No, really.

Courtesy of Dave Barry (yes, that Dave Barry) comes this link to a website that promises — for a fee — to send e-mails and do electronic delivery of documents to a list of people once the Rapture occurs:

You’ve Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends For Christ. Imagine being in the presence of the Lord and hearing all of heaven rejoice over the salvation of your loved ones. It is our prayer that this site makes it happen.

We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the “Rapture” of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

We give you 150mb of encrypted storage that can be sent to 12 possible email addresses, in Box #1. You up load any documents and choose which documents go to who. You can edit these documents at any time and change the addresses they will be sent to as needed. Box #1 is for personal private information such as “passwords” and letters to be sent to your closest lost relatives and friends.

We give you another 100mb. of unencrypted storage that can be sent to up to 50 email addresses, in Box #2. You can edit the documents and the addresses any time. Box #2 is for more generic documents to lost family & friends.

The cost is $40 for the first year. Re-subscription will be reduced as the number of subscribers increases. Tell your friends about You’ve Been left behind.

First off, let me be clear: I’m not mocking this site. In fact, it strikes me as a logical step given a firm belief in a pre-tribulation Rapture — at least as long as you believe that those ‘left behind’ still have a shot at repentance. And if you do, it seems to me that the fact of the Rapture itself — not to mention the tribulation that would follow it — would probably do a whole lot more to cause folks to repent than getting a post-Rapture e-mail from someone who was taken. But if I earnestly believed in a pre-tribulation Rapture and post-Rapture repentance, I might well look into this. (Besides, the site itself seems to indicate that this can also be used to give key information to those left behind, e.g., accounts, passwords, and so on.)

I have no proof one way or the other whether this site is serious or a joke; a ‘whois’ investigation turned up little information other than that the domain was registered via godaddy.com. Only time will tell.

Of course, the LDS view is different. We believe in an post-tribulation Rapture (though we seldom call it by that name) that will occur at Christ’s coming. We also believe that those caught up to meet Christ at his coming will then come back down to earth — still mortal — and start the long task of cleaning up the mess we’ve made of things down here.

faith-promoting story — Any story that makes you feel glad you’re a Mormon, even if you can’t bring yourself to believe it.

— Orson Scott Card, Saintspeak: A Mormon Dictionary (Orion Books, 1981)

Of course, the question is — is there some equivalent notification system for Latter-day Saints? A “don’t tell anyone, but I’ve got to attend a meeting at Adam-ondi-Ahman” system? The problem with that is that not only do Mormons have a hard time keeping secrets in the first place, we tend to make up more than actually exist (“faith promoting rumors”).

Beyond that, the Church itself is so well wired and organized that it already has the infrastructure to get out any notification worldwide in a matter of hours. Besides, the meeting at Adam-ondi-Ahman will probably be broadcast via satellite.

Other suggestions or comments? ..bruce..