Therefore Repent!
Written by: Jim Munroe
Drawn by: Salgood Sam

I have a sick fascination with the idea of Armageddon, rapture, end of days, whatever the hell you want to call it. And regardless of your own personal views on religion and the nature of “things” you have to admit it’s an exciting if not scary idea.

Therefore Repent! is a book about what happens when the Rapture occurs. One day, people just start floating up into the sky. Not everybody floats away though; only people who wholly believe not only in the idea of god but who believe that god is their reason for being. Only they are the saved ones. Everyone else is left on earth to toil in new-found magic like dogs who can talk and being able to conjure up magical skills from your own free will.

The whole story centers around two people, one of which can conjure ash ravens that save her when her and her boyfriend are in trouble. There are armies of what look like angels who come down to earth to wipe out the unfaithful, godless heathens left behind after the Rapture. Turns out the “angels” are possibly just aliens. I know this sounds weird but the end of the book suggests that nothing is really as it seems. The two main characters discover that the Raptured people end up dying after they reach space where their bodies float for all eternity. And the angels are actually just aliens that were aware of our biblical mythology (yeah, I said mythology, what’re you gonna do about it?) and come to earth in the form of angels, knowing it would confuse us and convince us that our mythology is correct.

Regardless of what you think or believe, it’s interesting to ponder the end of life as we know it. Will it all happen suddenly without warning; everyone and everything you’ve ever known and loved just disappearing into memory? That’s kind of what I lean toward. But there’s always the idea that we might end up left behind after a population-ravishing disease, war, or alien-angel annihilation.

What do you think? Is it more likely that it’ll be similar to this book and the South Park episode where only the Mormons get into heaven, leaving everyone else scratching their heads that THAT was the right religion? Who knows, but in the famous words of Tool singer Maynard James Keenan: “I wanna see the ground give way. I wanna watch it all go down. Mom please flush it all away. I wanna watch it go right in and down. I wanna watch it go right in…Learn to swim, I’ll see you down in Arizona bay…”