is the day, the glorious, frightful day, when Jesus returns to Earth to retrieve his faithful children. While I am sure every Christian has a slightly varied reading of how the Rapture will unfold, I can only speak for what the United Pentecostal Church teaches—I first learned the specific series of events as a young teen in Sunday School.

The first lessons young Pentecostals are taught about the Rapture concern the events preceding the actual second coming. If the UPC has any one obsession, it is their infatuation with the end times. Almost every apostolic sermon will mention our life in the last days. It may seem, on the surface, like a recruitment tool used to insight fear and paranoia, but to make that claim would undersell the fervor. The apostolic church interprets The Bible as a sacred text of literal fact, from the creation story to the apocalyptic imagery of Revelation.

The book of Revelation is of supreme importance, second only to Acts. Based on literal interpretations of Revelation, certain Pentecostals will passionately assign meaning to modern events. This tendency is nothing new, but allow me to illustrate. In Sunday School, I was taught from a bimonthly magazine called End Time. Feel free to check out their website (www.endtime.com) and take stock of everything you see on the homepage alone: there are previous cover stories, including “ISIS: The Bible Prophecy” and “What to Expect in 2017: The Election of Donald Trump – A Fulfillment of Prophecy?”; a series of vlogs with names like “Las Vegas Shooting” featuring dragon and leopard backdrops; an Irvan’s Thoughts section containing links to lengthy essays named “WWIII,” “America’s God-Given Destiny,” “US Discovered in the Bible,” and “The Antichrist.” This list only scratches the surface. While most Christian teens were finding Abraham and Abednego in word searches, I was being lectured on End Time and the end times. My Sunday School teacher was particularly paranoid about the number of the beast, discussed in Revelation 13, which he believed the one-world government will force all citizens of the world to have imprinted either on their forehead or wrist at some point in the near future.

When you least expect, Jesus will return to the sounds of trumpets that every ear shall hear. First, the dead in Christ will rise. After the dead, the Lord’s chosen few will vanish; a breeze will blow, they will no longer be.

I am eager to continue with a sentiment like and just like that, five thousand years of recorded human history is wiped clean, but that’s not what I was taught. After the church, the bride of Christ, is raptured, civilization will go on, thrive even, for those who accept the number of the beast. Those left behind will face a seven-year tribulation period in which they will live under rule of the Antichrist—Barack Obama has been the favorite candidate virtually ever since he entered the public arena. After this seven years, Jesus and his church, who have all been partying this whole time in Heaven, will return and begin what is known as the Thousand-Year Millennial Reign—I imagine “Millennial Reign” or “Thousand-Year Reign” just didn’t sound apocalyptic enough. According to Revelation 20, the biblical source of this teaching, Jesus kicks off his reign by locking Satan and the damned up in “the bottomless pit.” After another thousand years of partying, this time on Earth in Jerusalem, Jesus will face off with Satan one last time. He will win this battle, at which point the oft-discussed Final Judgment will occur. One by one, Jesus will judge the lost. All at once, he’ll cast them to Hell.

After Satan and the sinners have been properly taken care of, Jesus will establish Heaven on Earth, the final stage of the collective Rapture. To make it clear, our heavenly eternity will not take place in the sky or in some holy dimension, but right here on Earth.

Salvation was an all-day ordeal. In the dorm rooms Tuesday morning, a counselor cautioned me of the situation’s gravity. This was the most important thing you will ever do, he told me. Take a break before and after each of the three steps to thank God. Ask questions. Participation was not mandatory, and if I was not 100% invested or taking it seriously, then it might be best if I abstained from the proceedings. Nobody would abstain; we were here for this reason.

but that’s only the first of three distinct steps in the Pentecostal’s journey to eternal salvation.

A fervent Pentecostal would dispute my diction. Unlike most Christian denominations, true apostolics will not use the word saved to describe the state of their soul. That word has been watered down by lesser sects: the Baptists, with their saved-once-and-you’re-good mentality, have cheapened the lifelong journey of moral Christian behavior; the Catholics, with their tedious, cold traditions and confession-booth middlemen, have robbed the hungry Christians of direct contact; the Presbyterians, with their predestination, have doomed all of God’s children who would otherwise have made good Pentecostals; the Methodists are just embarrassed, noncommittal Catholics; and the Church of Christ doesn’t play instruments and that is boring. I have the Holy Ghost, you’ll hear Pentecostals say. Do you have the Holy Ghost, son? Do you have the Holy Ghost, sweetie?

