Paging Hooto Crunk

Those who know me, or at least those who knew me in my first 30 years, might be surprised I haven't commented on the recent Rapture debacle. The fact is, despite its being all over the mainstream news and fodder for high-profile comedians, I was barely aware of it; oddly enough, it was a friend's Facebook update pointing me to the Doonesbury comic strip that first caused me to try to figure out why the Rapture was such a hot topic all of a sudden.

I'd never heard of Harold Camping before May 18th, and didn't find anything compelling in his reasons for stating that the Rapture of Jesus' elect would occur on May 21st, so I basically ignored it. It was a full hour after the 6:00 pm (local time) deadline that it occurred to me to check and make sure I was still around, and I didn't bother calling all my friends to make sure they were still here, either.

Earlier in my life, I might have taken this more seriously.

In fact, as a teenager I was quite convinced that the Rapture would happen at any moment, and there were numerous times when I was excited by seeing a particular cloud formation, hearing what I thought might be a distant trumpet, or when I got a little nervous when someone was supposed to meet me somewhere and they were long-delayed. I especially remember sitting on the church bus, ready to leave for my first youth group retreat on October 6, 1973, when the youth pastor stepped on onboard and announced that all of Israel's neighbors had just launched a war against the beleaguered state. Having spent the summer reading Hal Lindsey's Late Great Planet Earth, I was CERTAIN we would NOT be returning from that weekend!

One can only keep that level of anticipation for so long, I suppose. And I guess I am fortunate that no one in my life ever tried to exploit my beliefs in any way (not that I HAD much of anything in those days to be bilked out of. And unlike Camping's narrow following and precise predictions (all based on some bizarre numerological mathematics and dating of incidents like the Crucifixion), the apocalyptic fever of my youth was widely held by the majority of evangelicals, from Hal Lindsey to Jack Chick (the artist of the poster featured here and numerous comic-book style tracts, many dealing with endtimes scenarios) to Pat Robertson to every youth worker I knew to every Christian singer I'd heard, all the way up to Billy Graham! In fact, it wasn't Lindsey who first brought to my attention the fact that there were a lot of Biblical prophecies still awaiting fulfillment, and that many of them seemed to be coming true IN OUR DAY! It was the Billy Graham film His Land, featuring Cliff Barrows and Cliff Richard.

What strikes me as most interesting in comparing recent events to the events of my youth is the fact that, back then, it seemed the whole Church was tuned into and agreed on most of the details of the pre-millenial Rapture doctrine, and made fun of the unchurched, non-Christians who disbelieved it. I especially remember a very creative and funny Christian comedy album by a group called Isaac Air Freight which had a skeptic named Hooto Crunk give an "Editorial Reply" in which he ridiculed the station for endorsing the Rapture. The joke is, that when he finishes recording his piece, all the Christians at the station have disappeared. The clear consensus within evangelical Christendom was, "We're in the know, we all believe this, and pity the fool who doesn't agree with us."

Last week, it seemed clear that the "facts" of the Rapture doctrine were common knowledge to those inside AND outside the church, and the bulk of evangelicals I know or know of were saying, "We all--Christian and non-Christian--know about this, none of us believe it--at least not in the way it is currently being presented, and pity the fool who DOES!"

What a difference 35 years can make!