Maybe worth noting that "Late Great Planet Earth," the Original Lunatic Text, also proclaimed in 1970 that among those things which absolutely positively infallibly had to come to pass because they were plainly and unmistakably foretold in the prophecies of the absolutely positively infallible Bible, were:
1) the utter economic collapse of the United States due to Hippies, Welfare, Riots, Hippies Rioting for Welfare, etc.;
2) the global rise of Russian Communism, which the now-ruined U.S. would be entirely helpless to combat (because if the US was going to be a factor in the End Times, the US would be in the Bible, wouldn't it?);
3) the molding of the European Union into a single superstate, becoming the only power capable of standing against Russian Communism.
So when these things plainly and unmistakably did not come to pass, Lindsey repented for his blasphemous presumption hahaha no, he went on writing more books about what would now really, seriously, for real this time infallibly come to pass because (etc. etc.), but the evangelical Christians rose up as one to say "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice" hahaha no, they gobbled up the Brand Spanking New and Improved revelation too,
That’s a really nice summary of the madness of pre-millennialism. Now, I am a Brit, and a ‘normal’ Christian, I.e. an Anglo-catholic, which means the very nearly Roman Catholic bits of the Anglican Church (which is itself a fragment split off the universal Catholic Church). And I would just like to reiterate that:
* none of this stuff has any basis in the Gospels or the core epistles; the only ‘Christian’ influence is the Apocalypse, which is scarcely mainstream, and is basically a fantasy, and not part of the Christian core. So, basically, none of this is actually Christian. In fact, much of it isn’t even biblical. A surprising amount seems to derive from the loony theology of the Great Disappointment.
* Catholic Christianity does not accept or recognise any of this nonsense, so we don’t actually have it as an article of faith. As Pope Benedict XVI said, the Christian religion is founded on the word of Christ in the gospels, and discussions of same in Acts and the epistles. None of this batshit is in any of them. It has no place in Christianity.
* Anyone who says this stuff is part of Christ’s word, or his commission to his followers, is lying.
"the site of the original Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which, saith the prophecies, must be rebuilt for Jesus to come back" The prophecies do not say anything at all about the Temple being rebuilt. Revelation simply takes for granted that there is a Temple in Jerusalem because it was written under Nero (*somewhat rewritten under Domitian but that's an issue for textual criticism) when the Temple hadn't been destroyed yet, and despite prophesying what was going to happen in the 21st century somehow the author didn't know what was going to happen very shortly.
It's like: in Escape from New York, Kurt Russell lands his glider on the one of the big flat roofs of the World Trade Center. This was not a prophecy that the WTC would someday be rebuilt exactly as it used to be; it is just a sign that the movie was made before 9/11 and so had no reason not to expect the WTC to still be there in the NYC of the future.
I was raised in this shit, had horrible nightmares, as a child, about being left behind or only raptured half way up before crashing back to earth. The non-southern Baptist Church I was raised in lived and breathed this stuff. Growing up I was taught to believe we were already one second away from the rapture. The damage that does to developing children is immense. Years of anxiety and panic. I'm out now, but to see these people trying so fucking hard to make the nightmares they forced on me as a child come true is...I can't even put words to it. You can't change their minds, you can't reason with them.
I grew up an atheist surrounded by such people. Many of the other children seemed to think it did not suffice to repeatedly tell me I was going to hell, it was their religious duty to speed me on the way.
As an Episcopalian, I feel compelled to apologize for John Nelson Darby. He started out Church of England, and then went off the deep end. He is the "father" of all the nonsense spouted by those embracing "the rapture." He was a terrible influence on the Church. Not that it didn't have problems before, but it was changing (at the speed of a glacier, but changing).
Those "rapture preppers" want all the Jews in Israel so Jesus can come back and slaughter them all in unspeakable ways and then provide popcorn for everyone to look down from heaven to watch all of us who weren't them, suffer the torments of hell so they can point and laugh.
And then came the Internet - so all of them could talk to each other and gin everyone up, so they felt more comfortable hating their neighbors (especially if they were Jews - or brown, because you know - Mark of Ham). I didn't look at all the charts - there's only so much my BP can stand, but I appreciate the thought you put into this piece. Unfortunately, the people who should read it, won't....but I will, and thank you.
I commented alluding to this elsewhere last night (but since I couldn’t sleep I really can’t remember where I said it! 🤪). I pretty much said all the Christian nationalists are going to go crazy to get this going because they will believe it will hasten the “Rapture” and they can leave the cinder from nuclear holocaust behind to all the sinners while they go be with Jesus (so no big deal for them if there is WWIII). Talk about a terrible mind set for people in charge of leading nations). It can be argued even that from the beginning the whole “creation” of Israel was to “help prophecy along” because God knows he obviously can’t do any of this himself…
Kinda explains why they love greenhouse gasses and pollution so much. More just deserts for sinners while they breath clean air in climate controlled rapture.
