bacht

Yes, I had some fear of this during the Bush years, that Christian fundamentalists would sanction or initiate the biblical Armageddon, with Israel being the battleground.

funinspace

Well a few people have thrown a few verses out there. I thought I would mention a book I read while I still was a conservative Christian...
This book was written in 1983, before the pop Left Behind series was written: The Footsteps of the Messiah: A Study of the Sequence of Prophetic Events (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Arnold G. Fruchtenbaum

It comes from a pretty conservative Christian background, and I think it did a pretty good job being consistent in terms of separating out end time prophecy from other general topics within the Bible. This definitely comes from the POV of the Bible being God-breathed. So if you want a better understanding of the thinking of such believers I think it would be a decent book to read, if you are going to put the time into it. Revelations, or rapture theology, is definitely something that is going to be hard to get your mind around from reading a few web pages, or within a few BB threads...

Clivedurdle

Go ye and worship the Job(s).

Buy ye the apple iphone, join the cloud and ye shall be saved!

Clivedurdle

Can anyone find out if a preacher somewhere has used the computer term cloud as a sign of the second coming? If not I hereby formally copyright it!

And there is a direct connection here to madness.

Over the century, the reported hallucinatory fantasies have changed with technology - electricity, x- rays, nuclear, ufo's all appeared in the hallucinations of the mad at appropriate times.

It should be possible to track similar beliefs - my mum in the sixties definitely linked the six of the common market to end times. I had a wondrous Brazillian book in the sixties arguing cogently that the Pope was the anti - Christ following those early sixties catholic conferences.

And actually I see xianity as being a result of such end times chinese whispers caused by the fall of Jerusalem.

I am enjoying Simplexity by Jeffrey Kluger, he only touches on religion but fundamentalism can be understood as the frozen state "stickiness" he describes in contrast to an unstructured gas like state and the complex states that are most interesting and where life happens.

The Sante Fe Institute studying religion.....:devil1:

Clivedurdle

And don't forget the pre Herschell cosmology here - complete with stars as leaves, the air as one of the elements, the emphasis on being caught up - no queues at Heathrow for xians!

rhutchin

That does not prevent people making bad decisions.

Seems easily understood to me, too.

That would seem to mean that we should accept what the Bible says, no more-no less.

Given the description of those events, it seems difficult to conclude otherwise.

Seems consistent with that which we are told about Jesus.

The Dagda

Let's put it this way if they were Islamic then we'd be nodding sagely and saying it's the religion. I don't think we can pin this one on the majority religion which is Catholicism. I think they use and abuse their religion, which is apocalyptic, the same way Muslim terror groups do.

You'd think they didn't have problems enough without having their populace withdrawing from education as well. Let's not forget they have the highest incidence of AIDS in Africa per capita IIRC.

rhutchin

Might be better to say, why worry about global warming since there is nothing man can do can alter the situation and one must trust God to keep things under control. Granted, some people believe that man's activities somehow contribute to global warming or can counteract same. The world is always in jeopardy to someone.

Nonetheless, there is ample reason to act against pollution because man causes it and can get rid of it and it has many negative impacts that reduce quality of life of many people.

One should take care of those things over which one has control. From what I can see, many decisions are influenced by economic realities and not by one's belief in a particular interpretation of the end times verses.

Still, pernicious??

Deus Ex

Why should anyone accept the Bible as the Word of God? Paul was a man just like me (well, almost. I don't have visions). Why should anybody worship the words of Paul?

bacht

I thought the biblical mandate for humanity was to act as stewards or caretakers of this world, rather than as despoilers or destroyers