Tag Archives: end times

Two-fer Tuesday: The Future by Deacon Blue

2 Replies

The Bible tells us a lot about the future. Not very clearly, with all that symbolism and prophetic visions and all. Not very precisely, of course, since there are no dates and timelines for the most part.

Of course, that doesn’t stop a ton of prophecy-infatuated folks from trying to figure out what’s going to happen. And when. And how. And figure that they can tie it directly to current events. What strikes me most about such hubris is the certain knowledge among such folks that current events are the ones that play into biblical prophecies.

Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies. Begin with the assumption that the recent past or the present or the reasonably predictable near future are the starting point and shoehorn the biblical stuff into it.

For myself, I am content to let history—and prophecy—play out in their own time.

Or, rather, God’s time.

And that’s the crux. I don’t need, nor do I want, to know the future. I am happy to let God carry that burden. The future will come to me, in whatever form or portion I am meant to participate, in its own time.

Devil in the Details

3 Replies

So, I wasn’t really going to go political today…and, in a sense, I’m still not going all-out political, but rather a 30/70 political-religious rant.

It’s all the fault of Chez over at Deus Ex Malcontent, by the way, and one of his his Tuesday posts with a quote by former Saturday Night Live cast member Victoria Jackson. And this is what Jackson said on her blog:

“I don’t want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti-Christ and I’m scared to death that un-educated people will ignorantly vote him into office.”

First, I didn’t want to be reminded of what a ditsy whack-job Jackson has become. I had first learned about her blog a few months ago when she was spouting off some religious lunacy related to the election season, and it just twists my gut. For one thing, we don’t need crazy folks making the rest of us Christians look bad by association. People already think those of us who believe that the Book of Revelation will come to pass someday are crazy, but then when folks like Jackson and Sarah Palin start spouting off about the end times certainly-definitely-uh huh yeah coming in their lifetimes, it just reflects poorly. People assume that belief in the Book of Revelation automatically means you’re expecting the Antichrist to pop out of the bushes and that you’re just hoping for the Rapture to come right now.

Frankly, I want the Rapture to come as slowly as possible because there are a lot of people out there who haven’t come to Christ, and the last thing I want is the world coming to a close any time soon. Aside from the fact I do want to see the end of important TV series like Battlestar Galactica and Lost, and the end of the world might fuck with that.

I just want to go on record with my fellow Christians who might be confused on some important points:

  • The Book of Revelation does not really give a description of the Antichrist.
  • In fact, the name/word antichrist doesn’t even appear in that book but in John’s other writings.
  • For the most part, antichrist is a generic term for people who are directly counter to Jesus.
  • The guy who screws things up in Revelation is referred to as The Beast. He’s the big kahuna of all antichrists, so I suppose you could give him a capital-A version of the antichrist name if you really want.

There is a nice overview of the who False Prophet/Beast thing here. It’s not the most complete I’ve seen, but at least it is honest enough to note that we just don’t know the specifics of who, what or when with the Antichrist/Beast. We just don’t. Apparently, it will be abundantly clear, though, when he arrives, at least to those who are born again.

Well, I’m born again, and it hardly seems like a slam-dunk that Barack Obama is going to be the Antichrist, even though in addition to Victoria Jackson, I’ve seen other bloggers claim this and viral e-mails that claim this. For one thing, Obama professes to be a Christian. That means he professes Jesus as the risen Lord. That already make things muddy and confusing. Because the Antichrist/Beast will preach against any kind of worship but worship of himself and a rejection of Jesus and other faiths.

Obama doesn’t reject Jesus.

I don’t care how much you might think the Antichrist will be the ultimate liar, that guy simply won’t be able to get those kinds of words out of his mouth. To lift up Jesus at all or profess that Christianity is a course to salvation would be entirely anathema to any agenda of a servant of Satan ushering in the end times.

End of story.

Please, if you are a religious wacko who insists on painting Barack Obama as the Antichrist, don’t spout your bullshit in my presence. Because I will slap you until some sense returns to your brain.

(There a nice piece dissecting the ridiculousnness of Obama-as-Antichrist here, by the way, too.)

