The Teaching of The Rapture - Cultural References

Cultural References

In "Thank God, It's Doomsday", episode 354 of The Simpsons, Homer Simpson predicts the rapture to occur within the week. Homer gets the date wrong and ends up being the only person taken up. Everything is then reversed after Homer vandalizes Heaven. In the American Dad episode "Rapture's Delight", the rapture occurs and Stan Smith helps Christ with his final battle with the Antichrist. In the Supernatural episode "The Rapture", the angel Castiel is taken back to Heaven by his fellow angels to be "reeducated", leaving his vessel Jimmy and the Winchester brothers behind.

The first feature-length cinematic treatment of the rapture was the 1972 film A Thief in the Night. That film was followed by three sequels and a novel, and set up the genre of the rapture film. With only a few exceptions, the genre died out by the end of the 1970s, only to resurface again in the 1990s with such films as Apocalypse, Revelation, The Rapture, Left Behind: The Movie, and The Omega Code. Cloud Ten Pictures specializes in making end-time films. The 2009 film Knowing, starring Nicolas Cage, has thematic elements that parallel the rapture, although the term "Rapture" is not used.

• In 1950, the novel Raptured by Ernest Angley was published, based on the accounts in the books of Daniel and Revelation. The novel focuses on a man whose mother is raptured along with other Christians, while he is left behind in the tribulation period.
• Robert Heinlein's 1984 book Job: A Comedy of Justice describes the troubles of a Christian man called Alex, who is moved from parallel world to parallel world, accompanied by his lover Margrethe. Halfway through the book, the rapture occurs and Alex is taken up, but Margrethe is left behind because she is a pagan. The rest of the book describes Alex's attempts to bypass the rules and save his true love.
• In 1995, Left Behind was published. The rapture is a major component of the premise of the book and its various spin-offs. The plot of the book was used as a basis for a movie series and a video game series.
• At the height of the Jesus Movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the rapture figured prominently in popular songs by secular artists, such as "Are You Ready?" by Pacific Gas & Electric (#14 in August 1970). Also at that time, the song "I Wish We'd All Been Ready" was written and performed by Larry Norman, one of the founders of the nascent "Jesus Rock" movement in the early 1970s. Other examples of apocalyptic themes like the rapture, the Antichrist, Armageddon and the Second coming of Christ in Larry Norman's writing are "U.F.O." from the 1976 album In Another Land, "Six Sixty Six" from the same album and "Messiah" from Stop This Flight.
• Examples of apocalyptic themes in Bob Dylan's writing are "When He Returns", from the 1979 album Slow Train Coming and — quoting 1 Corinthians 15:49–55 —Ye Shall Be Changed, released on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1–3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961–1991.
• Other songs about the Christian end times include "Goin' by the Book," "The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash, from the album American IV: The Man Comes Around, released in 2002, and "Tribulation" by Charlie Daniels. Noel Gallagher refers to the rapture twice on the Oasis album Dig Out Your Soul, first in "The Turning" ("Then come on, when the Rapture takes me, Will you be by my side?") and also on the following track "Waiting For The Rapture."
• FFH's popular song "Fly Away" asks what it will be like when the rapture occurs.
• Crystal Lewis' song "People Get Ready Jesus Is Coming."
• Sonic Youth's song "Do You Believe in Rapture?", on their album Rather Ripped
• Siouxsie And The Banshees' song "The Rapture", from their 1995 album of the same name, lyrically describes the supposed experience of being raptured.
• In the song "Rapture" by Antony and the Johnsons on the album Antony and the Johnsons (album) released in 2000.
• Hurt's 2006 debut song "Rapture" references the rapture directly at the end with "...Rest in peace, until the rapture comes to meet us."

On August 2, 2001, humorist Elroy Willis posted a Usenet article titled "Mistaken Rapture Kills Arkansas Woman". This fictional, satirical story about a woman who causes a traffic accident and is killed when she believes the rapture has started, circulated widely on the Internet and was believed by many people to be a description of an actual incident. Elements of the story appeared in an episode of the HBO television drama Six Feet Under, and a slightly modified version of the story was reprinted in the US tabloid newspaper Weekly World News. The story continues to circulate by electronic mail as a chain letter.

• The 2007 video game BioShock is set in the destroyed utopian underwater city of Rapture. The city was to house the best and brightest people on Earth in a completely free society. The city was named Rapture because those chosen by the city's founder disappeared to live in his utopia, mirroring God calling the faithful to Heaven.
• The Left Behind series of games takes place after the rapture.