Apocalypse NOW!

[lapsedmodernist]

What do we want? Apocalypse! When do we want it? NOW!

Pastors hope to spread Gospel, hasten End Time

INGLEWOOD, Calif. — Pastors of some of the largest evangelical churches in America met Tuesday in Inglewood to polish strategies for starting 5 million new churches worldwide in 10 years, an effort they say they hope will hasten the End Time.

The Rapture and Second Coming of Jesus have always been the ultimate goal of evangelicalism. But when that would occur was any Christian's guess.

The Global Pastors Network's "Billion Souls Initiative" aims to shorten the path to Judgment Day by partnering church resources with the latest communications systems to spread the Gospel of Jesus.

In an interview at Faith Central Bible Church in Inglewood, James Davis, president of the campaign, said, "Jesus Christ commissioned his disciples to go to the ends of the Earth and tell everyone how they could achieve eternal life. As we advance around the world, we'll be shortening the time needed to fulfill that great commission.

"Then, the Bible says, the end will come."

Added Davis: "The current generation may actually live long enough to see this."

I don't think I can express how disturbing I find the Left-Behind cruel, perverse iteration of fear-of-death. It goes beyond the standard Christian fantasy of eternal life, it mediates the fear of the moment-of-death through the belief that they will be taken into heaven ALIVE. The entire paradigm is a hysterical response to the fear of mortality. It's not that the believers are resurrected (as per St.Paul's comparatively existential sermons), it's that True Believers Don't Have To Die! And Everyone Else Does! Up Yours, Unbelievers! This line of thought strips Christianity of ANY metaphystical depth and, I guess, the leap of faith that is inherent in the knowledge of one's own mortality and the belief in resurrection. Fuck resurrection! These evangelists believe that they are in the express line at the airport, they reverse-en passant themselves into heaven. I really think they want to bring the apocalypse about to minimize their chances of dying before they can be raptured. It's a version of creepy that transcends into a culture-bound syndrome.

Comments

[dcart.livejournal.com]

I had hoped we'd see this particular pathology die off some after the millenium. So far, it's not looking good.

If you ever want to see a particulary creepy version of this dynamic at work, check your TV listings for Jack Van Impe Presents.

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

The Van Impe couple is crazy funny!

I blame Canada.

[flintultrasparc.livejournal.com]

Just thought I'd share that I have really enjoyed reading Slacktivist's take on the Left Behind series that I found on your del.icio.ussss-ness.

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, he/she's got great textual analysis that is chapter-by-chapter. It is worth reading LB to read that analysis, kind of like it was worth it to watch 7th Heaven to read the television without pity recaps...of course, they stopped recapping it and I am still watching...hmmmm.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

As an ex-fundie Christian, it always surprises me when people don't realize that lots of people out there really want to hasten the End Times. It's sort of like Christians believing that Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein are both puppets of Satan. My reaction is always: "Duh! Of course they think that!"

Isn't it a little presumptuous to think that you can alter God's timetable for the end of the world by evangelizing, though? It's almost as if they think that God is this unconscious cosmic machine and all you have to do is push the right buttons to get the desired result.

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

Haha; you said the same thing I wanted to, but got it out quicker.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

Also, I thought there was some caveat in there that if your entire goal was to go to heaven and capitalize on whatever exists in the Great Beyond, that you kind of missed the point and accidentally disqualified yourself from accessing all that.

I could be wrong.

[contrasoma.livejournal.com]

Interesting. I'd always ascribed the desire to live in the endtimes as nothing much more than a need to feel as though one's own particular moral/religious posturing/activism carried a weight and import that allows it to supercede all other spiritual narratives of the past or present that present contradictory views.

...And considering how I'm blazing through Buffy and Angel DVDs right now, I just get the image of this guy as a cowled demon with a skin condition shambling about a sewer system with a ceremonial dagger and some bad pig Latin incantations.

[redcord.livejournal.com]

I'd usually ascribed it to the same need, a la the Chabad Lubavitcher's constant mantra of We Want Moshiach Now.

