James A. Worrell
The End of The World According to The Bible
JAMES A. WORRELL
Christians believe some nutty things. To believe in a God that can only be appeased by human sacrifice is one of the weirdest. To believe that people are born in sin and doomed for eternal hell is another one. Yet, “Judgment Day” is without doubt one of the most convoluted, idiotic things believed by Christians.
John’s description of the Judgment takes up most of the last eighteen chapters in Revelation. The grapes grew bigger in the old days, so maybe the Marihuana was stronger. Here are some highlights of John’s madness.
Jesus, who is in heaven, resembles a dead lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, pulls seals off of a scroll held by God. This activity unleashes a series of calamities on earth. However, the carnage is temporarily halted while an angel marks the foreheads of the 144,000 to be saved.
Then the calamities, resume: the earth is bombarded with “hail and fire mixed with blood” and many other unpleasant things. The gates of hell are opened and out pour locusts with human faces, wearing tiny crowns that sting people with their tails for for five months. (Locusts have stinging tails?) Two hundred million angels, riding horses with lion heads that breathe sulfur and flame, kill a third of mankind.
Next is a lull. Two prophets appear on earth, packing a variety of deadly supernatural powers. For 1,260 days they torment humankind. (Those already killed by the 200 million angels). Then “the beast” from hell kills them, but after three and a half days they’re resurrected and go to heaven. An earthquake that kills seven thousand people announces this.
At about the same time war breaks out in heaven; (the perfect place), the angel Michael triumphs and hurls the Devil down to earth. The Devil teams up with a second beast (not the original beast) and they make life miserable for God’s chosen people for forty-two months. Then the first beast reappears and forces everyone either to worship the second beast or be killed. The worshippers receive the “mark of the beast.” (Christian fundamentalists never mention that the 144,000 god-fearing folk who have survived have also been marked, thus everyone has a mark on their forehead.)
God’s bloodbath resumes: angels with giant sickles kill thousands, plagues and hailstones pick off the survivors, earthquakes level cities including Babylon, “the great whore.” (Does the city of Babylon still exist?) The second beast and the first beast (now renamed “the fake prophet”) are thrown into a lake of burning sulfur. Every soldier in their vast army is killed in the battle of Armageddon by the sword-wielding mouth of a creature named Word of God. Birds eat their own flesh.
An angel grabs the Devil, wraps him in a chain, and throws him into hell. This signals the first resurrection, which only applies to those who have been beheaded because they stuck up for Jesus.
After a few thousand years, the Devil is released from hell. He gathers another vast army (“God and Magog”) to do battle, but they’re consumed by fire sent down from heaven. Then the Devil is thrown into the same lake of sulfur as the beast and the false prophet.
This signals the second resurrection: Judgment Day, the main event. Everyone is raised from the dead (apparently no humans have survived) paraded before a big, white throne, and anyone whose name isn’t written in the book of life is thrown into the lake of sulphur.
Heaven, hell, the earth, and death all disappear. A new earth replaces them and a new heaven, from which descends “the new Jerusalem,” a city made of gold, occupying fifteen hundred cubic miles.
John, whose descriptions have been painfully detailed up to this point, becomes suspiciously mun when it comes to describing what life is like in the New Jerusalem. He mentions only that it will be daylight, that its inhabitants will serve God and Jesus, and that no ”sexually immoral” people will be allowed in it.
I don’t believe one word of these delusional writings by a person obviously not in his right mind. There is nothing that has ever happened in history or life that could possibly bring about such a weird series of events. yet, Christians believe this kind of idiocy.
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