I stumbled on this little diagram today. It’s a chart made in 1918, and it describes periods of history from a pseudo-Biblical perspective – even claiming that the antichrist would appear in the year 2000. I say “pseudo-Biblical” because it seems to be based on the perception that significant Biblical events happened every 1,000 years, mixed with the Bible’s use of seven = divine, mirroring of the seven days of creation, and the “one thousand years is a day” verse.
I especially like how he puts “Dark Ages” as an event in 1000 A.D.
Growing up, I saw a lot of this pseudo-intellectual BS. In particular, I remember one Christian who caused a buzz in fundamentalist churches in the late 1980s. He thought he knew when Jesus would return, so he wrote a book and sent it out to churches all over the US. It’s called “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988″. 300,000 copies were given away to churches across the US, and 4.5 million copies were sold.
Beginning in the early Spring of 1988, a 56-page booklet entitled, 88 REASONS Why The Rapture Will Be In 1988 began to be mass-distributed across America. The basic premise of the book was that between the dates of September 11 and 13, 1988, the Rapture of the Christian Church would occur. (Link)
I especially liked how the author of the booklet began by saying “Only if the Bible is in error am I wrong; and I say that to every preacher in town.” (Gee, that sounds suspiciously like what a young earth creationist would say about creationism.)
I find it amusing to see this level of sincere self-delusion coupled together with all their best rhetorical arguments arguing for something that isn’t true. It’s like a miniature version of religion itself – a delusion within a delusion.
I remember a lot of “end times” preachers claiming (based on the New Testament) that the “end times” would occur within 40 years after Israel’s independence in 1948. (And before that, they said 40 years after 1918.)
Not all Christians are caught up in this rapture-mania, and some have soured on the idea of predicting “the end times”, but lots of big preachers continue to preach it, and the “Left Behind” series sold 55 million copies. You can even checkout the Rapture Index – which is a little bit like the “Terror Alert” chart – updated weekly and telling you if the end is near. (As of yesterday, we’re at 164, which is four points above “Heavy prophetic activity”, and into the highest category: “Fasten your seat belts”.) Do fundamentalists even have a long-term memory? It’s like they’re living inside 1984: “we were always at war with oceania”.
Update: I happened to find a recent post about the well-known end of the world prediction for 2012 on gia’s blog. She mentions some past predictions (like the Concerned Christians Cult that predicted Denver would be wiped off the map on October 10, 1998). I can’t help but think it would be fun to put together a little web-based daily calendar showing anniversaries of “end of the world” predictions from years past, just to mock them. Something along the lines of:
Today’s Date: Friday, October 10, 2008
Apocalyptic Predictions for this date:
Concerned Christians predict the destruction of Denver, CO on this day in 1998. Happy 10th anniversary.
Also his parochial notion that the western European dark ages was some kind of universal, one-of-a-kind event.
A month ago people were having a laugh about someone’s rapture2007 web site.
This sort of thing has a long history. Check out the Seventh Day Adventists on Wikipedia.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church is the largest of several “Adventist” groups which arose from the Millerite movement of the 1840s. The Millerite movement was part of the wave of revivalism in the United States known as the Second Great Awakening and originated with William Miller, a Baptist preacher from Low Hampton, New York. Miller predicted on the basis of Daniel 8:14 and the “day-year principle” that Jesus Christ would return to Earth on October 22, 1844. When this failed to occur, most of his followers disbanded and returned to their original churches.
Jehovah’s Witnesses once believed that Christ had returned invisibly to Earth in 1874.
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Ahem…I think you will find that we have always been at war with Eastasia.
The Left Behind Series? Who told Kirk Cameron he could act? (or preach come to that?)
[...] up to Tiny Frog, who also gives us some background on some of the other ‘Rapture’ maniacs. Technorati [...]
That reminds me a person called Charles Taylor. I know him only from this very amusing website called “A Brief History of the Apocalypse (http://www.abhota.info/)“, which is an archive of apocalypse/rapture predictions. According to this, Taylor, between 1975 and 1994, predicted the Rapture 13 times.
13 TIMES!!
I think that makes him a winner.
I just looked again in the Website I posted above, and apparently the guy who wrote “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Could Be in 1988″, after his predictions failed, wrote another book entitled “The Final Shout: Rapture Report 1989″.
These people seem to be comically slow learners.
after his predictions failed, wrote another book entitled “The Final Shout: Rapture Report 1989″.
Even worse, he continued making predictions into the early and mid 90’s as he faded from prominence.
Transfinite Consciousness
Nothing in its purest, and most intense form, holds the womb of genesis; yet is pure non-existence, as an ultimate absolute. This sounds irrational, but consider this, is not absolute pure nothingness in itself absolute pure nothingness, (the concept of absolute nothingness is difficult to conceive within the mind, it is beyond blackness, it is outside of any idea of time, it is beyond even infinitesimal volume, having none of these things), and if so, is not this something in itself?
This salaam (balanced) purity demands realisation, the emergence of a single, exotic, ethereal, virtual complexity in affirmation; yet at that instant, that single exotic virtual complexity is the sum of all knowledge; unsullied, undiluted, the sole alpha knowledge; not as a simple idea of the mind, but as categorical reality, the embryonic seed of consciousness builds within, so from the womb of nothingness, the seed of consciousness grows.
The two opposing states exist, each rebuffs the other, both must exist for each to remain, pure nothingness holds true, yet something remains demanding pure nothingness is all that exists, in so doing a powerful dichotomy exists, and the tension of the two opposing forces drives all existence, but between the two extremes the salaam holds the dichotomy in balance, and expands creation, and manifests fresh knowledge perpetually, emanating all through a single source, the tension between the two extremes of the overarching dichotomy, Allah (Not God), the eternally growing seed of the single consciousness of the alpha and the omega.
