Many moons ago at a very conservative and reformed seminary, there was this young man who came from a decidedly charismatic background and who was very vocal about his eschatological views...so much so that it had become somewhat of a joke because he somehow or the other managed to tie everything back into the Rapture or the Tribulation. And I mean everything. He was absolutely obsessed with the idea that he would not "be called up into the heavens" and that he would have to endure the Tribulation.One day I got to church (First Electric Baptist in Haddock) and there was no one there, anywhere. No one in the parking lot, vestibule, sanctuary.....not one soul. I freaked out. I thought, "Oh the Lord has come and raptured everyone up and I was not among them!"
I was truly destitute and preparing to face the end times, but then I looked across the street at the Methodist Church's parking lot and it was empty too! So, I knew the Rapture hadn't happened after all! I'd just forgot to set my clock back an hour.
Someone else at this very conservative and reformed seminary got together all the men in the dorm and convinced them to stage their rooms as if they had been raptured. Showers were turned on with open shampoo bottles dropped. Sinks left running with toothbrushes in them and towels behind them. Alarm clocks set to blare @ 0530. Clothes laid out as if they had fallen off of body. You get the idea...well, every man in the dorm went and hid behind the dorm inside the AC brick privacy wall area and a lone trumpeteer climbed onto the roof via the fire escape and at 0529 began playing "When the Saints Go Marching In."
Roughly five minutes after "the trump resounded," the kid busts out the front door onto the lawn in his boxers and collapses on the ground absolutely beside himself. Crying, screaming, mumbling...an absolute mess.
I retrospect, it probably wasn't as funny as we thought it was at the time.