With all due respect, gobear, I have to say, anilla certainly does NOT ignore the commandment to love her enemies, her neighbors, and turn the other cheek. From what I’ve seen of her, she’s not like that. But I do agree with you on the rest.
gobear: I’ve never read any LeftBehind books.
I don’t read fiction.
I’ve gotten the “end-times” scenarios from Hal Lindsey and many, many other authors.
It does seem unusual that Israel would go back to animal sacrifices, not to mention there certainly would be a holy war if the temple went back up again.
My point, since I don’t think I made it very well, is that I support Israel becasue i beleive the Jews are God’s chosen people.
I didn’t say i supported them doing whatever the heck they want to, re: Palenstinians.
Also, the Bible says God will save and bless Israel, so thats why i support them.
Well, by “you people,” I meant fundies in general, but I will exclude Vanilla from my characterization of them.
Hal Lindsey’s full of crap, too. In “The Late Great Planet Earth,” he said, among other things, that Communist Russia would attack Israel and provoke WWIII before the year 2000. It’s 2002, Russia isn’t communist, Arabs are more dangerous to Israel than commies, and no WWIII yet.
This whole Rapture/Tribulation nonsense was cobbled up by a British theologian, John Nelson Darby. It’s just one man’s fantasy about the end of the world, and it is about as worthwhile as Mayan prophecies that the world will end in 2012.
There will be no Rapture, no Tribulation, no End Times, at least until the sun goes white dwarf in about 5 billion years.
Darby was Irish.
Serves me right for getting my cites from PBS, I guess.
would have been easy for Darby to say;
at least Sister Whoseherface pronounced the Greek letter correctly.
I’ve got no idea about the liturature that you mention here with all the stories and predictions. But I will say this;
Yes modern Judaism could reistablish the Temple and its rituals. This would not be altering religious sensibilites beyond recognition. I would recognise them quite easily from what I read in the Torah and the Siddur, our prayer book.
And as far as a bloody crusade against the Jews, well we’ve seen that movie before. This wouldn’t be a major departure from contemporary reality or history as we know it.
I’m not saying that such a development wouldn’t be a revolution.
I’m not saying that it wouldn’t be a dramatic change. But it wouldn’t be as dramatic as you make it out to be. Your terminology “completely different” and “altered unrecognizably” are overstatements.
If you haven’t read the series, then you don’t know what you’re talking about.
You miss the point. The series depicts the Dome of the Rock being dismantled and the Temple rebuilt…and the Muslims do nothing! Is that realistic? If al-Aqsa Mosue were destroyed, the Muslims would slaughter Jews left and right, not just sit idly by, as the Left Behind books show.
You mean they wouldn’t just accept the Fundy Christians’ explanations, weep for praying to the wrong god all these years, and convert immediately to Christianity? Are you calling Jack Chick a liar?
RE-The Temple
I believe that there are some sects of Judaism that still teach how to properly sacrifice animals so that they’ll be ready when the Temple is rebuilt. Many scholars hold that the only reason Jews stopped sacrificing animals is that it is permitted only in those areas designated by God. I can remember two off the top of my head-Mount whatitsname where Abraham was going to kill Isaac but sacrificed a ram instead(nobody can be sure where this is) and the Temple-which doesn’t exist at the moment.
Re-Eschatology
I’m doing research on the phoneme “go”. I suspect it means leopard in some language or another. Bear is at the end, or foot, of the screen name. Thus Gobear is … the beast of the apocalypse! Which means the mark of the beast is…an NRA membership card? A tatoo saying “AOL SUCKS!” or wait-the mark of the beast is Gobear’s sig line!
Ah, well my sig line is definitely in line with being the anti-Christ–what’s scary is that my first name, middle name and last name have six letters each!
Ah, well my sig line is definitely in line with being the anti-Christ–what’s scary is that my first name and last name have six letters each, but my middle name has only five-665, so I must be the Neighbor of the Beast.
**
Bingo, DocCathode! And to make it even simpler, Jewish tradition teaches that those two places are one and the same.
As for slaughtering of animals; the slaughter of cattle for sacrifices is exactly the same as the slaughter of cattle for non-sacrifices.
Zev Steinhardt
Well, jeez gobear - which is it? 
( Just not quite quick enough with that stop button, eh? “Did I get it in time? I think so. Hell, it’s still a good joke even with only five. I’ll just post it that way. I think I stopped it in time.” )
Best laugh I’ve had today - Seriously, thanks :D.
- Tamerlane
thank you, gobear and uinastasia .
But, what I was saying is i support Israel because the Bible says they are God’s people, not becasue of any end-times beliefs.
D’oh! Sorry about that.
(I’m sick-please go easy on me!)
I don’t think your motivations are in doubt. As I said before, some people act like your friends because they really are.
But, International Christian Embassy (I refuse to use ICE as an acronym in a non-Neuromancer thread) is no friend to the Jews or Israel.
They just want the Jews to play the role laid out in Revelations.
BTW-For more information on end-times prophecy and the Book Of Revelations check out Apocalypse Wow! by James Finn Garner
Well, in that case, it isn’t the Muslims you’ll have to worry about if the Temple is rebuilt–it’s PETA! 
Now THAT is a scary thought…
Among Calvinist & Puritan thinkers since the 1600s, there was another theory which did not require the same sort of Apocalyptic Scenario as
PreTrib PreMillenialism. The idea was that Christians should favor the Jews’s regathering into the land of Israel to create a Jewish nation so that when God’s Judgement comes upon the dual AntiChrists of the Papacy & Islam and His Blessings shower on Reformed Christian peoples, the Jews will be moved by the Holy Spirit to examine & turn to Jesus as Messiah then resulting in a major spiritual outpouring in which significant populations of all humanity turn to the Christian faith
at which point either
AntiChrist forces wage a last desperate war against the Christianizing world that concludes with Jesus’ return
(the Non-Millenial view)
or
they build Christian societies that endure for centuries after which the above-mentioned scenario happens (the Post-Millenial view)
I will grant most US Protty C’tians who are ardently pro-Israel probably do hold to the PreTrib PreMil scenario represented in the LEFT BEHIND series. I used to believe that view but I now think there
may well be some validity in the above (without the pro-Calvinist, anti-Catholic edge).