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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/18/2007 2:29:12 PM |
In regards to the rapture.............hmmmmm. Think about this if you will.....You are not made holy by keeping man-made rules to obtain righteousness with God. That's legalism, and God hates legalism. Why? Because if you could keep a set of rules and thereby become 'holy', your works are the source of your salvation. You are made righteous by the atonement of the cross. Forget the man-made religious rules! Beware of false prophets........we are living in the end times and I for one am excited about it.
Ordinarily I would either just ignore this, but it was so singularly ignorant it sat up on its hind legs and cried out to be whacked on the nose with a rolled up newspaper...
"Bad assertion...bad....now do your business out on the lawn!"
Man made rules?
What rules are those? Legalism? If you could keep a set of rules and thereby become "holy"... the essential irony of this is stunning.
Who gave the rules to man? Were they man-made?
Anyone? Buehler? Any Christians in the audience with more than a passing Sunday School education want to answer before the buzzer? Too late.
The kids from Hebrew School beat you to it ages ago.
GOD gave man those rules (collective duh goes up from the crowd).
Now in the young lady's confused and self-righteous response, we see the typical pr0grammed words I recall from Sunday School past some three and a half decades ago...Ephesians 2:8-9, "by grace are ye saved...yadayada" but not works which is the Christian challenge...covenant theology and the responsa to the Torah. It is Pauline theology.
It is different. But make no mistake, it would be a singular ignorance, and a convenient one, to reduce the Law from it's origins as the word of God to the word of man. Notice her use of language to do so? Is it deliberate ignorance or calculated on the part of her religious teachers to devalue the predecessor faith and further aggrandize covenant theology?
To bring it back to topic, I would not be surprised in the least if this were the case...
The makers of these books released a video game based on them recently where in fact you get points for killing or converting the heathen.
But if you don't feel like spending your money on their garbage, here's a link to "Bible Blaster" so you can play along with Rod and Todd Flanders. Remember if you wing them, you only turn them into Unitarians! 
www.thesimpsons.com go to character bios, f-m, rod flanders, click on Bible Blaster, enjoy | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/18/2007 10:35:48 PM | feral and madfid
indeed I feel the need to be poetic in defense of your reasonings and the reasonings of some of my sisters and brothers in Christ as well.
"do not desire the day of wrath"
"when did we see thee sick or in prison or hungry and not help you?"
"neither the day or the hour"
"who then is the faithful and wise servant?"
indeed people chose to look at Paul and as Peter says twist and twist until a word like legalism falls out and the republican christian conservative is closer to God since he's not a liberal theologian like those dern dems...
but who's to say
Mad and Feral?
You are like prophets both in your own right! But "Knowledge puffeth up but charity builds up" is one thing Paul was right about...
no
I do not bash the christian for believing in such hype when the knowledgable athiest and philo-religio-criticio's like yourself can only push them further into a hole of self imposed persecution.
Left Behind preaches a positive message for the believer and self fullfilling non-sense for the prophets of nothing. It seems to me we should hold ourselves accountable for what we know... sort of a personal rapture...
"he that is not against me is for me" | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/19/2007 1:05:09 AM |
"do not desire the day of wrath" Sorry, found plenty of references to God's wrath and the day of it, even storing up wrath against folks (So much for turning the other cheek..), but nothing about not desiring it. Cite? The rest were easy enough to find, if not necessarily applicable...
I do not bash the christian for believing in such hype when the knowledgable athiest and philo-religio-criticio's like yourself can only push them further into a hole of self imposed persecution. Meanwhile (back at the ranch), as is the point of the thread, it's easy to point out the phantasy and wish-fulfillment heralded by the Left Behind books.
It's pathological, to say the least, the lust for "glory in the hereafter", a psychological effect of the dismal social conditions during both the Roman occupation and the days of the early Church. You got a bunch of poor, frightened, truly oppressed people, tell 'em there's "pie in the sky", so long as they keep the faith now, everybody gets together to congratulate each other on agreeing with one another (meanwhile, sharing what they've got with everyone in the "family"), and of course, everything starts looking a bit brighter. Must've been religion what done that!
