In regards to the "Rapture Ready" folks.

[tjwash]

I must say something personal, in regards to all of the "rapture ready" people and the threads associated with it here on DU.

I really do not loathe, fear, or think ill of of anyone that subscribes to the rapture mindset. Truth be told, I am sort of sad for the most extreme of them. I can't imagine the type of trauma that must have happened sometime in their lives to a good portion of people that subscribe to this, to drive them into the arms of such a twisted fantasy world. After reading some of the posts from their website, I am convinced that a good portion of them are in a state of such a deep emotional and spiritual pain, that they absolutely do not want to deal with reality, and have withdrawn to a place where it is OK for others to do their thinking and feeling for them.

The leaders of such a dogma, however, are nothing but vultures, and despicable opportunists. They have instilled an awful sort of an unfeeling detachment in their followers to what is happening in the Middle east, and the world. When thousands of people are being killed daily because of the United States Military's direct meddling in the region, and these people can think of nothing to do but to use the situation to tell others that they should be pleased with the misery and pain that we are causing out there, it just makes me ill. It makes me ill that these so called followers of Christ, are going against everything that he preached about. They do not talk about loving your enemy, or doing something, ANYTHING to ease the pain and suffering incurred out there, much of it by our country's doing; either directly or otherwise.

As much as I wanted to look down on, or be angry, at a large majority of the people that are convinced that these are the end times, I can’t be. I can only bring myself to be angry at the people that have convinced them to be this way, and have made them completely ignore their Christian teachings, and stray from Christ’s true message.

That’s the truly disgusting part to me.

[SlipperySlope]

1. Maybe they've just given up...

Maybe some of them have just had too much bad shit happen to them in their lives, and they just want to escape into the arms of their loving lord.

Some of these people have been kicked so much, only their faith keeps them standing.

The rest of them are bat-shit crazy.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. They are really no different than death wish jihadis, except that

they are all talk and no action.

[Ishoutandscream2]

6. A disturbing, but brilliant, description

Very sad, but very true.

[tjwash]

18. Well, what's at the base of death wish jihadis?

No hope, and a sense of nothing to lose. Someone powerful with an axe to grind always twists despair like that into a tool that they can use.

[eridani]

23. The same alienation that produces jihadis--

--also produces the Rapture Ready. They can't see a point to living in the world as is and can see no way of changing things.

[The_Casual_Observer]

25. At least the jihadis have the courage of their convictions.

The "christian" nitwits sit in their underwear typing away on computers in some kind of half ass religious stupor, batting the shit about the end of the world. It's guaranteed they would be the first ones jumping into the lifeboat if the ship was sinking. I have less that zero respect for those stupid delusional assholes. I dare a single one of them to go ahead and take that leap of faith to the other side and walk with Jesus like they are always bullshitting about. The world would be a much better place without their kind.

[walldude]

3. I can't find any sadness or sympathy for people

who celebrate the misery and pain of others.

[madeline_con]

4. What the 'Left Behind' Series Really Means

What the 'Left Behind' Series Really Means
A Whore That Sitteth on Many Waters

"Jesus merely raised one hand a few inches and a yawning chasm opened in the earth, stretching far and wide enough to swallow all of them. They tumbled in, howling and screeching, but their wailing was soon quashed and all was silent when the earth closed itself again."
-- From Glorious Appearing by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins

"The best thing about the Left Behind books is the way the non-Christians get their guts pulled out by God."
-- 15-year old fundamentalist fan of the Left Behind series

That is the sophisticated language and appeal of America’s all-time best selling adult novels celebrating the ethnic cleansing of non-Christians at the hands of Christ. If a Muslim were to write an Islamic version of the last book in the Left Behind series, Glorious Appearing, and publish it across the Middle East, Americans would go beserk. Yet tens of millions of Christians eagerly await and celebrate an End Time when everyone who disagrees with them will be murdered in ways that make Islamic beheading look like a bridal shower. Jesus -- who apparently has a much nastier streak than we have been led to believe -- merely speaks and "the bodies of the enemy are ripped wide open down the middle." In the book Christians have to drive carefully to avoid "hitting splayed and filleted corpses of men and women and horses" Even as the riders’ tongues are melting in their mouths and they are being wide open gutted by God’s own hand, the poor damned horses are getting the same treatment. Sort of a divinely inspired version of "Fuck you and the horse you rode in on."

