Um, if Jesus himself didn’t know when it was going to happen, how can Hagee claim he knows, without being laughed at?

I wonder if he’ll write a book about how gays end the world.Gasp! Jerry and Joe are in lover!??!?!? *entire human race head asplode* :p weird thing is I might actually read it if it actually happened like that.

I need to write a series of novels. They’ll be called, in order, “The End of the World is Coming Soon!”, “Prepare Yourselves For the End of Days”, “The Lord Will Return In the Blink of An Eye”, “Carrot And The Stick”, and finally a 12 book series titled “Financial Security Until I Die”.

I’ll have you godless ingrates know I’m very a-scared of the homo storm! Humph! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTPytutP3ZY

Transpose two letters in “Daniel” and you get “Denial”. HMMMMM! (as John Hagee likes to say whenever he thinks he’s cleverly scored a point against Teh Eebil Lib-rul Seckewlur Hewmunnists).

 So if the end began 15 years ago, the countdown has begun, we’re two years past the two-minute warning and are now living in “Earth’s Final Moments,” then why does John Hagee need an “heir apparent”?  

I think an even better question is, why does any pastor have an “heir apparent”? There is nothing in the parts of the Bible these folks claim to follow that indicates that ministerial work should in any sense be an inherited position. I consider a pastor having an  “heir apparent” to be high on the list of ways you know that you should run, not walk, away from that pastor/church. 

No man on man love unless it’s man on mirror, so sayeth the Lord.

Isn’t there also an issue of “soon” being measured against the timeframe from which the prophecy started?

So, we’re 2000 years later and “soon” in that setting would be a couple hundred years.  The longer it takes, the longer “soon” becomes.

By the way, didn’t Jesus say that some he spoke to wouldn’t die before the endtimes happened?

You know, I never cease to be amazed at the chutzpah of these PMD hucksters. Just avoid fixing dates on things and you can ‘raise the alarm’ repeatedly over some imagined major event for years on end.

I wonder if the fact that many people know this whole PMD Rapture thing is a complete fraud is why they’re so resistant about the issue of climate change.

Superficially, the way people describe the imminence of such events is actually kinda similar, and so I think some peoples’ ingrained cynicism about one demonstrably doctrinally questionable interpretation of a possible supernaturalistic event is improperly translated over to being cynical about a scientifically researched and peer reviewed phenomenon which is entirely physical in origin.

I’ve also just realized that there’s even an accidental similarity in the way the broad brushstrokes of Revelation are fairly easily read, but the exact details are fuzzy because of multiple interpretations (i.e. in the 1970s the WorldWide Church of God attributed many of the effects in Revelation to the prophesied use of biological and nuclear weapons, which made sense in the context of the tensions of the Cold War; you can see in Left Behind that L&J take a more… astronomical approach to the origins of things like Wormwood – ditto the Christ Clone, actually).

You can see that in the case of climate change the broad brushstrokes of the shifts we expect to see are pretty evident, but the details (will this or that species die out more quickly? Will this or that river dry up? Will this or that town be flooded out?) are as yet unclear simply due to inherent uncertainties in the models predicting the effects of climate change.

So I think it’s unfortunate that people on the political right who know the kind of PMD pabulum LaHaye and his ilk peddle for millions of their political fellow travellers is basically hokum and a load of bunk, clearly think that responsible scientists who aren’t in it to make $$$$$ are conducting the same basic scam and are thus impeding the wheels of progress in combating a disaster of much more likely origin than the words written by someone two millennia ago when he was trashing the Roman Empire.

Is this the guy that swore the world would end a couple of weeks ago? I swear I can’t tell these jackoffs apart anymore.
(Oh, wait, I googled him and he’s the paranoid, bigoted hypocrite. No, the other one. No, the other other one. No, the… forget it.)

 Isn’t there also an issue of “soon” being measured against the timeframe from which the prophecy started?  

There’s also the issue of “soon” being measured by the standards of the one running the clock. Supposedly God’s sense of time is quite different from ours, as one would expect of a being who has always existed. That whole thing about a day being as a thousand years and a thousand years being as a day kind of puts a crimp in the idea that a human can figure out what God considers “soon”.

