So, this is the first video in my little trial run where I release more videos! Hope you liked it! Check out my Patreon, if you want to! www.patreon.com/bigjoel
love to be a gnostic Jewish alchemist who understands that 666/616 is literally just Caesar Nero in gematria and knows that the gospel they use to justify slaughtering us started off as a gnostic critique of religion in the form of the Gnostic Gospels that just got absolutely gutted by the Council of Trent like 300 years after their publication
I have a friend who grew up in a super evangelical household who told me (a Jew) that his mom used to tell him he wasn't allowed to have Jewish friends immediately after going on pro-Israel rants about the end times. This is made even more unhinged by the fact that there are less than 700 Jews in this entire state.
I feel like I should preface this with "I don't believe any of this bullshit" but how is not being able to acquire food (which you need constantly and would probably start killing people for within days of not getting) not an issue? Seems like a pretty big problem to me. Or are you one of the delusional people that believes you possess the skills to become a subsistence farmer overnight?
"There shall, in that time, be rumors of things going astray, erm, and there shall be a great confusion as to where things really are, and nobody will really know where lieth those little things..."
This video was weirdly cathartic to me, as someone raised evangelical. As a small kid I was troubled by near-constant anxiety regarding the apocalypse. I used to cry in bed at night thinking about all the nice non-Christian people I knew; the neighbor lady who let me play with her cat, the cashier who complimented my pink bow, the funny kids at the library story time. According to both my church and my parents at the time, all of those people would go to hell forever after the second coming, and I felt like it was my fault since I was too nervous to minister to them. This mindset is a terrible thing to teach a young child, and though I love my parents dearly, a part of me resents them for raising me to believe that junk unquestioningly.
The flipside of that fear of ministering is when the child DOES do so, about another child’s religion, and causes a ton of social issues. I didn’t speak to one of my friends for half a year after I left the mores of Christianity because all he could talk about was his deep anxiety for my immortal soul. So I think you did the right thing, essentially being aware it wasn’t going to be received in those settings even if you had tried.
After over ten years of leaving the JWs, I am still deprogramming and honestly I'm not sure if the anxiety will ever fade. I was raised to constantly look at the world and interpret it as apocalyptic but always believing in the end things would be fine. Losing my faith mostly meant losing the "would be fine" part while maintaining a lot of the dread and pessimism about the future.
@@EAdano77 that’s very common. My ex-Catholic mother was similar, everything was pointless and doomed to her and there was no spiritual salvation. I was never properly in Catholicism myself but had picked up a lot of her fatalism and pessimism. It is possible to unlearn that, though it’s very hard. Whenever I read about eg climate change or the NHS collapsing, some part of me still goes “welp I guess that’s it then, we’re screwed”. Meditation and mindfulness (as difficult as it was at first to stare my proverbial demons head-on) have helped me redirect that impulse into thinking about all the ways it can still be diverted. I also invoke a sort of version of Pascal’s Wager, which is to say if the world truly is doomed it makes no difference what I think. But if there IS hope, it’s incumbent on me to hold onto that hope and do my part to see it through into reality. So either way I may as well focus on the hopeful side!
I've always loved the "credit cards are the mark of the beast" evangelical conspiracy theory, because it's evolved over time. Anything can be the mark of the beast. Cell phones? Mark of the beast. QR codes? Mark of the beast. Credit cards? Sure, why not!
There used to be a thing about www = 666, so the internet was "of the devil." (Because the letter vav in Hebrew is often translated as a "w" and vav is also the numeric equivalent of 6.)
I have a red birthmark on my chest. My evangelical Catholic father once likened it to the mark of the beast to make arguments I was similar to the Antichrist. These people really have no chill.
What exactly is an evangelical Catholic? I grew up Catholic and feel we are very different from Evangelicals. One distinct thing being we basically don’t care about end of the world stuff like this.
Mainstream Catholics generally aren't that concerned with the end of the world from my experience. Generally the Catholic stance is "it could happen at any time so be good at all times just in case" and that's pretty much it.
@@dazedneptune A bunch of angry old Catholic men got jealous that angry old Evangelical men were capable of being more angry, at more things, and at a greater frequency, so they just started parroting Evangelical anger in the hopes it would bring them closer to their angry God.
@@davitdavid7165 arranged marriage is still a common practice all over the world, you're thinking of forced or coerced marriage. Arranged marriage is a consensual partnership between both parties and is basically like going through a match-making service.
@@facelessdrone nah, I meant arranged marriage. It could be possible that the 2 partners don't like each other at all and are basicly forced by their families to be together. And the fact that it is commonplace just makes the situation sadder
The only reason divorce rates shot up the way they did is a lot of people were basically trapped in their marriage because no-fault divorce wasn't a thing. When it became a thing, people quickly (and then slowly) started heading for the exit door on their marriages. Since enough time has passed, everybody that wanted a divorce but couldn't get one is not a thing -- from a legal perspective. Divorce rates have been declining slowly ever since that initial rush to the door.
...so you ARE thinking of forced marriages, not ARRANGED marriages. Arranges marriages are statistically often a lot happier than non-arranged. They are common in cultures that deeply value family. No one is forced in arranged marriages, they use connections to try and find a good match, they meet, go on dates and may or may not get engaged. And often it follows a pretty standard timeline. I know people in happy arranged marriages and stuck in "standard" ones. You just sound like Dude Afraid of Other Cultural Norms.
My father is one of those apocalyptic Evangelicals, he's a seventy year old boomer, who still supports the monarchy here in Canada, and lives in a squalid shack in the Ontario wilderness, but wants American-esque gun rights, just in case parliament decides to confiscate his opium. My father's paranoia is fuelled by RU-vid, even in the middle of nowhere, no neighbours for miles, he is still online, awaiting for someone on RU-vid to tell him the war is on, my dad is as high on libertarianism, as much as he is on opiates.
