I retain a vivid memory from my middle school years. Staying up late during a sleepover at my best friend’s house we debated the rapture: when it would come, how it would happen, and the crucial question: Are you afraid? This was the mid-1970s, after Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth ushered in a new round of Armageddon angst, while the apocalyptic fright film A Thief in the Night was making its rounds of churches.
In the evangelical environment in which I lived, the imminent end of the world was assumed, and the rapture (the taking up to heaven of the faithful) was assured. People would be taken, and others would be left behind.
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