Bruce Watson of AOL asks “What Would the Rapture Do to Real Estate Prices?” In New York City, for example, a 49% drop would reduce the city’s population to 1910 levels. In the short run, this would cause property values to plummet in the city, but the effects would quickly spread beyond mortgages and rents. … This is assuming a post-Rapture world in which the political and economic systems would remain relatively stable — admittedly, a somewhat unrealistic expectation. …... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 388-391 We readers — along with Buck, Rayford, Nicolae and apparently the entire world — are watching Rabbi Tsion Ben-Judah present the findings of his three-year, Israeli-government sponsored research project on the Messiah. Rabbi Ben-Judah said he and his team spent almost the entire first year of their project confirming the accuracy of the late Alfred Edersheim, a teacher of languages and Grinfield Lecturer on the Septuagint. Edersheim had postulated that there were 456 messianic passages in... Read more
He rose, slow cleaving with his steady voice The intolerable hush. “This well may be The Day of Judgment which the world awaits; But be it so or not, I only know My present duty, and my Lord’s command To occupy till He come. So at the post Where He hast set me in His providence, I choose, for one, to meet Him face to face, No faithless servant frightened from my task, But ready when the Lord of the... Read more
(If the world does not end tomorrow at 6 p.m., then we can resume the usual alphabet game next Friday.) Hold on world ’cause you don’t know what’s coming … “I Wish We’d All Been Ready,” Larry Norman “Eve of Destruction,” The Dickies “Until the End of the World,” U2 “1999,” Prince “The Man Comes Around,” Johnny Cash “Earth Died Screaming,” Tom Waits “The Apocalypse Song,” St. Vincent “We Will All Go Together When We Go,” Tom Lehrer “I’ll Never... Read more
Thinking about the despair, fear and trauma of Harold Camping’s devotees leading up to and through and after his supposed Day of Judgment this weekend, I keep thinking back to a man I once knew. He was an old fundamentalist preacher and retired military chaplain with whom I spent several holidays years ago when I was briefly married to his granddaughter. The old preacher bore more than a little resemblance to the farmer in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic.” That was... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 386-388 “Want to take over?” Rayford asked his first officer. “I wouldn’t mind catching this special CNN report.” “Roger. That rabbi thing?” “Right.” So no sooner do I make a point of complaining about Jerry Jenkins’ lack of storytelling economy than he demonstrates he’s capable of it, transporting us to Air Force/Global Community One, already in the air and headed for Baghdad and New Babylon. We seem to have reached a point here toward the end of... Read more
When I worked for Evangelicals for Social Action — a progressive evangelical group in the same general orbit as Sojourners — one of our big supporters liked to tell the story of his first encounter with Ron Sider and Sider’s book, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. He was furious. He read just enough of the book to grasp Sider’s main theme, that the Bible commands believers to share what we have with the poor. This is, Sider notes,... Read more
There’s a bit of a thing brewing over Jim Wallis of Sojourners and his response to an advertisement from Believe Out Loud — a movement “to unite Christians for LGBT equality in the church and beyond.” The always insightful Sarah Posner has an excellent and thorough overview of the dispute at Religion Dispatches. (For some additional perspective and reactions, see Tony Jones’ “What Jim Wallis Might Be Missing;” Jason Pitzl-Waters’ “Jim Wallis and the Religious Left;” Christopher LaTondresse and Chris... Read more
Sometimes really long comments get eaten. Especially really, really long comments with lots and lots of links in them. This is, depending on one’s technological savvy, worldview, theology and/or self-concept, evidence that: 1) Disqus and similar platforms remain sometimes frustratingly imperfect software; or 2) There is a conspiracy to silence you from people who Just Can’t Handle The Truth. In completely unrelated news, Glenn Greenwald notes that the hopeful scenario I describe as one possible consequence of the death of... Read more
The Social Security Administration has released it’s annual list of the most popular baby names, with Jacob and Isabella topping the lists for boys and girls. Plenty of biblical names among the most popular, with Sophia shooting up to the No. 2 spot for girls’ names. I doubt any of the credit for that surge in popularity goes to this 2008 post on biblical baby names, but you never know. Anyway, recognizing that not everyone wants to argue about Abbottabad,... Read more
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