http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2005/12/what_the_left_b.html

[Initech]

15. Yikes! La Haye is an even more dangerous man than I thought.

[Ikonoklast]

5. They are selfish and hateful

Uncaring of others, after all, they are not going to be saved, why bother being nice to heathens? No ones death is as important than their own. Who gives a crap about your soul, fuckoff Jack, I'm saved.

They hate the miserable lives they lead on earth, and can't wait to fly into the clouds to live in a castle in the sky.

They are told by their pastors to give up all their earthly possessions; after all, they won't be needing them. But the churches need that loot, by gum. I wish I had the interest on Pat Robertson's money.

They are firm believers of a dogma that is NOT FOUND in any Bible, Old Testament or New.

[readmoreoften]

7. I feel sorrier for junkies, because they're considered social pariahs

But these RR people are no different. They are addicted to the good feelings that come from their delusion that they are superior to other peoples. The way I look at it, they are experiencing a psychotic break caused by delusions of grandeur. "god talks to me...I feel the almighty in my heart...he loves me....he speaks to me and through me... i know the truth"

Heroin addicts, on the other hand, are a group of fucked-up realists. Life is painful, can't deal with emotions, there is no "rapture", I need a fix.

For all the problems that we attribute to junkies, Rapture junkies are way more dangerous and I have far less sympathy for their arrogant escapism.

[OwnedByFerrets]

11. My mother falls into that group of people

and I cant for the life of me understand why. She was raised by very great parents and has had a fairly good life. I just cant understand her fervent belief system.:shrug:

[riderinthestorm]

24. Growing up, I was surrounded by fundie families

One family in particular that I was very close to - we practically lived in each others' households - they had the most wonderful supportive environment. Plenty of money and a wonderful homelife.

Yet, here they are today, rejoicing and praising the death and destruction in the ME. They are sure the rapture is right around the corner. I am so sickened it was impossible to stay at the block party and catch up on what else might be new in their lives.

I cannot understand it. at. all. other than as a cult. I honestly believe that a lot of rapture shit is Christianity-gone-cult. I've been on the "inside" and I can see how some of this could really escalate.

[jumpoffdaplanet]

8. They are loathsome morons

They cheerlead death and destruction for people who haven't harmed them. They cheer for actions that kill needlessly.

And if there was going to be a rapture, they are the last people any god would have anything to do with.

[Nothing Without Hope]

21. My feelings too. They are causing harm by encouraging others to

hold to their unspeakable beliefs. They are not innocent victims. They are active predators. Yes, their leaders are even worse, but the rapturites are not innocent sheep. They stand by their decision and encourage suffering and death every day.

[kineneb]

9. suckers and the charlatans that steal from them

The "minesters" are nothing but charlatans, fleecing their "flocks" to get rich quick. The poor suckers that follow them are simpletons, looking for easy answers to difficult questions.

Dealing with "Life, the Universe and Everything" is a complex undertaking- those who think they have found a simple answer will discover that they are wrong.

[rucky]

10. You're a bigger mensch than I. n/t

[farmbo]

12. LeHay's 'Left Behind- ism" the latest in a sad trail of Doomsday Cults

See: Doomsday for Dummies:

http://www.blackplague.org/cult/

"To further demonstrate your authority, prophesy is essential. It is easiest to adopt an established prophetic text and offer a new interpretation in which its amorphous rhetoric predicts your cult in explicit, lucid terms. The books of Nostradamus, Cayce, Blavatsky, Revelation, Daniel, and Ezekiel are the most common, but the same applies to Liber al vel Legis, the Eddas, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the Cabbala, or the Book of Coming Forth by Day. The text must to used to show that coming events fit into the context of a larger scheme that has been all planned out. Systems of astrology, numerology, or other divination can be absorbed to give further credence to predictions."

