The Amplified Bible, turn it up to 11

AND THE LORD SAID!  LET THERE BE LIGHT!
No Foamy, the amplified Bible does not mean shout it louder.  Moving on...

The Rapture is tomorrow!  At least, that's what we're being told.  Jesus is gonna come back down from Heaven, kick some ass and take names, and unless we're all followers, we're gonna burn baby burn.

Now look into my tired eyes and see something you recognise: me being sick of 2000 years of "Any day yet!"  My Google Fu has served me well and the little pixies at Wikipedia suggest that there are no less than 10 rapture dates that are already passed.  That's not to mention the many other prophesies made by pseudo-christain scaremongers that have yet to occur, and I'm also not counting the inevitable thousands of doomsday prophesies laid down by other religions in the past <insert length of time you believe your calendar started according to your religion here> years.

What really grinds my gears is not so much the idea of a rapture but the idea that we'll all receive a dip in the lake of fire, so anybody not wearing one-million sunblock is gonna have a really bad day.  Not that you'd believe it, but I was educated in a Roman Catholic high school.  Go figure, but not being ignorant I did keep my ears open and try to learn a little bit about the faith.

Before I start picking apart and throwing in my own ideas, let's take an academic viewpoint.  You can either choose to believe the Bible word for word, as a literal interpretation.  In doing so then you must put your full faith in human writings being fully accurate,  and are therefore putting faith in something other than the Lord, and you're gonna burn.

So if you're hedging your bets, the only acceptable course is to realise that humans are fallible and so the writings might be flawed in one way or another, and that's it's our interpretation that is important.  So if you want to avoid having to go hiking with Dante, you need to think for yourself.

That means actually reading and thinking about what's said.  Now I'm anticipating a bit of "pics or it didn't happen" or "ah but you didn't cite this passage or that passage".  Let me be clear, I'm going to get into a Biblical pissing match about which passage trumps that gospel and whatever.   I read a good chunk of it, and here's what I think.  Disagree with me if you like, that's your right.  Shut up and live your life.

So my interpretation is that Hell is not a pit of fire and death where Furbies sing Friday for eternity, more that Hell is the absence of God's mercy and forgiveness.  This is evident in Catholicism in the sacrament of confession, that unless we open ourselves to God and ask forgiveness, we're going to Hell.  It's also the case they make for baptism and communion, that in order to be saved you need to bear witness to and welcome God's will into your life.

That means that Hell on Earth can't happen in the literal sense, the sky falling and so on.  It means that unless you take responsibility for what you do, you're putting yourself in Hell.

So that rules out the argument going at the moment that the world is on a one way ticked to Armageddon.  It seems that what's happening at the moment is folk are looking around and going HOLY SHIT!  THE WORLD'S GOT BAD PEOPLE IN IT!  AND THEY'RE DOING BAD THINGS!  THAT MEANS WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE.

Newsflash fuckers, that's been the case for <insert your calendar start date here> years.  In fact, religion has been used over the centuries to keep people in line.  What a great way to keep your people in line than threatening them with fire and brimstone if they don't behave.

If you believe that the state of the world now is an indicator of apocalypse, what about the repeated bombings into 2010, globally.  What about Swine Flu, SARS, or Bird Flu.  What about 7/7.  What about 9/11.  What about the Christmas Eve bomings in Jakarta in 2000.  The Woolworths firebomb in Belfast in 1995.  The whole Northern Ireland crisis.  The 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege.  Lockerbie.  Rwanda.  Armenia.  The Cold War.  Cuban Missile Crisis.  World War 2.  World War 1.  The Wall Street Bombing in 1920.  The Creation of the KKK in the 19th century.  All the wars that went along with the British Empire.

I could fill pages with this stuff, the fact is, humans have been killing each other either officially as countries united or unofficially as vigilantes and terrorists.  The reaction the Hadron Collider was similar to the reaction to nuclear power as was the reaction to electricity and all other new technology.  We fear what we don't understand.  Everything points to the apocalypse, every religious book has a doomsday, every cult, every sect, every country, everyone on Earth believes the end is coming, we just disagree on when.  There's no way to fix a date.

Don't get me started on if, IF, your government knew the end was nigh, there's no way they'd tell us.  Mass panic would bring about it's own apocalypse.

The bottom line is either the rapture will happen, or it won't.  If it does, nobody can know how that's gonna go down.  I'd suggest that second guessing God and acting like you know what's going to happen will land you eternity in Hell.  The point of salvation is to put faith in God, not decide you've got it all figured out.

 If it doesn't, well, you rapture lot are gonna look really stupid.  Again.  And even Alan Rickman and Alannis Morissette, Jay, Silent Bob and fucking Superman can't save you.