History Main / CaughtUpInTheRapture

* The whole premise of ''Fanfic/AllWorldsAllianceMissionsCrossoverdose'' involves countless people from various corners of the multiverse mysteriously disappearing by a "bright light". [[spoiler:As it turns out it is caused not by a God but by the mysterious culprit in the Void. Said culprit happens to be a part of the story's BigBadEnsemble.]]

[[folder:Film]]
* ''Film/TheRapture'': The evangelical church Sharon and Randy join believes this will happen. [[spoiler:At the end of the film, they're proven right.]]
* ''Film/{{Knowing}}'' is a thinly veiled allegory to the rapture, [[spoiler:with aliens taking the place of God]].
* Along with Hal Lindsey's books, the 1972 film ''A Thief in the Night'' and its subsequent three sequels helped to popularize this trope back in TheSeventies.

** ''The Moment After'' starts off with this also, except without an Antichrist figure.
* Kicks off the main plot of ''Film/ThisIsTheEnd''. The fact that everybody at Creator/JamesFranco's party completely misses the Rapture is used to indicate just [[HorribleHollywood how depraved they all are]] -- ''nobody'' at that party was good enough to get into heaven. The characters left behind can also get Raptured later on upon making a HeelFaceTurn, as happens to [[spoiler:Creator/CraigRobinson, Creator/JayBaruchel, Creator/SethRogen and (almost) Franco, at least before [[JerkWithAHeartOfJerk he botches it]]]].
* Happens towards the beginning of ''Film/RapturePalooza''.
* The [[Film/LeftBehind2000 2000]] (Creator/KirkCameron) and [[Film/LeftBehind2014 2014]] (Creator/NicolasCage) versions of ''Literature/LeftBehind'' essentially have this as part of the plot.
* A plot point in ''Film/JerusalemCountdown'', where Biblical prophecies are related to the terrorist plot at hand. [[spoiler:It happens in the end, too]].

* The "800-pound gorilla" in this scenario is the ''Literature/LeftBehind'' series of Christian thrillers. The opening of the first book has the main character, Rayford, a pilot, contemplating cheating on his wife with a stewardess, before said stewardess comes into the cockpit to inform Rayford that half of the passengers have disappeared.
** The parody novel ''Right Behind'' had a fake Rapture and a climax of the protagonist fighting the AntiChrist in a Christian bookstore by chucking Precious Moments figurines.
* A lesser known series of Christian Rapture novels were the Prodigal Project series by Ken Abraham, with arguably better character development and more realistic dialogue than ''Literature/LeftBehind''. At one point, a man is confronted with his insane female neighbor who just witnessed her children's disappearance, and then killed her husband because he refused to have sex with her to replace their missing children and now wants the man to impregnate her.

* Before ''Literature/LeftBehind'', there was Hal Lindsey. Although he didn't create the idea of the Rapture, he helped [[TropeCodifier codify]] it with his 1970 book ''The Late, Great Planet Earth'', which purported that the Rapture would take place in TheEighties, coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the foundation of Israel. [[HilariousInHindsight His predictions are pretty funny now]], but back then, a lot of people took him very seriously, and it helped to fuel the popularity of dispensationalism in American Christianity.
** Remember our friend John Nelson Darby that we mentioned at the top of the page? Lindsey graduated from the theological university that was started by one of Darby's staunchest supporters. Reportedly, his former colleagues were a little mad that he made ''millions'' off of essentially publishing lecture notes.
* The Evangelical Rapture is cited and explicitly occurs during the plot of Creator/RobertAHeinlein's ''Literature/JobAComedyOfJustice''. [[spoiler:It's subverted, however, when it's revealed that God (who is a JerkAss) deliberately invoked it as part of a petty scheme to [[SecretTestOfCharacter screw with the protagonist's faith]] and, moreover, God and Satan themselves are merely minor deities in a CelestialBureaucracy. The whole scheme ends with a massive ResetButton, except that the hero gets his girl and lives HappilyEverAfter as a reward for his faith.]]

* Paul Bortolazzo's ''Literature/LastDaysTrilogy'' is an AuthorTract for the pre-wrath Rapture instead of the pre-Tribulation Rapture as in ''Left Behind'', as the main characters on the side of God continue drilling this in-story fact into people's heads using the Bible as proof. However, unlike ''Left Behind'', being raptured to heaven does not mean that the person is free from the judgment that could send that person to hell.
* Played for horror in the ''Literature/ArciaChronicles'', where the Wanderer is a powerful interdimensional being who can enter worlds on the brink of apocalypse and offer people he deems worthy (at least, the ones who are willing to abandon everything, including their "unworthy" friends and families, for his salvation) an escape. Where exactly they go is unclear, but multiple cults on different worlds come to worship him as their savior (in fact, the Wanderer is based on the Savior from Creator/NickPerumov's multiverse, who actually consumed the souls of those who left with him to gain power). At one point, Neo and Norgerel visit a dead world and witness its last moments, where the Wanderer appears in the middle of a FinalBattle, and offers escape to just two "worthy" people: the wife and the daughter of one of the army commanders. The former pleads to take her husband with them, then chooses to stay with him, while the latter runs back to her parents just as the world ends.
* This is much the plot of ''Creator/DeanKoontz'''s ''Literature/TheTaking'' - it also riffs off the idea that magic and sufficiently advanced technology are hard to distinguish. In this instance, [[spoiler:only children and caring parents]] remain and there is some ambiguity as to what actually took place.

