the.com/rapture
the cosmic elevator pitch where the good get a window seat and earth gets the bill
means A state of being completely overwhelmed by joy or delight, or, in Christian belief, the foretold moment when the faithful are swept up to meet God.
from From Latin raptura, 'a seizing,' from rapere, 'to seize or carry off by force' — the same violent root that gives us 'rapt,' 'rape,' and 'raptor.' The idea was bodily: to be raptured is to be snatched, hauled away whether you like it or not. English borrowed it in the early 1600s, first for the ecstatic kind of seizure — being carried out of yourself by passion or wonder. The end-times sense, of believers physically caught up into the sky, leans on the same Latin imagery (the Vulgate's rapiemur, 'we shall be caught up') but the popular doctrine attached to the word is a much later development.
- date math
- Harold Camping wrongly predicted it five separate times
- word origin
- from Latin raptus, meaning seized or carried off
- recent vintage
- popularized in the 1800s, not ancient scripture
- pop culture
- spawned an entire bestselling Left Behind franchise
- pet plan
- atheists once sold post-rapture pet care insurance
left behind series — christian fiction franchise by tim lahaye and jerry b. jenkins depicting the rapture, over 65 million copies sold since 1995
rapture of the deep — nitrogen narcosis phenomenon affecting scuba divers at depths below 30 meters, causing euphoria and impaired judgment