It is often suggested that it is why pollution in general is not a big deal on the right. The “deserving” (mostly white, wealthy people) don’t live where they are at risk from pollution (thinking of states like Texas and Louisiana now and their cancer clusters) and long-term damage isn’t a big deal because they will be in better places by then.
It totally ignores the stewardship preached in Genesis, but there seems to be a lot MAGA gets wrong about the Bible. 🙄
Thank you, thank you for addressing this. And kudos to Jennifer Welch. Everyone should be watching her videos from right here in the ‘Butthole of the Bible Belt’, Oklahoma City.
Maybe I woke up in a mood, but I laughed till I had tears in my eyes looking at the ‘Rapture Charts’.
You can’t imagine how much pain and suffering these conspiracy theories caused me and millions of other young people in the early 70’s. Campus Crusade for Christ, Hal Lindsey, frightening end times movies forced on youth groups.
In fact, for me, it was the catalyst breaking free of it all. Once you really try to understand it all, it just falls apart and you see it for what it is - scare tactics to make you afraid to Not be a Christian.
It also plays into white supremacy since you’re constantly told how special you are because we are especially chosen to be saved from all the horrors.
Anyway, basing foreign policy on Bronze Age Magical Thinking has to stop. It’s destroying the world.
AHHHHHH yes! Hal Lindsey and his *LGPE* series of informative revelations! I remember dormitory based STONERs getting all up in that in the early 1970s. Not to get down with Jesus and Crom, mind you. No, we just needed a break from dishing about Tolkein and found Lindsey a source of great laughter.
My favorite Lindsey revelation concerned how predicted earthquakes in "DIVERSE places" included the new, scientifically verified, evidence of undersea earthquakes which mystified and terrified the true believers. The undersea earthquakes were especially important because they happened in "DIVERS" places! Hal was speaking of the DIVERS who harvest sponges. He just dropped the 'E' from "Diverse" and- presto!- prophecy fulfilled! Many undersea earthquakes in many different and diverse places in the little mermaid's domains means JESUS! Many stoners died laughing about all this. For stoners love nothing more than to laugh at stupid. There are many biblical references to laughing stoners if you care to look them up.
I grew up around this...as a kid I just assumed it was true but never really cared. Now I think it's absolute bonkers stuff and wonder why when the actual only task given to us in scripture boils down to love God and love others more than ourselves (& the great commission) people spend so much destructive energy on this nonsense. Stupid and stupidest....and also with you. Thanks for your attention to this matter Evan.
I toured the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which is the remains of the old Temple and now the western side of Al Asqua mosque. There is a tunnel with many small rooms full of various sects of Orthodox Jews praying fervently in the direction of Al Asqua where they suspect their holiest of holies may reside. The tour guide - a normal Israeli more secular than religious, pointed out the spot where many decades ago the orthodox tried to tunnel into Al Asqua, hoping to occupy it and oblige the Israeli government to come to their rescue, thus capturing the site, which would have fulfilled this unrelated evangelical Christian prophecy. The Palestinians in the mosque heard noise, figured out what they were up to, and poured cement into their tunnel from above until they gave up. So I guess devout Muslims saved the world from rapture on that occasion.
“God is going to speak directly to Trump, I guess through some sort of bush or something”
OK, so while I like the idea of a bush on one of Trump’s golf courses bursting into flame and the voice of God shouting at him while he’s trying to toe-wedge his way out of the rough, given Trump’s history with women, that is not obviously the kind of bush God would use to get his attention.
To be fair, the way evangelicals feel about Jews is how they feel about anyone who is not evangelical: People who may join them and be saved or people who reject their teachings whom God will reject in turn. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” really means “Be nice to the sinner until they refuse to change, then the Hell with them.”
Those charts and timelines remind me of the various supplemental materials for Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Dune and probably dozens of other fictional universes.
I had to double check but that is the same Jennifer Welch who had a reality show on Bravo not too long ago. Is this the first time in history that a bravolebrity is on the right side of history after leaving the bravo reality tv universe?
Maybe worth noting that "Late Great Planet Earth," the Original Lunatic Text, also proclaimed in 1970 that among those things which absolutely positively infallibly had to come to pass because they were plainly and unmistakably foretold in the prophecies of the absolutely positively infallible Bible, were:
1) the utter economic collapse of the United States due to Hippies, Welfare, Riots, Hippies Rioting for Welfare, etc.;
2) the global rise of Russian Communism, which the now-ruined U.S. would be entirely helpless to combat (because if the US was going to be a factor in the End Times, the US would be in the Bible, wouldn't it?);
3) the molding of the European Union into a single superstate, becoming the only power capable of standing against Russian Communism.
