Faith & Spirituality • Finances & Money

How to Profit from the Coming Rapture

What do you do when you find that all those crazy Christians were right about Jesus coming back and taking his faithful followers to heaven with him…and then leaving the rest of us on earth to survive during seven years of horrible tribulations?

Well, you should invest wisely and make a healthy profit. Well, that’s before Jesus declares war on the final non-believers and destroys Earth as we know it.

What kind of investments should you make before the Apocalypse?

Good question. Luckily authors Steve and Evie Levy gave us a guidebook for profiting from the rapture titled, appropriately enough, “How to Profit From the Coming Rapture: Getting Ahead When You’re Left Behind“! Actually, they didn’t write the book; they “told” it to authors Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman.

Steve and Evie gives us these wise pointers, along with many others, specific to each point in the seven years:

• Buy up land in Israel (before the Rapture) so you can cash in on all those who want to be close to the action.
• During the actual Rapture, take photos of those being taken up to heaven and cash in by selling them as mementos to those “left behind”.
• Create your own tourist attractions, since all the others (Eiffel Tower, Grand Canyon, the Moon) will be obliterated by the forthcoming natural disasters.
• Start your own for-hire armies for wealthy citizens who want protection from the hordes of starving, sunburned and/or crazy people.
• Invest in peanut butter and tuna fish (in canned form).

In addition to these ideas, the Levys talk us through unique investment vehicles such as “Aunti-C” and “F-Pick” bonds (investments directly in the Antichrist). Yeah, you might have to throw all morals and ethics out the window if you want to implement all of the Levy’s ideas, but there’s a reason you weren’t taken up in the first wave, right?

Yes, it’s a humor book

When the rep emailed me to review this book, I thought it couldn’t be a serious book. When I started reading it, it was evident that everything should be taken tongue-in-cheek, and you have to have a sense of humor about your faith, or lack of faith.

As someone who has read the entire Left Behind series (12 books plus 3 prequel books), I was able to catch on immediately, but the author does give you enough background information if you’re not familiar with the more literal translations of Revelation and other Messianic prophecies. In fact, the authors actually used LaHaye’s and Jenkins’ writings as their source material for the Rapture and Tribulation.

As the book got near the end, the author clearly ran out of ways to make a profit as it’s pretty difficult when everyone is just trying to stay alive. But at least the first half made me laugh out loud, which is inconvenient as I was on a packed train at the time. And I felt like I had to hide the book’s cover from my fellow passengers as they would wonder “what in the heck is he reading???”.

It’s a fast read, and for around $10 (as of this writing) on Amazon, it’s a pretty affordable, humorous book. I will warn you, again, that you need to have a sense of humor about religion and other touchy social subjects to find the book entertaining. If you’re a stick in the mud, you’ll probably be offended.

And feel free to check out the Left Behind books (starting with the first one). They’re also entertaining, but in a dramatic way, and they give you an idea of one way to interpret the Bible, whether you believe in it or not. Most libraries have numerous copies of all 15 books in the series, so see if you can read them for free.