The Dark Age Restored
Any day now, many Americans hope and believe, the Lord of Hosts will cleanse the world with fire and brimstone and reward His Elect with eternal life. For some believers, this joyful purging of the wicked will begin with a sudden (or "rapturous") reunion of the righteous with their King and Saviour "in the air" (I Thessalonians 4.16). Others are not quite so certain of the teleportation but are equally convinced that Judgement Day is imminent and are making sure they are on side with Jesus before that terrifying but glorious apocalypse.
Gone is the old "postmillenarian" idea that human endeavour could create the heavenly kingdom here on earth and that, after a thousand years of Christian goodness, only then Christ would return to rule a perfect world. That dangerously socialistic Christianity, popular from the 17th to the early 20th century, has no place in the winner-take-all society of the early 21st century. Rather, we are in a "premillenarian age" in which the rough stuff comes first. Satan is already loose in the world and the showdown is just around the corner.
Not since the age of the crusades, which began when Pope Urban II goaded the barbarous Franks into invading the more civilized Muslim world, has global geopolitics so effectively intertwined Christianity's claims to an exclusive and universal salvation with a naked grab for global resources. Then, it was "the riches of the east"; today, it is oil. Chillingly, all the elements that characterised the earlier Dark Age have their 21st century echo in a nouveau Catholicism: apocalyptic foreboding, homage to Jerusalem, holy war, prophesy, faith healing and the whole medieval circus of religious deceit. Not for centuries has a faith-based agenda so closely meshed with political imperatives.
Welcome to a Brave New Jesus World.
More here (long article):
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/endtime.html
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