Receiving the Holy Ghost, man’s golden ticket into Heaven, is no easy task. The deceptively simple act of repentance isn’t straightforward; go be a Baptist if you think it should be. The location is flexible, though a dark prayer room (thirty minutes before service starts) is suggested. You’re not expected to kneel and rattle off a list of your sins; go be a Catholic if that’s your bag. The repentance process is more about a confrontation with shame itself. It’s about knowing how deep in the muck you are and realizing if you do not begin to live differently, you will, without a doubt, burn.

There is something to this showdown with shame, this holy mea culpa, that is inherently good. Many aspects of the Pentecostal lifestyle are like this, a bright apple of actual wisdom buried underneath some hundred-plus years of organized, apostolic mold.

After your prayer room sojourn, you schedule a meeting with your pastor. The pastor of a Pentecostal household is a de facto member of the family, a father with the absolute authority to override the decisions of your actual father. If the Catholics hadn’t beaten them to it by a thousand or so years, Pentecostal would have put the word “father” to its most literal use. Before a child in a Pentecostal household can do anything, they must first get the approval of both their parents and their pastor. Attend a social event or school event, especially one dealing with arts like theater or show choir? Grow a beard? Begin dating someone? Mini-Pentecostals become masters of the pitch. I once argued that if I could ask a Baptist girl out, and if she was kind enough to agree, then that would give me a perfect opportunity to convert a lost soul. In the meeting with your pastor, after your repentance, it is he who decides if you are ready, spiritually, to proceed to the second step.

is the most straightforward of the three steps, though its ease does nothing to lessen its importance. Letting your pastor dunk you is easy, but you don’t get into the baptistery without said pastor’s approval.

Dunk. Here is where the Pentecostals will applaud my word choice. Though many denominations practice full immersion baptisms, the Pentecostals approach the sacred dunking with the same zeal they bring to all of their rituals. To sprinkle someone and call it baptism is a laughable misreading of the scripture. Did John the Baptist mist Jesus with a twitch of his wrist in Luke 3? No, John the Baptist submerged Christ into the Jordan and when he arose, a dove descended from above and onto the savior’s shoulder, a sign of spiritual purity to all who follow in His footsteps. If you were covered in mud, you wouldn’t clean yourself with a few drops, and we are all covered in mud.

To baptize a child or newborn is a waste of holy water. The pastor of the church will dab anointed oil on your newborn’s head (and assure you it’s not the same thing). Surely the child does not feel remorse for its natural sin. Surely it did not consult its reverend about the importance and severity of baptism under false pretense.

After you’re baptized, you’re all out of tries. You get one shot. When someone you know is getting baptized for a second (or third) time, it is never an event to be celebrated. Subsequent baptisms are events shrouded in gossip and whispers. If you like the baptized, then they were tricked into it for the wrong reasons the first go-round, usually by a nondenominational. If you don’t like the baptized, then they have sullied the baptismal by making it their own personal watering hole and made a fool of whatever pastor they have deceived into allowing the ceremony.

After your baptism the church family begins to treat you differently. You’ve rounded second base and are almost home. Many in the church will tack on a Brother or Sister before your name. The moment you rise from that tub, you, a human, are washed of every single one of your sins. In that instant, you have become spotless, a blank slate. Sins can and will be added onto the slate virtually as soon as you leave the sanctuary, but for one dazzling moment, your clothes weighed heavy and your fingers dripping, you are pure. When you believe in the steps of the salvation process, the feeling you get after your baptism is unlike anything else you have ever felt and will ever feel again.

is the big one. Receiving the Holy Ghost is the primary objective of Pentecostal life. Nothing—not your spouse, your kids, your parents, your job—is more important. Entire sermons have been built around this fact; I was there to hear them. The bestowal of this gift is the only way, according to the doctrine of the United Pentecostal Church, a person can enter the kingdom of Heaven. Treating others with brotherly love will not suffice. Showing up for church every time the doors open won’t get you in. Placing ten percent of your income into the offering that is then transferred to a mystery location (which I’m pretty confident is the preacher’s checking account) will get you nowhere. If you have the Holy Ghost, you’re in. If you don’t, and Jesus comes back in the rapture, you burn.

