Ah, yes.

The Rapture.

Since the U.S. Armed Forces has brought up the subject, I thought I’d finally go ahead and share what this crazy old man believes about it.

It’s over. It happened a long time ago. People who followed Jesus of Nazareth were caught up (the literal meaning of “rapture”) to Him, translated from corruptible flesh into incorruptible. Just like the apostle Paul describes. Not all of them; some of them “slept,” or died — but they got to go first.

Why do I say this? Because Paul describes it as imminent, immediate, soon — over and over. “Don’t quit your jobs thinking it’s too imminent,” he advises. But his description is urgent.

When did it happen? I don’t know. Maybe at the destruction of the temple and the siege of Jerusalem by Rome. Maybe later. Possibly at a time that was so chaotic that no one saw them go, however it happened. People running; people perhaps trying to leave Jerusalem as they had been warned. It fits with the Matthew 25 picture, and other hints like it.

I think that moment is a good candidate, because it was the moment that the Almighty forever changed the way He does business with mortal men. No more sacrifice for evil. That price has been paid. No further blood can enrich it.

Only life itself … lived in grace toward self, toward others, for Him. Only that is acceptable; the image of His own grace daily shown.

So did we miss it? The Rapture? Having not been born at that time?

Well, if we did, then a lot of believers did — including some who endured horrific torture and murder as martyrs. And others, like John of Patmos who recorded the Revelation, lived long lives.

Or we could think in terms of God’s unlimited capabilities, especially regarding life, death, creation, destruction, resurrection, and perhaps even the flow of time in direction and speed itself.

Is anything impossible for God, including whisking the essence of each one of us back to the moment when that gathering took place in our past — but doing so at the moment each of us breathes our last?

So that we could see and experience what those believers did at the moment they changed and went to be with the One they loved, and loved with their whole hearts and lives?

That’s what I think happens, anyway; and it’s a moment immutable in history because it already happened, it was always going to happen and it’s going to keep happening as long as there are mortals who die.

That way, nobody misses out.

The ones who had already passed on when it came — well, it would only seem like an instant for them since they had died, as it would for those to whom it happened after they died much later on.

I think all the apocalyptic language that is attached to the prophecy of it happening is the attempt to hint at the indescribable; to share a glimpse of the unseeable; to capture a moment of timelessness.

What happens after that, I don’t know. Some kind of judgment or decision about whether the lives we’ve lived and the potential that we showed in that life can find fulfillment in eternity. Or maybe just needs to end, to close out in the same grace that must be shown to those who can never have or control enough … or who cannot live forever as equals with others they judged and hated and cheated and killed. That would be torture for them. Maybe in the blinding light of truth, we judge ourselves.

“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,” as the poem says.

Or perhaps the blinding light of truth brings its own grace, and instead of an eternity of nothingness, instead an awareness of what was not — maybe could not — be learned in the mortal realm: joy, love, patience, acceptance, respect and peace in the soul. A late epiphany. A flash of penitence. A grasp of the unimaginable. A commitment to all that is good thereafter.

I like to hope it will not be too late. I like to hope that the Creator’s great cosmic experiment in the efficacy of faith in the absence of tangible evidence to inspire the positive attributes of existence won’t necessarily mean it’s denied to those who are at a disadvantage in the mortal universe. — Those who were surrounded only by the negative and could never know more.

A lot of damage, I believe, has been done in preaching a permanent, eternal binary of good and evil that must, no matter what, be accepted on faith right now, no matter what mortal life has been like to the one who must choose between them.

Of course I think it’s best to choose a life of grace now, and make the mortal part of our existence better and more positive for others as well as ourselves. Of course.

Still … I like to hope that grace can reach beyond here and now. Especially since it has cost so much.

But I don’t know. It’s not my creation, not my experiment, not my call. I’m not omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent or in any other way qualified to judge.

I just hope.

And that has to be enough.