Rushing God

2 Replies

We don’t like to wait on God. Not one little bit.

We bitch and moan that if God were truly loving (or if He really existed at all), He wouldn’t make us wait for things like prosperity, peace, justice, love or anything else.

I’ve always put it down to a “me first” attitude of hypocrisy. That is, what I want is so clearly more important than what you want (or God wants), so God should be meeting my needs and wants first. It’s all selfishness because, let’s face it, if everyone got what they wanted, you’d have people with competing and frankly incompatible desires both getting what they want. That could be impossible in some cases, and damaging in many others.

But it never worried me much, this attitude of trying to rush God. To browbeat and beg and push for Him to give us what we want faster.

At least not until I started getting a better sense of churches, like one that Sarah Palin either still does, or recently did, attend. No, I’m not out to bash the great moosehunting savior of humanity with the naughty librarian look (Ooops, guess I did bash a little there); it’s just that her associations with such folks have brought up a whole End Times Christian subculture to which I had previously pretty ignorant of.

These are people who seem to consider it their duty to push along events so that the End Times (the Rapture, Apocalypse, Armageddon, the Millennial Kingdom, and all that) will come sooner. They seem to think that whatever they do is OK as long as it makes the End Times come quicker.

This stuns me.

The sheer arrogance that they won’t wait on God’s timetable but instead see themselves as soldiers to move events along, is staggering.

Why would Christians want to have a hand in all the vileness that comes about with the End Times? Why would we want to have any culpability in that? Why would be want to have our hands in affairs that are supposed to be perpetuated by the enemies of God and Christ?

And furthermore, why the hell can’t we just wait?

God clearly has things well in hand. He doesn’t need our help. We have a duty already, and that is to spread the Gospel. Not to accelerate the timetable toward the end of the world. Frankly, to be working to speed up the path toward the End Times is actually counter to the Great Commission. We are supposed to reach as many people as we can with the good news of the Gospel so that more people can come to Jesus.

To make the End Times come faster means you would purposefully be working toward reducing the chances of people to be saved.

This is so against the Word of God that it’s one of the few things I can truly say I think is outright heresy. These people are heretics. In fact, they may even be committing the one unforgivable sin, which is sinning against the Holy Spirit. Because what they are doing is seeking damnation for millions (really, billions)  and they are telling God: “You aren’t moving fast enough.”

This is a kind of hubris I cannot even wrap my brain around.

God help these people. God help us, too, and preserve us from these people.

UPDATE 10/13/2008:

Kellybelle made note of this blog post in one of her own; wanted to provide a link to hers since it expands on my thoughts nicely, as well as giving a nice quick overview of Religulous, which I’ve mentioned a few times recently around here. Click here to get to Kellybelle’s post.

Two-fer Tuesday: Rapture by Deacon Blue

3 Replies

It seems like every critic of Sarah Palin on blog posts these days has to pop in a comment at some point about her or her supporters “waiting for the Rapture.” Geez, I hate to be left out. Except I’m not going to rail on Palin at the moment. Miz Pink tells me that’s her job with this week’s Two-fer Tuesday topic. So, I’ll just rail on the folks who obsess about the following things and all things related to them:

The Rapture, the End Times, the End of Days, Armageddon, the Book of Revelation, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

It’s not that I think we shouldn’t ever think of such things or cogitate on them a bit. Hell, let’s even get some entertainment from them. Enough movies and books have played off the end of the world and the Rapture, right? I liked the Left Behind series well enough for the first five books or so, until it became clear that not only was the plot getting kind of silly, but the authors were dragging things out to write as many books (and get as much money) as possible.

The problem is that there are Bible scholars—and pseudo-intellectual blowhard hacks a-plenty, too, to be honest—who make their living theorizing about the “end times.” Who try to figure out what, if anything, in modern day ties into prophecies about the second coming of Jesus and the road to Armageddon. And I ask you: Why the hell are you spending so much time on this?

Jesus himself said, “no one knows the time but my Father in Heaven.”

No one.

Jesus said “no one.”

That means him, too.

