Most folks know that I am no fan of dispensational futurism, including its dogma of the rapture. Part of the reason I reject is the outright strange impasses it creates: such as what unworthy pagan will care for your pets once Jesus takes you away from earth? After all, good Christians care for their pets.
"Why not Us?" says a clever and enterprising atheist. Businesses Week reports that wicked pagan Bret Centre has started a foundation to care for your pets as the world inevitably goes to shit during the tribulation. Futurists are at an uncertain about this, but some are paying the fee.
Yeah, it's weird.
Personally, I can't help but have some respect for Bret Centre. I imagine he thought to himself something like this: "if members of their religion capitalize on the rapture, why shouldn't I?" (LaHaye and Jenkins, after all, aren't exactly living below the poverty line.) Since he never expects the rapture to come, he will never actually have to provide a service. This is, pretty much, free money. If he ever runs out of atheists to care for his pets, I'd like to volunteer myself, every other preterist, and Catholic and Orthodox Christians, who many dispensationalists believe will be left behind.
Perhaps my cynicism is getting the better of me.
In all seriousness, I wonder if this semi-overt exploitation of hysteria is going to warrant a little bit of self-reflection among those who read things like the rapture index. Futurists (like any group I suppose) can make themselves look very silly. More than once folks have racked up their credit cards or called their kids home from college because they expected the tribulation. There has been a small fortune made in selling things like rapture dog tags. Even groups like the SDA started with irrational growing popularity of an end-times prophet who kept failing in his predictions.
I have no idea how those who believe in the rapture will deal with this impasse regarding their pets. I do think, however, that Bret Centre will make a nice amount of free money.
