HOW TO PROFIT FROM THE COMING RAPTURE: GETTING AHEAD WHEN YOU'RE LEFT BEHIND

Are the end times near? Is the Rapture really just around the corner? Could Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson possibly be right? About 1 billion people among us believe, yes, absolutely.

And that means one thing: investment opportunities!

For those who are not as expertly versed in the Book of Revelation, Ellis Weiner and Barbara Davilman, authors of the bestselling Yiddish with Dick and Jane, helpfully offer both illumination and advice: What exactly is the Rapture, anyway? How is it different from the Tribulation? Who are the Antichrist, the Four Horsemen, and the 144,000 male virgins, and what do they want? And, most important, how can I make money during the 7 years of societal breakdown before Armaggedon?

Taking the familiar form of a how-to investment guide, How to Profit From the Coming Rapture instructs those readers who will certainly be left behind (Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, less ardent Protestants, and many more) on how to exploit the inevitable demise of the world in order to make a tidy profit. Sure, the rivers and seas will run with blood, locusts will swarm, mountains will move all over the place, and famine will strike. But for the five billion of us left behind, the post-Rapture world will be a time of even more unique investment opportunities.

Ellis Weiner is the only person, dead or alive, who has published in the National Lampoon (where he was an editor), Spy (where he wrote a column), and The New Yorker (where he still appears). He is co-author, with Barbara Davilman, of Yiddish With Dick and Jane, Yiddish With George and Laura, How to Raise a Jewish Dog, The Big Jewish Book for Jews, and other titles. He is founder and editor-in-chief of the Sherman Oaks Review of Books, a "channel" of the Los Angeles Review of Books, which debuted in 2016. Barbara Davilman writes for television. They live in Los Angeles.