A Brief Cultural Warfare Update Addendum

[solarbird]

Worshipping death: elfs finds fundamentalists at Rapture Ready celebrate war in the mideast.

"Lets keep the excitement going!!!!!"

"I am excited beyond words that the struggle of this life may be over soon and I can finally be FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!"

I swear that every single position these people have, every line they come up with, is pure, 100%, projection. Culture of death, you say? Well, what the hell do you call this?

Comments

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

I wonder what they thought when the world just kept on spinning after the 1967 and 1973 wars. Probably something along the lines of, 'Aw.'

[banner.livejournal.com]

Yeah but at least they're not killing anybody.

[loopback.livejournal.com]

Dr. Barnett Slepian would like to disagree with you on that, but he can't, because a fundamentalist christian shot him.

[banner.livejournal.com]

Strawman

[loopback.livejournal.com]

no, seriously, he wasn't a straw man. if he was, that bullet in his head probably wouldn't have killed him. he could've just gotten his straw restuffed and get on with his day.

[firni.livejournal.com]

If he ONLY HAD A BRAIIIIIIN

[solarbird]

I'm more thinking of the fundamentalist assertion that anyone who supports abortion rights and/or the rights of GBLT people is "worshipping in a culture of death," language which has apparently spread from accusations about Islam through fundamentalist accusations about GBLT people and abortion-rights supporters and has most recently shown up in Ramesh Ponnuru's latest assault on both the concept of civil discourse and the possibility of a loyal oppoosition, the book The Party of Death.

[banner.livejournal.com]

I thought you were just talking about the people who can't wait for the end of the world.

[firni.livejournal.com]

I thought the temple had to be rebuilt before THE RAPTURE.

[grian-ruadh.livejournal.com]

Well, that presumes that they know what their own holy book says. Many of them don't. Either that or they're of the ilk that claim that the whole thing is literally true but still pick and choose the bits and pieces that they follow. Either way, idiots...

--an ex-idiot

[lisa-marli.livejournal.com]

The worst of it is, most of them are exactly the kind that Won't Make It To Heaven! According to their own books they study so hard.

Bummer, not!

[shikyrie.livejournal.com]

I think the T-shirt I saw on someone at Sirius Rising yesterday sums up my sentiment exactly:

"JESUS: Protect me from your Followers"

I also saw a nicely done picture of shrubby at Elspeth's area, where it said something about "How could he have known..." and went into this long bit ending with "that this country would be run by a MORON". Kept meaning to ask how much it was, but ended up forgetting by the time we left the big bonfire, and went home. Guess I can always email them to inquire.

[darthhellokitty.livejournal.com]

Wow, that BB is a TREASURY of unintended humor!

[mathmuffin.livejournal.com]

I looked over the Rapture Ready website. They sound more world-weary than estatic, not so much saying, "All this destruction is going to be great!" as saying, "God is going to drop the final curtain soon and we will all be able to go home to heaven." If it is a culture of death, it is death by lethargy.

They quote Matthew 24:6-8 a lot:
"You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end.
"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes.
"But all these things are merely the beginning of birth pangs."

That phrase, "but that is not yet the end," they interpret as that those events will be a sign that the end of the world is about occur. The idea of the rapture, which lets the best Christians escape the troubles, is from the Revelation of John, the last book in the New Testament.

However, they ignore the verse after it, Matthew 24:9,
Then they will deliver you to tribulation, and will kill you, and you will be hated by all nations because of My name.
So they are not going to escape the troubles.

Besides, it is more likely that Jesus was talking about the early Christian church and the tribulations that the first Christains would face, rather than about the end of the world. Furthermore, later in Matthew 24, versus 26 to 44, Jesus said that there will be no signs of the last days. The end will come as a surprise. So looking for signs is foolish.

Erin Schram