* Anita Baker's song "Caught Up in the Rapture" is not actually an example of this trope, it's just using it as a metaphor for love.
* The song "21st of May" by Music/NickelCreek gently pokes fun at this trope, particularly concerning evangelists who keep revising their predictions of when it will happen.
* "Left Behind", the theme song of ''Film/LeftBehind2000'', by Bryan Duncan featuring [=ShineMK=].
* The gospel song "Midnight Cry", which chorus mashes together what 1st Thessalonians 4:16-17 and 1st Corinthians 15:52 says.

* It's used as a one-off gag in Webcomic/MenInHats. Everybody ''except'' for TheFundamentalist Sam (who it's been made clear annoys God as much as he does everyone else) gets taken up into heaven. After hanging out for a few hours they are given souvenir t-shirts and head back home when the party dies down.

* Invoked by the "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pQ_ZozZIio Ascension of the Jackdaw]]" glitch meme from ''VideoGame/AssassinsCreedIV'', where sailors are carried skyward to the sound of religious music followed by the ship. [[spoiler:The sailors are spawned on their position in the ship's rigging, but the ship spawns below sea level, so when the ship floats up so do they.]]

* In the ''WesternAnimation/AmericanDad'' episode "[[Recap/AmericanDadS6E9RapturesDelight Rapture's Delight]]", when the Rapture happens Stan and Francine are among those who get left behind, probably because they just had sex in the church's closet.
** Later Stan seeks out Jesus and [[AttemptedRape nearly gets raptured]].
--->"You're not really Jesus, are you?"

The {{Trope Namer|s}}, the song "Caught Up in the Rapture" by Anita Baker, [[ThisIndexIsNotAnExample is not about this trope]] but rather about being deeply in love.

* A fairly contrived ''Comicbook/XMen'' storyline featured a conspiracy by the Church for Humanity to cause a fake Rapture in the Catholic Church, using explosive wafers to 'rapture' Catholics and tricking the world into thinking Nightcrawler (whose mutation makes him resemble a stereotypical devil) is the Antichrist. Notably, [[ArtisticLicenseReligion the Catholic church does not officially believe in the Rapture, and it ignores all the other denominations who do believe in it and would be rather confused]].
* Perhaps unintentionally done in ComicBook/TheInfinityGauntlet. Thanos, upon becoming God through acquiring the Infinity Gems, causes half of all life in the universe to disappear, causing mass panics as people see their loved ones disappear right in front of them, wars and the typical conflicts associated with the end of days. The people who have disappeared aren't taken into Heaven, but rather become a part of Death herself.
* [[ComicBook/ChickTracts Jack Chick]] uses the Rapture quite a bit, both in his tracts and his ''Alberto'' series of comic books.
* ''ComicBook/ThereforeRepent'' and its sequel, ''ComicBook/SwordOfMyMouth'' are a sort of anarchist TakeThat against ''Literature/LeftBehind'' with the Splitters who side with the angels who randomly butcher people against our heroes who have rediscovered magic in the wake of the rapture and are LaResistance.
* Dr. Fate in DC Comics' ''ComicBook/{{Legends|DCComics}}'' catches up various superheroes for the purpose of confronting G. Gordon Godfrey at the end of the series to put an end to his stirring up the hatred of superheroes for their destruction, as per Darkseid's overall plan. The cover of issue #5 has Captain Marvel standing among [[EmptyPilesOfClothing piles of empty superhero clothing]], completing the image of the Rapture, although that part doesn't happen in the story itself.
* Averted in ''{{ComicBook/Preacher}}'', where the planned-for Rapture by the Grail involves launching every country's nukes at midnight at the end of the millennium, where they will... fail to explode, with the Grail emerging to rule the world. As Herr Starr puts it: "You just want to inherit the Earth".
* ''ComicBook/ScudTheDisposableAssassin'' is set in a world where the Rapture was scheduled to happen in the 80s... [[SubvertedTrope but then Satan failed to show]], [[spoiler:on account of being killed and overthrown]]. God [[GodIsGood wasn’t willing to throwing the first punch]], so the Rapture has just kinda been in limbo; officially it’s still going on, but nothing is actually happening. [[CrapsackWorld Things have being going downhill on Earth ever since]].

The TropeNamer, the song "Caught Up in the Rapture" by Anita Baker, [[ThisIndexIsNotAnExample is not about this trope]] but rather about being deeply in love.

Curiously, the theology of the Rapture has extended itself out of Christianity entirely. Many New Age gurus who have left Christianity maintain some of the teachings surrounding the rapture, and many of these pseudo-Christian ideas exist in, for instance, Terrance [=McKenna=]'s ''Timewave Zero'' and the various expositions of the end of the age in the Mayan Calendar in December, 2012. (P.S: the last one didn't happen, either. Of course, the world could have ended on December 21st, [[CloudCuckoolander we've just been caught up in our own affairs so much that we didn't notice]].)

The TropeNamer, the song "Caught Up in the Rapture" by Anita Baker, is not about this trope but rather about being deeply in love.