HAVE A NICE DOOMSDAY!
June 17th 2009 06:51
Why Millions of Americans are Looking Forward to the End of the World.
By Nicholas Guyatt.
ISBN : 978 0 09 191087 7
About $10 to $15 at Bargain Bookshops (QBD in Brisbane)
THE END OF THE WORLD IS NIGH!
Journeying into the heartlands of America*s Bible Belt, Nicholas Guyatt goes in search of the truth behind a startling development : that 50 million Americans have come to believe the apocalypse will take place in their lifetimes.
Guyatt starts his trail in Texas where one of today*s most influential Evangelist, Pastor John Hagee has sold more than 600,000 copies of his book, Jerusalem Countdown, in which (as a staunch Jewish sympathiser), Hagee claims *inside* information from Israel, which proves the fact that, *The coming nuclear showdown with Iran, America and Israel is a certainty!*
Hagee is also the president of John Hagee Ministries, which sells sermons, videos, Israel tours and even high speed internet access that filters out the nasty stuff. He made $1.25 million in 2001 and claims that he earns every penny by working a 80 hour week. The list of his activities and commercial empire not ending there, as he controls his own TV and media outlets, NBA sports teams and all manner of stuff.
From this simple beginning, Guyatt winds his path away from Texas to the White house through a string of powerful Evangelical doomsday preachers including Tim LaHaye, who all share a remarkably consistent view of how the Bible*s prophetic promises from Revelation and beyond, will shape tomorrow*s headlines. Not surprisingly, it isn*t long before Guyatt runs into charismatic speakers like Tom DeLay, the former speaker in the House of Representatives; and Gary Bauer, an adviser to Ronald Reagan, and smack dab into G. Bush himself. Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu all appear too amongst others, many notable movers and shakers of Israeli politics, which seems (to Guyatt) slightly misplaced in San Antonio, Texas?
But, this is not a conspiracy theory book, far from it : just a book of facts. You will take away from it what you want and leave behind the rest, as Guyatt slowly unveils the means by which the second coming of Christ is about to happen, through the careful scrutiny of the scriptures, and as seem through the eyes of Hagee and millions of his followers. You will come to understand intimately this deep obsession that lies in the heart of the world*s only superpower and why.
Guyatt explores the texts in the Bible that today*s evangelists use to make their claims. He opens to plain view and examination the evangelical conclusions drawn by men like Pastor Hagee, and loooks long and hard at the reasons why they are so sure of what they are saying. Concluding that ALL AGREE that the beginning of the apocalypse, will be marked by the Rapture, when all the true believers will be *raptured* by God. The time when all the faithful Christians will instantly vanish from the Earth, creating political and social chaos.
Guyatt writes :
Although this is where things start to sound far fetched, the idea of a massive disappearance of true believers is based on a verse in a letter from St Paul to the Thessalonians. (You can hear Tim LaHaye reading the verse in question from Thessalonians, and admire a Flash animation of the Rapture, at www.timlahaye.com ). The Rapture is absolutely central to the prophetic scheme of most apocalyptic Christians in America. In a Christian superstore like Mardel*s in Littleton, you can buy a bumper sticker that reads:
IN CASE OF RAPTURE,
THIS VEHICLE WILL BE UNMANNED.
THIS VEHICLE WILL BE UNMANNED.
Prophecy believers use chat rooms to debate how they can reconcile public safety with the unknowable timing of the Rapture. Some have suggested that true believers should think twice before becoming surgeons or airplane pilots, because they could easily endanger non Christians by disappearing suddenly when God gathers up the faithful.
Guyatt reveals that John Hagee sincerely believes that he will be Raptured. In fact, some of his books contain a rider in which he anticipates this scenario in which he writes : *For those who have missed the Rapture : you may be confused and terrified by the momentous events you are experiencing. You may be in hiding. Take heed to this book, then lift up your heads ~ your redemption draws near.*
As a lapsed Catholic himself, Guyatt admits to being drawn to what he termed ; *the liberal warnings of evangelicals run amok,* adding that the one thing he couldn*t work out is why apocalyptic Christians, who believe that the world is about to be ruined by the Antichrist, would want to get involved in politics? Guyatt*s point of view is that if God is in charge, what*s the point of electing a Republican Congress or an evangelical President?
His confusion is well founded because what makes today*s apocalyptic Christian so intriguing and perplexing is that historically, prophecy believers have been politically marginal, content to withdraw from the public arena whilst awaiting Christ*s return, (interestingly, also totally conditioned to believing that much suffering and terrible times must proceed the Second Coming). But not so today, when apocalyptic Christians are political activists involved in everything from debates on abortion, homosexuality, to the Bill of Rights and all that is politically mainstream, right up to the white house itself; up front and generally to the right of the situation at hand.
So what has changed and why?