Unless his father has been misleading us all these years,

No no no no no, his father’s been right all this while. It’s the gays who have been defying god’s will and making sure the apocalypse doesn’t happen. They’re stopping the extinction of the human race and wholesale destruction of the planet! HOW CAN YOU NOT SEE THE EVIL IN THAT!!11!oneoneelebenty!

…

That whole thing about a day being as a thousand years and a thousand
years being as a day kind of puts a crimp in the idea that a human can
figure out what God considers “soon”.

It also torpedoes the entire foundation of Young-Earth Creationists, what with the whole “a day for god being as a day for us” thing they base their entire “guesstimation” on.

By the way, didn’t Jesus say that some he spoke to wouldn’t die before the endtimes happened?

Methelusah ain’t got squat on those guys.

And what is that heir doing preaching a sermon titled “The Coming Generational Storm“? Unless his father has been misleading us all these years, there won’t be any coming generation to experience the perfect storm of gayness that Matthew Hagee warns us is coming.

How did the Evil Gaystorm become a thing?  Did some focus group participant somewhere go “Well, I don’t normally find the statements that gay people will somehow ruin everything by getting married and not being discriminated against convincing, but if you use the word ‘storm’ a lot, it suddenly all becomes really scary!”? 

Jesus doesn’t know the hour or the day, but that doesn’t prevent Hagee from knowing the week.

Clearly.

By the way, didn’t Jesus say that some he spoke to wouldn’t die before the endtimes happened?

It was the trees, man. The trees.

(Do not say this to fundamentalists, if they believe you they’ll start a massive deforestation campaign to hasten the return of Jesus.)

The likely meaning of Hagee’s demagogic term “homosexual agenda” is that gays seek to convert all straight people, starting with children. But what does Hagee mean by “homosexual history”? He might imagine that it starts with a Brokeback encounter between two cavemen.

What is 15 years compared to the massive 6000 year history of the Earth?  Oh, a quarter of a percent.  Actually…that is a surprisingly long time, all things considered.

Jesus says that.NO ONE knows when the world will end, but that he will come as a thief in the night.. No one knows, but loose the arrows of the Lord and pray for the East gate to be repaired and open to bring the world to an end.
1st Thessalonian 5:2 For yourself know perfectly, that the day if the Lord shall so come, as a thief in the night

“Will not stop until their will is pressed on the majority” actually seems pretty accurate, although Hagee probably has a different idea of what “their will” involves than everyone else.

I guess people are becoming tired of using war-imagery, or their audience isn’t reacting as well to the “culture war”, especially as more and more people begin to meet and realize they’re meeting gay people. Putting it as a “storm” means it’s not the case that EVERY gay person is a soldier in the “culture war”, but IS part of the bigger problem.

…yeah that’s all I got.

How did the Evil Gaystorm become a thing?  Did some focus group participant somewhere go “Well, I don’t normally find the statements that gay people will somehow ruin everything by getting married and not being discriminated against convincing, but if you use the word ‘storm’ a lot, it suddenly all becomes really scary!”?

Honestly I think it reflects a shift in their thinking about the situation.  They have surrendered the idea that they can “win” a culture war against the gay and gay-tolerating.  They go to imagery of a storm because a storm is something you cannot fight, cannot beat, cannot push back.  A storm is something that you have to hunker down, batten the hatches, and just weather out until it passes you by.  You do not fight a storm, you just try to survive it.  

I find that thought encouraging.  They know it is the beginning of the end… for them.  

So I think it’s unfortunate that people on the political right who know
the kind of PMD pabulum LaHaye and his ilk peddle for millions of their
political fellow travellers is basically hokum and a load of bunk,

I’m not so sure they DO know the PMD stuff is “basically hokum and a load of bunk.”  I think, instead, they fall into two categories (which probably overlap, but these are what I think are the Big Two camps):

1.  They are generally hopeful that the Rapture/Second Coming will happen in their lifetime.  This can be based on the genuine hope generated by years of being a Christian in which you know the stories of Jesus walking around teaching and healing.  You think, with the benefit of hindsight, “How cool would it have been to be part of that!”  And in that respect, I get it.  How cool would it be to actually be a part of that event!?!