This reminds me of when i was still going to kids church and during our time there the workers found out that gay marriage was legalized and they all started crying because they thought the end times were near. Never seen adults be that immature and misguided in my life lmao
As a young evangelical, I remember watching a documentary that all that proved that Sadaam Hussein was the Antichrist. It went over the numerous prophecies he fulfilled, and really made it all pretty black and white. I remember being so PROUD after that, like just so impressed with myself for knowing the future, for being 'clued in.' I was really excited for the imminent validation and catharsis of the End Times, for the obvious signs to come and check off prophecies like a to do list. I wanted it to be true. I think, on some level, because if it was imminent, then it was demonstrable and real. And if it was demonstrable and real, then the secret torment of Faith -- of doubt and uncertainty and constantly having to reconcile your belief with science and philosophy and culture, would finally be over. God would come down and give you your I Was Right medal, and you could finally stop worrying. Your salvation would be assured, the finish line crossed. Finally, we'd get to stop having to be Christians
I feel that as a 'doomer' environmentalist. It's hard not to take some bitter joy in every bit of validation that I perceive from the climate news, while also having to constantly remind myself I'm biased. But more importantly... how to have a good life with that hanging over our heads? Voltaire's 'Candide' did it for me... I tend my little garden on the slopes of the volcano, mostly at peace.
It's pretty disturbing how this sort of stuff would be shown un critically to me and other children who recieved evangelical education. I used to believe in the apocalypse, and was very much terrified of it. Fucked up how some people want a world where you can drill shit like this into children's heads, but daring to say they can accept themselves even if they're not cis or straight means you're a monster.
Fr like i cannot count how many times I’ve woken up and my parents are gone and didn’t tell me or leave a note and I panicked thinking they got raptured and I missed it
I used to have a hyperfixation on the book of revelation and the end times. Honestly there was something vaguely suicidal in my interest looking back on it…
the crazy thing, is that I distinctly remember being showed a documentary exactly like this one at school when I was, like, 11 or so... and asking myself "what if we're suposed to NOT want those this to happen?" "What if what we're really supposed to do is try to make this planet heaven, instead of just accepting that it's doomed and waiting for it to end?"
It begs the question, why would we be saved from earth and brought to heaven for eternity if we were made of the very dust of the earth even before sin?
@@midnight_77 Biblically speaking, our bodies are made from the dust of the Earth, but our spirits are made by God. This is made clear to Ezekiel in his visions, in which god basically revives a bunch of skeletons by giving them spirits, so he can see for himself that "death" is not temporal, but spiritual. "Dust to dust" is not a statement of fact, it's a warning of what'll happen to those who don't make it to salvation.
my parents were apart of a messianic jewish-christian hybrid “cult”. We would celebrate sukkot for 3 weeks a year in oklahoma. I was young, it was just a fun camping trip with family friends and a congregation. But soon they started selling survival handbooks for the revalations and teaching that it was coming imminently. my parents bought a trailer and a truck in preparation to live out of it. we had go bags with wool socks. it was horrifying to me at 11-12. i was told everyone else would perish and we were the chosen few to survive and live in heaven forever. I calculated i would live to 15 with the timeline they gave me. I was homeschooled and isolated. it was awful.
Yikes! Also, as a Jewish person (atheist for decades, but still consider myself culturally Jewish in some ways), I couldn’t help but find it surprising that you celebrated a one-week holiday for three weeks! When my kids were growing up we generally celebrated Sukkot, usually built and decorated a sukkah in the backyard, and sometimes spent a night in it if the weather permitted and the mosquitoes weren’t too bad 😄. We mostly liked the agricultural cycle/harvest, nature/quasi-pagan vibe of the holiday, and added in lots of secular context as we did with most holidays. Anyway, my sympathies for the discomfort you experienced, and I’m glad you got away from an environment that was toxic to you. (Btw, I met a lot of Messianic Jews in my middle adulthood-my former mother-in-law is evangelical and constantly dragged me to events with, or sent folks to me from the Messianic movement in the hope I could be saved by something that felt more “familiar” to me. Didn’t work, of course, but I never had the heart to tell her as a progressive, secular Jew just how weird I found most of their interpretations of Jewish practices in any case…)
@@literaterose6731 Rabbinical Judiasm is messianic by default. Almost all Jewish sects today are messianic, this has been the norm since around fall the of the second temple. Messianic Judiasm, however, does not typically preach that the messiah is likely to come in our life times, though does, typically, hold that everyone will be revived in the world to come. Judiasm is generally focused very much on the material world and holds a much more material world view as compared to Christainity (in Judiasm, for example, it is considered a religious obligation to maintain your health, being permissible to break almost any commandment to do so). This lends itself less, generally speaking, to the more spiritual views of a coming apocalypse and messianic age. The Jewish view is typically that the messianic kingdom will be a literal kingdom on earth.
