The Rapture is Crapture (Part 1)

[samhsarah]

by Tony Hendra

Sorry, Jerry, sorry Pat. No James, Tony, Tom - and especially not you George - you're not going to be snatched up bodily to Heaven, nekkid as the day you were born, your shriveled grey Republican asses extracted by the Lord from your 1000-dollar suits, leaving them in a puddle on the drivers seat of your SUV or the pulpit of your mega-church.

You're not the elect, the just or even, we suspect, the saved, who because of your incomparable virtue will be whisked out of harms way by the aforementioned Lord when he comes to wreak genocidal revenge on billions of us unelect, unjust and unsaved. You're the latest in a millennia-long line of money-grubbing power-hungry hypocrites and hucksters who offer the lonely, threatened, frustrated, and as always, those with a limited supply of marbles, a lovely lie. Not only are they saved but those they hate, fear, envy and blame are damned! Not only will they be snatched up to heaven way ahead of schedule, but - A Special Final Days offer! - they DON'T HAVE TO DIE! That's the beauty part of the Rapture, a new American twist on an old, old Euro-scam: no massive heart attack, no terminal cancer, no being crushed by a truck on I-95. You're snatched up to heaven just the way you are.

(Though judging by my current book tour through the Bible Belt the Lord's going to get a hernia snatching up some of those Baptist babes).

The Rapture is an all-American, jumbo-colossal, Southern-style end-times racket. (Super-save me Jesus!) It makes all previous religious opiates look like Sominex.

more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-hendra/the-rapture-is-crapture-_b_19606.html

[CrazyOrangeCat]

1. Thanks for this.

Excellent stuff.

[Left Below]

2. I remember speed-surfing the TV wasteland and listening to

some comfy GOP ladies discussing the Rapture fantasy. Their concern was whether or not their fake tits would be raptured up with them when it was time.

Really soulful women..... not.

[DainBramaged]

4. Imagine their suprize if true, they went up flat chested

before being cast into an eternal drowning pool of silicone.

[samhsarah]

6. I hate that I even have to ask this, but....

Were they serious?:eyes:

[patrice]

3. About those "with a limited supply of marbles" . . .

I frequently get the impression that many of those who get on the media stage and push "family values" or whatever spiritual "truth" are people who relatively recently gave little or no attention to questions of morality and ethics. Compared to many of us who have been thinking and trying to understand our spirituality almost all of our lives, what we've got here are people who are following a sort of fad, with little or no experience in trying to develop their understanding of Life's many variations. They deliver judgements based on next to nothing more than their opinions.

[LouisianaLiberal]

7. Very well put.

NT

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. Are there Walmarts in Heaven?

The ultimate Big Box.

[Warpy]

9. Fundy heaven IS Walmart

and their carts are bottomless, eternity spent walking the aisles and picking out play-pretties on a limitless credit card.

[megatherium]

13. Fundy religion is to religion what high fructose corn sweetener is to

nutrition. We live in an artificial country, we eat and drink artificial foods and beverages, while the farm animals from which these are produced live out their brief, tortured lives in huge warehouses being fed corn products and animal byproducts. Likewise, the fundies go to their huge megachurches, that look like airport concourses inside; listening to glossy sermons and soft-rock praise bands, and reading the Left Behind series -- while the suffering in this country, and the suffering we inflict on countries we are taught to hate, goes unanswered.

[glitch]

8. OMG this is hilarious. K & R for Super-Save Me Jesus! alone. nt

[Kablooie]

10. Don't they realize the rapture has already happened?

It was Jim Jones and his koolaid. They have been saved, the rest of us are left here to suffer for eternity.

[knitter4democracy]

11. They don't understand that it's a new, bad theology.

It's preached like it's the Truth, and they're given very carefully chosen verses. I honestly thought it was true until I started reading more and finally found a good book that ripped it apart, bit by bit, written by an Eastern Orthodox theologian.

What bothers me more is the Prosperity Theology going all around the churches (mostly the evangelicals and Pentecostals, from my experience). That's just a bunch of crap.

[Demeter]

12. A Killer Article--It Continues:

The world's been ending ever since the Book of Revelation was penned, supposedly by the apostle John but more likely by some 1st century acid-casualty who'd eaten too much moldy bread. The Rapture however is new - dreamed up by one John Nelson Darby, an Irish lawyer turned Anglican priest, in the 1830s. His loopy biblical interpretations divide all history into seven ages or dispensations and declare - surprise surprise! - that Jesus' precepts are inoperative until he returns. This will be heralded by...the Rapture.

Darby was defrocked by the Anglican Church and most of his pals regarded him as deranged. But his ravings spread like kudzu in the fertile soil of 19th century American evangelical fundamentalism. A century and a half later the Rapture is taken as literal truth according to reliable estimates - eg Kevin Phillips - by a third of the nation, who, needless to say, will be the only Rapturees.

SO, NO NEED TO ACT LIKE A CHRISTIAN UNTIL AFTER IT'S ALL OVER--THAT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING!

[LisaLynne]

16. Excellent point.

It's always been amazing to me how people don't realize how people have ALWAYS thought the world was about to end. I suppose it's some reaction to our own impending deaths combined with our need to feel that once our life is over, what else could possibly follow? I mean, if we're going to die in 50 years or less, shouldn't the world just end, too? What would be the point of it going on without us? :)

[Hissyspit]

14. Tony Hendra of "This Is Spinal Tap" fame.

Hee.

[maxsolomon]

15. there is nothing new under the sun

http://www.biblio.com/books/24947224.html

the rapture has been coming for a 1000 years, and its no closer today than before.