The knowledge of pure non-existence, that very knowledge obliterating the reality of untainted absence. When this line of reasoning is considered, keep in mind both three dimensional space and linear time are manifest realities, not reality; within the overarching dichotomy, the concepts of time and space are not apparent.
Knowledge of nothingness transcends into absence; absence transcends into awareness of absence; awareness transcends into knowledge, revolving knowledge.
You may ask how can we know this to be true? Because the original structure repeats throughout all creations, infinite in diversity yet held within a framework of common structure, so this underlying structure exists, and can be observed repeated again and again within this physical reality, (so infer these underlying structures also exist within the virtual); knowledge builds on knowledge, knowledge evolves and expands, all realities are constructed from pure knowledge, all energy is a physical manifestation of knowledge, so we know it began from this point, as it began so it continues.
When you consider the concept of, ‘began’, consider it time free; a single consciousness, imagining ‘Be’ (phonetic ‘cun fa ya cun’) without any linear time:
A single infinite instant held with no beginning and no end, circular time, the revolving wheel of a fleeting moment. Only that instant, that ignition point when the dichotomy formed, being the totality of all time; so that single realisation of pure none existence, is the single point of all; that isolated moment spins, between denial and affirmation, and through its dichotomisation, complexity evolves.
The linear time we understanding within this physical reality, is a construct of this complexity, ‘Be’ (phonetic ‘cun fa ya cun’), pours from this spinning conflict, building linear time instant by instant, to give the perception, or illusion of the passage of time.
‘Be’ (phonetic ‘cun fa ya cun’), and from it creation, it always existed within time, from the very beginning of time, but is none existent until that manifestation, so put another way, once it is apparent within the virtual, it had always existed, but before its virtual appearance, it was none existent, a dichotomy of manifestation.
This linear time free emergent knowledge, transcends into cognisant knowledge, spinning out into wheels within wheels, cognisant knowledge transcends into a volume absent, infinity of virtual truth; cognisant knowledge builds on knowledge, until infinity transcends into infinities of pure truth, conscious thought, reasoned purity.
And from these infinites of knowledge, existence in all it splendour, longs to evolve into conscious knowledge, self aware, spinning out, transformed into a united harmony of conscious purpose.
The cognisant knowledge evolves, building, its state rising ever more complex, more connected, more negentropic, until the single consciousness builds to the birth of imaginative creation, one consciousness, holding all creation within its matrix, correlated to every aspect, concept, precept, and an expanding engine of infinite imagination. We know this, because this is once again, the evident form of evolving complexity we observe within this reality, the universe builds in complexity, the natural world builds in complexity, the knowledge of humanity builds in complexity and so on.
Each infinity held as a single drop within the next, each drop infinite, yet finite, each infinity beyond inclusive comprehension yet perceived, an endless infinity of infinities, this is because there is in fact only one infinity, Allah (Not God) the transfinite being, balanced between, and in direct contradiction to pure non-existence, and unified in all reality.
How do we know this is true? Because, again, this archetypal order still exists, it is a form of order that is reproduced throughout creation.
Dichotomy is the form, a contradiction of force, both nothing and something, simultaneously existent, the forces of opposites pull at the fabric of reality, from the attainment of the moment of nothingness to the growth of the knowledge of that purity.
Allah is what lays between the two extremes, the form of order is copied throughout creation, light is the extreme of blackness, but every designate between is held and combined to generate the whole, just as Allah’s consciousness culminates when unified into the whole of all realities.
All reality is built upon these dichotomies (copying the form of the overarching dichotomy), the forces defy reason yet contain logic, they hold true yet confuse the intellect, a pure contradiction of direct opposites.
This founding structure is the template, knowledge transmuted in purpose, function, interaction, but not in their nature; the contradiction drives the universe, north and south, dark and light, attraction and repulsion, all working in balance yet in conflict, all working in harmony, yet in disequilibrium; evolving, dynamic, interactive, held in contradiction.
Our infinite universe held as a single drop within an infinite ocean of knowledge, which in turn is held as a single drop within a greater ocean.
All existence is knowledge pure and undiluted, knowledge gives birth to greater knowledge, communication transcends to transformation, transformation builds from state to state, ever more complex, truth holds all realities in unity.
Energy flows from the emanating manifold to manifest all our physical universe; quibits (quantum bits of information) manifest space, electromagnetic energy manifests from time, knowledge in flux manifests mass and a higher conscious knowledge manifests life, within an infinity of possibilities, all is energy, all tangible energy exists as physical knowledge.
Knowledge is filtered through consciousness, ordered and reordered, through more and more refined interactions and transformations, expanding the truth of perfection; truth is the nature of Existence.
We can ourselves expand and evolve our own emotional energy through the same form of development, the advancement of a higher form of knowledge through an interaction with a lower form, for example:
The blackness of infinite physical space, speckled with points of light, fills the mind above and around the world, each dot burns beyond a distance, yet beyond a closeness, all knowledge connects and interacts, evolves and propagates knowledge.
This dusty blackness, like nothingness, transcends into new innate beauty; the burning fiery sky of the red dawn, slowly filling the world with the fervent colours of blinding brilliance. Taking the deepest point of darkness to ignition, in an instant filling the senses, your soul rising, expanding with the intensification of splendour, a burning beauty, with the power to grab a conscious soul, and effortlessly lift it to the heights of poetry.
So the assimilation of one expression of knowledge, for the expansion of a higher order, building from state to state.
The evolution of knowledge