Some Things that have always bugged me about pre-millennialism Bible fiction

 For some reason, I had a weird thought about the Rapture involving books and media I've read, and in that moment, I realized a lot of them make little sense to varying degrees. Their premise is conceptually sound, as a fictional end-times apocalyptic fiction hook, but most media (invariably Christian-sponsored per the premise) always have some gaping plot holes and a lack of logic.

For those who are not Christian, the basic premise goes like this. Presuming the events of the final book of the Bible (Revelation) speak nigh exclusively of some time in the future of humanity after the founding of the Church as depicted in Acts, the premise is that, in the twinkling of an eye, all who believe in God and His Son Jesus will be yeeted off Earth, leaving behind nothing save what was on their bodies, but they will just vanish. The rest of the world will naturally panic for a while after, until a smooth-talking liar unites the world, comes up with some elaborate lie to explain away the vanishing and seduces most of the world into uniting into a one-world government. Initially promising peace, which will involve a bad faith threat with Israel that will one day break, this period (called the Tribulation) will last seven years. The first half is going to be pretty bad, but will also allow those left behind to make a choice to stand for or against God, though the evil one-world government will increasingly try to persecute them.

At the halfway point, the evil one world leader will be temporarily killed, but will resurrect, and this kicks off the second half of this period. During this, now indwelt by the oldest traitor of the Biblical angels against God, the persecution will increase exponentially. During the first half, those who believe in God are marked with a sign only they can see to identify one another. Well, those who cast their lot with the evil one world leader get their own, and the last three and a half years are Hell on Earth for both sides. The believers are hunted down, and those caught are killed if they refuse to pledge loyalty. As for those who are given the evil mark and the remaining undecided will be tormented by plagues from heaven.

At the end, Jesus comes back, we have 1000 years of peace, then the forces of evil make one last play for victory before being curbstomped, and then a new heaven and earth replace the old.

However, after having read several takes on this concept, they all have some gaping plot holes and logic errors that have always bugged me.

1. The fact no one figures out only true believing Christians vanish.

Most end-times books as described above tend to approach this logical problem from one of two approaches. As seen in Left Behind, they come up with some idiot lie to sucker the public and ignore only Christians vanished on purpose. Alternatively, the evil leader or his cronies do acknowledge it, but come up with some reason why that had to happen to sucker the rest left behind.

My problems with the first choice is that, in an age where the Internet is a thing and even before, the fact that the mass majority of the populations of most churches would bottom out nigh instantly and the fact Christianity is a religion with a billion plus adherents would leave little to no question who was gone and why. My problem with the other half is that while they have a decent excuse in universe most of the time to explain away why the Christians had to go, they never address how any of those excuses don;t square with what the Bible itself says on the topic, even if only to cynically out of context quote the Bible against itself out of context for their "proof".

"Left Behind" was notoriously bad at any worldbuilding or verisimilitude because not only did they give the impact of people vanishing barely more than a week before the rest of the world got over such a traumatic event, the excuse they gave for the cause was so weak and embarrassingly not addressed it destroyed any ability to suspend disbelief even in universe. The in-universe excuse was some vague thing about how our existing war tech causes a billion-plus people to disintegrate, but they never explain this further.

The "Apocalypse" series (adapted into film by Ten Cloud Pictures) went for a modified second approach, where the evil one world leader claims it was done to purify the souls of those who were holding humanity back (in a deliberate reversal of the truth so he could corrupt the rest), but still left unaddressed how humanity didn't freak out over this one man claim he just effectively killed (for all intents and purposes) over a billion people.

The one end times series that came closest to a feasible lie was the Christ Clone series by James Beausinger, where his in-universe liar claimed those who died shed their old forms and ascended beyond them, and he was going to help the remainder do the same (again, per the fact he's a liar, wanted to make sure they went down into perdition instead)

2. The logistics of all the Christians vanishing and the ramifications.

The Rapture as an event is typically handled badly by most end-times writers as a plot tool. Even simply used as a writing device, that alone should change how humanity deals with the world left behind for decades to centuries to come. Over a billion people no longer being there in a literal instant should cause the rest of humanity to have a collective terror it could happen again.

Unfortunately, most end-times writers are horrible at doing any world-building on what was left behind. Zombie apocalypse writers, even the more terrible among them, tend to put more thought into the chaos, the devastation, and the changed socio-political aspects of how the world would change than any end-times writer typically does.

Left Behind is the emperor of dealing with this terribly, with the novels barely dwelling on the subject for more than a week before they consider that old news. The Christ Clone series was somewhat better at handling that, but still tended to gloss over a lot of the chaos that would be caused.

What I'd really like to see is in-universe stuff like how they have to adjust for world hunger, distribution of vital resources, and how this massive gap in humanity's numbers affects politics and social interaction. Things none of these series have ever really delved into.

3. The reactions of the public

In most end times fiction of the vein discussed, to some degree all cover how the lack of all the Christians who truly believed causes chaos and has caused the worst elements of humanity to declare all their snow days at once came in and leave the world worse off for awhile until a false peace by the one world lying leader kicks in before the bottom drops out even harder later.

The thing is, hardly any of the media depicting this world have ever come close to showing how the public would deal with things long-term. Sure, the first couple of weeks get coverage, but this should have an impact of months or even years before humanity fills the void from billions plus of its number vanishing from vital industries and services the world over

Now, bear in mind there may be some series out there that address these questions appropriately; I may have missed some, feel free to solicit suggestions. That said, just some things that bother me about these works from a writing perspective, I wanted to get off my chest, feel free to send me comments and criticism.