So when these things plainly and unmistakably did not come to pass, Lindsey repented for his blasphemous presumption hahaha no, he went on writing more books about what would now really, seriously, for real this time infallibly come to pass because (etc. etc.), but the evangelical Christians rose up as one to say "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice" hahaha no, they gobbled up the Brand Spanking New and Improved revelation too,
In the end it's simply a stupid narrative to fill empty stupid lives.
That’s a really nice summary of the madness of pre-millennialism. Now, I am a Brit, and a ‘normal’ Christian, I.e. an Anglo-catholic, which means the very nearly Roman Catholic bits of the Anglican Church (which is itself a fragment split off the universal Catholic Church). And I would just like to reiterate that:
* none of this stuff has any basis in the Gospels or the core epistles; the only ‘Christian’ influence is the Apocalypse, which is scarcely mainstream, and is basically a fantasy, and not part of the Christian core. So, basically, none of this is actually Christian. In fact, much of it isn’t even biblical. A surprising amount seems to derive from the loony theology of the Great Disappointment.
* Catholic Christianity does not accept or recognise any of this nonsense, so we don’t actually have it as an article of faith. As Pope Benedict XVI said, the Christian religion is founded on the word of Christ in the gospels, and discussions of same in Acts and the epistles. None of this batshit is in any of them. It has no place in Christianity.
* Anyone who says this stuff is part of Christ’s word, or his commission to his followers, is lying.
"the site of the original Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, which, saith the prophecies, must be rebuilt for Jesus to come back" The prophecies do not say anything at all about the Temple being rebuilt. Revelation simply takes for granted that there is a Temple in Jerusalem because it was written under Nero (*somewhat rewritten under Domitian but that's an issue for textual criticism) when the Temple hadn't been destroyed yet, and despite prophesying what was going to happen in the 21st century somehow the author didn't know what was going to happen very shortly.
It's like: in Escape from New York, Kurt Russell lands his glider on the one of the big flat roofs of the World Trade Center. This was not a prophecy that the WTC would someday be rebuilt exactly as it used to be; it is just a sign that the movie was made before 9/11 and so had no reason not to expect the WTC to still be there in the NYC of the future.
Yes, you are correct, I elided that fact just like they do!
"Well if the prophecies say Jesus is gonna go to a yard sale that day, IPSO FACTO there must be a yard sale!"
I was raised in this shit, had horrible nightmares, as a child, about being left behind or only raptured half way up before crashing back to earth. The non-southern Baptist Church I was raised in lived and breathed this stuff. Growing up I was taught to believe we were already one second away from the rapture. The damage that does to developing children is immense. Years of anxiety and panic. I'm out now, but to see these people trying so fucking hard to make the nightmares they forced on me as a child come true is...I can't even put words to it. You can't change their minds, you can't reason with them.
I grew up an atheist surrounded by such people. Many of the other children seemed to think it did not suffice to repeatedly tell me I was going to hell, it was their religious duty to speed me on the way.
I'm glad you are out!
So it's child abuse. That scans
Bingo!
As an Episcopalian, I feel compelled to apologize for John Nelson Darby. He started out Church of England, and then went off the deep end. He is the "father" of all the nonsense spouted by those embracing "the rapture." He was a terrible influence on the Church. Not that it didn't have problems before, but it was changing (at the speed of a glacier, but changing).
Those "rapture preppers" want all the Jews in Israel so Jesus can come back and slaughter them all in unspeakable ways and then provide popcorn for everyone to look down from heaven to watch all of us who weren't them, suffer the torments of hell so they can point and laugh.
And then came the Internet - so all of them could talk to each other and gin everyone up, so they felt more comfortable hating their neighbors (especially if they were Jews - or brown, because you know - Mark of Ham). I didn't look at all the charts - there's only so much my BP can stand, but I appreciate the thought you put into this piece. Unfortunately, the people who should read it, won't....but I will, and thank you.
That sure is an awful amount of death and destruction to wish for simply for the chance to say "see, I told you so"
Their level of hate transcends the most insane killers of history.
I commented alluding to this elsewhere last night (but since I couldn’t sleep I really can’t remember where I said it! 🤪). I pretty much said all the Christian nationalists are going to go crazy to get this going because they will believe it will hasten the “Rapture” and they can leave the cinder from nuclear holocaust behind to all the sinners while they go be with Jesus (so no big deal for them if there is WWIII). Talk about a terrible mind set for people in charge of leading nations). It can be argued even that from the beginning the whole “creation” of Israel was to “help prophecy along” because God knows he obviously can’t do any of this himself…
Kinda explains why they love greenhouse gasses and pollution so much. More just deserts for sinners while they breath clean air in climate controlled rapture.
