Doomsday, anyone?

I'm a long-time fan of The Simpsons, and one concept which keeps cropping up in its episodes is that of The Rapture.  So what exactly is it?  Well perhaps "exactly" is an unfortunate word, because the idea is anything but exact.  It's all to do with the second coming.  Christian dogma says that Jesus will one day return to the earth, and that will be the "end of times" - the world will end and we will all be judged - the blessed will go to heaven and the rest of us will go to the other place.  But there is some dispute as to the way this will happen and one version prevalent in the US is that the blessed will be taken up (literally) to heaven first, and this is The Rapture. The rest will be left behind to await their fate.  Interestingly the word rapture comes from the same Latin root as the word rape!