[calico1]

13. I think you are right about at least some of them.

Several extreme fundies that I have known all had that in common. Really bad lives with a lot of bad stuff happening to them. Some out of choice, some just due to bad decisions that were made with good intentions but ended up messing their lives up. When they were at their most vulnerable the fundies came to "help" them and they got sucked in. Its something they can cling to rather than think of and deal with the issues in their lives that need to be resolved.

[Raine]

14. If they are so read to die and be raptured

why don't they sign up to go to Iraq??? :shrug: They could achieve a number of goals that way by fighting terrorism, supporting their beloved leader and dying an early death so they can go to heaven right away. :think:

[ladjf]

16. People who fabricate their core beliefs and then fabricate the

arguments that buttress their superstitions will eventually pay dearly for their lapse in objectivity. The problem is that since they are in charge, the rest of us will also suffer from their delusions.

[Homer Wells]

17. Have they stopped to consider the Rapture may have already occurred

and THEY got Left Behind?????

Seems to me they are surely evil enough to not have earned a ticket out!!

[smoogatz]

19. Millenialist movements have a long and fascinating history in the U.S.

Some small and sensational, some surprisingly large and influential. In modern times they run the gamut from Heaven's Gate to Jim Jones to the Baptist Rapture Cult, but in the U.S. they go way back to the dawn of the so-called "Great Awakening," early in the 19th century. Only in the end times, you see, does one sect or another get proven right. That's why they can't wait for their weird-ass prophecies to come true.

[elehhhhna]

20. Idiots who wish I'd die & burn in hell bother me. Just saying.

[RagAss]

22. they're so easy to hate....it's a fucking shame.......

[annagull]

26. Wow, that was Freaking Great!!

I find that those who want the "End Times" start thinking about their kids and stop. except for the Crazies. Very good essay.

[pitohui]

27. i look down on them, i freely admit it

i have never known a "rapture ready" person who wasn't a Total Freaking Moron

why shouldn't i look down on them, let's be honest, they are stupid and their stupidity is killing us

supposedly there is something wrong w. their temporal lobe, well, you know what, boo effin hoo, if they are ill, then their "opinions" should be considered w. exactly the same respect as we treat the opinions of anyone else w. a major psychotic illness, we do NOT humor them and pretend that their delusions should be taken seriously

[Voltaire99]

28. I think you're wrong about "unfeeling detachment" vis-a-vis Middle East.

The fundies are overt in their feeling for Israel, explicit in believing that Israeli regional supremacy over enemies is a condition for their much longed-for End Times.

Related, of course, is the exquisitely vengeful spirit of Rapture fantasy. See the best-selling "Left Behind" novels, religious pornography that gloats over the suffering of those unsaved after the Rapture. Rapturism is schadenfreude taken to a pathological extreme (and in that way especially suited to the punishing desires of American puritanism, but you could also say that the Rapture is where people turn when conventional ideas of Hell just aren't enough).

So I think that is evidence of a much more violent worldview, and associated vulgar sentiment which some might call organized hatred, than the detachment you perceive.

That said, I really liked your post and share your disgust.

I simply don't share your compassion. We are discussing a mass death movement, and one at that which nurtures visions of apocalypse and pandemic suffering. Not nice people. Not a nice creed.

Quite a nasty bunch, really, and it's hard to only blame their leaders while feeling sadness toward the followers. I think that's giving short shrift to the adherents. It's not as if they're all dupes; people can consciously choose madness, after all, and not only because they feel sad, confused, lonely, etc. Some just like it. I would hazard to guess that one reason the imagery from Abu Ghraib did not cause an uproar in America is because it corresponded to so many cherished personal visions of the End Times.

[tuvor]

29. Trouble is, I think they've got the interpretation totally wrong.

From Matthew 24:

37 "As the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

38 For as in those days which were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ship,

39 and they didn't know until the flood came, and took them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.

40 Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and one will be left;

41 two women grinding at the mill, one will be taken and one will be left.

Looks to me like being "taken" in this context means "to die"--not to be "raptured".