13 - A Thief in the Night

Hey guys, new listener to the pod here and enjoying the back catalog! I too was traumatized by the idea of the rapture in elementary school after going to church with my friend and her family the morning after a sleepover and hearing the most terrifying sermon I can remember. Now I find the history of the bible and how it was written, edited, interpreted, and used for certain purposes at the time fascinating and I really loved hearing yalls insights on the “behind the scenes” of the book of revelations. I would love if yall did a deeper dive into the whole book and what it was meant to say! Or if yall have any recommendations to other pods which discuss it.

I know im several years late to the party, but I was not expecting to hear that a movie was filmed in the town I moved to when I got my first job out of college. Pellas got pretty weird vibes even today, and my transgender ass did not feel safe there. Some of my coworkers have compared it to the town from Hot Fuzz, which is the best way to describe Pella imo. Lake Red Rock is still around btw, and is the largest lake in Iowa

My mom used to tell me, "if you wouldn't want to be doing it when Jesus comes to rapture you, don't do it."

I stumbled upon the YouTube 2000 left behind, and there are so many people in the comments who appear to buy into it. I commented about how antisemitic it got and the responses were completely out of touch It's like you're not even using the same internet

the talk at the end yall have is real interesting cuz it kinda sums up an idea ive had for a while that like these folks seem to think that the devil is like more powerful than god? its really surreal

Oliebollen is fukking lekker

A demonic credit card? You mean a charred card?

Bit late on this but, I remember watching this as a kid at a Teen Youth Group event. I grew up in rural maine and moved to slightly less rural maine, but my parents were the volunteering to help out with church type. My sisters and I would have to go to sunday school, chuch, evening church, youth group, teen youth group in addition to being volun-told to clean the church. I was at something called an "All-nighter." where al the aligned churches in the area would hold a big, late night rivial event with music and special speakers. Afterward the teens would be bused to various YMCAs that would be open access with pizza and soda. This was typically in the middle of winter, so being able to swim in an indoor pool made it a pretty nice trip, some played games or rock wall stuff. One room had a projector playing and they would Marathon Thief in the Night and the other movies of that series. It was a big, dark room and i'm shocked more teens weren't making out or something. Regardless, i remember the movie terrified me. In particular was someone being guillotined. I have so many other weird christian things from my childhood. Jump5, Left Behind, this one christian kids magazine about Christians being hunted by catholics for translating the Bible from Latin to English, A Focus on the Family: Thanksgiving The Legend of Squanto audio drama. Oh boy.

I remember sitting in youth group listening to a guest speaker (a very special episode) talking about the end times and how the demons described as locusts with women's hair were probably metaphors for attack helicopters. End times stuff was so prevalent and strong in the 90s. Attended a different church than helicopter guy that had a Thief in the Night type play put on EVERY YEAR. And this was a bugger church with a bug budget (for church) production.

I don't remember ever seeing this particular movie, but I grew up in a very conservative Free Will Baptist home in the leadup to Y2K when everybody was Rapturepilling *hard* and this and similar movies were all over the shelves at every Christian bookstore, and everyone was swallowing the Left Behind cash-grabs err I mean novels left and right (my sister I remember especially devoured them, reading both adult and YA versions of the series). I remember watching Left Behind, Meggido, The Omega Code, Tomorrow Never Comes and having recurring nightmares about all of them. The absolute mental trauma this stuff inflicted on me literally ruined and ruled my life for *years.* I had insomnia for all of high school, listening for sounds of my family still being in the house, or planes falling from the sky, terrified to be left behind for the sins of my burgeoning queerness. I remember my parents having dinner with other members of our church, gleefully counting the signs of the apocalypse they were seeing on the news, showing off the guns and powdered soups they were stocking up on to survive through the tribulation. I was so terrified *every* *day* that the entire world was going to be ripped away any second. It felt so unfair and I didn't understand why these people around me were so *excited* for everyone on Earth to die before I even had a chance to live a life. It made it hard to put any serious consideration into a future, college, career, etc when it was all just going to burn any day now anyway. I remember the panic I felt on New Year's Eve 1999, waiting for the clocks to hit midnight, all the power to go out, and the tribulation to began. My otherwise relatively centrist Baptist parents had become full-on preppers (I'm pretty sure there's still MREs and powdered soup at my mom's house). All that to say, great episode! A lot of fun. Thanks for covering this movie, it honestly feels good to listen to y'all talk about some of the same things I was thinking through but didn't know how to unpack at the time. If you want to dive into some more of this garbage, there's plenty of other great nightmare fuel out there and I'm down to listen to you slog through it!