@@DembaraLemoon While interesting, I’m not sure why you’re lecturing me about Judaism (for one thing, I’m Jewish, and I know the difference between Jewish and Christian dogmas). The reply I left, in response to someone’s comment about their personal lived experience, is about the fringe fundamentalist *Christian* movement known by various names: back when I encountered them, they usually called themselves Jews for Jesus or Messianic Jews, now they often just call themselves the Messianic movement. But again, this is a Christian group. Some people are converts from Judaism, but many are not. They have nothing whatever to do with what you’re going on about; they are neither “Rabbinic Judaism” nor a “Jewish sect.” When they use the word “Messianic,” they mean it very literally, in the sense of “accepting that the messiah has already come, namely Jesus.” You know…Christians. Finally, I’m sorry, but at best your lecture is useful only in the pedantic academic sense, not any practical way. Non-orthodox, non- or low-observance modern Jews do not describe themselves as “messianic” (and most would be confused or affronted at being described as being in a “sect.”). I grew up in Conservative Judaism, in a relatively low observance, secular home. I was bat mitzvah, we went to shul semi-regularly (usually Friday night), and celebrated most major holidays. I went through a more religiously attached period as a teenager (not uncommon), even considering becoming a rabbi, and studied Torah and liturgy informally with a local rabbi for a bit. But here’s the thing: I’ve belonged to or been involved with synagogues and other Jewish organizations over the last half century across the U.S. (easily a couple dozen individual groups, in at least six states) ranging from Conservative to Renewal and some straight up secular or political. In none of them, not one, ever in my memory, did anyone refer to that community or themself personally as “messianic,” as some sort of accurate descriptor of their religious sensibility. You are, again, speaking academically, not colloquially. And if someone tells you they are “Messianic” or a “Messianic Jew” they are not saying they are a Rabbinical Jew, I guarantee- they are a fundie Christian who likes to flavor their religious practice with random Jewish cultural elements, and they probably want to tell you the “good news.”
The wackiest part about this is that the Rapture itself doesn't actually come from the Bible. It's a misinterpretation of poetic metaphor made in a Bible commentary from some dude in the 1800s that the church really latched onto in America during the 2nd Great Awakening, or as I call it: The De-Coolification of Christianity
@@duffin.caprous After deconverting, it's been weird to learn more historical context and realize that the eschatology of modern Christianity has its roots more in Dante and Milton than anything scriptural...
Growing up southern Baptist, I gained a fear of the dark I 100% blame on the church. On one Sunday after Sunday school they took all the 10 and under kids to a shed attached to the church with just 2 adults, not parents. They locked the doors, no ac so super hot, turned off all the lights then turned on those screaming/hell torture soundtracks a lot of the rural churches used for plays at the time. Then turned on some dim red lights to simulate fire. The adults then started screaming at us that “this is what it will be like if you go to hell”. Got us all huddled together in the middle of the room screaming at us. It’s a formative memory for me.
I remember as a kid how the history channel and other dubiously educational channels would play very similar "documentaries" about the book of revelations and the apocalypse. They left me convinced and terrified of the end of the world. I was raised very vaguely catholic, and, looking back, I think these sorts of documentaries were what made me ask my parents to start attending church every week. It's absurd to me that an "educational" channel would broadcast evangelical propaganda like it was no different from any other documentary
$$$ The channels were taken over because people with tax-breaks always have the upper hand. Just last year I saw some Science channel rerun about how a ghost-train in Russia meant that the USSR had secretly killed more people than counted in their civil wars and forced prison labor in the conquered "Manifest Destiny" Siberian.
That part about “boy I’m sure glad I’ll be saved from The Tribulations while the nonbelievers have to put up with it for 7 years” really helped recontextualise the phrase “hell on earth” for me ngl
Reminds me of how Thomas Aquinas theorised that people in heaven get to see people in hell, so that they can delight in seeing them tormented, and be more convinced to praise God for not sending them there. "We're going to have it good while everyone else suffers" is a surprisingly common part of theology, and really raises a lot of questions about how "love thy neighbour" and "turn the other cheek" these people really are.
@@jogeran4955 yk, I’m pretty sure we covered that in my history of philosophy/ethics class, but I largely tuned-out after it left the ancient Greeks and Romans until the Enlightenment because Christian ethics didn’t interest me. I definitely wrote essays about Aquafina’s (I wrote Aquinas properly, then my phone changed it, but I like it so I’m gonna leave it) for the class, but I didn’t retain it like I did Plato or Nietzsche. Anyway, to actually address your comment rather than just comment on it: I’ve always known that politics of envy was part of the reasoning behind bad afterlives to want to avoid. But it didn’t previously click for me that the people who want The Rapture to hurry up and come, did so in part due to the desire for the Sinners to pay NOW, without even having to actually die first! Which, to elaborate a little further, explains even more about the particular type of leftist who treats The Revolution rapturously. I always knew there was a psychological appeal in The Revolution coming and sweeping everything clean, to be saved and play their part in saving others like them, and that that was influenced by Christianity. But adding the extra layer of “and I want to make sure everyone GETS WHAT’S COMIN TO EM” in the analysis really makes everything sit together neat and flush in my brain. In a way, it’s just another psychological hack to defer gratitude (if punishing others in horrible ways can be categorised as gratitude), by engaging in performative anticipation rather than just waiting or calmly laying the foundation with no furore.
@@kaitlyn__L Yeah, this is 100% what Nietzsche was getting at. That ethics based around meekness and humility cannot conceptualise immediate punishment for the wicked and reward for the virtuous, so instead they have to sublimate that desire into some grand cosmic idea of justice.
@@jogeran4955Maybe Hell is a test by a clever God. If you accept it or delight in it, you fail for not recognizing that eternal suffering can't be justified.
I laughed when they said that the anti Christ will make them unable to buy and sell things. Like, is that really your nightmare scenario? You could literally make anything up and you choose that?
When Covid came along, a lot of these loons insisted that they were now banned from stores if they weren't jabbed and masked, and that was the fulfilment of the prophesy that said people wouldn't be able to buy or sell. And I was like: haven't you heard of shopping online?
@@WhaleManMan yes, it is. But depending on your point of view, the fact that it's in the Bible doesn't necessarily mean that it isn't made up. However my point, as per the message in the video, is that even if you're a Bible believer then you ought to be cautious about interpreting modern events as fulfilment of biblical prophesy. Human beings are incredibly prone to perceiving patterns and coincidences where none exist in reality, especially when they _want_ to believe in them. I think the Book of Revelation was probably supposed to be allegorical, not read as a series of literal events. I also believe it was written for the people of 2,000 years ago, not for us. Being unable to buy or sell, as a marketplace activity, would have been an easily relatable concept to those people - but the authors of the Bible could not possibly have conceived of ecommerce, or even the internet. It didn't matter then, because Christians weren't looking very far ahead. Jesus's early followers expected him to return within their lifetimes, not 2,000 years later.