Fast forward to present-day USofA, and you've got a similar setup. Shut-ins, homeless, single moms trying to make it on a waitress' wages, etc., give 'em hope, give 'em a little to get by, see what kind of passionate supporters you've got. Televangelists figured this out a while ago. Politicians are just recently picking up on it. Meantime, you got a bunch of scared people (scared of the bogey-men so thoughtfully provided), they send you money, you use it to tell 'em there's hope, and voila! Everything starts to look a little brighter. But, wait! There's more!
Not only is there that need for hope, that spiritual hunger to believe everything's gonna turn out right, the sly ones realise there's another side to the coin (almost typed "con", lol. Maybe I shoulda left it...) of "cosmic justice". That'd be the darker side, the one folks wouldn't admit to normally (some would, if only to show how "human" they really are, granted, or just to be able to say I'm talkin' out my @$$). If things are gonna get better for us, we gotta know that the folks we don't like or agree with are gonna get their comeuppance, too, right?
Hence, you've got the pornographic nature of the Left Behind series. It's biblically-based, so it's gotta be "godly", right? And it feeds that little "imp of the perverse", the tiny little sadistic voice deep in the darkness of the human heart that rejoices in the suffering of those we wish would suffer. And, who better to suffer than those very scapegoats bringing down our nation right now? No, I haven't read too deeply into the books, but it wouldn't surprise me if there's plenty of "secular humanists" getting what they "deserve".
Hell, the term's just vague enough to apply to anyone who disagrees with one's (of course, biblically-based) position on a given aspect of society. Therein lies the danger, though. Just like Fiddler said, now there's a video shoot-'em-up game based on all this, yeah? What was it video games are supposed to do to folks? Desensitise them? Alienate and dehumanise the "opposition" (never mind that the contemporary portrayals of "secularists" and "leftists" on the part of the "Religious Right" parody them as something less than human anyway...)? Add that to the martial rhetoric of Evangelism...
So, now you've got a lot of folks taking this nice little fictional series as, at the very least, accurate in the sense that it's based on "truth", they've got an idea the "face" of the "enemy" (i.e., anyone who disagrees...), and they're gaining political power, bolstered by the fact that Zionist/dominionist political machinations have stirred up that little cauldron of hate we like to call the "Holy Land".
Yeah, I've got plenty to say about the Left Behind books, but they're not the totality of it. They're a piece in a larger sociological puzzle that, once put together, shows a "sweet" picture of suffering, intolerance, violence, death and self-fulfilling prophecy, only guided along and exacerbated by the folks reading the books.
Here's the kicker, though. Point out the demon. Let someone know you see the flicker, the gleam in their eyes when they contemplate the horrors to be visited on all us "heathens" for not following the "city on a hill" doctrine of American destiny. Nobody wants to consciously believe that they're actively and materially contributing to the pain and suffering of other human beings (hence, dehumanise them). That wouldn't be "Christian", would it?
So, yeah, they slide into their comfortable little coccoons of self-righteousness, claiming "persecution". But, make no mistake, it's of their own free will. Those of us with eyes to see point out the facts, the reality. There are those who aren't afraid to speak truth to those bolstering the powers that be, so yeah, maybe we do "push" them further in. Maybe we show them reality, and it's a happy, comforting excuse for them to retreat further into their magical little world of apocalyptic phantasy.
I have no problems with it if mine is the face they see on whatever burning corpse they want to visualise in their sick, cataclysmic wet dreams. That's not about to shut me up. And, neither is telling me that pointing out the truth just makes the fearful more afraid. They wanna be sheep, their call. They wanna long for the days that they're not here to see me and mine suffer, while at the same time getting their sadistic jollies letting LaHaye and Jenkins paint them a graphic picture of it, fine. Doesn't mean I gotta roll over and let 'em bring it about, dig? | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/19/2007 8:19:17 AM | Feral
thanks for the response, here's the scriptures that I had in mind when I said
"Do not desire the day of wrath"
I have not run away from being your shepherd;
you know I have not desired the day of despair.
