Speak for yourself. I’ve worked directly with the military. I never assumed that.
Damned autocorrect.
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That is the standard for being a fundamentalist “christian” and a MAGAT. It makes one think of Lucy and the football. Some people you really can fool all of the time.
What is troubling and scary is that there have been complaints from some Armed Forces members that they are getting this twaddle from their commanders. Apparently Trump has purged the Brass down to the lowest of the low who are in that dumbass class.
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I am reading Historian Thomas Cahill’s the gifts of the Jews. So many of the characters and the stories in the “inerrant” bible that these people call the word of “god” came from folk tales dating back to the 10th century BC and were handed down in oral histories by desert nomads who eventually became the jews that populated parts of the Middle East. It is all fiction, invented to amuse themselves while sitting around in the cave waiting for the sun to come out.
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The only “end times” may well be the mutual conflagration that Trump and Putin bring about by being such greedy dickheads. I do not think that any “jesus” will be involved.
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Genocidal in its origins and suicidal in its conclusions. These Christian wackos want the world to end. And those that don’t convert to Christianity in time will burn to ash. If they make a few bucks along the way, all the better.
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Fundamentalist Religion is a Rorschach test,
What Hagee really needs is a Hare Psychopathy Checklist – a psychological assessment that is commonly used to assess the presence and extent of psychopathy in individuals. (Wikipedia)
- Item 1: Glibness/superficial charm
- Item 2: Grandiose sense of self-worth
- Item 3: Need for stimulation/proneness to boredom
- Item 4: Pathological lying
- Item 5: Conning/manipulative[[12]]
- Item 6: Lack of remorse or guilt
- Item 7: Shallow affect
- Item 8: Callous/lack of empathy
- Item 9: Parasitic lifestyle
- Item 10: Poor behavioral controls
- Item 11: Promiscuous sexual behavior
- Item 12: Early behavior problems
- Item 13: Lack of realistic, long-term goals
- Item 14: Impulsivity
- Item 15: Irresponsibility
- Item 16: Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
- Item 17: Many short-term marital relationships
- Item 18: Juvenile delinquency
- Item 19: Revocation of conditional release
- Item 20: Criminal versatility
Ring any Bells?
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Stimulating discussion, like how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
I read this: Amazon.com: The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount: 9780195152050: Gorenberg, Gershom: Books on a tour of Israel when netanyahu came to power in 2007. We went to a Meggido - where there were southern baptist tour groups PRAYING for all this violent horrific stuff.
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As a classicist who has spent his life immersed in ancient texts and as one who taught Roman religion and the rise of Christianity, I must say these people are idiots. Have they no clue that Revelation responds to the Neronian persecutions of 64?
I will never forget what my Greek prof said back in the 80s about Revelation: “The ravings of a sunstroked lunatic on a hot Aegean island writing bad Greek.”
Yep.
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Your post reminds me of the mother who wouldn’t let her son enroll in my Latin program because I taught the pagan gods.
Sigh… I despair.
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Kegbreath is pretty much the advocate for this view at the top of the command structure.
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Seems to me God would take a pretty dim view of a bunch of cocky grifters demanding the End Times to feed their egos and fill their pockets. But that’s just me.
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Religion is a grift. Period.
Pretty amazing that every single one of those attributes could reside in one man, but TSF always did claim to be the best.
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Yes, I agree with you about those Christians who are animated by the End Times narrative of retribution and destruction, by the need to judge and condemn others.
It is true that for the true believers, the continued attacks on Palestinians in Gaza, the stealing of land in the West Bank and Lebanon, and the unprovoked bombing of Iran, is an acceptable level of collateral damage.
And no, I don’t mean acceptable for Israelis and Jewish Zionists — because while American Jews are deeply divided over Israel’s policies, there are some who see them as necessary — it is the Christian Zionists who are far more dangerous because of their fanatical apocalyptic beliefs.
To the Jewish people, with their tragic history, the state of Israel is a safe haven and refuge in a hostile and dangerous world.
But to the millenarian and apocalyptic Christian Zionists, the establishment of the state of Israel marks the countdown to the End Times and the final battle between good and evil.
The audience for this nightmarish scenario believes in the inerrancy of biblical prophecy, and they see the bloody saber-rattling escalations and aggressive provocations as the fulfillment of inerrant biblical prophecy.
Tens of millions of American religious reactionaries believe that Jesus will return to earth soon.
They cheered when Republicans castigated opponents of the war in Iraq as “surrender monkeys.”
They opposed the Iran nuclear deal and cheered when then-Speaker Boehner welcomed PM Netanyahu to address Congress – without notifying the White House, and only two weeks before Israeli voters went to the polls, an unprecedented breach of protocol – and vociferously denigrate the proposal, even though its violation ratchets up the chances for all-out war.
They gloried in the unilateral movement of the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and Trump’s recognition of a united Jerusalem — the “City of Peace” — as Israel’s capital, because biblical prophecy says Israel must be united in order for Jesus to return.
There are building plans for the reconstruction of the Temple of Israel on the site of the sacred Muslim Dome of the Rock, and vestments for the Temple have already been designed.
Some say the prophesized Red Heifer has already made its appearance (and through an electoral mishap now sits as president of the United States).
And now they herald Trump as the Chosen One, and as Cyrus, who defeated Babylon and liberated the Israelites — and whom some Israelites of that time welcomed as the Messiah — and say he will usher in the End Times and the return of Jesus.
They have already minted gold coins conflating Trump with Cyrus.
And they believe in the Rapture, which tells them the righteous will not suffer physical death but will ascend to heaven, while the wicked endure the tribulation and the final battle of good against evil between Jesus and the forces of the antichrist.
Because to them living with the certainty of an imminent global catastrophe on a biblical scale is preferable to the uncertainty of living in a changing world that challenges their assumptions and perceived position of privilege.
And their response to this cognitive dissonance and world-weariness is this conversion by crisis, this baptism by fire, with all the psychological qualities of a suicide cult.
The only difference: they fantasize that only they, the righteous, and their fellow believers, will be able to cheat death, while we, their perceived opponents, will be forced to endure the hell on earth that they have left for us.
So for the Jewish people, Israel is a safe haven where they can live their faith, and their lives as Jews, freely.
For Christian Zionists, Israel is a welcome harbinger of the imminent destruction of a world too wicked to be saved.
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Yea verily.
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I always wonder about folks whose “faith” is so threatened by mere exposure to other ideas.
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The worship of Thantos, the love of death. They know not what they do.
You can unpack a lot here: beginning with Freud and the death instinct and Jung’s subconscious, the Shadow concept. And grifting, Americans have lost their nose for detecting BS, which is vital to survival in a capitalist society.
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And they will be sorely disappointed should rapture actually occur (it won’t), and they discover they aren’t among the saved, rather they will be among the damned.
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