Welcome to the Highway, Wanda!
Please forgive my brothers' sarcasm. It's just that so many of us are sick and tired of scare tactics. Revivalists, politicians, and our own government here in the U.S. has been inventing and hyping crisis after crisis for years and years.
Revivalists use fear to wake what they perceive to be a sleepy church out of her doldrums. Politicians use fear to gain greater power. Our national and state governments create alarm in order to exceed their Constitutional boundaries and to justify savage attacks on personal liberty and brutal taxes "to save America" from this "threat" they have either invented or exploited for its value as a fear factor. I blogged about the use of fear as a tool of empire
here.
When it comes to the modern evangelical end-times scenario, it might surprise you to hear that the very idea of a "rapture" that is
separated from the Second Coming of Christ by years of time is little more than 100 years old! Even the founders of colonial America never heard of any such idea. Lots of articles on
historical Christian eschatology (doctrine of "last things") can be found
here. Historically, the church's teaching about the last days was based on Scripture rather than newspaper headlines and conjecture. Today's popular "left behind" scenario is not only unBiblical, it is dangerous. Find out why
here. I know it's popular to use fear as a motivator. But the more and more it used, the less and less effective it becomes as people become jaded.
Remember when Hal Lindsay wrote that the Soviets were going to invade Israel by 1988? Remember all the TV preachers' predictions about the rise of the Antichrist that was supposed to happen by that time? The more these "Christian" predictions that are supposedly based on the Bible fail to come true, the more and more people will say,
"See? The preacher proved his own Bible to be a book of fairy tales. Nothing he said the Bible predicts has happened."You'll prob'ly find a lot of resistance to scare tactics and unBiblical eschatology in this forum.
-Robin
