Schedule changed at the make-ends-meet night-job this week — instead of Fri., Sat., Sun. it’s now Wed., Thurs., Fri. This is actually good news, as it means the position, which was originally a short-term “seasonal” gig, will continue and I’ll get to keep m-e-m.
But it also means rejiggering my schedule for writing Friday posts here, which should work out fine … starting next week.
So, in lieu of either a Left Behind post or a Friday music game post, here’s a musical take on premillennial dispensationalist Bible prophecy. This is Southern Gospel group The Hoppers performing Larry Norman’s song “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” (the song that gave the Left Behind series its name):
The Hoppers recorded this in 2012. Connie Hopper noted: “I first heard ‘I Wish We’d All Been Ready’ in the early seventies and haven’t heard it performed since … but the message stayed with me through the years.”
So Larry Norman writes a song in 1972 warning that we are in the Last Days and that “there’s no time to change your mind.” And then 40 years later that message inspires a cover version.
Shouldn’t the fact that it’s now more than 40 years later cause us to question that message a bit? It reminds me of the book-store customer in about 1994 who wanted to special-order a copy of Hal Lindsey’s The 1980s: Countdown to Armageddon. She was terribly disappointed when I told her it was out of print.
Edgar C. Whisenant’s 88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988 is out of print too, but I suppose if you talk to fans of that book, they’ll continue to praise it and to tell you that its “message stayed with me through the years.”
I guess the logic is that Norman, Lindsey, et. al. weren’t wrong when they said the world was about to end back in the 1970s. They were merely premature. And so now we must be even closer to The End and now there’s even less time to change your mind and now all those people who were wrong decades ago are more right than ever.
Following that logic, I think instead of covering groovy Larry Norman songs, “Bible prophecy” fans should consider adapting They Might Be Giants’ “Older“:
It’s later than it’s ever been
And now it’s even later
And now it’s even later
And now it’s even later
And time is still marching on …
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