Dominion

[Graham Kennedy]

For me, I'm deeply fed up with the constant stream of "after the apocalypse" series that have come out in the last few years. Boring, boring, boring.

So you're not excited about the next big Nicholas Cage movie, "Left Behind," based on the very popular Left Behind series of books? There's an original "Left Behind" movie produced by and staring TV's Kirk Cameron as well. Left Behind is based on The Rapture, possibly centering on those who haven't been Raptured. I could have sworn Cage did a similar movie like this except The Rapture was done by aliens.

I used to lurk on the "rapture ready" message board, purely for an occasional head shaking look at just how crazy people could be. I find the whole rapture concept just incredibly silly on every level. I've not read the Left Behind books, but I've read a fair bit about them. They're really quite remarkable books in many ways. Remarkably stupid, remarkably badly written.

My favourite moment? Somebody points out to the antichrist that everything that's happening follows biblical prophecy, and according to the bible... their side loses. The Antichrist, who has read the bible and knows the prophecies, smugly declares that he has a surprise in story for Jesus when he comes back. That surprise turns out to be... the exact army the bible describes him bringing, and which it says Jesus will destroy utterly. Which he does.

[McAvoy]

Well keep in mind the author is also batshit nuts too.

[Nutso]

I was raised in a Rapture household. My father just went to church so it was my mom and her side of the family. The good people would go into heaven while the wicked would burn and suffer the anti-Christ and he will burn, and rape, and torture, and mutilate for 1,000 years until Jesus will come on a white horse and destroy the anti-Christ and banish Satan to hell forever in chains. After hearing off this for the first time, 7 year old Nutso said, "No, I don't want you to burn mommy." Didn't realize what I had implied at the time.

Anyway after being surrounded by this stuff, even watching programs featuring Pat Robertson and other Rapturists wherein they predicted Russia will invade Israel, then China will invade Israel, then a combination of China and Russia will invade Israel (predictions changed every now and then when regimes collapsed), I couldn't understand why these "good" people would want the Rapture. It was like they were going to be so happy to watch everyone else burning on Earth. That was kind of sickening. I thought it would be nicer to avoid the Rapture and save my fellow human beings from 1,000 years of torture and burning.

Things got even more muddy when these same people were rabidly anti-abortion but they want to bring on The Rapture.

[Graham Kennedy]

One of the interesting things about the rapture crowd is how clearly they want the doomsday end of the world scenario to play out. They may object to that characterisation sometimes, claiming it's something they regret but it's just god's will... but if you watch them talking about it for a while, they are pretty clearly salivating over the idea of all the suffering and death the rest of us will go through once they've flown off in the rapture. One of the most frequent refrains on the rapture ready message board is along the lines of "Oh, look at this horrid thing in the news. I'm so sick of this world, I just can't WAIT to go home to heaven!"

[McAvoy]

It is also common with the crowd that the Rapture will happen very soon. The funny thing is that everyone thought it would be within their lifetime since the beginning of Christianity.

[Graham Kennedy]

Oh yes. They struggle with that since the bible says nobody will know when it happens (though Jesus also says it will happen within the lifetime of the people listening to him, but that's retconned), so they usually won't engage in "date setting". But they love to go on about how it could be any day now. They've been saying that for a long, long time.

[Mikey]

One of the most frequent refrains on the rapture ready message board is along the lines of "Oh, look at this horrid thing in the news. I'm so sick of this world, I just can't WAIT to go home to heaven!"

I can think of myriad ways to speed them on their voyage. In all seriousness, though, isn't Pride supposed to be one of the Christian big-seven sins? I believe so, yet isn't it also the absolutely height of hubris for one of these misanthropes to say that he knows that he'll be one of the saved when the rapture comes?

[Nutso]

One of the most frequent refrains on the rapture ready message board is along the lines of "Oh, look at this horrid thing in the news. I'm so sick of this world, I just can't WAIT to go home to heaven!"

I can think of myriad ways to speed them on their voyage. In all seriousness, though, isn't Pride supposed to be one of the Christian big-seven sins? I believe so, yet isn't it also the absolutely height of hubris for one of these misanthropes to say that he knows that he'll be one of the saved when the rapture comes?

When we go to church as a Christian whose endgame is the Rapture, the sermons presented to us are about "the enemy," sometimes we were prayed for, but usually it's about the End times. The enemy wasn't Jews or anyone else or an Earthly religion. I now know that the enemy was the Anti-Christ. Whatever the hell we were, we weren't as lunatic as the Southern Baptists where they proclaim to hate so many of our modern lifestyles, but still our goal was to be taken to heaven. In the 1980's the Rapture would happen where the "good" would be lifted up into heaven. In the 1990's that was turned into we would vanish into the Kingdom of Heaven. I don't know what the hell happens now.

Interestingly Pat Robertson or someone as old and doddering as Pat Robertson in the 90's believed that Jews will be automatically taken to heaven as China invades Israel. His rationale back then was that only China can present a 200 million man army and they can invade from the East, across the fields of Megiddo, and then the battle for the Holy Lands will start Armageddon when all the other nations get involved. I haven't been a part of that in a very long time. The one constant is that this present time is always the worst time in history, whether it's earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, or wars. We're always on the precipice and tomorrow the war begins.

[Graham Kennedy]

The 200 million man army is one of those little logistical oddities of the bible. Pretty obviously it's meant to be hyperbole. But of course literalist christians can't buy that, so...

Well, the Russians are usually the bad guys who invade Israel. The total Russian armed forces number 766,000, with 2,035,000 reserves. They'd need to boost the size of their armed forces by seventy-fold to field a 200 million man invasion force. More, actually, since nobody can send their entire military into one battle.

It's an absurdity. Hell, it wouldn't even be a sensible thing to do in this day and age when massive numbers don't count anything like they used to.

[Teaos]

I doubt 200 million people would fit in Israel.

[McAvoy]

200 million soldiers is a lot of logistical support.

[Mikey]

I am far from being an atheist; I am a believer in the theistic tenets of the oldest monotheism on the planet; and yet I am still and continually dumbfounded by people's inability to read the Bible as figurative or hyperbolic.

[McAvoy]

I am far from being an atheist; I am a believer in the theistic tenets of the oldest monotheism on the planet; and yet I am still and continually dumbfounded by people's inability to read the Bible as figurative or hyperbolic.

I am nearly 100% Atheistic and it always gets me that one passage is literal and another can be metaphorical. Unfortunately I can't think of it off of the top of my head but there is a verse that says you must take the word of God literal.

[Mikey]

There's also a verse that requires you to burn a ram, a bull, and a goat monthly on the altar in Jerusalem; and a verse that requires you to leave the corners of your fields unharvested for the poor and unlanded. However, I don't see even the most ridiculously fundamentalist people following those, either.

[McAvoy]

Another thing that amazes me is how many who have actually read the Bible and can actually remember what it says versus the ones who only knows the cherry picked verses.