I thought I’d take this opporitunity to share the fake news story about a woman who thought the rapture was at hand after seeing helium-filled blow-up dolls floating skywards…
From Snopes:
Oh lordy, how sad. vanilla, don’t you pull something like that, 'mkay? Believe in the Rapture all you like, but if you think it might be starting, please don’t try to help Jesus out by jumping off a high or moving object! We need intelligent and reasonable people like you around for as long as we can keep you. 
Oh yes I can prove it. I don’t even need anything but the ability to actually read what is written, and I can do that just fine with a good English translation (it’s not like I have to go back to the original Greek.) I suggest getting a copy of Craig G. Hill’s In God’s Time and reading the article in the appendix, entitled “Not Left Behind.”
And they’re massively, massively wrong. Daniel was written during the reign of Antiochus IV probably around 167 or 166 BC. This can be seen within the text and corralates nicely with other sources around the time, mostly 1 Maccabees. Revelation is dated to somewhere between AD 54 and AD 96, due to various data and references by John of Patmos inside the text. Some references appear to suggest Nero and some Domatin. In any case, both are meant for a specific audience in a specific time, like all the other apocalyptic literature. 4 Ezra (which is inside 2 Esdras) or the apocalypses written in the names of figures like Adam or Abraham or Enoch. Daniel is pseudonymous as well. They are not supposed to be accurate predictions thousands of years later. Quite frankly, I don’t understand fundamentalists, because they spend more time and go into more contortions defending their literalism and that every word is correct, even the stuff that appears to conflict with other stuff, than the time it would take to do a far more useful biblical study which would not only be true and accurate to the text and the time the texts were written but would actually be more useful in being able to see what the bible says to a Christian today.
Can someone please help me out here? Diogenes or Polycarp perhaps?
Oh man, that’s hysterical. I wish I was a good enough writer to have made that one when I was trying to make and spread a fake urban legend…
I remember that thread when you said you want to make up an urban legend!
How did that work out?
The LIBRARY?
On a SUNDAY?.
Wow, your county budget must be having a kick-ass year.
I don’t know where vanilla calls home, but our library here in Topeka stays open on Sunday. Pretty damned decent library too. The facility is nearly brand new.
Complete failure. I tried a couple, and they not only didn’t spread, one of them could have been construed as a slam against an actual store. I tried very hard to be ethical, but in some of the few discussions about the UL (in the places I planted it) they thought it was an attempt to slur a business. I stupidly made up a fictional store name that was pretty close to a real store. Good thing that one didn’t spread.
I’ll try again, if I can think of a decent sounding one that seems clear of any ethical problems.
I call a suburb of Cleveland Ohio home.
Heck, the Lakewood Ohio library is open til 9 p.m. on Sundays!
12 blow up dolls?
Why 12? Disciples… 
The Jaysons?
Asterion, Rapture Theology comes up in GD at intervals. Here’s one fairly recent thread. The title has harsh language, but to me, rapture theology is a harsh, bitter, cruel theology, filled with lies, including ones such as it’s been around for more than a couple of hundred years and all Christians believe it. To me, it’s repellant and a tool to drive people from Christ. There is little of love or mercy in it, none of the care and respect for outsiders Christ showed in His life and ministry, and a great deal of the cruel, legalistic judgement Christ denounced.
CJ
Hmmm . . . like one of those devious lies God is supposed to send down to sucker people away from “the true path?”
:rolleyes:
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and its quack doesn’t echo . . .
Actually, though, Christian that I am, I’d place the blame on man, not God. People make up and believe lies like this for all sorts of reasons, perhaps to improve their own reputation for holiness and knowing God’s special message, perhaps to increase their own power, if only over their own followers. After all, if a deviation from the One Truth as revealed by Pastor So-and-so means you’ll suffer unbelievable torment for all eternity, you have a pretty strong incentive to do and believe what he says.
