Lies

Blood Moons, Shemitah, CharismaMag.com, and Last Days Nonsense

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Four Horsemen of the ApocalypseWhere I live, everyone has been running around like crazy, preparing. Kids are off school. People have been buzzing about how it might all go down, and who will be chosen and who will not. Some have been anxious, others elated. What has long been awaited is finally upon us.

In other words, it’s the week of the county fair.

You thought perhaps I was speaking of something else?

Like that blood moon thing. Oh, that’s yesterday’s news. Who’s going to win Best of Show in cattle is more important right now.

As for me, I’m not so much a county fair person. I’m more concerned with the aftermath of this month of September within the pathetic prophetic community in charismatic and dispensationalist Christianity.

An unhealthy fascination with the Jewish holy days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which fall within September, is an area of concern. This year is also a Jubilee year in Judaism, which happens every 50 years (7 X 7 Shemitah years plus one) and marks a time of the forgiving of debts and the releasing of those in bondage of any kind. Add in the blood moon tetrad we just experienced, and all manner of End Times craziness afflicted us in 2015.

Over at Charisma magazine online (CharismaMag.com and it’s sister site, CharismaNews.com), it’s business as usual, save for a few rare posts wondering why nothing happened. For the last year or so, these sites have been spewing predictions about this month’s eschatological “certainties.” I know this because my Facebook pages have been strewn with Christians posting End Times articles sourced from these two websites.

What was supposed to happen as prophetically announced through various pricey books, DVDs, teaching seminars, and other big money generators was the end of the world, the Second Coming of Christ, the exposing of the Beast and Antichrist, the Last Battle, all manner of Israel-related stuff, signs in the heavens, and signs on earth.

Oh, and that Catholic leader guy visited America. Surely he had to fit into all that too. Had to. Gotta read all the signs.

Here’s the scorecard:

Blood moon tetrad events – FAIL

Wonders related to Shemitah – FAIL

Attacks on Israel – FAIL

Armageddon – FAIL

The Second Coming of Christ – FAIL

The Rapture of the Church – FAIL

Wow, that’s surprising, isn’t it? Not one of those things either happened or signaled anything.

What gets me is that we’ll go on about our business, get ready for fairs, go to work, cheer or lament our local football teams, and nowhere will there be an admission from all these “prophets” who made a fortune hocking End Times nonsense that they were ultimately dead wrong about everything they predicted. And nowhere will there be an apology from the editiorial staff at Charisma that they rode this nuttiness for all it was worth and that they’re sorry for having done so.

I fully believe that Jesus will return one day. I fully believe it will be during a time of great unrest and turmoil. I fully believe that a war between the forces of God and the forces of Satan will erupt sometime in the future.

But all these End Times predictions by self-anointed prophets in polyester suits seem more like astrology, numerology, divination, and outright witchcraft than anything Christian that proceeds from the throne of God Almighty.

God is not a god of error, confusion, and fear. He is not found in earthquakes and windstorms, but instead speaks in a still, small voice, yet one that carries devastating and lasting authority.

My advice to fellow believers is to stop funding and promoting charlatans who attempt to make money by peddling loud, scary predictions. Just stop. Please. Don’t buy their materials and don’t repeat their silliness in social media and elsewhere.

I also hope you will consider that today will be no different than yesterday, and that no apologies will come from those who spoke wrongly. Consider that sometime in the next year we will get another run-up of predictions heading into next September, and by the same “prophets,” and they will be wrong then too.

Whatever we do, we cannot and should not forget or excuse these failed prophetic words. We cannot go on as if the failure of these predictions does not matter. The only way the Church can be strengthened is if we stop supporting the predictions and predictors. One reason lost people no longer look to the Church for answers is because of this nonsense. It must be dealt with.

If any of us fell for all this, we should not lie to ourselves that we didn’t. Instead, we should get before God and get real with Him about our obsession with all things End Times and our tendency to fall for related nonsense. My fear is, if we don’t deal with it, should the Liar of All Liars arise in our lifetimes, we will believe his or her lies just as readily as we believed all these mistaken “prophets.”

I will add that perhaps we should examine the truthfulness of our eschatology. Is falling for this again and again a sign that perhaps what we believe about the End Times is flat-out wrong? Christians have held many differing views of the End. Perhaps the one we currently hold is incorrect.

In conclusion, I offer this.

The smartest religious people of Jesus’ day completely blew both the prediction of His first coming and its means. They got everything so hopelessly wrong that even when the anticipated Messiah stood before them, they could not see.

I believe Christ’s Second Coming will be just as surprising and confounding. It won’t occur the way we think or at the time we believe is most perfect. Yes, we are in the Last Days, but God has not stated to us the exact number of those days.

Until that Final Day of these Last Days, keep doing the work of the Kingdom and relax in letting God choose when and how He will bring it all to its conclusion.

The Lie Remains the Same

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Due to an overwhelming number of tasks on the old to-do list at year’s end, I called a halt to interacting on Facebook, that great time suck. I said goodbye to birthday congrats for people I hadn’t seen in 30 years, bid adieu to keeping up with other people’s holiday plans, and articulated a hearty aloha to commenting on someone’s else post that got my goat. And there were plenty of goat-getting updates to note.

Too many.

Now returned from exile, it seems to me that Facebook is awash with the kind of commentary guaranteed not only to get one’s goat, but raise hackles, rub the wrong way, get dander up,  make to see red, and stand hair on end. Everyone seems angry on the Internet, especially on Facebook.

