EXERT ABOUT THE RAPTURE

Mr. TOM PERROTTA (Author, “The Leftovers”): Well, the Rapture is part of pre-millennial end-times theology. It’s actually a pretty recent part of Christianity. I think it was a 19th-century invention or formulation, and it’s the beginning of the second coming, which is a seven-year period.

GROSS: So in the Rapture, the believers rise to heaven, and the nonbelievers stay behind and have to deal with the tribulations, the plagues and floods and all that.

So basically, the Rapture is the first real occasion, the Christians on Earth rise to meet Jesus in the sky, and the people who are left behind suffer through a seven-year period of tribulation, which is wars, plagues, all kinds of suffering, and there’s a big battle that involves the Antichrist and Armageddon and finally the second coming and the millennium, which is, you know, Christ’s kingdom on Earth for 1,000 years.