Caring for Pets Left Behind by the Rapture (Not The Onion)
February 15th, 2010Via: Business Week:
Many people in the U.S.—perhaps 20 million to 40 million—believe there will be a Second Coming in their lifetimes, followed by the Rapture . In this event, they say, the righteous will be spirited away to a better place while the godless remain on Earth. But what will become of all the pets?
Bart Centre, 61, a retired retail executive in New Hampshire, says many people are troubled by this question, and he wants to help. He started a service called Eternal Earth-Bound Pets that promises to rescue and care for animals left behind by the saved.
Promoted on the Web as “the next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World,” the service has attracted more than 100 clients, who pay $110 for a 10-year contract ($15 for each additional pet.) If the Rapture happens in that time, the pets left behind will have homes—with atheists. Centre has set up a national network of godless humans to carry out the mission. “If you love your pets, I can’t understand how you could not consider this,” he says.
Centre came up with the idea while working on his book, The Atheist Camel Chronicles, written under the pseudonym Dromedary Hump. In it, he says many unkind things about the devout and confesses that “I’m trying to figure out how to cash in on this hysteria to supplement my income.”
And devout Christians can return the favour by setting up a company to look after the pets left behind when all the atheists go to …. oh wait, that doesn’t work, they just get left behind.
The whole Rapture thing just leaves me incredulous. Talk about making a whole subculture and industry out of one throwaway phrase in the Bible. I’ve read about it, thought about it, still don’t get it. Not because I am godless either, I’m not.
Hey, maybe I can make a living looking after the social networking accounts of those who get Raptured? I can update their Facebook status, post the odd Twitter message, Digg the occasional link to a Rapture Index website…. and they’ll have to be maintained after the Rapture too, who’ll do that? Yep, I think I’ve got a business plan….
So…. is Hell more ‘left behind and looking after the pets of those who got Raptured’ rather than Dante’s ‘Inferno’?
I dimly remembered reading about a similar service that would send a pre-written letter to your contacts etc explaining what had happened.
Sure enough, here it is: http://www.raptureletters.com/
” This message has been sent to you by a friend or a relative who has recently disappeared along with millions and millions of people around the world…
…This may come as a shock to you, but the one who sent you this has been taken up to heaven.”
People are lunatics. It makes my head hurt most of the time.
This is a truly sick way that Bart Centre has found to make money. Sounds to me like he is preying like a vulture, on the fact that not a one of us is getting out of here, this earth plane, alive.
Worrying about your pets when you might be whisked off in an orgasmic rapture. Think about it.
If its a really going to be a Rapture that takes these souls up to their God they should have no worries. No cares. If puppy is good why wouldn’t that beloved be seized up into the great beyond too?
Sounds like the Rapture needs to be more fully explained to the people who believe in such a thing if they are not willing to believe that the creatures that they love won’t be participating in it with their mistresses and masters.
And Bart Centre, may the gods/goddesses bless him for his “good intentions.” Sounds to me like he’s adding a shit load of bad karma to his plate.