@@MrReasonabubbleShopping online is fine and dandy until you can't use a credit or debit card either... And cashless society is coming one step closer with FedNow in July. You don't even have to be Christian to be concerned about the centralization of payment systems, but it's as good an excuse as any to be leery of it.
What finally made Christian theology about the end times finally make sense to me (as someone raised in a very progressive Jewish household so the whole thing seemed and frankly still seems extremely weird) was that it wasn't written to be literal, it was written as almost like... I guess a satire of the Roman Empire, is the best word. This end times theology all comes from the Book of Revelation, authored by a guy who identifies himself as John of Patmos, a Christian martyr. The whole thing is basically him thinking he IS living in the end of times, and describing what he's witnessing - war, famine, plague, persecution - and ascribing these evils to the ruling powers that exiled him since it's obvious to him these ruling powers are what's ruining everything because they bear all these signs of evil he's describing. Ultimately it's an attempt to reassure Christians that this war and suffering at the hands of charismatic and powerful leaders who don't have their best interests at heart and are keeping them poor and downtrodden is worthwhile, because at the end of it all Christ is coming back to reward them (early Christians who still probably thought of themselves as Children of Israel/kinda Jewish). The reason it still resonates is because human nature hasn't changed all that much in the last couple thousand years. People with money and power still abuse their money and power, and the people they abuse still want to find signs that the suffering they're feeling at the hands of those in power is somehow worth it or going to end and they'll be vindicated. Since the Book of Revelation's symbolism is distinctive and terrifying enough to be really cool and attention-grabbing, yet vague enough to apply to almost any situation, people who perceive themselves as martyrs can always find ways to ascribe the evil symbols to whoever they don't like, and use it to justify whatever they do like as being pre-ordained by the Bible.
The fall of the Western Roman Empire would have also felt like the end of the world to anyone who lived through it, you went from a large interconnected world with huge cities to a world ruled by local war lords where trade had almost come to a halt.
I think "polemic" might be a more fitting word, meant to harshly castigate the then current Roman emperor. Most of the weirder stuff was meant symbolically or as code which has been reinterpreted many times since its writing. It's interesting to read about John Nelson Darby and his Plymouth Brethren, and the Scofield Reference Bible, which popularized their beliefs in the US, because much of what is now popularly accepted, without criticism , about what Revelation says and what it means is primarily based on some weird extremists from the 19th Century and their personal interpretations that are not really supported by the text or the context of its writing. It's sort of the beginning of American Christianity's dive into conspiracy theories, which is funny because, reading your comment, I couldn't help but picture John of Patmos as a sort of proto-Alex Jones, ranting about being the only one privileged with the secret "truth."
@@hedgehog3180 That was true in parts of the former empire, but in other areas the change was gradual enough that people went on considering themselves "Romans" for centuries after losing contact with the capital. In some places it probably seemed more like a Great Depression than an end of the world, and of course in the eastern half of the empire things went on relatively the same as always for over a thousand years. In any case, "John" was writing long before the shit truly began hitting the fan.
The malleable nature of the narrative seems like the point. It allows Christians to simultaneously feel victimized, vengeful, righteous, disgusted, excited, and most of all better than everyone else. It doesn’t matter that various aspects of the narrative contradict each other both in content and in the emotions they elicit. Each one lets a Christian feel a specific mix of emotions in one moment before feeling a different and possibly incongruous combination in another moment. It’s literary self-pleasuring in its purest form.
I think you're pretty spot on with that assessment. The nature of the system of thought seems to allow both fear of being victims, as well as taking pleasure in the idea that their savior is finally coming to punish everyone who hasn't been limiting themselves by pseudo-biblical conservative morality. Both ideas are held simultaneously which makes for a weird emotional state when trying to explain it to children, given that "happiness" is not something a 4-5 year old kid is going to feel when being told that they're about to be hunted down for their beliefs. Especially when said god is going to be sending 99% of the population to hell. Regardless of the way you're taught it, when you're that young it just sounds like a depressing end to the world and most of its inhabitants. Growing up in a household where this was just *assumed* to be absolutely true and the Pentecostal bubble affirmed it made for some shocking revelations in my youth. You discover that most people aren't operating day to day on this worldview of imminent demise and persecution, which of course reveals how intentionally limiting the philosophy ends up being in terms of what you feel is a good use of your time. Why get a college education or fight for a higher paying job? Why seek out a place to retire in? The more I learn about how Jehovah's Witness are raised, the more it seems like eschatology as a whole is intended to keep people poor and therefore dependent on the church community for their resources. Including hope.
The rapture already happened, only like 7 people were pure enough and nobody noticed. We've been in the "thousand years of tribulation" phase for about 500 years. Which I take as a positive, because we've made it this far at least.
It’s also messed up just how much still gets filtered through, “secularly”, from parents who tell themselves they rejected the faith they were raised in - but didn’t interrogate anything else about their worldview. Something else just takes the functional place of the religious rapture - nuclear war, climate change, what have you. You still grow up with it constantly talked about, invoked, wished-for; but without the emotional “padding” of hoping/saying you’d be one of the redeemed ones 🙃
me too! my family was part of the jehovah's witnesses religion/cult and i remember being extremely depressed and anxious when they told me about armageddon :/ i had constant nightmares about it. i kept thinking about how everyone i knew was going to die horribly in fire (that's how they described it), i was scared that god would decide my family and i weren't "pure enough to survive." pretty surreal! and sad, honestly. especially considering they kept telling children that god was "our friend" lmao.
