Oh yes absolutely one of the true scams a rapture, does it say I want
some spiritual insurance, or the gravy train for me?
Well here is a take from 1986 The Messianic Legacy, not much has
changed only the names:

But there are certain premises which are specifically fundamentalist.

The first of these is that the United States and the United Kingdom
today are to be identified sometimes symbolically but more often quite
literally - with the scattered 'remnants' of ancient Israel. Modern
Judaism is believed to derive from the biblical Tribe of Judah, but
the descendants of the remaining tribes are deemed to be the white
Anglo-Saxon Protestants of Britain and America - and their kindred
abroad, in places such as South Africa. These are the new 'elect', the
new 'chosen people'.

The second underlying premise of modern fundamentalism is that
biblical prophecy is of cardinal importance. Certain specific works
are repeatedly cited, notably the Book of Revelation (dating from the
late first or early second century A.D.) and the 'classical'
prophecies of the Old Testament (dating from between the eighth and
fifth centuries B.C.). These works, it is believed, were composed in
large part to predict events in the modern world - events 'scheduled'
to occur in our own time. Despite numerous documented blunders by Old
Testament prophets about their own epoch, they are held to be
infallible prognosticators about ours. Even their dire fulmination's
against each other are lifted out of the original historical context
and deemed applicable today. And yet it, is worth remembering at least
something of the historical context which fundamentalists so
cavalierly ignore. Ancient Israel, after all, was a loose-knit,
ill-defined and often ungovernable political entity smaller than the
county of Yorkshire, or the state of New jersey - with a bare fraction
of the population of either. It occupied an inconsequential fragment
of what, even then, was the known world. And yet the records of its
internal wranglings are regarded as an infallible guide to the late
twentieth century, in virtually every sphere, from personal conduct to
foreign relations. It is rather as if the vision of the future
propounded by one member of a Yorkshire council, or the New jersey
legislature, in 1986 were to be used, quite literally, as a means of
explaining friction between, say, Canada and China, or even between
earth colonies in space, in the fiftieth or sixtieth century.

The third premise underlying modern fundamentalism involves the
specific message of certain prophecies. This message, of course, is
that the apocalypse is imminent. For the fundamentalist, the world has
entered the Last Days, just as it was believed to have done in Jesus's
time. The Antichrist will shortly appear (if he has not already done
so) and wreak assorted kinds of havoc. A period of 'tribulation' will
ensue, culminating in the epic Battle of Armageddon, and the world
will be utterly destroyed in some kind of holocaust. After this
debacle, the Second Coming will occur - Jesus will descend in glory,
from the heavens, the dead will rise from their graves and the new
Kingdom will be inaugurated. Needless to say, only the 'elect' or the
'saved' will be granted residence permits.

This, in general, is the prospect envisaged by fundamentalist
preachers. At given points here and there, certain of them become more
specific. Thus, for example, the Antichrist is often identified with
the Soviet Union - the 'evil empire' castigated by Ronald Reagan. One
of the wealthiest and most powerful fundamentalist organisations,
however, identifies the menacing ten-crowned 'Beast' of the Book of
Revelation - that is, the Antichrist - quite precisely ; the EEC with
its ten member nations. 12 (That they are now twelve is presumably
some new, pernicious and previous stratagem on the part of the
'Beast'.) It is predicted that the nations of the EEC will wage war
against the United States and the United Kingdom, will defeat them and
will then enslave them. Britain and America will become satellites of
a new world power based in Europe, and this power will embark on the
Third World War ' - presumably against the Soviet union. Biblical
prophecies are invoked to forecast that ie war will last two and a
half years and cost the lives [two-thirds of the population of Britain
and America, ] in order to bring people around to God's way of
linking. 'In this fearful, awesome atomic age, World war III will
start with nuclear devastation, unleashed in London, Birmingham,
Manchester, Liverpool, New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Detroit,
Chicago, Pittsburg without warning!"' Curiously enough, the major
cities on America's West Coast, which would merely seem to qualify as
the modern world's Sodom and Gomorrah, are exempted from this
catalogue of destructive retribution. But then again, as the Old
Testament prophets never mentioned any of the cities in question,
there is probably a greater margin for error on the part of the modern
interpreter. It was inconsiderate of Jeremiah riot to have said
anything about Hollywood, thus leaving its residents uncertain of
their fate.

At the end of the Third World War, the climactic battle of Armageddon
will be fought somewhere in the middle East. The Antichrist will
appear again - or perhaps it is a different Antichrist - and contend
against the forces of God. Since the game has been fixed in advance,
God's forces, commanded by Jesus in the Age of field-marshal, will
naturally emerge triumphant - but the whole affair will have been
messy in the extreme. However, if one repents now, if one allows
oneself to be 'saved' and especially if one makes a financial
contribution to the church, one will be spared all the carnage and
removed to a place of safety until the turmoil has been resolved. In a
variation on this theme, certain fundamentalist preachers speak of a
moment in the present generation when the faithful will be 'Raptured
away'. ' Without warning, all true believers will suddenly evaporate,
dematerialise, disappear in the flicker of an eyelid from their
offices, their homes, their golf courses, their cars (left careering
driverless across streets and motorways), and will rocket upwards to a
personal interview with Jesus. From a position of shelter amidst his
celestial entourage, they will be permitted detachedly to watch the
unfolding cataclysm as if it were a football match.

It is, of course, easy enough to scoff at such convictions, compared
with which the beliefs of many so called 'primitive societies' appear
downright sophisticated. And yet an extraordinary and ever increasing
number of people in America today take them quite seriously, and are
not only resigned to an imminent apocalypse, but actually, in some
sense, look forward to it, in expectation of a blissful eternity in
the millennial Kingdom of the Second Coming. Among this number, it has
been suggested, is the President of the United States. In an article
which appeared both in the Washington Post and in the ,Guardian, for
example, Ronnie Dugger, a prominent American journalist, writes: ' . .
. Americans could fairly wonder if their president ... is personally
predisposed by fundamentalist theology to expect some kind of
Armageddon beginning with a nuclear war in the Middle East'." And,
further: 'If a crisis arises in the Middle East and threatens to
become a nuclear confrontation, might President Reagan be predisposed
to believe that he sees Armageddon coming and that this is the will of
God `
LB