#prophetic failure

[kelmunger]

We can safely say it looks like he is pointing to the end of things. Early or late '70s. However, if it goes past the '80s, it will all totally end by 1986. AMEN!

Fundagelical preacher Neal Frisby, as quoted in Randall Balmer’s Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory: A Journey Into Evangelical Subculture in America, 4th Ed.

Frisby died in 2005.

Great Phoenix New Times story: “The Frisby Legacy.”

[kelmunger]

Tomorrow's the big one! Not.

[kelmunger]

Your info was stolen from Target because of End Times prophecy

Seriously.

Over at Slacktivist, Fred Clark makes a smart case for American belief in "Bible prophecy" as the reason the U.S. has resisted the sort of smart credit card technology that would have prevented the theft of account information in the Target case. 

It's because of the "Left Behind" books!

The “Bible prophecy” mythology of these books isn’t an irrelevant fringe belief. This stuff influences American culture, American politics, and the American economy. It’severywhere.

That mythology is why tens of millions of Americans aren’t happy about an initial agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Peace with Iran, to these “Bible prophecy” believers, means Armageddon is less likely. And they view that as a bad thing.

“Bible prophecy” mythology is also why thieves were able to steal consumer data from 40 million Target customers this fall. That theft was easily preventable with the smart-card encryption used in most other countries, but we can’t use that technology here in America because the phrase “embeddable microchips” sends tens of millions of Americans off the deep end. It’s the Mark of the Beast!

That’s also why, for example, you have to carry a piece of paper showing proof of insurance in the glove compartment of your car. Your status as an insured driver could easily be kept up-to-date with a smart-card driver’s license, but we can’t have those here in America because of Nicolae Carpathia.

So if you’re one of the 40 million Americans who has shopped at Target since Thanksgiving, then thieves may have your debit card number, expiration date and CVV — which is to say they may have access to your bank account. Yes, that’s infuriating. And, yes, you should be angry with Target for not handling your data responsibly.

But you should also be angry with folks like Tim LaHaye, John Hagee, Hal Lindsey and all the other “Bible prophecy scholars” whose foolish, anti-biblical heresies made this theft possible. To me, that’s “the most infuriating thing” about this story.

Go read the whole thing. Slacktivist is one of the smartest evangelical Christian bloggers out there.

[kelmunger]

What would such a timeline look like for a Rapture-prophecy “ministry” like TKIC?

1963: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1964: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1965: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1966: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1967: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1968: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1969: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1970: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1971: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1972: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. … 1973: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. 1974: Predicted the Rapture would happen very soon. We were wrong. …

Jehovah's Witnesses' prediction of 1914 as the date of Christ's return will have its 100th anniversary next year. I wonder how they'll deal with that?

Oh, wait ... They've already decided it happened "invisibly," thus playing the Harold Camping Prophetic Failure get-out-of-jail card.

[kelmunger]

Source: AlterNet. The Christian right in America, like all organized religions, claims to have a correct and exclusive understanding of God's will. To hear them tell it, the almighty creator of the universe has strong opinions about corporate tax rates, firearm ownership and what consenting adults do with their genitals, and he's delegated them to speak on his behalf. But if they want us to believe they have this authority, it seems only fair to consider their track record.

Here's the thing about predicting the end of the world: It's always, eventually, a failed prophecy.

[kelmunger]

Always coming, never here. The newscaster at Pastor John Hagee's "news" station is preaching the same contemporary fulfillment of the prophecy of the end times that I first heard five decades ago as if there's never before been war, violence and "lawlessness" in the world. It's always fun to point out to these people that violence is actually decreasing in most of the developed world, including the U.S., and that the only reason there seems to be so much more of it is because of the 24/7 "if it bleeds, it leads" media. Stephen Pinker's book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined is an excellent resource for creating cognitive dissonance among such people, and I recommend it highly.

(And don't you love the scary "#bloodmoons" graphic?)

[kelmunger]

It’s been noted by scholars who study apocalyptic groups that believers tend to have analytical mindsets. They’re often good at math. I met several engineers, along with a mathematics major and two financial planners. These are people adept at identifying patterns in sets of data, and the methods they used to identify patterns in the Bible were frequently impressive, even brilliant. Finding unexpected connections between verses, what believers call comparing scripture with scripture, was a way to become known in the group. The essays they wrote explaining these links could be stunningly intricate. That intricacy was part of the appeal. The arguments were so complex that they were impossible to summarize and therefore very challenging to refute. As one longtime believer, an accountant, told me: “Based on everything we know, and when you look at the timelines, you look at the evidence—these aren’t the kind of things that just happen. They correlate too strongly for it not to be important.” The puzzle was too perfect. It couldn’t be wrong.

"A year after the non-apocalypse: Where are they now?" by Tom Bartlett, from Religion Dispatches, 18 May 2011.

[kelmunger]

Yeah, see, the problem with predicting the end of the world is imminent is that somebody will always notice the passage of time.