@@froot2114 It's only in retrospect that I realize what it did to me as a child to be constantly told that I wouldn't live to see my 30s, maybe even my 20s... And I should be happy about it. And I was! I remember being 12, lying in bed, thinking that I would be okay with dying in my sleep because then I would get to go see Jesus. I also remember being terrified whenever I couldn't find anyone at church/home, because I was scared the rapture had happened and I wasn't good enough
I can’t even imagine the trauma that would come from being told that you would literally suffer for eternity in hell if you didn’t behave perfectly. Such an insidious way for people to be controlled.
I had a history professor that used to go on and on about Revelations. He would often describe it as "the most misunderstood work of allegorical fiction in the world," as he (and many other scholars) believed the entire thing to be an allegory for the fall of the Roman Empire, with accompanying symbolism that critiques governments like it. Obviously, Revelations isn't the only apocalyptic text (ReligionForBreakfast actually just made a really cool video about AI and its relation to apocalypticism), but it is nevertheless the text that most Christians latch onto. I think their devotion and excitement about the end times just speaks to a general Christian desire to revel in the suffering of everyone who isn't a Christian. They want the apocalypse to happen so that they can say, "See? Look. We were right. We were superior all along." It's just another example of a religion misreading their own sacred text to reaffirm weird, rigid rules about morality and consequences. In my opinion, anyway. Cool video, broseph.
@@isidoreaerys8745i guess being the main factor of stopping slavery in the US is clueless, so is more democracy, government responsibility. And higher literacy rates as well 😂
The allegory for the fall of the Roman Empire seems pretty obvious once you start to think about it, like the fact that there are 4 horsemen of the apocalypse is very obviously inspired by the Huns, the Anti-Christ is probably Julian the Apostate who tried to return the empire back to its pagan roots and so on. People seem to forget that the Bible is a historical text that was written and then edited in a historical context and as such bears obvious marks of that.
The line between “normal religious belief” and “doomsday cult” seems to be very thin indeed. Editing to say that, as a cult victim, I don’t think normal religions are all Basically Cults or whatever. Probably all major religions have beliefs that could easily be used to turn them into a cult (which is what this comment is about; any belief in hell or some other great consequence, for example, can be used as a tool to manipulate believers into being part of, and staying in, a cult), but cult doesn’t just mean “beliefs I think are crazy” or “religions/beliefs that cause harm”. When it comes to cults based on broader belief systems, like Christianity, it’s more about those in control and how they use and manipulate the beliefs + followers that differentiates them from other denominations.
Most religions are death cults, especially Christianity. Meaning their salvation and rewards are only done after death sand everything done while living is in preparation for this death It's the easiest concept used to control people
My mom entirely believes in this stuff, and she watched this documentary when I was a kid. She had the basement prepared for the tribulations, and she would tell us that one day we might find her clothes in the field, but not her, and that she has been raptured, but we would not be because we were little, and we would need to remain faithful to Christ through the seven years of hardship so we could meet her in Heaven. I would talk about what I wanted to be when I grow up or things I wanted to do when I am a mommy, and she would tell me to not get too attached to these ideas because they may never happen. She wouldn't let me get an IUD because she thought it was the mark of the beast and how the government would track me. It really was a wild way to grow up, with such fear and no hope for the future, the only solace coming from our unbending faith.
I believed in rapture theology until I was a Junior in college. My junior year, I was so stressed out and depressed that I truly would tell myself "It's okay, all I have to do is make it a few more years and then Jesus will come back and I won't have to suffer any more". I didn't have the words at the time to realize how mentally ill I truly was, but like, how sad is that? The only way I could conceive of a future, of living my life for a few more years, was knowing that it was all going to end soon anyway, so I might as well keep going for a little bit longer.
It's strange that it is so much easier for the human mind to believe we of all people will face the endtime of creation, than to believe the world might go on just fine even after we are gone...
If religion doesn't drive us back to the stone age first, politicians will be the ones to end it all. They're the ones with nukes at their disposal. Religion poisons everything, absolutely, but it will be politicians who send us the way of the dinosaur.
To evangelicals, the world is one big divine conspiracy theory, with a powerful, mysterious entity pulling the strings, leaving vague clues about its intentions for believers to find and interpret, all building toward some climactic endgame scenario that is always right around the corner but never actually arrives. So of course they fell for Qanon.
I was raised by an abusive conspiratorial extremist Christian. He used to make me watch these documentaries about the apocalypse. They would terrify me as a child. He would predict a new apocalypse every few years and start prepping. He would make me stay home from school around the predicted date. I started crying watching this video. I’m an atheist now and I don’t speak to my family. Religion is poison.
Having grown up as a Christian, and being exposed to the obsessive talk about the end-of-the-world, I really became numb to it and it thankfully is not a significant part of my faith nor the church I currently serve at any longer. Fact is, the Bible doesn't talk about the end-times so that we can obsess over it every waking moment. It's really just there to say "evil is destined to lose" and "there really is something this all amounts to." The Bible isn't an exhaustive guideline to living your life. It's still ultimately, a written work with a finite amount of knowledge in it. It isn't as much "fallible" as it is "divine knowledge presented in the limited scope of human authors". The Bible isn't some sort of conspiracy board where you connect its most minute details to modern day events. That's not only incredibly unhealthy both spiritually and mentally, but a failure to understand the true purpose of the Bible.
It can be pretty funny to look at historical theologians’ same “conspiracy board” theories and how stretched their links are. Not that I’ve done a whole lot of it, but I went through a period as a teen where I read all I could, which went back about 1000 years IIRC. Every war or famine or natural disaster of the time got folded in, whereas today they’re “just regular history”. It’s also interesting to compare modern “areligious” neoliberal “end of history” theories to said historical rapturous anticipation.