Have a Nice Doomsday will read like pure fantasy to some; part fiction to others and even still; absolute gospel and validation to those who already believe. Whichever way you read it, this book will make you stop and think about your mortal soul should an apocalyptic ending be as close as so many now believe it to be. You will be left to wonder just exactly what it will mean to you in a world gone mad with too many choices.
A small paperback of only 307 pages, you will learn how prophecy scholars are focused on spiritual decline in America before God/the ultimate justice turns it into the kind of paradise that people have long prayed for. Guyatt has done his research well and I learned a fair bit more about the Bible and how the mind of the modern Apocalyptic Christian interprets it.
Reading this book helped me look at things in a completely different light to the way I had before, which is always a good thing because it allows us to build on our own beliefs.
There are time too when this book pushed buttons and boundaries within me, and it is for this reason that I recommend that you give your brain a good stretch and bend, and grab a copy. Find out why over 50 million Americans believe our world will end, within our lifetime.
You may just surprise yourself and end up agreeing with them, then again, you may think that the world will become what we believe it will become, as it is our collective belief en masse, which sees us as the co~creators of our own future as a species?
Either way, you decide.
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Comment by Kleonaptra
Kalikapsychosis
Comment by Janet Collins
Acceptable Etiquette
The Social Critic
Janet Collins Blog
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
The fact is that perhaps they are, but catholics don*t know shi*t about Hell, truly. You wanna head up to the Buddha boys and get a glimpse of their interpretation of hell. *chuckle* They have documented about 18 or so hell realms actually (to put it into proper perspective), 8 or so hot hells the lowest being Avici, then Constant suffering hell. Above that are the Pratapana, or Intense Heat Hell; the Tapana , or Heating Hell, the Maharaurava, or Great Howling Hell; the Raurava, or Howling Hell; the Samghata, or Crushing Hell; the Kalasutra, or Black thread Hell; and the Samjiva, or Reviving Hell.
In the reviving hell beings are cut and kill each other, after which a cold breeze comes. When the breeze touches their bodies, they are revived again. This happens repeatedly until their life span has ended.
The Black Thread Hell the bodies of beings who are born there are cut by flaming swords or flaming axes wherever a black thread has marked their bodies.
The Crushing Hell the bodies of beings who are born there are crushed between two big mountains or hot iron plates. Again a cool breeze will revive them to be crushed again repeatedly . . and so it goes to the deepest hot hell realm of Constant suffering where there is a blazing metal house, 20,000 yojana*s in height and length, in which there is a bronze kettle many yojannas across. In that kettle, beings are cooked in burning, molten broonze and copper. Fire surrounds them in the four directs. etc..
A yojana is the distance you can hear a persons call.
The life stpan of each goes from the lightest hell (or closest to the surface of the earth) which is 1,620,000,000,000years of suffeering to about 53,084,160,000,000,000 in the deepest or lowest hell.
Then above them are the 3 Neighbouring Hells; followed by teh Eight cold hells where cold freezes and covers your body with various blights and blisters, the second lowest the blisters burst, the next three contain unbearable cold, in the sixth one, the skin turns blue and cracks into five peaces like utpala flower petals. Int he 7th the blue turns red and the body cracks into ten or more pieces like lotus petls. so on and so forth.
The final hells closer to the surface are the Occassional Hells where many beings can be gatrhered together, or just a single person and their karma. ~ again more suffering. Above them and on the planets surface the Hungry Ghost Realms where the hungry ghosts come and take the joy out of all that you would do, like the Dementors in Azkaban. (Probably the equivalent of earthbound spirits et al). . . Finally the animal realms where you are senteced to a life of suffering by being used, the suffering of slaughter, and the suffering of being eaten.
The interesting thing is that the negative emotions we shed during mediation fall to these lower realms and offer the light to them. Our cast off negativity is there illumination, imagine that. So it is worth pursuing meritous behaviour to help those stuck there. . not that much can but luckily Buddhism teraches about how to achieve virtue and merit and offers antidotes to thinks like negative thinking, and the vices, no different to Christianity or catholicism in that regard, through the practicing of virtue over our vices. But I did really enjoy the descriptiveness of the hells in the course, as it was something to get your teeth into and decidedly I didn*t find one of them appealing.
I wish you well on your choice of which one to spend eternity in.
Lilla ..
Comment by Lilla
From The Home Front
Enviro Warrior
Dream Herald
Esoteric Bookshop
Good on you, I thought you might like this one too. As I said it is certainly there for those who believe it has merit, and an interesting read of how religion and politics DO indeed seem to be running together throughout much of the US? Albeit from a distance to each other.
Personally this type of stuff reminds me of Jones Town cults and how mass thinking affects reality, but as you say, there is lots in this book that rings true too!?*!
All interesting stuff. .
Lilla ..
Comment by JohnDoe
Film & TV on DVD
Sounds like a good read...I'm just working my way through Guillermo Del Toro's The Strain which is a very cool vampire novel.
Comment by Mountain Fog
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
THAT form of 'god' is not my God ideal.
cheers Lill
fog