Evangelist claims that Rapture will happen in 2011

Yorokobi wrote:

Ceres wrote:

(Historically, I think the psycho elements of the Rapture were created sometime in 18th-19th century America, near the northeast parts. There was an important speech made by some sadist preacher dude that even made it into my English lit class, because he spoke of hell oh-so-vividly.)

EDIT: Oh, here we go, found the link. Sinners at the Hands of an Angry God. Jack Chick, meet your spiritual ancestor.

Oh Jonathan Edwards. Yes, he was quite the firey (no pun intended) preacher.

You should post the full text. It's so much more vivid. Although, I have been given to understand that Edwards delivered his sermons in a dry, uninteresting monotone. He wrote them down and read them off word, for word, for word. Very boring. And Jack Chick is a yahoo with barely any Biblical involvement with his tracts. You may not like John Edwards, but he's theologically on point.

Since everyone is talking about it, question: If the Rapture were to happen, wouldn't all pregnant women suddenly become... not pregnant? Because if there's one thing I've learned from nutty fundies, it's that they consider UNBORN children to be perfectly sinless little innocent beings.

I think that would get noticed, even if all the born children didn't vanish.

tachikoma01 wrote:

Since everyone is talking about it, question: If the Rapture were to happen, wouldn't all pregnant women suddenly become... not pregnant? Because if there's one thing I've learned from nutty fundies, it's that they consider UNBORN children to be perfectly sinless little innocent beings.

I think that would get noticed, even if all the born children didn't vanish.

I'm gonna go with "no" being as unbaptized babies that die or miscarriages go to limbo.

I think that would depend on whether you're in one of the aforementioned groups that believes you have to baptize at birth or else, or whether you're one of the groups that believes kids under a certain age get an automatic 'get out of hell' card?

I don't really care one way or another, I was just curious as to whether heaven was full of floating half-developed baby angels. Because that would be really creepy.

Delcat wrote:

Lapin wrote:

Catholics are surprisingly sane despite what anyone thinks.

Have I mentioned lately how much I like you? [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Yay!

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I was just curious as to whether heaven was full of floating half-developed baby angels. Because that would be really creepy

SILENT HILL: HARRY GOES TO HEAVEN

tachikoma01 wrote:

Since everyone is talking about it, question: If the Rapture were to happen, wouldn't all pregnant women suddenly become... not pregnant? Because if there's one thing I've learned from nutty fundies, it's that they consider UNBORN children to be perfectly sinless little innocent beings.

I read a hundred pages or so of Left Behind for the lulz before getting bored with it, and they actually cover that with a description of a woman in labor "deflating" on the hospital bed. It's a real shame it wasn't handled by a decent author, because it could have been a lovely bit of body horror--as is, it's terrifically narmy. That pretty much applies to the book in general, though.

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SILENT HILL: HARRY GOES TO HEAVEN

Spoiler:

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You may not like John Edwards, but he's theologically on point.

It speaks poorly of Christian faith if he's right, because Edwards is basically arguing that we should join God because otherwise we'll go to hell. Essentially, "love me or ELSE!"

Ceres wrote:

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You may not like John Edwards, but he's theologically on point.

It speaks poorly of Christian faith if he's right, because Edwards is basically arguing that we should join God because otherwise we'll go to hell. Essentially, "love me or ELSE!"

That this is in the Bible is no secret. Edwards is saying what everyone already knows. Unless we turn to God for salvation then we are not saved. This is all up and down the whole Bible. Jesus states this outright in John 14:6. You're framing it in a very cynical way, but since Christianity takes the position that all humans are sinners and that Christ is the only way to be saved, the inescapable converse of that position is that not turning to Christ results in damnation. It's not really a fringe position.

(I will content myself with mentioning two bunny trails that I will not go down. The first is that the modern church focuses so much on what I call the "hearts and flowers and smiley faces" of the Bible that verses like John 14:6 and the fact that Christianity does take this position start seeming like totally unconquerable stumbling blocks. The other is about how the fire and brimstone and eternal torture Hell is found in Dante's Inferno and not really in the Bible.)

Mafiosa wrote:

tachikoma01 wrote:

Since everyone is talking about it, question: If the Rapture were to happen, wouldn't all pregnant women suddenly become... not pregnant? Because if there's one thing I've learned from nutty fundies, it's that they consider UNBORN children to be perfectly sinless little innocent beings.

I think that would get noticed, even if all the born children didn't vanish.

I'm gonna go with "no" being as unbaptized babies that die or miscarriages go to limbo.

I'm not Catholic, but didn't the last Pope do away with limbo? And if so, what happened to all the souls that were there waiting for someone to pray them into Heaven?

Rabid Badger wrote:

Mafiosa wrote:

tachikoma01 wrote:

Since everyone is talking about it, question: If the Rapture were to happen, wouldn't all pregnant women suddenly become... not pregnant? Because if there's one thing I've learned from nutty fundies, it's that they consider UNBORN children to be perfectly sinless little innocent beings.

