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October 09, 2005

Finally! Competent Leadership!

By Jim Dallas

For once, I hope Pat Robertson is right (and by that I mean correct, not "right-wing"):

Prominent US preacher Pat Robertson said that recent natural disasters around the world point to the end of the world and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

Notwithstanding the fact that both Jesus and George Bush only got where they are because of who their fathers are, the difference between the spiritual and temporal has rarely been so stark.

Update: Although it greatly annoys me that Reuter's AFP (what, do they not have Christians in France?) has bitten the Religious Right spin hook, line, and sinker. Consider:

Devout Christians believe that the "last days" will be marked by political and geological upheaval, and Roberts said recent events show that those days might have arrived.

Citing scripture from the Bible, the conservative Christian broadcaster said the latter days would be marked by "the birth pangs of a new order, and for anybody who knows what it's like to have a wife going in labor, you know how these labor pains begin to hit."

There are few things in Christendom more controversial and heterogeneous than eschatology (the theology of the end-times). Many "devout Christians" do not believe in "End Times" at all, and the premillenarian faddishness espoused by Robertson is relatively new in the history of our faith. Moreover, much of this is not "in the Bible" so much as in their particular interpretation of the Bible (particularly the interplay between Revelation and the Old Testament prophecies).

Nonetheless, I think having J.C. back in the 'hood would be funk-a-delic, fo shiz'.

Posted by Jim Dallas at October 9, 2005 11:28 PM | TrackBack

Comments

Woo hoo! JC is coming back to kick some Roman butt!

Posted by: Dave In A Cave at October 10, 2005 08:19 AM

Let's also be clear that premilennial dispensationalism (the fancy term for the idea that there will be a Rapture followed by a tribulation followed by the Second Coming) is actually not based on the Bible at all, but rather emerged in the mid-19th century after a Scottish farmgirl had visions of the end of the world. Her visions set off an international movement convinced that the end of the world was coming, most thought in 1874 or 1875. Two groups emerged in the US as a result of all of this--the Seventh Day Adventists and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

The return of Christ is a fundamental part of Christian orthodoxy, and I personally believe that He will return someday. However, attempting to "prove" that it will be in the near future is not only silly and unoriginal, it is in my opinion heretical. How or when is not important, and a plethora of hurricanes, earthquakes, wars or whatever does not make it any more likely.

Finally, the evidence for His return is not solely from Revelation, but throughout the New Testament. Revelation is the book that barely made it into the canon because of its potential for and history of abuse by charlatans and crackpots (such as Mr. Robertson). The book's visions appear to me to be more of a first century "code" that was meant to communicate to embattled Christians that God would not let the Romans destroy them (prophecy fulfilled). When I say code, I mean something akin to a political cartoon nowadays, where symbols that are familiar to contemporary readers are used to represent ideas in a sort of shorthand. If we see a picture of a donkey stomping an elephant, we don't think that it is some mysterious prophecy--we know it means that Democrats are doing better than Republicans. The big evidence of this in my opinion is that if images of winged demons actually refer to helicopters, then it could not have possibly been correctly interpreted by the Christians the book was written for. That is not the way it works--Christian orthodoxy means what all Christians have understood to be true at all times in all places. Giving some kind of 20th or 21st century spin on a first century piece of Scripture is heretical.

Revelation references the return of Our Lord, but is not solely about that. Perhaps Mr. Robertson would be better off ignoring the signs and wonders that herald the supposed End Times and rather should study Christ's letter to the Church of Laodicea, which it appears Robertson is a charter member of.

Posted by: Andrew Dobbs at October 10, 2005 11:00 AM

Andrew,

You might like this book:
Worthy is the Lamb: an Interpretation of Revelation by Ray Summers, Broadman:Nashville, 1951.

It presents the amillenial view.

Posted by: Jim Fuller at October 10, 2005 07:38 PM
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