There’s also plenty of evidence that revelations was referring to then-current events centering around the wide-spread persecution of Christians by the Roman Empire. That the Roman Emperor (Nero, whose name translated to Hebrew Numerology as 666 and whose face adorned currency at the time) was the anti-Christ. Rome certainly United the world as they knew it, was considered decadent and sinful by Christians and inhabited seven hills (a seven headed beast features in Revelations) In any case the clear alternative is that they were communicating in metaphor about their current tribulations and hoping for their eventual salvation. Personally as a Christian I vibe with that. Raving that the end times are coming because of gay people existing today seems ridiculous when Christians were literally being hunted down and thrown to the lions back then. Seems to me if there was ever any tribulations we already went through it and our current era of Christian dominance in the Western World resembles Christ’s “Millennium” (not necessarily a literal 1000 years) of rule before the actual day of judgement. The only reason that fundies are clamoring for another apocalypse is because they keep making a mess of our Millennium. It’s our opportunity to make the world a better place for all in preparation for Paradise and instead they just want to repeat the bad times because they want more people they deem as sinful to suffer. It’s honestly gross.
What is bibliolatry but a bunch of details no one wants to hear? What is a "horror in history" if someone can mischaracterize it as "it's not that bad if all things don't end."
I thought so too. I think that any serious leftist would benefit from more discussion about and understanding of religion. Especially Christianity. Especially Evangelicals. Was great to see this video from Joel, glad you concur!
This is really interesting because not only does it leave believers with no purpose, it actively discourages them from making the world a better place. On the one hand, the dissolution of society and “moral values” is a bad thing that will cause a lot of suffering. On the other hand, its a sign of the end times meaning that working to prevent genocide, war, famine, etc. is impossible since its predestined or even directly working against gods plan. To some extent being “tactically aligned with the antichrist” does not just mean supporting israel, but also means not trying to make the world better, or even make it worse.
Biblical Scholar Bart D Ehrman just recently released a book called Armageddon: What the Bible Really Says about the End. It does a great job explaining what the current academic consensus is about the Book of Revelations (that it was basically just Christian revenge fantasy towards Rome from a time when Christians were actually being oppressed) and explains how we got to the point where many modern Christians believe it is predicting our near future. I would recommend it to anyone really interested in this topic.
I think the contradiction secretly lies in the uncomfortable reluctance to admit "we want the people who aren't us to suffer forever, or are at least totally okay with that." Great vid as always.
I grew up having to watch things like this. This really hits too close to home. My entire childhood was anxiety about the Rapture, end times, and the fear of being left behind. On 9/11 2001 I was 13, in middle school, and at first no one knew what had happened. The info they gave us kids was scant, vague and sounded a lot like planes were falling out of the sky. I believed it was the Rapture. For several terrifying minutes I genuinely believed I had been left behind and the rapture had started. When it was finally revealed that the planes had been hijacked my reaction was immediate RELIEF. This shit is entertaining sure but never forget it ruins lives. I spent my formative years not planning for my future because I believed my parents and church when they said the world will end. Fundamentalist Christianity is awful.
"never forget it ruins lives. I spent my formative years not planning for my future because I believed my parents and church when they said the world will end." Exactly, it will inevitably lead to people seeking less education, and trying to do less for themselves, which leads to centralization of wealth. In my opinion the major reason that the Republican party has latched onto this mentality is because they're realizing that it's the easiest way to keep people poor and they desperately need a large group of poor people to keep working minimum wage jobs and dying in the military so they can afford to get an education.
Same. Even as a conservative Christian teenager, I rolled my eyes whenever the youth pastor talked about the evangelical version of the End Times because that shit clearly wasn't in the Bible.
The Apocalypse before Jesus appears: “Global sea levels are rising at a dangerous rate.” The Apocalypse after Jesus appears: “Global cooking wine levels are rising at a dangerous rate.”
Christians during the Tribulations: God please come pick us up there are plagues and everyone's drunk Non-Christians during the Tribulations: shit sucks but at least there's infinite wine
As someone who grew up Evangelical but is now Episcopalian, I… honestly struggle to comprehend how adults make and watch documentaries like these. A major part of my life as a teenager and young adult has been figuring out what kind of theological framework makes the most sense; how are there people in their 50s and 60s or older who are all like “yeah God is gonna kill everyone who isn’t a Christian and we just gotta sit back and be Christians til then”
side note: one time i saw a post that was like “there should be a show like Queer Eye except it’s five Bible scholars talking to a fundamentalist Christian” and… yeah. I want that show
It comes from the same place as people who mistake cruelty for logic and kindness as weakness; people who just want to be nice and say that God isn't gonna condemn everybody for arbitrary reasons are just soft and weak people who can't face up to the hard truths that we all deserve hell and that God is gonna drop us all into the eternal deep fryer. You're just being emotional, like a soft woman, while they're just speaking facts, which can easily be discerned as facts because they're offensive and cruel and, thus, manly (thus, logical).
@@Rachel-og8jy the episcopalian church is so progressive that a lot of other christian sects flat-out call them heretics. they’re definitely not the doom-mongers that evangelicals are
I didn't grow up in a group that is usually connected to Evangelicals, instead Mormons, and in the Mormon Church it is usually typically for a kid to get a Patriarchal Blessing which is basically a priest predicting the future of the kid. These are considered a big deal and a copy of the blessing is kept for decades. My mom even still has her copy. I bring it up because a very common phrase in these blessings is "You will be a strong, and hopeful spirit during the end times." My aunt actually had that in her blessing, and to this day my family still talks about how wonderful that is. My aunt has been dead for a few years now
I used to be mormon and it is extremely evangelical, just with another aesthetic. I know people with patriarchal blessings that say they're supposed to live through the second coming, and I am watching them closely. I have heard people say that if these people die, it's only because they fell short of their covenants and their blessing stopped applying to them.
