Ugh (again) Religious groups want apocalypse now
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-endtimes22jun22,0,7902314.story?coll=la-home-headlines
?End Times? Religious Groups Want Apocalypse Soon
By Louis Sahagun - Times Staff Writer
2006-06-22 -- WDC MEDIA NEWS
(LA Times) - For thousands of years, prophets have predicted the end of the world. Today, various religious groups, using the latest technology, are trying to hasten it.
Their endgame is to speed the promised arrival of a messiah.
With that goal in mind, mega-church pastors recently met in Inglewood to polish strategies for using global communications and aircraft to transport missionaries to fulfill the Great Commission: to make every person on Earth aware of Jesus? message. Doing so, they believe, will bring about the end, perhaps within two decades.
In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a far different vision. As mayor of Tehran in 2004, he spent millions on improvements to make the city more welcoming for the return of a Muslim messiah known as the Mahdi, according to a recent report by the American Foreign Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
To the majority of Shiites, the Mahdi was the last of the prophet Muhammad?s true heirs, his 12 righteous descendants chosen by God to lead the faithful.
Ahmadinejad hopes to welcome the Mahdi to Tehran within two years.
Conversely, some Jewish groups in Jerusalem hope to clear the path for their own messiah by rebuilding a temple on a site now occupied by one of Islam?s holiest shrines.
Artisans have re-created priestly robes of white linen, gem-studded breastplates, silver trumpets and solid-gold menorahs to be used in the Holy Temple ? along with two 6?-ton marble cornerstones for the building?s foundation.
Then there is Clyde Lott, a Mississippi revivalist preacher and cattle rancher. He is trying to raise a unique herd of red heifers to satisfy an obscure injunction in the Book of Numbers: the sacrifice of a blemish-free red heifer for purification rituals needed to pave the way for the messiah.
So far, only one of his cows has been verified by rabbis as worthy, meaning they failed to turn up even three white or black hairs on the animal?s body.
Linking these efforts is a belief that modern technologies and global communications have made it possible to induce completion of God?s plan within this generation.
Though there are myriad interpretations of how it will play out, the basic Christian apocalyptic countdown ? as described by the Book of Revelation in the New Testament ? is as follows:
Jews return to Israel after 2,000 years, the Holy Temple is rebuilt, billions of people perish during seven years of natural disasters and plagues, the antichrist arises and rules the world, the battle of Armageddon erupts in the vicinity of Israel, Jesus returns to defeat Satan?s armies and preside over Judgment Day.
Generations of Christians have hoped for the Second Coming of Jesus, said UCLA historian Eugen Weber, author of the 1999 book "Apocalypses: Prophecies, Cults and Millennial Beliefs Through the Ages."
"And it?s always been an ultimately bloody hope, a slaughterhouse hope," he added with a sigh. "What we have now in this global age is a vaster and bloodier-than-ever Wagnerian version. But, then, we are a very imaginative race."
Apocalyptic movements are nothing new; even Christopher Columbus hoped to assist in the Great Commission by evangelizing New World inhabitants.
Some religious scholars saw apocalyptic fever rise as the year 2000 approached, and they expected it to subside after the millennium arrived without a hitch.
It didn?t. According to various polls, an estimated 40% of Americans believe that a sequence of events presaging the end times is already underway. Among the believers are pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America, who converged at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood in February to finalize plans to start 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years.
"Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life," said James Davis, president of the Global Pastors Network?s "Billion Souls Initiative," one of an estimated 2,000 initiatives worldwide designed to boost the Christian population.
"Religion is like a badly written contract - most people don't read most (much less all) of it, believe what the other party says, and execute with the best of intentions and naivety."
- Me
- Login to post comments
THis is why the xtian right hopes for and wants global warming to happen. They think it is a precursor to the apocalypse.
The problem is this, how can we prepare for the future if we believe there is not future? But not only that, as this article describes, we (humans) want to speed up the process of the "apocalypse". We are so brainwashed that we actually want death...what a fucked up world.
Atheist Books, purchases on Amazon support the Rational Response Squad server which houses Celebrity Atheists.
These are some frightening people.
:shock:
I wish I could move somewhere and get away from them. I'd go to Canada tomorrow if I could afford it.
There was a theory about intelligent races destroying themselves and starting over in a cyclical way. I wonder whether what we are witnessing today isn't another of such cycles. Truly, in case it is, all predictions related to this so-called end of the cycle were wrong: it is neither war, nor hunger, disease, warming or overpopulation that is ending the cycle: it is religion.
Guys from all churches: The end of the world can come to you right this second in which I'm writing. I don't care. May you be eternally happy in Heaven, all of you. But just let me live here on this screwed-up Earth without interference, ok ? Can you do at least that much? Thank you (for nothing until now) !
As in the article about the "Left Behind" game I posted in the "News" section, I really wouldn't mind having a PK in my hands, going about in Times square and making Christians wish they had never ever heard of Jesus Christ, in case the idiotic minds of the church leaders actually start a man-made "apocalypse".
Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/
They actually want it to happen. Crazy.
OK, so, tickets on the first flight for Mars, anyone ... ?
(this post's motto: "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, Christians are from a parallel dimension"
Inquisition - "The flames are all long gone, but the pain lingers on..."
http://rigoromortis.blogspot.com/