But it’s the way people respond to the things that make them angry that should alarm a thinking person. Everyone and his brother must add their two cents, and it might as well be counterfeit coinage.

In nearly every conversation regarding culture, societal shifts, current events, politics, or religion, you see the following:

Does the Bible really say…?

People should be free to do what they want, so….

Over and over and over. And in almost every case, those two are used to justify something antithetical to orthodox Christian theology or to godly, righteous living.

I wonder if the people who resort to using that question and that statement recognize their source:

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.'” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”
—Genesis 3:1-5 ESV

That supposedly clever line of reasoning some guy used to justify his immorality or someone else’s is old, old stuff. Back to the beginning kinds of justification and argument—just with contemporary wording to fit the spirit of the age.

Did God actually say…? Well, yes, He actually did. And your argument that He meant it in some other way that no one in 2000 years of Christian history has ever proffered as true should tell you something about the wrongness of your interpretation.

But then…

…And you will be like God…. You will be self-determining. You will be free to decide what is right and wrong. You will do whatever the heck you want to do, and no one will tell you otherwise because you told God to take a hike and enthroned yourself on His plush chair. You.

Red-eyed snakeEngaging the conversation in 2014 means a near-constant return to the Garden. Any time some postmodern Socrates chips away at traditional morality or invokes an alternate interpretation of truth, you can hear hissing between the words.

The part that no one who resorts to the old lies ever thinks through is this:

You will not surely die.

Actually, you will. And you’ll start that dying long before you get to the genuine finale. And then you’ll get a nasty, nasty surprise.

At least it will be a surprise to you. To some who weren’t spouting lies, it’s no surprise at all. They know that people who argue Satan’s way get to meet the originator in person.

Meanwhile, people who know better than to quote evil keep seeing the same old lies everywhere they turn.

If it weren’t so sad, it would be boring.

The American Conscience and the Horror of Denial

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Anonymous businesswomanJocelyn is in her final year at an Ivy League law school. Though she came from humble roots and didn’t enjoy the birthright of a silver spoon in her mouth, Jocelyn took a can-do approach to life. Valedictorian of her high school class, her establishment  as a 17-year-old of a hospice program in Charleston, S.C., geared specifically for the poor was a deciding factor in her acceptance to every notable university to which she applied. Perfect SATs and an IQ of 142 fast-tracked her for great things post-grad school. You can recognize Joceyln on campus by the designer handbags she indulges in and her winning smile. At 5′ 8″ and 118 pounds, the willowy brunette has the looks to match her intellect, as her offers from international modeling agencies will attest. Several of her professors remarked that with her combo of stunning good looks and brains, Jocelyn could write her ticket anywhere.

In contrast, Jessie didn’t make it past 10th grade, which was a disappointment to upperclassmen at her high school who expected the easy source of a good time to keep producing for another couple years. The hair color comes from a bottle, and the attitude is pure sass—pretty much the only thing pure about Jessie. Looking for more, she left her small town in Indiana and headed for the big city, where’s she’s a common sight in local bars and on street corners. Her weapon of choice is a pair of crimson stilettos she found on sale at DSW, and with her long legs and short shorts, Jessie attracts a lot of attention. Or she did. A couple face-busting fights with that guy who hangs around her, a meth bust or two, and some other hygiene issues have taken the luster off the small town transplant. You’d guess 40, but she’s actually just 26. And if you had to conjecture about her life trajectory, the angle is downward, with the streets looking meaner. The other day, she got bypassed up for a younger girl, with the man tossing off a “skank” after looking her way and deciding no.

Now if I asked you which was a prostitute, would you say Jocelyn or Jessie?

The answer? Both. Sure, Jocelyn’s clientele is more upscale and her prices higher, but law school isn’t cheap.

Which brings us to infamous abortion “doctor” Kermit Gosnell.

The New York Times blog ran a post called “What the Gosnell Case Doesn’t Mean.” I find it telling that the URL slug for that post is “what-the-gosnell-case-doesnt-tell-us,” a surefire sign that even the writer knew better. You see, anyone breathing knows exactly what the case tells us. Better that our enlightened betters now inform us of what that telling actually means. And so goes the media’s infatuation with its own moral brilliance, informing the great unwashed of meaning.

The only difference between Jocelyn and Jessie is the pretense we constructed in our own minds about the virtue of one over the other. Both women made their money selling their bodies to men. Strip away the settings and the details, and the outcome is the same.

The only real distinction between the Gosnell case and the typical abortion mill that escapes our collective judgment is the level of sloppiness.

The great lie of denial that happens every day in America is that seemingly rational people can’t bring themselves to be aghast at the Jocelyns of this world. Same for abortion. The abortion doctor in Beverly Hills is no different than Kermit Gosnell, save for a cleaner operation and better quality K Cups in the waiting room. The outcome is the same: Two people go in, and only one comes out. Context means nothing to the one who doesn’t leave alive.

That Americans, for the most part, can’t understand this is why The New York Times blog writer can get away with the denial he spews all over the monitor. By insisting that Gosnell is NOT the typical face of the abortion industry, he perpetuates myths and salves the conscience of a country. Vilifying Gosnell is our contemporary version of “one man must die for the good of the nation”–except we feel better about our choice over that of the Jews and Romans, because our scapegoat is so obviously guilty.

We tell ourselves how enlightened we are, that we can’t be fooled by mere facades, and then we declare our support for the “right to choose” and ask for Jocelyn’s number.