There was probably a time in my life when I had not yet heard of the Rapture—the miraculous evacuation of Christians to heaven before God unleashes hell on earth—but I cannot remember such ignorance. “If the Lord tarries,” was tagged onto nearly every conversation my fundamentalist parents had about plans more than a week or so in the future. Every which way they looked they discovered signs the end was nigh. From the Gulf War to the “Kids First” Illinois license plates popular during my elementary school years, proof that the world was too corrupt to last much longer was seen everywhere. The most damning evidence that the Jesus’s return was imminent, though, was the utter lack of interest our small-town neighbors had in attending our church and listening to Papa preach at them about the sin of abandoning church in the weeks, maybe years, preceding the end of times.