The Rapture No One Expected - An Introduction

From the archives of Ethan L. Romero as collated by the Harvest Heritage Committee.

“If there is going to be a brave new world, our generation is going to have the hardest time living in it.” - Chancellor Gorkon, Klingon High Council

“I never thought I’d change the world and I wasn’t trying to predict the future; but somehow, I ended up doing both...”

On April 5th 2026, at exactly 4:03pm Greenwich Mean Time, 4.73 billion people vanished off the face of the planet.

This event would come to be known as the Harvest.

In the blink of an eye, the entire world was reduced to almost a third of its former population.

The days and weeks that followed saw opinions rage as to the cause of this global catastrophe; from “Thanos the Mad Titan,” to Freemasons and the Large Hadron Collider. It’s somewhat ironic, given what we know now, how little we anticipated the truth.

My native London alone saw the population drop from 9.9 to 2.6 million people in less time than it takes for a signal to travel from your eyes to your brain. In an instant, almost half the region north of the River Thames became virtually uninhabited. The hustle and bustle of Commercial Road. The endless stream of tourists shuffling between Tower Bridge and the Tower of London. All went still, all fell silent.

The extent of this catastrophe could only be described as cataclysmic. Whilst it wasn’t an isolated incident, several regions fared worse than the others.

The state of New York reportedly dropped from 19.6 to 9.3 million people. Brazil saw losses of 79 to 81 million souls (which, in retrospect, didn’t put that big a dent on its pre-Harvest population of 223 million). China, on the other hand, suffered catastrophic losses; going from 1.4 billion to 375 million people overnight (a loss of 73.24% of the population). But even this didn’t stack up to Pakistan. Out of 241 million people, only 61 million remained; just 25.6% of the former population.

There appeared to be no rationale or pattern to the disappearances. They seemed random. Then the reports started coming in. Out of all those who’d survived, everyone was either under the age of thirteen—or was a professing Christian.

Suddenly, we were no longer speculating about cosmic freak accidents. Now, we were wondering why every single Christian on the planet had been “left behind.”

Everyone’s end time theology took a hit.

Whether you were premill, postmill or amill; pre-trib, mid-trib or post-trib, none of the systems worked anymore. Nobody had anticipated this.

Nobody—except me.

You see, I was the guy who—three years prior—had inadvertently predicted the Harvest.

My name is Ethan L. Romero and until April 5th 2026, I was a nobody.

I had a wife and two kids, a decent job. I moonlit as a theologian in my spare time. I loved the hidden, secret places of scripture; the mysteries and dusty nuances the average person didn’t delve into. What I discovered, I posted about here.

Nobody was meant to read it. Ok, I wanted somebody to read it, but I never thought anything would come of it.

On Sunday 3rd September 2023, I wrote an article titled, What if “the Rapture” Happened in Reverse? And on Monday 4th September 2023, the world responded with collective crickets.

To this day, I’m not sure how it got out there; whether it was shared via social media or the result of some desperate soul’s Google search for answers. All I do know is that my sister called me the night it went viral to tell me what was going on. This freaked me out more than anything for two reasons; 1) she never read anything I posted, and 2) she was not a social-media-butterfly.

(Janice, if you’re reading this—which you’re probably not—I love you.)

Once it went viral, it wasn’t long before it made the news. That pretty much did it. Not only did people start visiting in droves, they began to share their own stories. The comment section was a swiftly overrun. I’d already been terrible at clearing my inbox, but by the following morning it reached epic proportions.

Suddenly, my little corner of the internet was no longer just for me. It became a hub; a depository of eyewitness testimony; a living recollection of the Harvest in real-time. I can only describe what happened next as a gravitational shift in paradigm and focus. These stories were important, and as long as I had the world’s attention, I felt it was my duty to make sure the people behind them were heard and seen. So, I didn’t just read, I collected; and what I collected, I began to share. To add some meat to the bones and fill out the details, I conducted interviews, collating some of the most vivid stories and releasing them in a weekly newsletter.

The contents of those newsletters form the bulk of this work.

After awhile, even this wasn’t enough. I felt an almost providential drive to do more. Part of this was due to the nature of the Harvest. To those who haven’t lived it, it’s hard to convey the sense of isolation in a world where the majority of the population has suddenly vanished. In such circumstances, the desire to meet and converse with other flesh-and-blood humans is overwhelming. I had to see these people, look them in the eye and hear their voices. And so, much to my wife’s dismay, I began to travel.

My newfound notoriety made that somewhat easy. Not only were many doors opened, but people were more than willing to speak to me. Heck, some were even eager to have their stories told.

I listened first-hand to those who saw the Second Great Schism play out, or lived through the Black Hebrew Israelite Siege of Jerusalem. I visited the orphans of Afghanistan, Yemen and Jordan. In so doing, I bore witness to the effect of Christianity’s gravitational shift from the Global North to the Global South.

As the First World passed away, a new world was dawning.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

In the days and weeks that followed the Harvest (then, still called the Vanishings), the centre of expertise shifted from scientists and socio-political commentators to theologians. A wave of mass prayer, public worship and repentance ensued for weeks on end. You could even call it a “revival” of sorts; but eventually the time came to rebuild.

The Church (or, what you could now just call “humanity”) needed to do something she had not done in an age. She needed to sit down, talk and actually listen. If we were going to make sense of any of this, if we were going to chart a course forward, we had to do it together.

If only it were that simple.

The greatest theological minds, together with a hodgepodge of political thinkers and what was left of the world’s leaders, gathered together in what would come to be known as the V-Committee Summit.

