A Thief in the Night is a 1973 American evangelical Christian horror film written by Jim Grant, and directed and produced by Donald W. Thompson. The film stars Patty Dunning, with Thom Rachford, Colleen Niday and Mike Niday in supporting roles. The first installment in the Thief in the Night series about the Rapture and the Tribulation, the plot is set during the near future, focusing on a young woman who, after being left behind, struggles to decide what to do in the face of the Tribulation.

Three sequels were produced: A Distant Thunder (1978), Image of the Beast (1981), and The Prodigal Planet (1983). An additional three follow-ups were planned but ultimately unproduced.

The film became one of the decade's most widely distributed films and has been highly influential in the evangelical film industry and American evangelical youth culture.

Plot

In medias res, Patty Myers awakens to a radio broadcast announcing the disappearance of millions around the world. The radio announcer suggests that this might be the rapture of the Church spoken of in the Bible. Patty, a member of a liberal church, finds that her husband, a born-again Christian, has also disappeared. The United Nations sets up an emergency government system called the United Nations Imperium of Total Emergency (UNITE) and declares that anyone who does not receive the mark of the beast identifying them with UNITE will be arrested.

Several flashbacks occur to times in Patty's life before the Rapture. The story begins with Patty and her two friends, who all have different destinies. Her friend Jenny considers Jesus Christ her Savior; her other friend Diane is more worldly-minded. Patty considers herself a Christian because she occasionally reads her Bible and goes to church regularly; however, her pastor is shown to be an unbeliever. She refuses to believe the warnings of her friends and family that she will go through the Great Tribulation if she does not put her faith in Christ. Meanwhile, her husband has been attending another church and has accepted Jesus. The next morning, Patty awakens to find that her husband and millions of others have suddenly disappeared.

Patty is conflicted: she refuses to trust Christ, yet she also refuses to take the Mark. She desperately tries to avoid UNITE and the Mark but is eventually captured. She escapes, but after a chase she is cornered by UNITE on a bridge and falls from the bridge to her death.

Patty awakens and realizes it has all been a dream. She is relieved, but her relief is short-lived when the radio announces that millions of people have in fact disappeared. Horrified, Patty frantically searches for her husband only to find he is missing too. Patty realizes that the Rapture has actually occurred and she has been left behind.

Cast

  • Patty Dunning as Patty Myers
  • Mike Niday as Jim Wright
  • Colleen Niday as Jenny
  • Maryann Rachford as Diane Bradford
  • Thom Rachford as Jerry Bradford
  • Duane Coller as Duane
  • Russell Doughten as Rev. Matthew Turner
  • Clarence Balmer as Pastor Balmer
  • Gareld L Jackson as UNITE Leader
  • Herb Brown as UNITE Officer
  • Herb Brown, Jr as UNITE Officer
  • Betty D. Jackson as Wedding Guest

Themes

The film's title is taken from 1 Thessalonians 5:2, in which Paul warns his readers that "the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night."

A Thief in the Night presents a pre-tribulational dispensational futurist interpretation of Christian eschatology and the rapture popular among U.S. evangelicals, but is generally rejected by Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Lutherans, and Reformed Christians. According to Dean Anderson of Christianity Today, "the film brings to life the dispensational view of Matthew 24:36-44."

In 1999, journalist Adam Davidson placed the film in the context of a shift in evangelical views on non-believers since the early 1970s, contrasting it with the then-popular Left Behind series. He argues that evangelicals went from "[not yet knowing] who they were in the American public sphere" in the 1960s and early 1970s to a "major shift in evangelical thought which allowed for political and social activism" by the late 1990s, more negative and divisive. Evangelicals, Davidson states, had previously been more separatist, with little interest in attempting to create large-scale religious, moral, and political change. He uses the A Thief in the Night as an example of this former approach, with its compassionate view towards unbelievers: "This is a portrait of regular people who don't know what to do and happen to make the wrong choice". In contrast, Left Behind, he contends, has a contemptuous and triumphant view of non-Christians and their suffering in the end times that he sees as symptomatic of a larger change in evangelicalism.