Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Armageddon anyone?
A group of American evangelical pastors is launching the Billion Souls initiative, in an attempt to reach every heathen on Earth. Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney warns that those who fail to heed Christ's message are "toast". Meanwhile Iran's fundy Islamic President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, recently stated that within two years, the Mahdi, the last of Mohammed's heirs, will return to Tehran, ushering in the ultimate grand finale Jihad on the non-Muslim world.
Now religious fanatics have been predicting the end of the world, basically since the dawn of human society. These doomsayers have universally had poorer foretelling accuracy than Miss Cleo, but they have never let that stop them from continuing to forecast the end of the human race. It's always been easy to be dismissive of such folks since they've never been right before. The times, as they say, however are a changing. The Almighty is no longer required to begin the end of all, and a true believer like Ahmadinejad could microwave large portions of humanity before one can send out their "You've got raptured" e-mail. Even more frighteningly 40 percent of folks in a recent poll done here in the supposedly enlightened US of A, believe that the End is near. Many of them in fact, are currently running our government. It can be seen in policy decisions made across the board, why save the whales the world is ending; O-zone? who cares if one has been raptured; Energy crisis? There are no cars in heaven.
Why try for peace in Israel if it's all part of God's plan? Why not welcome a global religious war between Christianity and Islam if it will get one raptured? These are the questions we face today in an ever more dangerous world that has come so far in 2000 years, and yet in some ways, has not.
Now religious fanatics have been predicting the end of the world, basically since the dawn of human society. These doomsayers have universally had poorer foretelling accuracy than Miss Cleo, but they have never let that stop them from continuing to forecast the end of the human race. It's always been easy to be dismissive of such folks since they've never been right before. The times, as they say, however are a changing. The Almighty is no longer required to begin the end of all, and a true believer like Ahmadinejad could microwave large portions of humanity before one can send out their "You've got raptured" e-mail. Even more frighteningly 40 percent of folks in a recent poll done here in the supposedly enlightened US of A, believe that the End is near. Many of them in fact, are currently running our government. It can be seen in policy decisions made across the board, why save the whales the world is ending; O-zone? who cares if one has been raptured; Energy crisis? There are no cars in heaven.
Why try for peace in Israel if it's all part of God's plan? Why not welcome a global religious war between Christianity and Islam if it will get one raptured? These are the questions we face today in an ever more dangerous world that has come so far in 2000 years, and yet in some ways, has not.