For my part in all this, I suddenly found myself thrust into the spotlight amidst every biblical heavy-weight left on the planet. For five days we deliberated and debated back and forth. My article (short as it was) was scrutinised and picked apart as though I was defending a doctoral thesis.

When the dust finally settled, this unprecedented gathering came to three points of agreement by which humanity could chart a course forward into an uncertain future.

The V-Committee Accords

Article 1.1 - This Post-Harvest period will last anywhere from a few to a thousand years.

Article 2.1 - Sin and death will not be eradicated during this time.

Article 3.1 - There will be a final rebellion and apostasy before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

Like Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics, these articles would come to define every decision made by mankind in the years to follow. They became the foundation upon which we would rebuild the future. And here we stand, as of the time of this writing, almost 15 years to the day since the Harvest.

Now, why write an oral history of the Harvest when we have history books, video footage, public records and documentaries (not to mention, Wikipedia)? Whilst these sources record the cold, hard facts of the Harvest, they lack the raw, human touch of those who lived and breathed it. People like you and me. Their stories fill the canvas of this work. Their thoughts and feelings, hopes and dreams, fears and apprehensions form the multi-hued brushstrokes of this historical portrait. And make no mistake, whilst recent history, this is still a work of history.

Though few alive today would question the historicity of what happened, I imagine that there will come a day when what was once brutal fact for this generation will become questionable myth to another.

I say all this to say, I’m not a secondary source but a primary one. I was there. I experienced it. As an eyewitness, I can attest to the authenticity of these accounts. Though coming from various backgrounds, separated sometimes by vast geographical and cultural differences, we all share a common experience. We saw the rest of the world vanish before our eyes.

It is my prayer that, should that day ever come, this work will stand as a testimony to what was seen, what was heard, what was felt and what was touched. A testimony, not borne of cold, hard facts alone, but of raw human experience.

If I may be so bold, my hope is that this work will give flesh, blood and living breath to the dry bones of a bygone era.

To borrow the ancient words of Luke the Historian; I write so that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.

— Ethan L. Romero

In commemoration of this milestone (and at the insistence of my publisher), I present below the original article that started it all; unabridged and without additional commentary.

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What if “the Rapture” Happened in Reverse?

By Ethan Romero - 3 September 2023

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Have you ever thought about it?

I hadn’t until Friday morning when I opened up Matthew 24.

Now, I’ve never personally taken this view but we’ve all been subjected to either the Tim LaHaye books, that awful movie with Kirk Cameron or the even worse one with Nicholas Cage.

I’m talking about Left Behind and the theology behind it.

The idea is that Jesus comes back to secretly whisk the church away in what’s called the “Rapture.” We’re caught up to meet him in the clouds and dwell with him in heaven whilst all hell breaks loose on the earth.

All those who don’t believe in Jesus are left behind, including professing Christians who maybe weren’t quite living up to their profession of faith. They’re given a second chance to turn to Jesus and follow him faithfully. The problem is, they have to deal with the rise of the Anti-Christ, the incarnate son of Satan, who comes to rule the world and persecute all followers of Jesus.

That’s it in a nutshell.

I won’t go into all the theological arguments for and against this, I simply wanted to do a thought exercise.

Imagine if this did happen, only it happened in reverse?

Hear me out.

Many people read Matthew 24:36-41 and assume that when Jesus says, “Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left.” That this is the rapture moment. The believers are taken and the unbelievers are left behind. But look at what Jesus actually says:

‭“For as were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day when Noah entered the ark, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two men will be in the field; one will be taken and one left. Two women will be grinding at the mill; one will be taken and one left.”

‭‭Jesus said his coming would be similar to what happened in the days of Noah.

Now, what happened in the days of Noah?

God told Noah to build an Ark because he was going to destroy all life on the earth as an act of judgement.

Noah, his wife, his three sons and their wives were the only people on the Ark (along with two of every kind of animal except sea creatures, obviously).

Everyone and everything else perished.

Jesus said, concerning all those outside the Ark, “they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away.”

So, in this context, the ones who were taken were the wicked.

The ones who were left behind were Noah, his family and the animals.

Now, Jesus said that his return, this thing that some people call the “Rapture,” would be like that. In other words, those who are “left behind” aren’t unbelievers, they’re believers. And those who are “taken” aren’t believers, they’re unbelievers.

Hence my question: what if the rapture happened in reverse?

Let’s say Jesus did come back in judgement in the manner some people suspect. Wouldn’t that mean he’d sweep away the wicked and leave behind the faithful?

I mean, I’m not saying this would actually happen. That’s not my position at all. But imagine if it did? What on earth would that be like? Heck, if I ever get to sit down with Noah in the new creation, I’ll ask him.

It kinda reminds me of the parable of the wheat and weeds in Matthew 13. Jesus tells this story of the master sowing good seed in his field and an enemy coming to sow weeds while he was away. His servants ask if they should uproot the weeds but he says to wait. The master says:

“Let both grow together until the harvest, and at harvest time I will tell the reapers, “Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.”

‭‭Now, there’s a scary thought.

Of course, there are some things that wouldn’t work in this scheme. For example, you have to arbitrarily split passages that refer to the Second Coming from the Day of the Lord and effectively create a “Third Coming.”

For example, Jesus said that when he comes, the tribes of the earth would mourn when they see him, which precludes coming in secret.

And what about the Great Apostasy? 2 Thessalonians 2:3 says that the day of the Lord’s coming won’t, y’know, come until the rebellion comes first.

But hey, it’s an interesting exercise.

What would that look like? What would we have to reinterpret to make sense of it? Would this change the face of Christianity? And more to the point, what would it mean to be a Christian in a world without unbelievers?

Some food for thought.

What do you think?