Emails to the Left Behind

Atomic Bomb Detonated at Nagasaki

Who will be “left behind” for events like atomic devastation?

Some rapturists made the news a couple of days ago. Notice this unusual story:

Web service allows Christians to e-mail people ‘left behind’

The Reporter-Herald, Colorado – May 31, 2008

HARWICH, Mass. — Christians who believe they will be caught up in “the Rapture” can arrange to send messages to the people left behind. You’ve Been Left Behind is a new service that, for $40 a year, will automatically send messages to as many as 62 friends and family members who remain on earth after the Rapture.

Christians who hold to pretribulation teachings about the end times believe that when Jesus returns, all Christians will be caught up in the air, or “raptured,” with him.

Nonbelievers will be left behind, they believe, for a seven-year period of Tribulation that is described in the book of Revelation. The You’ve Been Left Behind service gives subscribers the opportunity to send one last e-mail message to the loved ones they believe will be left to endure the Tribulation.

The company’s Web site, www.youvebeenleftbehind.com, includes sample letters that subscribers can use when composing their own messages to friends.

“Imagine how taken aback they will be by the millions of missing Christians and devastation at the Rapture,” the Web site says. “They will know it was true and that they have blown it. …There will be a small window of time where they might be reached for the Kingdom of God. We have made it possible for you to send them a letter of love and a plea to receive Christ one last time.”

The Web site also gives users secure encrypted storage space to save financial information that they can send to people they want to help during the Tribulation. As to the question of how this service will be able to send out e-mails after the Rapture, assuming its operators are Christians: The system will automatically activate “when three of our five team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a three-day period. Another three days are given to failsafe any false triggering of the system.” http://www.reporterherald.com/feature-story.asp?ID=17129

What a scam!

Of course, one of the biggest problems that the pre-tribulation rapturists have is that they are wrong about Jesus returning twice.

While Jesus will return, it will not be until AFTER the Great Tribulation:

29 Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken. 30 Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory. 31 And He will send His angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they will gather together His elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other (Matt 24:29-31, NKJV).

Because of this, those who expect to be raptured away prior to the Great Tribulation will be “caught unawares” (Luke 21:34, KJV). And so, I would suggest that perhaps those who believe in the pre-tribulation rapture should read the following articles and email the truth to their friends who still believe that false notion–so that they can properly repent.

Otherwise, they will find themselves the ones who are “left behind”:

Is There A Secret Rapture for the Church? When and Where is the Church Protected? What does the Bible really teach? Who really is left behind?

There is a Place of Safety for the Philadelphians. Why it May Be Petra This article discusses a biblical ‘place of safety’ and includes quotes from the Bible and Herbert W. Armstrong on this subject–thus, there is a biblically supported alternative to the rapture theory.