DOOMSDAY-The Covid-19 episode has prompted me to explore the concept of doomsday from a scientific and philosophical viewpoint. During the last thirty to forty years of recent memory, I suspect I have heard suggestions of imminent doomsday hundreds, maybe thousands of times. Each and every natural disaster has brought the Armageddon predictors out of hiding a-likened to termites swarming out of a piece of rotten wood.
Just who are these soothsayers anyhow? In my experience they are always preachers who cling to each and every word of the bible, both Old and New Testaments. So what prompts those predictions made with such absolute certainty and directly in the face of total erroneousness of all such previous predictions? My observations tell me the prompts are twofold—a brainwashed audience and a cunning predictor.
I remember well several years ago, our local schools were closed on a certain day because someone had predicted a major earthquake along the New Madrid Fault line—such was the certainty of the prediction. Even I considered there was nothing to lose by clamping a vise-grip tool onto the turn-off valve of the natural gas supply to my house—its still there—may come in handy some day, but not by prediction. Of course, no earthquake occurred—everyone was so relieved. As I recall, he wasn’t even a preacher—a real soothsayer who was ‘super-believable’ however. Nostradamus was ‘alive and well’ at that time.
So why should millions of people have the wits scared out of them because of the prediction of some idiot with no scientific data. Unless you just crawled from under a rock, everyone who lives along the New Madrid Fault is keenly aware of the major quakes of 1811-12 which, in addition to changing dramatically the flow-path of the Mississippi river, also formed Reelfoot Lake in northwest Tennessee, and Murphy’s Pond in northeast Hickman county , Kentucky. Scientists tell us, that the likelihood of another major quake(s) is a certainty, the exact date cannot be predicted—not as of now, at least.
So what gives most of those prognosticators the belief that they are interpreting world events in appropriate terms?—the ‘absolute certainty’ of God’s inerrant word, the Bible, of course.
Now let’s examine that philosophy from just ‘simpleminded logic’. If the Bible truly is the absolute inerrant word of God, then how can all those predictions be wrong? The answer to that very simple question, I believe, has a very simple answer. Either God is stupid and ignorant and doesn’t know what he’s doing or saying, or the biblical interpreters are ignorant and stupid and don’t ‘have a clue’—far be it from me to call God stupid and ignorant. You are now free to decide which it is—I’ve already decided.
All one has to do is investigate a teensy-weensy bit to understand that the bible was written, rearranged and rewritten dozens, maybe hundreds of times by people who ‘had an axe to grind’. They were all astrologers at heart—the celestial bodies controlled everything—even the ‘star of Bethlehem’ led the astrologers (magi, wise men) to King Herod in search of baby Jesus. That made a great story for those who knew that the ‘earth was flat’, who knew that the earth was the ‘center of the universe, who knew that God was a grizzled old man sitting in the clouds ready and willing to ‘crack the whip’ on anybody or anything that crossed him. They had absolutely no idea of science which is knowledge, which is truth.
But that didn’t stop the money-changers—the fleecing must go on and ‘go on’ it did and does. Jesus tried to stop it—he was a ‘total failure’—they hung him on a tree—and the fleecing beat goes on, and on, and on.
All of that ‘fleecing’ comes in the form of religion.
So what is the truth? Knowledgeable scientists tell us that habitability of earth will likely cease in ten million years—that, of course, assumes that mankind doesn’t kill everything before then. The earth itself will come to a planetary demise in about 7.5 billion years when it is adsorbed by an ever expanding sun (red giant). In the meantime, natural disasters of all sorts and kinds will occur—any one of them could potentially ‘wipe out life on earth’ but not likely and certainly not as the result of any prediction from the bible.
Guess who is continually making those predictions and interpretations—the ‘money-changers, of course. Some of them even fall into the category of snake-handlers—you be the judge.
If you’d like a more complete explanation of these and many, many, more points, you might try reading my two little books, Wilderness Cry, and Peace in Spirituality.