I think that would get noticed, even if all the born children didn't vanish.

I'm gonna go with "no" being as unbaptized babies that die or miscarriages go to limbo.

I'm not Catholic, but didn't the last Pope do away with limbo? And if so, what happened to all the souls that were there waiting for someone to pray them into Heaven?

A Pope can do that? Make limbo disappear?

Okay, misunderstanding on my part. Taken from Wikipedia:

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On April 22, 2007, the advisory body known as the International Theological Commission released a document, originally commissioned by Pope John Paul II, entitled "The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die without Being Baptized."[21]

After tracing the history of the various opinions that have been and are held on the eternal fate of unbaptized infants, including that connected with the theory of the Limbo of Infants, and after examining the theological arguments, the document stated its conclusion as follows:

Our conclusion is that the many factors that we have considered above give serious theological and liturgical grounds for hope that unbaptized infants who die will be saved and enjoy the beatific vision. We emphasize that these are reasons for prayerful hope, rather than grounds for sure knowledge. There is much that simply has not been revealed to us.[22] We live by faith and hope in the God of mercy and love who has been revealed to us in Christ, and the Spirit moves us to pray in constant thankfulness and joy.[23]

What has been revealed to us is that the ordinary way of salvation is by the sacrament of baptism. None of the above considerations should be taken as qualifying the necessity of baptism or justifying delay in administering the sacrament. Rather, as we want to reaffirm in conclusion, they provide strong grounds for hope that God will save infants when we have not been able to do for them what we would have wished to do, namely, to baptize them into the faith and life of the Church.

Pope Benedict XVI authorized publication of this document, indicating that it is considered consonant with the Church's teaching, though it is not an official expression of that teaching.[24] Media reports that by the document "the Pope closed Limbo"[25] are thus without foundation. In fact, the document explicitly states that "the theory of limbo, understood as a state which includes the souls of infants who die subject to original sin and without baptism, and who, therefore, neither merit the beatific vision, nor yet are subjected to any punishment, because they are not guilty of any personal sin. This theory, elaborated by theologians beginning in the Middle Ages, never entered into the dogmatic definitions of the Magisterium, even if that same Magisterium did at times mention the theory in its ordinary teaching up until the Second Vatican Council. It remains therefore a possible theological hypothesis" (second preliminary paragraph); and in paragraph 41 it repeats that the theory of Limbo "remains a possible theological opinion". The document thus allows the hypothesis of a limbo of infants to be held as one of the existing theories about the fate of children who die without being baptised, a question on which there is "no explicit answer" from Scripture or tradition.[24] These theories are not official teaching of the Catholic Church, but are only opinions that the Church does not condemn, permitting them to be held by its members.

So basically, limbo still exists, but the church now believes that, given Christ's love of children, babies who die in utero or aren't baptized before they die likely go to Heaven anyway.

I guess that still leaves all of Dante's original residents there, however.

KelinciHutan wrote:

You should post the full text. It's so much more vivid. Although, I have been given to understand that Edwards delivered his sermons in a dry, uninteresting monotone. He wrote them down and read them off word, for word, for word. Very boring. And Jack Chick is a yahoo with barely any Biblical involvement with his tracts. You may not like John Edwards, but he's theologically on point.

I wrote my senior thesis on this sermon (and another book, but that's not the point of interest at the moment). There are tales that came out of this sermon's delivery, including a man dropping dead of fright and people clinging to solid objects in the church in fear that the floor would open up beneath them. It was pretty intense, from the research I found.

You're right, though, that Edwards was normally a pretty low-key minister most of the time. The rest of his sermons are far less fiery, and he was on the fringes of the emotional appeal movement starting up in Protestantism in his day; previously, appeals from the pulpit were appeals to logic. The Puritans and their immediate successors were intense believers in the "logic" of their faith (the people can all read the Bible themselves and see how it plays out in their lives, so it makes sense to them), but by Edwards' day, logic wasn't working as well for a number of reasons (increasing secularism [of sorts] and religious diversity, less widespread education/literacy, that sort of thing), so preachers drew on emotion for conversion and retention. Edwards originally delivered this sermon to a parish in a community that had become known for laxity in practice and behavior outside the church. At least, that's what I remember from the paper; it's been about 3-4 years since I wrote it and the sources I had aren't ones I worked with often.

...sorry. We're finally talking about a topic I know something about. I get carried away sometimes. [You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] And I also have to say that I've been raised in the Episcopal church, and we never got taught that there would be a literal "Rapture." They keep things kind of vague.

KelinciHutan wrote:

Although, I have been given to understand that Edwards delivered his sermons in a dry, uninteresting monotone. He wrote them down and read them off word, for word, for word. Very boring.

I guess he's Tuxedo Mark's spiritual ancestor as well as Jack Chick's...