Tuesday, May 17, 2011

If I were Hal Lindsey I'd sue.

Honestly, My Beloved Sinners; all the attention currently being paid to little Harold Camping and his assertion that this coming Saturday evening is going to be a little more memorable than most is making this old Doctrinal Warrior sick.

I mean really, if God was going to spill any secrets that big, He’d do so with me. The mere idea that I would be left out of a loop this large is ridiculous - let alone the notion that the best person the Almighty could find to call the nations to repentance is some fool who hasn’t even put any Google advertisements on his web site in order to capitalize on all the attention. After all, Harold Camping isn’t even an Anglican, so how he can possibly claim to understand anything of what the Bible teaches? Although, I’ve got admit, neither are little Peter Jensen and his family, and that doesn’t stop them from laboring under the same delusion.

Not of course, that this isn’t proving a fabulous opportunity for us here at St. Onuphrius’. Our special Rapture Insurance® team of Lay Ministers/Sales personnel has been simply overun with enquiries, and their closure rate has hit an all-time high - currently few than one in ten contracts are involuntary, or made to persons deemed medically incapable of understanding what they’re signing. With one paltry down payment (cash only please, although welfare recipients are permitted to sign their check over) people can enjoy peace of mind knowing that in the event of their being raptured any unsaved loved ones will be provided for.

Naturally provisions apply - as with any reputable insurance product – and for the benefit of any of you big-government types out there I would like to stress that any offers made by or purporting to be made on behalf of Rapture Insurance Ministries® pertain only to persons residing in such jurisdictions as where this sort of thing can be got away with and I am in no way liable for any actions made which may appear to be in contravention of this fact. (Sorry about that, but one can’t be too careful about such matters. And there's never such a thing as too much fine print when you're a Conservative. Just ask little Peter Ould. Or Harold on Sunday morning.)

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.

10 comments :

Anonymous said...

Dear Father
I have wired you a down-payment to ensure my dog and wife are placed in a Nursing Home following my imminent departure. I shall see you on Sunday morning, when we can have a nice cup of tea at the feet of Jesus. What a shame the Jensens won't be there - along with Peter Ould and other homosexualists.

Raspberry Rabbit said...

My mother is far away (though not as far away as she'll be come saturday) and I'm not well placed to ask whether the coming rapture is in the same category as the oncoming bus with respect to the need for clean and fresh-smelling shorts.

Is one raptured "butt nekkid" or are the classic pictures of clothes left in piles simply metaphor?

Harold Camping (got to LOVE that name) said...

Come Sunday morning, the 22nd, the World will no longer exist, Fr Carte.

Leonard said...

JUDGMENT DAY is feared by the world and is the day that God will destroy the world because of the sins of mankind¨

One might safetly say that God has observed ¨destruction¨ for a very long time-- why the rush now as deadly/degenerate Homophobia is about to be smashed, Osama Bin Laden is dead and the GOP Party ¨Greedsters¨ are falling through the cracks in their own heads?

BOQ said...

Badge for the 21st.

The Rev. Dr. Christian Troll said...

ROFLMAO BOQ! Thank you!

BOQ ("Bitter Old Queen") said...

A great source of fun, come Sunday morning, will be identifying those left behind who felt certain of their salvation ("What else did the sanctimonious cow expect?"; "Always knew he was a Whited Sepulchre".)

Peter said...

Any of you righteous ones who ascend to heaven when The Rapture comes on May 21st . . . please toss your wallet down to me.

Pierre Wheaton said...

Dang it, and all that Rapture practice gone to waste. You see, I figured it out that all the best mansions in Heaven were going first-come, first-served, and I had my eye on this honey of a McMansion on the corner of Faith St and Hallelujah Blvd that was gonna get snapped up in a heartbeat so I spent the week before the anticipated event out in the backyard jumping up and down increasing my vertical leap, so I could get a head start on the rest of yinz. I'm up to a stunning 2ft leap which is impressive for someone of my weight and age, and now the Rapture ain't happening.

I did the research and realized that Camping did the math wrong. See, he carried the one and multiplied by three, he should have multiplied by one and carried the three and then he would have come up with September 13, 2011, which so happens to be my birthday. That's a heckuva present. So maybe all that practice will come into play after all. You heard it here folks. The whole she-bang goes ka-blooey on September 13, 2011.

Anonymous said...

[I've waited long to spring the following because I didn't want to be associated with Camping! Alex]

Hal Lindsey's Pretrib Rapture "Proof"

Is Hal Lindsey's proof for a pretrib rapture "100 proof" - that is, 100 percent Biblical?
In "The Late Great Planet Earth" (p. 143) Lindsey gives his "chief reason" for pretrib: "If the Rapture took place at the same time as the second coming, there would be no mortals left who would be believers" - that is, no believers still alive who could enter the millennium and repopulate the earth.
We don't know if Lindsey's amnesia is voluntary or involuntary, but earlier (p. 54), while focusing on chapters 12 through 14 of Zechariah, Lindsey sees "a remnant of Jews in Jerusalem" who are mortals who will become believing mortals at the second coming and then become repopulating mortals!
During the same discussion of Zech. 12-14 Lindsey overlooks some of the final verses in Zech. 14. They reveal that some of the tribulation survivors "of all the nations which came against Jerusalem" will refuse to go there "to worship the King, the Lord of hosts." Here's what will happen to those "heathen" rebels: "upon them shall be no rain."
So the facts about the repopulating mortals, in unbelieving as well as believing ranks, cancel out Lindsey's "chief reason" for opposing a joint rapture/second coming - the ONLY rapture view to be found in official theology books and organized churches prior to 1830!
(See historian Dave MacPherson's "The Rapture Plot," the most accurate and most highly endorsed book on pretrib rapture history - available by calling 800.643.4645. Also Google "Pretrib Rapture Stealth," "Pretrib Rapture Pride," "Pretrib Rapture Secrecy" and "Pretrib Rapture Dishonesty.")
Although Hal Lindsey claims that his "Late Great" didn't set a date for Christ's return, many of his followers - including copycats Bill Maupin ("1981") and Edgar Whisenant ("1988") - did view Lindsey as a date-setter, and his later book "The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon" (the sort of title that date-setters and their ga-ga groupies love) became another fizzle - unless we're still living in the 1980s!
In Old Testament days false prophets were stoned to death. Today they're just stoned!