@@chaotickreg7024 yeah, it's gonna turn into a Jehovah's Witnesses thing with the "Only 144,000 will be saved" thing. "Oh well they'll be resurrected at the beginning of the Millennium so that's technically them living through the second coming! Source: grew up Mormon in Utah
The impact of the Left Behind book series on evangelical Christian myth making cannot be understated. I grew up in Tennessee, and just about every Baptist/Pentecostal/Presbyterian’s perspective on Revelation was a slurry of these fiction books, what their parents told them, and what they heard in passing from other Christians. Very few I have met have actually read the book, mostly because it’s so incoherent and incongruent with the rest of the New Testament.
This is why I don't blame Democrats or government the way many do, the Bill Maher attitude if you will; where Reasonable people know about the crazy, but forget about them when judging schools, Agencies, etc. Same with "Parents are working longer hours" + "Social Media is Terrible for kids,", followed by "What's wrong with the schools?"
Interestingly the antichrist in Left Behind seems to be based on Gorbachev, a charismatic politician from a former communist country who had ambitions of creating world peace.
Rapture theology was never biblical to begin with. American evangelicals practice a kind of "ouija board" religion where they have prophetic dreams and then hunt for a verse in the bible that sounds similar to it.
When I was a kid, the entire idea of the end times instilled such genuine terror in me. I was always, always worried that if I did something wrong, I wouldn't be considered a good enough christian to be raptured. If I couldn't find my family, even briefly, I'd be filled with dread that they were all taken and I was left behind.
This kind of rapture anxiety is sadly very common with people who grew up in religions that focus on the apocalypse :( for me it looked different, but I'm so sorry you had to go through this
Here is something really messed up... Back when I was an evangelical in the early 2000s, John Hagee loudly promoted a "ministry" that was focused on flying as many Jews as possible back to Israel to help trigger the end times. From his pulpit, he would preach about how the destruction of Jerusalem was necessary.
I used to believe this growing up💀 I’m not christian anymore and it still freaks me out despite how obviously BS it is. the fact that people seriously believe this is scarier than the theory it’self
The bible says that the end times would happen within the lifetime of those alive when Jesus left for heaven so idk how any Christians believe the rapture and end times are still on their way.
I was waiting for this to drop on youtube so I could mention that I was watching some revelations preacher on the tv on vacation, and he kept repeating "what you do to the jew, god will do to you" and i still can't get over how weird that is
@@letsomethingshine at that time i was staying at a hotel in Vancouver i don't know if it was licensed from the US, the programming on the channel seemed entirely evangelically based.
Yeah! The video is a breadtube classic. Still sticks with me! Doesn’t it have a complicated title like “pretribulation postmillenialism” or something like that
So I've thought the Israel thing was ridiculous for a while, and as a Jew it feels somewhat offensive, but I've never connected it to LGBTQ+ issues or divorce rates. They support Israel because it's necessary for the rapture, but they don't support LGBTQ+ people because it's necessary for the rapture. It's not even like there's two groups of rapture believers who disagree on whether the rapture should happen. It is almost every individual person who believes in the rapture disagreeing with their own view on the rapture just so they can hate gay people.
This is why I'm hesitant about saying stuff like "religion causes bigotry". It seems like bigotry often precedes religious belief, with religion being more of an excuse than a catalyst.
@@cartoonhippie6610 I think everyone has the capacity for hate. It's something most people understand is wrong to act on, either irresponsible, immoral, or just pointless. Most people don't want to be hateful it is just too much work.. Religion for most good people doesn't make them bigots because they just don't want to be hateful. However the people who do want to be hateful and only aren't because of societal repercussions are a large minority of people. Religion gives them that excuse. Certain religious leaders tell them that actually being a bigot is the responsible and moral thing to do. So they naturally gravitate towards those people. They don't really give a shit about religion. They just like people encouraging the hate. Politics can be very similar at times. As sad as it is a certain subsection of people just want an excuse to be a bigot because it makes them feel good and superior. My exgf's dad was, probably still is, this way. Super religious but couldn't tell you anything from the bible, he just hated LGBTQ+ people, and racial minorities, and women. Also Jews and atheists, which was annoying since I am an atheist who comes from a Jewish family. He treated his wife like shit and he treated his daughter, my ex, like shit. He was a very hateful guy and used Christianity as a shield to justify his hate. Even though I'm not certain he could even list the ten commandments or the books of the bible for that matter. Religion helps foster hate because it brings hateful people together. Then they become hateful as a group which makes them feel justified. Religion can be a wonderful thing. It brings people hope which is important. However it is very easy to use that to feed into existing hatred and bigotry.
I think it's reflective of the fact that supporting Isreal aligns with American foreign policy and ensures that the US has a useful ally in the Middle East. The views of these evangelicals aren't really their own, they're just whatever support the American Oligarchs who own their megachurches and TV channels filtered through some vaguely Christian sounding rhetoric. The only belief they're actually consistent about is always following whatever their leaders tell them to do.
Religion is a notoriously poorly defined category. It's hard to make any general statements. However we can say high control groups for example are bad for you. Don't trust thought terminating cliches. Authoritarians want you to bring in an authorization sky Father so your submission will be total
I literally just got done writing a thesis on Tolstoy and eschatology and it was all about how there seems to be an unspoken assumption in many liberal theologies that "the apocalypse" or "doomsday" has already happened, that we're living in a time of realized eschatology, and that it is the duty of the Christian to create a heaven on earth through Christ-like works. Got into how it interfaces with the Jewish idea of tikkun olam as well as the understanding of Jesus as the platonic ideal of a human being. Fun stuff. I'm so fucking tired of writing.
