By now almost everyone has heard the prediction from Harold Camping that tomorrow May 21st, at 6:00pm (I'm not sure in which time zone) the world is going to end, Christ is going to return, the saved will be raptured (taken up into heaven), and the damned will be left behind on earth to face some pretty terrible times (as if we aren't facing some pretty difficult times now). If you want the history of Harold Camping and a confusing (there isn't a simple) explanation for how he came up with the date for the end of the world, read Jaweed Kaleem's Harold Camping: The Man Behind 'Judgment Day,' May 21, 2011. For those of you who have read my blog before, you know my take on the end times. For those who have not, you can look at my article End Time: A Marginal Belief.
What I want to discuss in this article is what heaven will look like on the day of "the rapture" (I do not particularly like this form of Christianese and will try not to use it frequently in my blog). The traditional belief among many Christians who focus on end-times doctrine is that when Jesus returns, the saved (Christians) will be lifted up into heaven while those who are not saved will remain here on earth to face incredible suffering (there is another view in which some Christians will remain during the period of tribulation [the Christian term for suffering] and will be taken up when the suffering is over). So the question is, who will heaven be filled with, and who will remain on earth after May 21, 2011? What will the make-up be of each location during the Apocalypse?