It is here that one can deduce the main driver behind a Pentecostal lifestyle. The Holy Ghost does not contribute benefits to everyday life: you don’t look any different, act any different, talk any different, you’re not bestowed with any supernatural power you can show-and-tell your class. Folks strive to receive it for the sole reason of not burning. Nothing motivates us like old fashioned, hot-hot-hot, apocalyptic fear. We pray out of fear. We shout and sing and perform and run out of fear. We are Christians out of fear. We love out of fear. Life becomes a rat race to the finish line and every smile from here to there is loaded, double-barreled.

I am not sure how much the act of speaking of tongues is discussed in other sects of Christianity, but I do know most denominations believe in some form or another. I know for many, it is grouped in with the list of spiritual gifts Paul writes about in 1 Corinthians 12: wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, prophesy, the power to distinguish between spirits, tongues, and the ability to interpret tongues. Traveling evangelists advertise themselves with spiritual gifts, like stats on the back of a baseball card. Local pastors will book them, like a bar band, and hold week-long revivals. Bro. Healing came last year and healed Granny’s knee. And Bro. Prophecy will be visiting for revival next month. Etc.

Tongues are still considered a gift of the spirit, but it is the gift any Christian can have if they only want it. On the other hand, the ability to interpret tongues is a true gift. You can count on every apostolic church having at least one tongues-and-interpretation lady. You can always pick her out. She is always the lady who doesn’t style her hair into an elaborate knotted design reeking of hairspray. Eschewing the brightly colored brooches and skirts of her contemporaries, her clothes are austere, loosely fitting. She sits on the back pew waiting for her moment.

If you ever witness the act of tongues and interpretation, you will never forget it. It is a phenomenon—even if you believe it to be a ruse, there is not another word—which must be seen to be truly believed. One person will stand at a random point in the service and begin speaking in tongues, loudly, as if they were rallying the congregation to battle. Whoever is at the pulpit will step back from the microphone and stare, with hunger in his eyes, at the person. When finished, the speaker will calmly sit down. Everyone else will, as if it were rehearsed beforehand, remain silent. They won’t turn back to the preacher or resume whatever they were doing on their phone; babies will squirm and fidget to no response. Then, after the silence, the interpreter will stand from their pew. Many heads bow in reverence. In the same booming tone, the interpreter will, if the phenomenon is to be believed, translate the tongues into English. The act is awesome in the truest sense. It makes you want to push your chips forward and go all in.

Luckily, you don’t have to do any of this to get into Heaven. All you have to do is speak in tongues, in a different language you likely will have never heard, within earshot of a trustworthy member of your congregation who will confirm it to the pastor you have, beyond the shadow of a doubt, received the gift of the Holy Ghost. All you have to do is be touched by God.

dream about that prayer, about the words Micah prayed in that bottom bunk, the sounds I was unable to make sense of and carry me forward. I still can’t set anything on top of a Bible: another book, a piece of paper, a glass, my hand for too long, a telephone, candy, remote controls, a toothpick. I still have never said the words God and damn as a collective unit, out of fear of irreversible damnation. I still wake up every Sunday with not only the mind to go to the First United Pentecostal Church of Hattiesburg, but the desire to go. Still want to stand beside the choir loft with the rest of the musicians, but my beard grows longer. Still feel wrong raising my hands at a concert, because I would be doing something for Bruce Springsteen I never felt moved to do for Jesus. Still feel the evangelist’s sweat drip and then slide down my neck. Still remember his warnings, how desperately he believed them, how desperately he wanted my salvation in his trophy case. Still fear they’re right. I still anticipate, at any given moment on any random day, as I’m driving down the road or mowing the lawn, hearing the sound of trumpets announcing Jesus’s return to Earth to take everyone but me.