Have you heard the one about how now resigned environmentalist Van Jones told Obama he had to move the dreaded “Welcome Back to School” speech from the original Wed. Sept. 9th date, because of concerns about the environmental impact of the massive cleaning bills necessary to mop up after all those evangelicals crap a brick sweating out the Rapture because the Devil himself will be speaking directly to their children on 9/9/9, WHICH upside down is 666, or the mark of the beast, which proves Obama is the anti-Christ just like they’d been warning us about? And who was going to take care of their pets when they were gone?
Yeah, I didn’t think it was funny either.
But at least one atheist group did, as Tara Lohan reported 9/02/09 on Alternet.org, an organization calling itself Earthbound Pets has offered to take care of Raptured Christians’ pets if the second coming came to past. With this being the day that so many the hard core Evangelical Christians have been looking forward to, to have their literally “holier-than the-rest of our” behinds raptured on out of here up to heaven to sit among the chosen 144,000 who sit on the right hand of God and get to hang with the J-man himself while the whole world roils in the torments brought by the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and so on.
Insignificant, comic, glorious or absolutely terrifying depending on where you stand in the sliding scale from seriously Christian to seriously non-Christian, today, 9/09/09 is one of the most horrifying days for some true believers, certainly the worst since 6/06/06, when the gods unleashed that horror of horrors, the remake of The Omen and it was so scary it was in fact a bomb.
I’m not surprised if you haven’t kept up on the latest Revelationist lore; but some people do. Some folks take this more seriously than the Super Bowl and are expecting a hell of a light show. Maybe you personally are not a Revelationist, but you shouldn’t ignore the fact that hundreds of millions of people around the world are living their lives expecting that the Beast, the anti-Christ and the Whore of Babylon are soon to be their future dominatrix. Talk about making it hurt so good.
So, if you are not one of the true believers who thinks that today is the day that Obama is going to detonate the world and your little pumpkin patch is among the 144,000 most earnest, then joke lightly on your Christian brethren today, my fellow Americans, you will have no idea of the terror some of our fellow citizens might be feeling all day today. There are so many things to fear.
Like the number 144,000, a darn small eye of a needle to shove a rich man through. Once upon a time, i.e. 1st century AD Judea, 144,000 of the most devout Christians was somewhat selective but a fairly encompassing number of the number of potentially anointed. You could probably even get away with being somewhat of a slack-tivist martyr and still find a ticket in coach. Nowadays, there are something like two point two billion folks around the world who claim to be Christians all competing for a berth in steerage when the Rapture Express lifts off. The math breaks down to only one out of every 15,277.8 Christians will get a golden ticket. It’s enough to have kept the fans of LaHaye and Jenkins up all night planning how to decorate their little piece of heaven when their kingdom comes. And, apparently wondering who will take care of their pets.
Some people will say, ‘why do I pick on these poor people, just trying to practice their religion? Why make it about religion?’ My answer is, of course, I never would want to tease about somebody’s religion. Except, of course, when that religion wants me dead.
But like other vengeful gods throughout history, the Christian god has been used to brutalize the multitudes and the god of Revelations intends to throw a whole bunch of us into a lake of fire. This is how he will show his brotherly love for mankind. Percentage wise, none of us have more than a .0000020571% chance of making it to heaven. That’s some pretty slim odds even for Vegas casinos, even when the fix is in. Sounds like the kind of guy our US government leaders should work against if they were indeed looking out for the people. But sad to say that is rarely the case.
Every since the founding deists created the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution; some Christians have been working on tweaking the rules so they can gain more power. It must be the ones unfamiliar with the passage about the meek inheriting the earth.
In recent history, many of our American Christian religious and political leaders have been openly Revelationist, believing that god’s will is that they should do all in their power to bring about the biblical Armageddon. Two of the most notable would be Billy Graham and his acolyte George Bush. In comparison to destroying the entire planet for the sake of a population the size of Gilbert (though perhaps with better malls), it makes Jeremiah Wright’s little “Goddamn America” dance seem downright silly.
Unless of course you believe you are one of the chosen, one of the very, very few to be chosen. If you are one of those elite then everyone else is expendable, right? In America alone that’s something like three hundred million eight hundred and fifty-six thousands Americans killed, making their fantasized for 9/09/09 something like 102,285.333 times worse than the real world 9/11. So many terrifying thoughts shredding the nerves of poor Christians as they try making their way through 9/09/09 today, which is indeed 666 … if your sense of the whole world is upside down. Like:
What if they’re the ones driving when the Rapture hits and their cars wreck and kill others or even their family. Can lawyers get a hold of the area code for heaven? What if you get Raptured, but your honey does not? Can you borrow one of a Moslem martyrs’ forty-nine virgins? What if you get to heaven and the only other family member that gets there is that one uncle you always hated and he wants to pal around? What if the rest of your family goes, or that annoyingly overfriendly Buddhist down the street is actually the good soul that gets Raptured and it turns out you weren’t nearly as holy as you thought?
And don’t forget the ever pressing issues of whose going to feed Fido and clean the cat box?
But most of all the question that will torment some Christians today is the thought that has terrified Christians for Millennia: what if the whole thing’s just wrong and you and all you devout ancestors have been duped and used as tools? As another foretold date comes (and hopefully) goes unfulfilled, many Christians may have their entire worldview shaken today and have to face up to a different Revelation: the Copernican one—that they and their god are not the center of the universe.
Which makes them only about five hundred years behind the times.
Let’s pray they hurry and catch up.
--mikel weisser writes from the left coast of AZ.
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