However, there’s also another side to this wherein that hope is a false hope based on fear.  It’s the fear of growing old and dying.  After all, if the Rapture comes while I’m still alive, that’s great.  But if it doesn’t, then I have to deal with living through old age and having my body and mind slowly fall apart.  And if it doesn’t, I also have to deal with wondering if my belief was right.  Rapture = Validation for these people.

2.  They are lazy.  If the Rapture/Second Coming happens in their lifetime, then that means that Jesus takes care of everything.  They don’t have to care for the environment; they are more than happy to misread Gen. 1:26 and focus on dominating creation rather than caring for it.  They don’t have to actually love their neighbors, because Jesus is coming back to pass judgment on those heathens.  They don’t actually have to work to care for the sick, homeless, hungry and imprisoned because Jesus is coming back and “I need to be busy about the work of proclaiming how great he is while reminding all those godless, gay-luvin, liberal heathen how they are going to roast when Jesus comes if they don’t get right with God.”

So they buy into the PMD prophecy stuff hoping to be part of the action while rationalizing why they really can’t be bothered with the other stuff.

But what does Hagee mean by “homosexual history”?

Um . . . Jefferson had a thing for Adams?

“Wish Ugg knew how quit Ogg.”

In any case, the gay storm rhetoric fails because it immediately brings to mind The Weather Girls’ 1982 classic It’s Raining Men, which does not exactly inspire fear of the nefarious gays.

That is a wonky part of scripture. It doesn’t necessarily say that, but I’m damned if I could say what it said. To me, it seems to say that “when the signs of the end times come, the generation that saw them won’t pass away before the end.” Of course, the signs listed were rather vague, and things that happened all the time even before Christ.

Overall, it’s probably not too wise to take what a transtemporal entity says about time too literally. If pressed on why a being that existed before time is taking 2,000 years to do something it said would happen “soon,” it might reply “Why the rush? I just told you about it!”

The theme song for the Gaystorm is totally “It’s Raining Men.”

The person Jesus supposedly said would not die until his return was John the Apostle, the dude responsible for most of the last five books of the Bible. In his errata, I mean, gospel, he calls out this story specifically and corrects his audience. My understanding is that certain portions of the Mormon church still believe John is walking the earth, but I don’t know how widespread that belief is, or how reliable those reports are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcYnRG_9Y14

“God, how long is a million years to you?”
And God said, “A million years is like a minute.”
Then the man asked, “God, how much is a million dollars to you?”
And God said “A million dollars is like a penny.”
The man thought for a moment and asked, “God, will you give me a penny?”
And God said, “In a minute.”

Someone (I believe Harold Camping, of the failed May 21 and Oct. 21 prophecies) claimed that the statement was true at the time, but not now. In other words, the statement says “No one knows the day or the hour…”, rather then “No one will ever know the day or the hour…”, and the present-tense “knows” applied only to 2000 years ago. In the meantime, clever people like himself have been able to figure it out. I don’t know if that’s the argument Hagee makes, however.

OK, I listened to 7 minutes of that sermon before I had to turn it off.  He hadn’t gotten to any of the gay menace stuff yet… he was talking about the “generational storm in the White House.”  He reads a supposedly 300-year old quote by a British historian named Alexander Tytler about democracy dying when people start voting for benefits for themselves from the public treasury.  The quote sounded so suspiciously like modern Republican talking points that I immediately doubted its authenticity. 

I checked both snopes and Wikipedia. Both affirm: it’s a fake.

Trying again to post the snopes link.

 The person Jesus supposedly said would not die until his return was John the Apostle, the dude responsible for most of the last five books of the Bible. In his errata, I mean, gospel, he calls out this story specifically and corrects his audience. My understanding is that certain portions of the Mormon church still believe John is walking the earth, but I don’t know how widespread that belief is, or how reliable those reports are.  

Aren’t there people who believe that John was taken bodily into heaven (like Elijah) and therefore didn’t technically die?

