I have a story that’s topical; I’ve told it before on tumblr, but it’s topical to this and thus worth repeating.
Back around 2005, I ran into a Baptist missionary who spotted my kippah and basically took that as permission to attempt to missionize at me.
I defended myself, using the basics of the knowledge I have of Christian theology and texts that I learned specifically to fend off missionaries.
We went back and forth and back and forth, and he wouldn’t leave me alone for… oh, probably the better part of an hour.
Then this part is seared into my memory. I have nightmares about it.
He smiled at me and said that, with my knowledge of the Gospels, I am sure to be one of the Elect when the time comes.
I asked what the hell that meant.
And he told me. He told me in a tone of utmost sincerity–even envy, because to his belief system, it was a good and enviable thing…
Because to be one of the “Elect” is to be one of the 144,000 Jews who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior at the Apocalypse. This will happen when all of the Children of Israel have been Gathered in the Land of Israel; war will break out, the Assembled Jews will have the Gospels preached to us, and 144,000 Thousand–Twelve Tribes times Twelve Apostles times One Thousand–Jews will spontaneously convert to Christianity.
Once that occurs, all of the Jews die in the Apocalypse, but the Elect ascend to Heaven to be Jesus Christ’s personal escorts down to Earth for his Second Coming (the rest of the Jews go to hell for eternity, in case you’re wondering).
He told me that I existed to be a human blood sacrifice to bring back his god. I was not a person to him. I was nothing more than a means to that end.
And he was jealous. Jealous of the fact that he viewed my knowledge of his religion, something that I had learned specifically to fend him and his kind off, as proof that his religion was right and correct and inevitable. That in learning it, I had made myself more valuable to his worldview.
Jealous that, because I was more valuable, because I existed to die for his god, I would meet that god before him.
It was terrifying, to be told that I was to die… and he thought that it was a good thing.
This is how Evangelicals view death. Not as something to be avoided, but something to seek, something that is a positive, and not just for themselves… but for everybody.
They are the closest thing to a full-fledged Religion of Evil on the planet, and I say that without hyperbole.
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