There is some argument over whether this hilarious crazeeness is a hoax or for real, but the latest I've heard is that it was started by an atheist to bilk nutty fundies out of their money, which he then donates to charity.
I think if I were a nutty fundy, I would be teaching Evil Kitty how to operate a can opener on her own, lack of opposable thumbs notwithstanding, rather than trust her well-being to a bunch of godless heathens, who'll be busy being consumed by plagues, etc, anyway.
(If I have that right. Catholics don't believe in the Rapture, so they didn't teach me any of the specifics of this back when I used to go to church. Someone correct me if I'm wrong about the plague thing.)
xoxo
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IIRC the whole Rapture thing was dreamed up by some weird protestant minister of some weird, almost culty- protestant sect in the late 19th C. and went nowhere until it was, for some reason, revived by someone/s or other in the 60s-70s when it caught on with the big evangelically revivalist types.
It's no surprise you don't know the details, Catholicism has been around far too long to know the truth of God's law. It's, like, only 1900 years later that someone can figure out important issues like The Rapture.
Which I think means since you don't know it, you don't get to take part. Only 144,000 Evangelical Protestants are going to get lifted bodily to heaven (I think, in one version) and everyone else on earth suffers the torments of armageddon, hell, etc. I'm not sure if it includes plagues--but aren't there plagues in Revelation? If so, if you don't suffer eternal torture from demons, you probably get plagues.
You really gotta keep up with modern theology. It could save your eternal life.
Oh, and according to a documentary I saw on this, it's all happening in a year or two, so bone up quick.
So who was this guy who thought it up? The L Ron Hubbard of your Jesus types?
Ah, doesn't matter. I'ma accept Jesus as my personal savior right now. (But only the baby Jesus who cries when Mr Barma doesn't use his arnica.) You heard it here first.
(I'm sure Evil Kitty will be able to fend for herself. She's probably part of Satan's vanguard. When Armegeddon happens, she'll probably grow her own opposable thumbs.)
I only know about this from a Q&A after a screening of a documentary about Evangelical Millenialists who've become big supporters of Israel cause they think that Jews coming back to the Holy Land will bring about Armageddon and the End Times quicker.
These people seriously believe this, too... there was one scene where this woman was sobbing at her kitchen table cause her high school age daughters were never going to get to go to college and get married and have kids cause the Rapture was probably going to come before they graduated from high school. And the weird thing was the filmmakers deliberately only put in professionals and people with graduate degrees... and they totally believed this stuff.
I got a some of this wrong from my memory of the post screening talk, but some judicious googling reveals the original Rap-turist was an Irish dude called John Nelson Darby, a leader of the Plymouth Brethren (sounds pretty culty already, doesn't it?) who first came up with the idea in the 1830s and toured around the world pushing it, especially in the US.'
Later some dude called William Eugene Blackstone published a bestseller Jesus is Coming in the 1880's which pushed the idea outside the Brethren, and it sort of hung around fermenting within the heavily influential (on Evangelicals) Scofield Reference Bible (first published in 1909 and supposedly the first use of the word Rapture, though other references claim otherwise). Apparently the Scofield Reference Bible is the source of lots of Evangelical crazeeness, not just The Rapture.
Finally in 1957 and 1958 two rapturists published theological books which got the rapture once again back on the evangelical map, but the Rapture really hit the bigtime in the 1970s when it went viral in popular culture with Hal Lindsey's The Late, Great Planet Earth. So most of the widespread Rapture crazeeness (or revelation, depending on your POV) is actually pretty recent. More recent than I'd realized two hours ago.
Unfortunately the various Wikipedia entries are pretty deadly: poorly written, dull, and they don't match up with each other on the details including, sadly, being pretty damn vague on the rather important details of what's actually going to happen when The Rapture comes. I'd suggest watching the Mimi Rogers movie, which as I recall isn't bad.
Oh, and next scheduled Rapture begins on May 21, 2011, so you better get moving on your prep-- spiritual and animal, both.
You're like my own personal reference librarian! hahaha
What year is it the Mayans say we're gonna bite the big one? 2012? Maybe I ought to befriend some of those nice illegal Mesoamerican day laborers on the bus and get the scoop on that. I'm sure they know something. However, for that plan to work, my Spanish is going to have to extend past cooing, "no duele, papi, no duele!" Huh.
Actually, if you want to get the real scoop, you probably ought to learn Mayan, not Spanish. Given the origins of many of the Central Americans around Boston, you probably ought to find a few who know the real deal from ancestral knowledge. (What really happens on Dec. 21, 2012 is the Mayan long count calendar starts over again. It's simply cyclical, like the several other shorter Mayan calendars, they couldn't care less that it resets).
Until I saw that talk, I just assumed The Rapture was longstanding Xtian doctrine, not recent culty craziness, cause it's so permeated popular culture. Of course, so much of popular culture is written by Jews like me who don't know Catholic dogma from pentacostal snakehandling, they just go with whatever they learned on the streetcorner, especially if it's dramatic.
Shoulda guessed the Rapture was recent craziness, though, cause it does sound so much like not terribly innovative horror fantasy/fiction, not long pondered deep-thought theology. Though I bet it's such a part of our culture now that even many Catholics believe in it, not knowing they're not supposed to. If I was you I'd get some more info, just in case it's going to become useful. Though being Catholic I think you're immediately screwed, while I believe we Jews get a pass, at least at first.
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