What is with Christians who are fascinated with predicting the future? I remember as a kid in a Baptist church being really interested in the stories about the antichrist and the mark of the beast. I remember an elaborate chalk-talk in church that ended with a tape of war sound effects and colored lights and blacklights seeming to animate the final drawing of Armageddon. I thought it was scary and really cool.
But that was when I was a kid.
Grown-ups (the Living Church of God, which emphasizes end-time prophesies) are still obsessing about these stories that are pretty much on the level of graphic novels with vast armies and superheroes? Somehow...I don't know how...we have to find a way for it to become okay for adults to outgrow these stories. It's time to move on to more difficult books, like Stephen Hawking's The Universe in a Nutshell.
3 comments:
I've read this book and it is excellent. However, I would debate you on the intellectual complexity and symbolism of the very artistically written book of Revelations.
I totally agree with you. If you read what it actually says in the Bible it is vague about the end of the world, so if you are a Christian and you believe in the Bible then leave it at that... Vague.
Seems to me it is more important to live for today than to wonder about the future. That being said does not mean to not save and prepare for retirement.
In the 1970's Hal Lindsey wrote the book The Late Great Planet Earth and many people quit caring about preparing for old age. Some figured Jesus was coming soon and when the rapture hit the credit card companies would be out of luck. - Attitudes like that are tantamount to stealing and God fooled 'em by holding off on the rapture. So it goes.
Some theologians teach that the Revelations was written about Rome and it's fall. 100 years from now there might be a whole new set of conjectures about it. Bet people will make some money off it then too.
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