What passes my lips is open before you.
- Jeremiah 17:16
Woe unto you that desire the day of the LORD! to what end is it for you? the day of the LORD is darkness, and not light.
-Amos 5:18 | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/19/2007 9:15:02 AM | Feral
Here's the kicker, though. Point out the demon. Let someone know you see the flicker, the gleam in their eyes when they contemplate the horrors to be visited on all us "heathens" for not following the "city on a hill" doctrine of American destiny. Nobody wants to consciously believe that they're actively and materially contributing to the pain and suffering of other human beings (hence, dehumanise them). That wouldn't be "Christian", would it?
Taking scripture and americanizing it is not something I'm in love with but it occurs to me that we cannot deny the USA's place in history. We've fought hard, the US and Canada for the freedoms we enjoy [wow you're from springfield mo, ever heard of alton il?]
Anywho... something you've heard me point out before is that we would not be enjoying these conversations if it were not for our country. But i do not deify my USA even though i love and do not take for granted the lives lost so i could, if i wanted to... jump in my car and we could have this conversation face to face and perhaps even write a point counter point book on the subject without getting killed by the government.
So what is the re-write for the "Left Behind" series? I hope to make some of my own self fulfilling prophecies... i listen closely to the little old lady at the soup kitchen and though she like the left behind series she tells me that we should mostly be concerned with the good works God has put right in front of our faces to do. Helping people to
"Repent for the Kingdom of Heaven is here!"
And so it is with a free bowl of soup... prayer and direction if you want it enough ask for it... and the love that comes with those who through gratitude serve the Lord by serving the least of men and women amoung us.
But Feral
you do have a responsibility to what you know... all of us do, no? "
"Satan will come as an angel of light so that if it were possible he would decieve the very elect of God..."
again from memory... but I say to you that the scriptural knowledge you have surpasses probably everyone in the church i now serve in and attend. why is it that you find only evil in it when thus addresses how to deal with evil and is not evil in itself. perhaps the way men use the words are evil, yes? so you would throw the baby out of the manger and let the goats feed? Or do you despise the sheep who are doing the good they see needs doing? | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/19/2007 10:19:49 AM |
You are made righteous by the atonement of the cross. Forget the man-made religious rules!
Job 35: 7 If you are righteous, what do you give to him,
or what does he receive from your hand?
8 Your wickedness affects only a man like yourself,
and your righteousness only the sons of men.
Righteousness does not help God but your fellow man. What you "give" is a "work". Does this fall under a "man made rule" and therefore may be ignored?
Beware of false prophets........we are living in the end times and I for one am excited about it.
Indeed beware .... you are excited about mans destruction of himself by polluted water, food, air, disease, pestilence, famine, violence and in general our disregard .....? The "end times" is judgment for ALL, all shall be judged .... and I for one am not "excited about it". Beware of false prophets. | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/20/2007 7:04:53 AM | Parts of post by: allamericangirl1964 on 7/18/2007 12 01 AM
"The spiritual importance of Jerusalem to the Jews, Christians, and Muslims has made it the object of wars to gain possession of the city like no other city in the world."
Actually I don't think Christians have much more than a historical interest in Jerusalem. Their goal is a kingdom "not of this world".
"History reveals humanity's triumphs and failures, giving us a compass for the future."
Indeed it does. And man's nature remaining as it is, the compass continues to point unerringly to sooner or later disaster. The difference this time is the destruction will be on a scale and the effects so residual as to make earth unfit for human habitation for the next 25,000 years. The notion that God Himself will intervene to prevent it seems very likely.
"You are not made holy by keeping man-made rules to obtain righteousness with God. Maybe not. On the other hand I hope heaven does not consist of a lot of cruel, hardened, vulgar criminals who simply asked for forgiveness in their final hour. Surely, for them a great measure of penitential reform such as doing earthly life over again is in order.
" Forget the man-made religious rules!"