God the Father is the only one who knows what the day and time will be that He starts wrapping up things here on Earth and moving us on to whatever it is that is far more important for us to do for the rest of eternity in the spiritual realm and perhaps elsewhere in the physical universe.

Only God.

If Jesus wasn’t fretting over the time and was willing to wait…if Jesus doesn’t know the precise signs that will tell us the day is nigh…if Jesus said only the Father knows…

…how in hell do you expect, as a measly mortal, that you are going to figure it out?

Are you smarter than Jesus? More connected than Jesus? If you think so, you need to re-examine whether you’re born again, because if you think you’re better than your Messiah, Lord and Savior, then you haven’t submitted yourself to God.

There are too many millions upon millions of things going on amongst us billions on this planet—even if you focus just on the movers and shakers and political dealings—to tie anything to the Book of Revelation. I might get a bit worried if I hear about a seven-year peace agreement between the Arabs and the Jews, but even then, it wouldn’t prove anything. It would be about the clearest warning sign, but it still could just be a false start. If it ever happens in my lifetime or yours, which it probably won’t.

No matter how bad Christians may think the world is, this isn’t the worst it’s ever been and it isn’t as bad as it could still get. I suspect this planet has plenty of life left in it. Yes, the end days could come tomorrow. The Rapture could happen a few minutes from now. But is that likely?

No.

And frankly, I have bigger things to worry about, both in terms of my worldly/family obligations and Jesus’ Great Commission, than to fret about when the end times are coming.

So should you.

Two-fer Tuesday: Rapture by Miz Pink

Leave a reply

Sarah Palin worries me. She worries me on so many levels my head hurts to think about her. I know so many of my fellow left-wingers have really harped on how unprepared this woman is for the job, how ignorant she is of world affairs, how she brings things down to the lowest base crap and adds nothing of value.

What worries me is what I read in an article on Salon:

Munger also asked Palin if she truly believed in the End of Days, the doomsday scenario when the Messiah will return. “She looked in my eyes and said, ‘Yes, I think I will see Jesus come back to earth in my lifetime.'”

Deke is talking today about why the fascination with the Rapture and End of Days is so wrong but I’m gonna take a different path. I don’t think that someone who is convinced the end of the world is near should be in charge of our nuclear (or as Sarah would say, “Nuke-yoo-lar”) arsenal. And make no mistake she very well could be if McCain and her get elected. McCain is old. Acturial tables say he stands a good one in three chance of dying in office. His father and grandfather checked out early. He’s had cancer before. He has anger issues, and stress often leads to early death.

I’m not afraid that the end times are near. They might be they might not be but it doesn’t matter in my life. I’m already living under Jesus’ grace so whenever they come, I’m ready.

But there are scary people in the end times crowd who think it might be their duty to help usher along the end of days. They seem to think that if we can help push things along and get the kingdom of heaven here on earth sooner all will be well.

It’s scary first of all that they think God needs or wants their help. It’s also pretty arrogant to think that they can push up God’s schedule. It’s also scary to think that they think its their destiny to play a role and whatever they do consciously to help move civilization to the brink is okay because it was probably part of God’s plan for them to do that anyway.

Sarah Palin, thinking in the back of her mind that she will see Jesus return in her lifetime means that she stands a good chance, consciously or subconsciously, of doing stuff to piss off world leaders, start wars and do other stuff to rock the boat with the notion that she can help move along the timetable and get the Antichrist to show up so that Jesus can show up so we believers can all be raptured up to heaven (even though the Bible is pretty unclear on what exactly the rapture is. I don’t really want it rushed because maybe it doesn’t mean we believers get whisked away. Maybe we have to live through the hell one earth scenario with everyone else).

Sarah is convinced that an event people have been predicting will happen really soon for the past 2,000 years will really finally happen in her lifetime. She could be in a position to try to “help” that come to pass. More so than any of the other wackos who follow her line of thought.

I don’t want that. You see, Sarah’s been pregnant a few times, just like me. She should know about false labor. You feel like you’re going to give birth, you head to the hospital and they shake their heads and say go back home.

False labor is bad enough.

I don’t want a false apocalypse before the real scheduled one arrives.