It seems to me there are also some people who aren’t happy to get into heaven unless a certain number of people get sent to hell. I’m still working on the ratio of how many people have to go to hell for them to be happy in heaven, mostly because I’m not sure of what assumptions they’re using. I mean, the majority of the people in the world aren’t Christians. Therefore, if they’re figuring in the entire population of the world, the ration of people going to heaven versus people going to hell is well below 1:1. On the other hand, if they’re figuring on the United States only, if we take that 80% Christian figure which got bandied about earlier, perhaps a 4:1 heaven to hell ratios all right. If they’re figuring only on people they know or people in their town, we may well be talking 95% or even 99% Christian, aka “everyone in town except old Joe the Atheist who had a falling out with the preacher” in which case, it might be as high as 99:1 heaven to hell. Nevertheless, apparently, in order for some people to be happy in heaven, they have to believe in the suffering of others, even if it’s only the unjust, unSaved, and otherwise worthless types. :rolleyes:
CJ
Actually, Siege, it’s a British-Isles invention. Welsh Baptist minister Morgan Edwards seems to have first developed the idea of an interval between the Rapture & the Return of Christ (he had the interval at 3 1/2 years for the reign
of AntiChrist). He presented it as a novel theory in a college paper around the 1750s, but its unknown if he ever preached it when he became a pastor in colonial America.
1830’s Britain though really saw PreTrib Rapturism launch out as Presbyterian proto-charismatic Edward Irving’s congregation had members who promoted it, Scottish proto-charismatic teenage girl Margaret MacDonald had an extended vision which did the same, while Irish-born Anglican priest turned Plymouth Brethren theologian John Nelson Darby really worked out the intricacies of Dispensationalist theology (including the “seven year Tribulation” as the unfulfilled "70th Week of Daniel 9).
Following the withdrawal of American forces from Southeast Asia in the early '70’s, the Khmer Rouge, hardline Stalinists under the leadership of Pol Pot, came to power in Cambodia and immediately instituted a massive “reform” program which involved herding almost the entire population of Cambodia into the countryside where they lived in crude camps and villages. The conditions of the camps and villages were horrible by any reasonable and humane standard, and inmates were subject to arbitrary torture and execution. The slightest ideological deviation could be grounds for death. Executions were often done with axes or blunt instruments to save ammunition. Estimates of the dead range from 800,000 to 3,300,000. Mao’s China and Stalin’s Russia would also be excellent examples of societies gone brutally insane. Granted, Chick’s vision of a totalitarion future is wacko, but there are historical precedents for entire societies becoming virtual slaughterhouses.
Here’s the whole of the relevant passage-
II Thessalonians 2:9-11
9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. 11 Therefore God sends them a strong delusion, so that they may believe what is false, 12 in order that all may be condemned who did not believe the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness.
The passage speaks of the Man of Sin/Son of Perdition/Lawless One’s (aka AntiChrist) rise to power and defeat by Jesus. Paul notes in v 10 that the deception will come to those “who refuse to love the truth and so be saved”, adding in v 12 that they not only disbelieved the truth but “had pleasure in unrighteousness”.
So this is the order, these people refusing to accept the Truth of Christ’s Gospel
then get from God exactly what they want and deserve- a delusion & a false messiah they will believe.
Btw, I believe this could well apply to the first century AD, when those who opposed the Gospel got the Herods & the Annas-family Priesthood & Nero Caesar & various other false prophets & messianic pretenders to fall behind.
We can look into the past century, when the Russians rejected the social democratic reforms of the Kerensky government and thus got the Bolsheviks, or when the Germans ultimately rejected the Weimar democracy and thus got the Nazis. Thomas Jefferson has been quoted (accurately?) as saying that people get the government they deserve. Paul anticipates this by saying that if people reject the Truth, God’s gonna give them the Lie they want.
(Btw, a Hebraic view that arises in similar OT passages is that, in allowing something to happed, God ordains it to happen. Whether God allows a bad thing or causes a bad thing wasn’t a big debate among the Hebrews- the real issue is that we are responsible for our choices & He is responsible to redeem the whole mess.)
Exactly.
Thank you!
Who are these straw-christians who won’t e happy unless people are in Hell?
Have I seen them on this board? Any quotes?
Guess not. 
I dunno. The Chikites seem to exude a certain perverse pleasure in having the non Christian’s getting their comeuppance. I mean most of them, the most vocal, tend to go up in flames, get shot, or die painfully and then get taunted by the Big faceless guy in the chair TM before getting tossed into the lake.
On a strictly personal level I have talked to a few folks who seem to talk more about how the non believers will get theirs rather than talking about the word itself.
It reminded me of those type of people (mostly children and nutters) that sit in their homes fantasizing about how anyone who slighted them or rejected them will one day rue the day.
Oh by the by Vanilla, don’t you find the idea that God would be actively decieving those who didn’t believe in him just to put the final nail in their “soul coffins” a wee bit disturbing . I mean if there is choice wouldn’t he wish for us to make the correct one rather than making sure that we don’t?
See above what FriarTed wrote.