Amen to that. | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/23/2007 12:17:34 AM |
Taking scripture and americanizing it is not something I'm in love with but it occurs to me that we cannot deny the USA's place in history. Seems to me to be more like b*stardising Scripture, as far as the modern American trend is concerned, but I don't see what relevance North American history has to this, honestly. The focus of the cosmology or mythology, whatever one wants to call it, is Middle Eastern. Always has been. Seems to me the folks that read these books see them as yet another way to justify injecting the "values" and characters (i.e., themselves, albeit vicariously) of the "most influential nation on Earth" into the story.
Anywho... something you've heard me point out before is that we would not be enjoying these conversations if it were not for our country. All fine and dandy, and if you wanna come visit, I'll put you up. But, the issue that I have with the whole deal is, if I'm at all close to the mark (and I pray I'm not), the looming spectre of the end of all things, the apocalyptic dream of divine justice, and the insistence on interpreting current world events to bolster the flagging authority of a religion that preaches absolute subservience to those who interpret that authority are all leading America closer and closer to a divinely hegemonic police state.
May not seem overt, may not be moving too fast, but the threat is there, yes? How many of the "guaranteed" rights in the Bill of Rights have been subverted already? And, in one President's tenure. I shudder to think what'll happen if we get another Evangelically-elected "leader" (and yes, I am aware that the quotes could have gone around any of those three words).
Sure, it's a paranoid delusion, it's a conspiracy theory, it's just the fearful ramblings of someone who's not in the "in" crowd. Whatever. Trouble is, I see the connexion between the passionate, mindless consumption of the Left Behind series, I see the correlation with voting patterns, and I see all too clearly the blatant psychological effect the confluence of these factors has on the community in this area. Projection? Possibly, but I don't think so.
i listen closely to the little old lady at the soup kitchen and though she like the left behind series she tells me that we should mostly be concerned with the good works God has put right in front of our faces to do. Cool beans, you and your little old lady get the gist. Trouble is, there's a lot of folks out there that think buying the Left Behind books is their contribution. Hey, they go to church and Sunday school, they pay their dues (tithe), they vote Republican, but supporting such fine, upstanding men as LaHaye and Jenkins has got to be that much more good they're doing, right? Those guys apparently know what's going to happen (more or less), and they are spreading the word, right?
Trouble is, they're spreading the message of the stick, while you and that nice old lady are focusing on the carrot. Props to you guys for keeping the humanitarian side open, but there's no open hand in these books, just a closed fist. It's a spook story, and the only hope it inspires is the prurient sadism that those who are stuck here are screwed. Yay for that, I guess. It doesn't keep me up at night, and I'm sure it gives plenty of judgmental and publicly Christian but secretly vindictive folks all the right dreams to warm their nights.
To me, it's more the exacerbation of existing trends. Why help the poor, when Jesus is gonna come back and make 'em all happy? Why look out for the environment, when it's just gonna get wasted in all the wars? Why not take over America (and as much of the world as possible) for "dah Loahd!", since that's just more bennies to move the whole process along? Essentially, who the #@!! cares if anyone believes otherwise, if we've got the truth? And, now we've got a more coherent connexion of that truth to the very geopolitical mess we're fostering. Splendid! The day of Jesus is at hand! Huzzah!
and the love that comes with those who through gratitude serve the Lord by serving the least of men and women amoung us. You want a re-write, this is it. Get folks actually caring for one another, paying each other attention. Not because God or Jesus commands it, not because it's promoted in the Bible, not because somebody decides they ought to use their illegitimate political claims to power to demand that taxes be funneled toward it, but because it's the right thing to do. Teach folks that we're all "God's children", that we all need to share the love we have with all our brothers and sisters on Earth. Give God the finger! Tell Him, we don't need your Rapture, your apocalypse. We got it right!
Sad that it doesn't work that way. And, to my mind, it's the sick, coldhearted, selfish superiority that the Left Behind books contribute to fostering that makes it so.
