All the imagery of the rapt and the raptured and the rest that the "Left Behind" books have made a staple for fundamentalist Christians represents contemporary people and events, and was well understood in those terms by the original audience.
You explore a primly deserted village in Shropshire, eavesdropping on the enduring conversations of the apparently raptured locals, whose memories roam the streets as swirls of light.
Nor do all (or even most) of the missing qualify as Camping-style Christians; those raptured away include Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Jews and the odd alcoholic.
"Safe inside myself are all my thoughts of you/ Sweet raptured light, it ends here tonight".
They are not particularly elegant ("Ophile, waiting for Paris's ship to come in"), and when they consist of a single word ("Panicked", "Raptured") look poor on a huge page.
When the pilots happen to be among the "raptured," the book suggests, people left on the plane have an instant crisis on their hands.
True, come Monday morning Tim Pawlenty probably will have to explain to values voters why he hasn't been Raptured, but he's become pretty good at extended apologies (any voters left to hear the explanation remain in this fallen world too, so perhaps they'll find some common ground).
Unfortunately, none of their merch was for sale.* But I'm told that getting Raptured hoovers you right out of your clothes, so tomorrow I might be able to find something just lying there crumpled on the street.
Many Christians who are helping Israel today are doing so to facilitate the moment when they believe they will be raptured into Heaven.
Talking heads on cable news try, and fail, to identify a coherent explanation for who was raptured and who was passed over; it was, it seems, a "random harvest".
The righteous are raptured up to heaven, while the rest (or at least most of the famous people in Hollywood) are swallowed up in fiery pits that open up in the ground, or pursued by scaly, oily, horned demons with enormous genitals.
