I keep hearing from my religious family how we
are “in the last days”. That more and more bad things are happening in the world because it’s in the bible.
I guess we better get saved.

Most christians, being ignorant of church history (among many other things) believe that that rapture/tribulation doctrine was always believed by Christians.
Actually, it was a tenet of the Darby Brethren (a group in England) in the erly 1800s. A man named Schofield visited them and brought the doctrine back to the US. He published a Bible (Schofield reference bible). The baptists picked it up.
The rest, as they say, is history.

When the first book of the series came out I wasn't really aware of what it was all about. I checked it out at the local library and couldn't make it half-way. It was, to me, disgusting and I was a real believer at the time. That must have been close to 40 years ago and I still find the idea and the people who believe it rather disgusting.

What if you're on a plane and the pilot is raptured? Ha. I saw the wizard behind the curtain 10 years ago. Finally.

I never read the Left Behind series but I have read Revelations many times and I think there is a lot of credibility to the idea that the author was high on ergot or mushrooms and had a really, really, really bad trip.

Whats terrifying is when superstitious/religious people like that are in positions of power. They WANT the end of the world. What motivation do they have to make things great here? I went to High School on a nuclear Air Force base in Germany at the height of the Cold War. And I remember finding out that some of the nuclear weapons were cared for by Christian "End of Days" types - and how much that terrified me, thinking "wait a second, these guys want a nuclear war!!!"

Back when I was all young and full of the Spirit and crap, I had an agnostic friend who loved for me to tell her Bible stories. She thought they were a hoot!

Stories of the end times puzzled her more than most, though. "But why would God go to all that trouble?" she'd ask. "Why not just 'poof' and be done with it?"

I don't remember what answer I gave her - probably some crap about "mysterious ways" or something - but it was a really good question.

Lol, the 'Endtimes' have been 'predicted' since almost day one, the 'Apostles' believed that Jeebus was returning WITHIN their life-times, guess what, he didn't and he's still awol, the next prediction was that it would happen in the year 666 C.E., again they blew it and Jeebus is still awol and eagerly waiting for notification from the Guinness Book of Records that he IS the World Record Holder of the title of the Best Hide and Seek player of ALL times, they keep 'predicting' the 'endtimes' with so regular monotony but EVERY time they are 100% wrong, so sit back, relax and be assured that, unless some dopey, stupid idiot presses that BIG red button and blows the planet into dust, the time when the world will end is somewhere around the same time as our Sun runs out of hydrogen to burn and starts swelling up as it burns the helium in its core, expands outwards and wipes Mercury, Venus, Earth and possibly Mars completely out of existence BUT we definitely won't be around to see it.

In my opinion, there is only an endtime for each individual when one dies.

I know what you mean. Revelations scared the hell out of me in multiple senses. It was one of he most bizarre and disturbing things I have ever read. I now believe that it was written by a psychotic person suffering though bouts of dementia.