But Feral ...you do have a responsibility to what you know... all of us do, no? Precisely my point. I know I love my family, and I do right by them. All of them. Whenever I can, and that's the point, yeah? In my belief, there's also the matter of "teaching a man to fish", so I foster as much as I can people's awareness of factors affecting their environment.
why is it that you find only evil in it when thus addresses how to deal with evil and is not evil in itself. As regards this, I've got no trouble with Scripture as Scripture. The instant it's put into effect, though, the very second someone brings it up, you can just about bet they're angling for something. One day, I'm sure, I'll meet someone who knows it enough not to bring it up. 'Til then, though, I'm just as aware of human nature and self-interest.
Think about it. "Happy" and "the Goose" are getting fat and high on the money and power handed them for being so popular. Idolatry, plain and simple. The habit is ingrained in the mortal, and these guys found a gimmick to tap it. Good for them, says I, 'cept it's seriously putting a crimp in my style that folks are just about taking the series as Gospel, if only to the extent that they don't understand what the word means and focus almost exclusively on that particular portion of the New Testament.
Sure, the sheep need a shepherd, but guess what, folks? People aren't sheep. They're apes, at best, but apes can be taught, and if we can teach 'em to think for themselves, they may or may not line the Spanky Twins' pockets, but at least they won't be paying to be used the way they are.
The "end times" is judgment for ALL, all shall be judged...
...all shall be judged... Guess there's hope after all, eh?
Upshot of this post, for those what didn't feel like reading the whole thing, is we gotta stick together as human beings. None of this saying others aren't "as human" or "as good" or "as Christian" as anybody else. None of the willingness to see folks suffer and die, if it helps us get by. Let's crap on this prophecy, folks. Don't let 'em dazzle us with vengeful wish-fulfillment and phantasy. Let the scales fall from our eyes, and let us look to one another for comfort and the opportunity to share that comfort with others.
The future depends on YOU! | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/23/2007 9:25:40 PM | Wow Feral...
I won't do a point by point as you do. I agree with the spirit of what you are saying and I think that what is hardest to understand is that judgement if for those who judge wrongly, hell is for those who live hellishly and heaven is for those who forgive the first two. However, the Gospels really do live up to what you are saying save giving God the finger... we should give God our whole body and let God teach us what to do with that finger. (It's really good for gripping... being the longest finger...)
Anywho Feral,
what makes you think that your passion isn't shared by many more christians than you know? hmmmmmm.... Ask God how many others see the truth as you see it, as He has shown it to you. The truth about apathy... the truth about being biased, supremist, condemning, apocalypse hungry extremists.... or well, Sadducees and Pharisees?
With all my heart I believe it's about the ressurection, Feral. We will all be ressurected. That's the real message... that's all. Yes we need to live this life right because this is the only life we've got. Yes we need to focus on today and not some Kingdom to Come. But the truth is the Kingdom of Heaven that Jesus preached is right here right now... in our hearts if we chose to acknowledge it.
That's what I believe Feral. That's why I think that movies like Left Behind are irrisponsible... because they draw focus away from what matters in the here and now. I'd rather watch Star Trek! Like the one episode "A piece of the Action" about that world where some settlers high tailed it off the planet leaving the survivors with a book about Chicago Gangsters and the whole planet patterned itself after the Capone years... Prophecy for the city of Angeles I'll be moving to soon to persue my writing... I grew up in South Central Los Angeles. Now I'm going back for my last bit of research. Hopefully I'll find a way to be a better peice of the action... | |
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| Christian Evangelicals: Left Behind Series and Israel
Posted: 7/24/2007 12:27:19 AM |
what makes you think that your passion isn't shared by many more christians than you know? Who says I'm not aware of the good ones? I got no beef with 'em, and we're talking about the LB series and the kind of myopic, self-centred, elitist judgmentalism it fosters, right? Hence, my comments.
Ask God how many others see the truth as you see it... No need. First, I know for a fact no one else "sees as I see", but beyond that, there's plenty of folks not caught up in the self-serving selective legalism and phantasy-seeking disseminated by the shock troops and propaganda departments of the Evangelical dominionist movement.
That's why I think that movies like Left Behind are irrisponsible... I'd almost agree with you that the books and movies are irresponsible, except LaHaye and Jenkins realise and promote the mindset the media help perpetuate. That's not irresponsible, it's wilful manipulation. Can anyone say "evil"? | |
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