1st Thessalonians 5:2 “For yourself know perfectly, that the day if the Lord shall so come, as a thief in the night…”

Well, sure, but if you’ve got a really good burglar alarm system, with motion-sensor-activated floodlights and all, then you’ll see the thief coming!  So what the Bible is saying here is…

@ Lori, John has TONS of legends about him. If someone told me that there’s a story in which John the apostle is embodied in the modern age in the form of Panthro, I would believe that some splinter group, somewhere, actually believes that. That specific legend you mention I’ve heard before, and it’s usually based on John never actually returning to Earth after God’s done with the revelation he gives him. The idea is that John just sort of . . . stayed up there. It’s not a vision, John’s journalling in real time.

 The idea is that John just sort of . . . stayed up there. It’s not a vision, John’s journalling in real time.  

So how do those folks think that John’s journal was transmitted to Earth? I mean it’s one thing to think God took him directly into heaven after he finished his writing. It’s another to think he was writing from heaven and never came back. I’m not getting it. 

My understanding is that certain portions of the Mormon church still believe John is walking the earth, but I don’t know how widespread that belief is, or how reliable those reports are.

Yes there are folktales in Mormonism that talk about John, also the Three Nephites and Cain still alive and looking like bigfoot. There are several others as well. A really good book about Mormon folklore is “Between Pulpit and Pew: The Supernatural World in Mormon History and Folklore.” None of these stories are considered ‘official’ by the LDS church itself. They are just urban legends and folk stories that people tell.  

Ah, worshiping at the feet of Cognitive Dissonance.

Lori, I believe Terry Pratchett best answers you’re question: “It’s quantum.”

The wonderful thing about folklore is that it doesn’t need to be internally consistent.

 Yes there are folktales in Mormonism that talk about John, also the Three Nephites and Cain still alive and looking like bigfoot  

That’s really, really funny.

why does John Hagee need an “heir apparent”?
Its in the gospel of Ayn Rand silly.

Maybe one of Jesus’ disciples was secretly Vandal Savage?

Now I’m thinking…in a war, any side can say “We’re the good guys, our cause is just”, even sides that are really evil.  It is entirely possible, and in fact common for self-proclaimed “good guys” to be unjust aggressors, fighting for immoral reasons, conducting themselves in a morally deplorable fashion, and generally not being innocent victims.  Call the situation a war, and a lot of people will go “So, you’re declaring war on me?” or “So it’s you declaring a war on gay people.”

Declare a gaystorm, and everyone who’s not gay gets cast in the role of Victim, while all gay people are the Menacing Force of Destruction, regardless of what we actually do. 

Sorry, I forgot to cite chapter and verse.  I think it was right after the Prophet Ayn told the Roman soldiers to gather up all of the loaves and fishes from the damn moochers and give it to the bond traders.

I would be amused at the notion that a minority pressing its will against a majority is a bad thing, if it weren’t so deeply offensive.

That I can recall, from the ablishment of slavery to women’s suffrage to the civil rights movement, nothing good happened until the minority began to press its will.

Fred:  “So if the end began 15 years ago, the countdown has begun, we’re two
years past the two-minute warning and are now living in “Earth’s Final
Moments,” then why does John Hagee need an “heir apparent”?”

Because the scam is still going strong.   The shamelessness always amazes me.

Just for information: I was that  “Hells Granny” on the Snopes board.  I don’t post there any more – just haven’t got the time!

I think the “generational storm” motif was chosen because without some kind of thematic device, all the scare-mongering speakers (religious and political) default to innuendo:

“…they will not stop until their will is pressed upon the majority…”
“…they try to sneak this agenda in the back door…”
“…they’re trying to ram this agenda down our throats!”
etc. etc. etc.

It’s tragicly amusing the fixation on sex they have, when the real “homosexual agenda” is things like “making sure my partner is covered on my health care” and “getting to hold hands with the person I love in pubic”…

And don’t forget the buggy: “Being a full citizen of this country like everyone else who was born here or got citizenship here.”

“…they will not stop until their will is pressed upon the majority…”
“…they try to sneak this agenda in the back door…”
“…they’re trying to ram this agenda down our throats!” 
etc. etc. etc. 

That sounds just like fundamentalists in American politics.