Guest Post by Morbo
Just as a courtesy to readers, I thought I’d pass on the news that nuclear war will break out on Tuesday.
Personally, I’m not happy about it. Sept. 12 is primary election day in my adopted home of Maryland, and this is going to significantly delay the results.
A friend tipped me off to this news recently. A few years ago, he joined a conservative church in Florida. I’m not sure he believes this prophecy, which has been issued by a church in Texas, but he seemed to want me to know just in case.
If you want to check it out for yourself, the church’s website is www.yahweh.com. You will note that it’s the usual collection of Bible passages buttressed with boilerplate harangues about how many of us are going to be burnt to a crisp within the next year and a half — a whopping four-fifths of the planet’s population. I get the impression these folks don’t mind. As a librarian friend of mine remarked when I told him about this site, “Those right-wing Christians, they sure love their social justice revenge fantasies don’t they?”
As we all know, predictions like this are legion. The Seventh-day Adventists and the Jehovah’s Witnesses have both made end-of-the-world predictions that failed to come true. Neither put a damper on the growth of these faiths.
For an interesting perspective on this topic, I recommend the 1998 book “End-Times Visions: The Doomsday Obsession” by Richard Abanes. Abanes is an evangelical who is completely unimpressed with the constant attempts to put a date on the apocalypse, and his book summarizes 2,000 years of failed predictions. When I opened it up after talking to my friend in Florida, the first thing I saw was a copy of a flier blaring, “Rapture 1994! Are You Ready?” (Used copies of the book can be had on half.com for as little as 79 cents.)
While I’m no fan of nuclear war, I wouldn’t mind if the Rapture did occur next week, and all of the self-righteous followers of TV preachers, the gay bashers, the creationists, the anti-abortion fanatics and the Bush-loving American Taliban got sucked up into Heaven. Look on the bright side: It sure will help with the mid-term elections.