Planet Earth Braces for the Rapture, Misses Flight—Global Implications of an Unkept Divine Appointment
Global Dispatch – Rapture Watch, 2024 Edition
By our senior correspondent, filing from an undisclosed bar with questionable Wi-Fi and a suspiciously empty stool on either side.
It began, as these things so often do, in the United States—specifically in a small, air-conditioned megachurch outside Tulsa where the pastor assured his flock that the trumpet would sound “any minute now, possibly during the second hymn.” Within minutes the clip was subtitled in 47 languages, memed by Nigerian TikTokers, remixed by K-pop stans, and solemnly debated on Iranian state television between segments about pistachio tariffs. By nightfall the phrase “Rapture 2024” was trending in more countries than FIFA, gluten-free diets, and the phrase “please hold, your call is important to us.”
The theological claim was vintage: Jesus would supernaturally vacuum up the righteous, leaving behind empty driver’s seats, half-finished espressos, and—if past form holds—everyone who still forwards chain emails. What’s new is the planetary distribution of the belief. Brazilian televangelists live-streamed countdown clocks; Filipino Uber drivers festooned dashboards with “In Case of Rapture, Car Will Pull Over” stickers; and in Switzerland, the central bank quietly asked staff to monitor interbank settlement in case key personnel vanished mid-transaction. Nothing says “modern faith” like hedging your eternal destiny against overnight repo rates.
Of course, the Rapture has gone global before—Hal Lindsey’s Late Great Planet Earth was a Cold War bestseller from Oslo to Johannesburg—but today’s apocalypse is outsourced, gig-economy style. Chilean animators supply CGI tribulation graphics, Indian call centers handle prayer hotlines, and a discreet firm in Luxembourg warehouses hard-copy “Left Behind” novels in seventeen languages, ready for same-day fulfillment once Amazon Prime notices its delivery drivers are missing. If divine selection happens, the supply chain is already diversified.
The geopolitical implications are deliciously awkward. NATO planners war-gamed sudden population loss in the American Bible Belt and concluded that NORAD’s early-warning grid would lose 18% of its software contractors, while Russia quietly drafted a doctrine titled “Non-Provocative Utilization of Post-Rapture Power Vacuums” (the PowerPoint is classified, but rumor says slide 7 is just a bear shrugging). Meanwhile China’s Ministry of Emergency Management ran simulations on how to absorb 30 million suddenly ownerless Ohio-class houses, presumably to flip them into vertical farming startups. Nothing accelerates manifest destiny like celestial eviction.
Financial markets, ever allergic to uncertainty and allergic to empathy, took it in stride. Gold spiked, then fell when analysts realized that if the saved truly ascend, their bullion stays behind—bullish for supply. Crypto, naturally, promised to “blockchain the Rapture,” which turned out to mean an NFT of a transparent sandal. In Lagos, currency traders offered “rapture swaps” hedging naira against the probability of mass disappearance, a contract so exotic even Goldman Sachs asked for a tutorial.
The human response followed three classic arcs. First, performative piety: selfies with open Bibles and captions like “Ready, Lord! #NoFilter.” Second, performative debauchery: bars from Prague to Seoul ran “Sin While You Still Can” happy hours, offering two-for-one shots labeled “Pestilence” and “Famine.” Third, performative paperwork: the Italian civil service issued Form 27-B/Stroke-of-God for citizens who wished to pre-authorize someone else to feed their cats in the event of translation to glory. Bureaucracy, it turns out, is the one thing the grave cannot triumph over.
By dawn the predicted hour had passed without celestial Uber surge pricing. The pastor blamed “time-zone confusion,” a theological loophole roughly as convincing as “the dog ate my eschatology.” Conspiracy theorists pivoted to claiming the Rapture did happen but was “quiet,” like a software update—only 144,000 elite users got the patch, everyone else must wait for Rapture 2.0, subscription model, terms and conditions apply.
And so the planet exhaled, half-relieved, half-disappointed. Airlines reinstated pilots, Tokyo’s bullet trains filled again, and somewhere in rural Kenya a farmer switched off the radio, muttered “same time next year,” and went back to coaxing maize out of soil older than any prophecy. Because if history teaches anything, it’s that the world ends constantly—just never on schedule.
