A Distant Thunder (1977) This rapture film was filmed in Des Moines, Iowa.Ī Distant Thunder picks up five years after The Rapture ended, and Patty is in a concentration camp, but she still refuses to receive the mark of the beast. Then she wakes up and realizes it was all a dream-until she hears a radio report signaling that everything she just dreamed about is starting to happen in real life. Patty refuses to receive the mark and is subsequently persecuted. A sinister new global government called UNITE-United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency-is swiftly set up and it demands that all citizens on Earth receive its mark. Then one day her husband-a truly devoted Christian-and millions of other people disappear. The main character is Patty, a nominally Christian housewife who is more fixated on personal pleasure than on pleasing God. ![]() (Its three sequels, covered below, are A Distant Thunder (1977), Image of the Beast (1980), and The Prodigal Planet (1983). This is the first of four films by Russell Doughton and Donald Thompson that essentially defined the rapture-movie genre. Thompson produced and directed this evangelical Christian film. It also introduced the idea of the chaos that would erupt after Christian workers were suddenly spirited away from their jobs: “Speeding trains will plunge unsuspecting passengers into a black eternity as Christian engineers are snatched from the throttle.” A Thief in the Night (1972) Donald W. It was produced by the Scriptures Visualized Institute, which was owned by Venezuelan-born businessman Carlos Baptista. The Rapture (1941) Several shots from The Rapture were used in Diane Keaton’s film Heaven.Ĭlocking in at just over 13 minutes, this is believed to be the first rapture-themed film in cinematic history. And they’re all basically working from the same basic script-the Book of Revelation and a smattering of other verses from the Old and New Testaments. Most of the following movies are not large-scale Hollywood productions and were instead funded by evangelical ministries and shown exclusively at churches and Christian summer camps. ![]() ![]() There’s an extra element of dread when you’re watching what you feel is essentially a “coming attraction” of something horrific that you believe will actually happen one day soon. ![]() Part of the slim comfort that most horror movies afford their viewers is that they know vampires and werewolves and murderous robots really don’t exist-in other words, there’s an element of fantasy involved, so you can walk out of the movie theater without being scared anymore.īut at least for those who believe that the rapture will one day happen, these movies are similar to nuclear war movies in that they don’t deal with fantasies, but with a horrific inevitability that will one day wipe out life on planet Earth. Imagine the sort of chaotic insanity that would suddenly erupt if train engineers, bus drivers, plane pilots, prison guards, and numerous other workers who ensure society’s smooth operation suddenly disappeared in the midst of performing their duties. Belief in an end-times “ rapture” is not a universal doctrine among all Christians, but a subset of believers, piecing together numerous Bible verses, preach that all truly born-again Christians will suddenly be snatched from Earth while alive and taken up to heaven in one fell swoop one day, leaving all nonbelievers stuck here to suffer for seven years of horrific “tribulation”-i.e., “trouble”-that occur before the Final Judgment.
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