaged in a four-year battle in which lives and American interests are at stake. Israel is pimping a genocide in which we are, as her allies, complicit, and Trump is still playing grab-ass with Netanyahu. Gas and consumer goods prices are at all time highs, with no relief in sight. The ACA has been whittled down, insurance premiums are exploding, and drug prices are forcing the chronically ill to decide between rent, food, or medicine. The justice department is being used as Trump’s secret police, civil rights are being threatened, a free press is being strong-armed, and democracy is eroding every night on the evening news. We’re being fed a diet of mistruth that a large swath of the populace insists is the truth, whether from misguided allegiance, stupidity, or pure goddamn spite.
And MAGA Christians are brandishing a Rapture Boner. Some are now suggesting that DJT is the Antichrist, but that’s okay, because it will hasten the hand of God. Others still believe he’s going to lead us to the promised land and sit at God’s left hand, across from Jesus. A few have developed their own deific concepts with Trump as the new God on Earth.
Like those of us once considering a career in printer repair for the endless carnal adventures we saw on grainy videos, they’re jerking in vain.
Unlike them, though, we got a money shot.