Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Forty Bucks I Won't Be Spending

Here's the latest in services offered to the Christian community, specifically those who believe in the Rapture doctrine. From the ABC news website:

A new Web site is offering a first-of-its-kind service: sending e-mails to nonbelieving friends and family who are "left behind" after you are whisked away by God in the rapture.

The site Youvebeenleftbehind.com offers users the ability to store e-mails and documents that will be sent to up to 63 e-mail addresses six days after the rapture has occurred. Users get up to 250 megabytes of storage space, 150 megabytes of it encrypted for sensitive information such as bank account numbers or eTrade passwords that can be accessed by those who remain on earth.

The owner of this service says that your email is "one last chance to bring [your loved ones] to Christ and snatch them from the flames."

You may wonder, how will the emails be sent? The guy who owns the site has a system in place so that if the majority of his employees don't log into the system for a duration of six days (presumably because they've been raptured), the system will automatically send the stored messages to the recipients.

And this service isn't free; you'll need to shell out $40 a year to make sure that everyone on your email list who is left behind will get that one last message from you.

Hmmm. Now I personally do not believe in the rapture, but even if I did, I don't think I would be leaving my personal information out there on some stranger's server for some hacker to access. And I don't think, if the rapture is for real, it would be necessary to leave messages to my friends and loved ones explaining to them where I have disappeared to.

Besides, I'd feel really stupid if I got to heaven and saw someone there from my email list.

5 comments:

Tony Arnold said...

I think it is very funny that someone figured out how to milk money from those that believe in the rapture.

It does not seem to me the site is really interested in saving anyone. I sense it could be a non-Christian who said, "Rather than tell these people that I think their crazy and argue with them, maybe I can find a way to use to my monetary advantage."

JMG said...

I sort of wish I could come up with a good money making venture to take advantage of this obviously lucrative market.

But, that would probably be immoral.

Actually, from reading the article, I think the guy who came up with this really believes in the rapture and thinks he's doing people a service.

Tony Arnold said...

At $40 bucks a pop, somebody is feeling rapture!

jettybetty said...

This one is a classic!

Don't think I will spend that $40 either though!

Ayatollah Mugsy said...

I occasionally see drivers here in Texas with bumper stickers reading, "In case of rapture, this vehicle will be unoccupied."

And I sometimes wonder if they could be ticketed for reckless driving.