[mysteryjesse.livejournal.com]

Did you ever hear the radio story on "this american life" about the farmers trying to breed red heifers in Israel for the same reason? There are also theories I've heard about the right-wing jesus-vote supproting Israel because the bible evidently also says the Jews must control Jerusalem for the second coming to happen.

yours,
jesse

[sui-generis.livejournal.com]

dispensationalists.


What amazes me is that these people don't see the similarity between their views and the Muslim extremists who want to blow up innocent people to hasten their own ascension to their eternal reward. The Wahabbists want to kill a crowd of people to get 72 virgins, and the Fundies want to bring about the End of the World to get their heaven, too!

"Fuck everyone else" is apparently the higher moral ground both religions share.

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about it (to me) is the bizarre and insulting idea that they can MAKE God do something he doesn't want to do by using up resources and the like. The idea that there's a God that would reward such people for that kind of insolence just seems so... so... blasphemous.

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

Hastening the coming of the apocalypse... Finally their insistence on voting for Bush makes sense!

[orpheusinhades.livejournal.com]

I actually read an article with some polls suggesting that many religious Americans thought that Bush's wastage of resources was a good thing because it would bring around the End Of Days.

[schrodingersgnu.livejournal.com]

Jeeeeebus... I can't even trump the man in hyperbole...

[lapsedmodernist.livejournal.com]

oh shush, you just need to meet a nice girl.

Evangelicals, yes. Mormon fundamentalist, no.

[congogirl.livejournal.com]

I have been reading Under the Banner of Heaven, and I have to say, at least there isn't as much attention being paid to all of the 'prophets' receiving 'revelations.' The whole phenomenon of fool after Mormon fundie fool who insists that he is the One, Strong and Mighty, sent to earth to fulfill God's will is unfathomable, and from this particular account of history, all these men think that their own seed is the purest and should be propagated, that they speak to God and receive these messages, and that many 'revelations' pertain to the 'removal' of 'obstacles' in the way of achieving God's will on earth. Thus, a bunch of murders and the story that inspired Jon Krakauer to write the book.

[tigermilkdrunk.livejournal.com]

This dovetails rather interestingly with Pat Robertson's recent condemnation of Sartre, whom he accuses of having relieved Europeans of a "faith in the future". It seems (in the Christian right) you can either have an imminent future (Yay apocaplypse!) or none at all (Boo philosophy!), but that what is impossible is the linear progression of time, however understood. And coupled with your notion of an inherent denial of death (which I think is dead on), there's something very alarming here at a basic how-the-individual-human-life-is-perceived level - it seems as if this mindset would lead to a complete denial of individual responsibility, as well as an enormous devaluing of life-as-process-towards-death. Humph.

[nearly-there.livejournal.com]

From the article: "I believe when that time comes, the power of peace will be greater than the power of war, the power of love will be greater than the power of hate, and fullness will be greater than poverty and hunger."

I agree with everything that you said about creepy fear-of-death... but that's not what scares me about these guys. Do these people not see the fundamental conflict between 'peace' and 'destroying Palestine so that Israel might control Jerusalem, as was laid down prophetically'? Or how 'condemning gay people' (or Muslims, or whomever) is nothing like 'the power of love'?

Evangelical pastors (and politicians) redefine their terms - huge cultural ideas like 'justice' and 'truth' and 'love' - to mean whatever suits the agendas of the church. And so many followers never even bother to evaluate what their mission actually *means* because the pastor told them to, because god said so, so it must be right? Right? When faith becomes an act of wholly ceding critical thinking to What Some Believer Said, it makes me cringe. It also makes me think that if they do manage to convert a billion people, then the world deserves to end.

(Um, sorry for the rant.)

[atallvlad.livejournal.com]

Yeahp, there's the power of love (whatever that is) and then there is the power of CRAZY love. Jesus LOVES you so much he's gonna sacrifice himself to save ya- and then we are gonna eat pieces of him in church! More and more lately christianity strikes me as a village with it's dirty little secret traditions to keep it going... like in Shirley Jackson's story "The Lottery"

Sigh maybe I can't wait for it to end :P

Where's my nice girl? lol

[bookwormpride.livejournal.com]

yep, in total agreement with your analysis of the phenomenon in the context of Christianity more generally