It is often suggested that it is why pollution in general is not a big deal on the right. The “deserving” (mostly white, wealthy people) don’t live where they are at risk from pollution (thinking of states like Texas and Louisiana now and their cancer clusters) and long-term damage isn’t a big deal because they will be in better places by then.
It totally ignores the stewardship preached in Genesis, but there seems to be a lot MAGA gets wrong about the Bible. 🙄
Ok I tried. I really tried to understand this a long time ago. I just tried again.
My brain goes blank. My eyes glaze over.
It just makes no sense.
Trying to understand all of the magical thinking turned me away from religion.
Not just these end times scenarios, but religion itself.
Thank you, thank you for addressing this. And kudos to Jennifer Welch. Everyone should be watching her videos from right here in the ‘Butthole of the Bible Belt’, Oklahoma City.
Maybe I woke up in a mood, but I laughed till I had tears in my eyes looking at the ‘Rapture Charts’.
You can’t imagine how much pain and suffering these conspiracy theories caused me and millions of other young people in the early 70’s. Campus Crusade for Christ, Hal Lindsey, frightening end times movies forced on youth groups.
In fact, for me, it was the catalyst breaking free of it all. Once you really try to understand it all, it just falls apart and you see it for what it is - scare tactics to make you afraid to Not be a Christian.
It also plays into white supremacy since you’re constantly told how special you are because we are especially chosen to be saved from all the horrors.
Anyway, basing foreign policy on Bronze Age Magical Thinking has to stop. It’s destroying the world.
Thanks for your valuable work on this Evan.
AHHHHHH yes! Hal Lindsey and his *LGPE* series of informative revelations! I remember dormitory based STONERs getting all up in that in the early 1970s. Not to get down with Jesus and Crom, mind you. No, we just needed a break from dishing about Tolkein and found Lindsey a source of great laughter.
My favorite Lindsey revelation concerned how predicted earthquakes in "DIVERSE places" included the new, scientifically verified, evidence of undersea earthquakes which mystified and terrified the true believers. The undersea earthquakes were especially important because they happened in "DIVERS" places! Hal was speaking of the DIVERS who harvest sponges. He just dropped the 'E' from "Diverse" and- presto!- prophecy fulfilled! Many undersea earthquakes in many different and diverse places in the little mermaid's domains means JESUS! Many stoners died laughing about all this. For stoners love nothing more than to laugh at stupid. There are many biblical references to laughing stoners if you care to look them up.
Ah so that is the meaning of Revelations 15
“7 Then one of the four living creatures gave to the seven angels seven golden bowls filled with the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever.”
8 “And the temple was filled with smoke from the glory of God and from his power”
“And He answered and said unto them, “I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stone(ers) would immediately cry out.” Luke 19:40
I grew up around this...as a kid I just assumed it was true but never really cared. Now I think it's absolute bonkers stuff and wonder why when the actual only task given to us in scripture boils down to love God and love others more than ourselves (& the great commission) people spend so much destructive energy on this nonsense. Stupid and stupidest....and also with you. Thanks for your attention to this matter Evan.
I toured the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, which is the remains of the old Temple and now the western side of Al Asqua mosque. There is a tunnel with many small rooms full of various sects of Orthodox Jews praying fervently in the direction of Al Asqua where they suspect their holiest of holies may reside. The tour guide - a normal Israeli more secular than religious, pointed out the spot where many decades ago the orthodox tried to tunnel into Al Asqua, hoping to occupy it and oblige the Israeli government to come to their rescue, thus capturing the site, which would have fulfilled this unrelated evangelical Christian prophecy. The Palestinians in the mosque heard noise, figured out what they were up to, and poured cement into their tunnel from above until they gave up. So I guess devout Muslims saved the world from rapture on that occasion.
“God is going to speak directly to Trump, I guess through some sort of bush or something”
OK, so while I like the idea of a bush on one of Trump’s golf courses bursting into flame and the voice of God shouting at him while he’s trying to toe-wedge his way out of the rough, given Trump’s history with women, that is not obviously the kind of bush God would use to get his attention.
To be fair, the way evangelicals feel about Jews is how they feel about anyone who is not evangelical: People who may join them and be saved or people who reject their teachings whom God will reject in turn. “Love the sinner, hate the sin” really means “Be nice to the sinner until they refuse to change, then the Hell with them.”
Those charts and timelines remind me of the various supplemental materials for Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Dune and probably dozens of other fictional universes.
I had to double check but that is the same Jennifer Welch who had a reality show on Bravo not too long ago. Is this the first time in history that a bravolebrity is on the right side of history after leaving the bravo reality tv universe?