906242_Press Release for Wilderness Cry
Press Release for Peace in Spiritiality
ESATER-What a glorious day—so most of us have been taught to think and believe. So, what’s so glorious about Easter? If someone ask you to explain the significance of Easter, what would you tell them?—would you have a definitive answer? I truly would like to hear a few of those answers.
When Jesus began speaking and teaching of an ‘all loving God’, the Jews mind-set just was not ready nor capable of accepting such a philosophy. Jesus was quite aware of their attitude—he recognized that his task was severe, but he accepted the challenge. Knowing full well that his message would not be well accepted by the Jewish hierarchy, Jesus stayed in the shadows trying desperately to educate his apostles and followers to his ‘new commandments of love’—God and neighbor. It seems very doubtful that he ever succeeded—-We’ll never know.
But what about the ‘Resurrection’?—Jesus had told his followers he ‘first had to die’. In their greed and exclusionary demeanor, they had to have a recreation of Paradise and they had to have it now. They could see plainly that Jesus was dead—-he had to come right back to finish the job. That meant he had to ‘raise from the dead’ and ‘ascend into heaven’—the ‘second coming ‘ was both mandatory and immanent. Therein lies Paul’s injunction to his followers to ‘abandon their usual lifestyles of marriage, family, children, etc.; put on a holy face and prepare for Jesus immanent return—maybe tomorrow’ (paraphrased).
What did happen is this—through his teaching and death, Jesus ‘turned on the lights of God’s truth and love’. He became the Christ—the light of the universe. He demonstrated for all to see the perfect love of God.
What I see in all of this rationalizing is the continued attempt (and I might add a successful attempt) to meld Judaism with Jesus—that is the Church which eventuated. But what did Jesus say? I recall him saying ‘I’ll give you two commandments. You shall love your God with your all and you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ (paraphrased). In fact, he seemed to despise rituals and religion. He said the love of God is personal and not based on hierarchies and buildings. He attempted to tell his biased comrades that God was in everything and that everything was/is in God—seemingly, they didn’t comprehend (we’ll never really know for sure whether or not they did, so distorted and corrupted is the written word we have).
Now lets get to the nitty-gritty. The Jews and early Christians were ignorant but they weren’t stupid They knew no science but they knew how to fleece and control each other—in fact they were experts—they could bargain with God down to the last penny. I recall Jesus ‘calling them out’ for it—they killed him. Maybe that’s the reason Jesus has never gotten his ‘just due’ from religion. They didn’t know much—the earth was flat, and teetered on five crooked, wobbly legs (it was always in danger of falling into the netherworld below—everyone knew that). The sun, moon and stars controlled pretty much everything—so they thought. The religion they finally formulated (an extension of Judaism) put them in absolute control enforced by the Roman army.
LIMBO-You know what limbo means—of course you do—you’ve probably used that word hundreds of times. It means hanging on the edge, awaiting a decision from someone else—unable to make a move or a decision until a certain question is resolved etc. But do you know what it means in religious terms?—I don’t recall hearing that term used from any pulpit in the Catholic Church for fifty years. But that was not always the case.
HELL-FIRE AND DAMNATION—how many times have you heard those predictions and where did those dire proclamations come from—well from your preacher, of course—where else? Could you have ‘guessed’ it on your own?—possibly, but not likely. It is very likely that no rational person, realizing that he/she had been born into a world, not of its chosing could ever imagine of such. So where did such ideas come from? Well, we have to go to the bowels of religion to find that answer. From the earliest days of recorded history, mankind has ‘imagined’ a ‘higher power’ who exerted control over their lives. Some saw that power in the wind, others in the water, some in the sun, others in the moon.
The poor peasants would bring their ‘imperfect offerings’ and the High Priest would take them for little barter. In exchange, they had to pay the High Priest a ‘pretty penny’ for his ‘prefect offering’, whilst he literally ‘stole’ their hard earned offerings. Jesus took note of that—in addition, he took great exception to that practice. He became so irate as to overturn their money-changing tables and called them out as hypocrites—that, among other things, got him killed—-they hung him on a tree for all the world to see. Thank God for Jesus.
WILDERNESS CRY by Hilary L Hunt MD 