Spoken exactly like I would expect someone who just got done writing a thesis on Tolstoy and eschatology all about how there seems to be an unspoken assumption in many liberal theologies that the 'apocalypse' or 'doomsday' has already happened: that we're living in a time of realized eschatology, and that it is the duty of the Christian to create a heaven on earth through Christ-like works to sound. I hope you find the rest you're looking for.
History Channel used to run their apocalypse programming at the end of the year, usually on my birthday. I still get incredibly depressed every birthday thinking about the weight of all the endings instead of being hopeful to start a new year.
The History Channel was my first introduction to the apocalypse and Armageddon when I was 9. It was early-2000s programs they had with evangelical figures talking about the Tribulations, the Antichrist, and how all these horrible things were destined to happen that became my biggest source of religious trauma. These ideas also agitated my childhood depression and made me obsess that the world was going to end soon and like a nightmare--in addition to giving me actual nightmares as a kid.
Sadly, It seems like millions of children were traumatized by apocalyptic religious documentaries by channels like the History Channel during the late 90s/2000s. (2012 docs were a Mood Killer for me).
As someone who grew up without religion in my household at all, the idea that anyone genuinely believes this stuff feels so surreal to me. I find myself watching this and thinking that there has to be some angle to why they would lie about it, but maybe people really can convince themselves of anything.
It helps give a sense of certainty in this confusing and fucked up world. So it makes a sort of sense to me. Still extremely frustrating to watch someone genuinely argue for it though
I feel very blessed to grow up the way I did. Both my parents are pastors, and they're both extremely intelligent. When I had people at school and in small groups talk about the apocalypse and how the world was going to end in 2012, my parents helped me critically think about everything. They also reminded me about the here and now. My parents and the denomination I come from are very here and now focused. Thankfully, worrying about the apocalypse was not a huge part of my life. Not all of us Christians are too worried about it!
I'm really glad not all churches have fallen to the temptation to use this tactic to scare people. I think it's actually destructive to faith, especially during hard times when people need hope.
@@trapd00rspider I completely agree! When we focus on just making sure we get to heaven or if we get raptured, then we're not focusing on the people around us and taking care of them!
Every morning my mom would wake me and we would read Revelations and she had me convinced the end was near any day I still carry that fear of the end of the world due to my extremist mom
I read a lot about Buddhism and Buddism's arguments against unenlightened Gods/Gauts/Gotts just waiting stupidly to fight each other "metaphorically physically" and it really helped me.
The four horsemen of the apocalypse are the following: 1. The lights will flicker on and off 2. The phone will ring and there will be nobody there 3. The walls will ooze green slime 4. The apocalypse appears in the ghost of the bus that ran over the hash-slinging slasher
The wish for the second coming is heartbreaking to me. Christians cradle the corpse of a man they never knew and beg him to come back, not because they loved him - they don't even know him - but because they have such anguished hatred for everything else that the end of time is what hope looks like to them.
Because they want to simultaneously bring on the apocalypse while also inflict pain and suffering on everybody they don’t like. It’s about power and control.
If you're Jewish and not in favor of Israel I guess you have nowhere to go the next time something horrific happens in the world and Jewish people are targeted again. But hey, at least your comments get upvoted here! That's the one thing the left and the right have in common, both sides are anti-Semitic.
yeah being taught about the evangelical apocalypse triggered lifelong anxiety in me starting as a kid. i remember hearing a bell and thinking "is this it? is it happening?" turns out the sound was from a game I was playing.
Even as a child, I distinctly remember having low level anxiety because our preacher did a whole sermon series on the end times. I'll never forget him repeating "your children will not die a natural death." It would be after the kids went to the "children's church" aka glorified daycare, but I'd stay with my parents usually since I was older. Now I'm pushing 30 and no longer call myself Christian. I'm still processing shit.
This is how religion works. An explanation so generalized that it can integrate any event or idea with ease and maintain the illusion of understanding it all
I grew up in the South. I was surrounded by Pentecostals, Southern Baptists, Catholics, and Evangelicals. Every single thing said in this video was discussed casually among everyone where I came from. I've had weird conversations with so many people who firmly believe all of this. They look forward to it. When you pair this kind of mentality with the Quiverfull movement, you begin to understand that these people are serious. They sincerely want to immanentize the eschaton. I know that phrase is a kind of joke, but it's true. They want to usher in the end times and any action that brings us closer to that day is praised no matter how evil.
2:37ff ...Did they really just say China could muster an army of 200 Million people or did I mishear that? More than a seventh part of their population? Right now, China has an army of about 2 Million and a reserve of 500.000. Do they have any idea of the logistical nightmare of even just doubling that number, let alone multiplying it by 100? _Even if_ you include in the Militia in these numbers as well, which has 8 Million largely noncombatant members and isn't actually a fighting force, you'd still have to multiply that number by 20 to get to 200 Million. These recruits would have to be mass-recruited, armed, and also _trained,_ because in today's world, an untrained combatant is _worse_ than useless. Do they have any idea of the stain this would put on the Chinese economy?? Yeah sorry, that's impossible. [edit] I just looked up the total number of military personnel worldwide _of all countries combined,_ and it currently sits at about 27.8 Million. Just so you get an idea of the scale we're talking about here. [/edit] I swear these people live in a fantasy world. No connection to reality whatsoever.
My experience growing up Evangelical was that most attempts to understand Revelations and the End Times revolved around how to identify the Anti-Christ so you didn't accidentally accept the mark of the beast and get sent to hell. It's like the final test of Christianity for a lot of Evangelicals.
Which is kinda hilarious, because if I remember correctly there's only two requirements for the Mark (restricting commerce without it, and being on the forehead or right hand) and yet _within my lifetime_ I've seen Christians freak out over no less than five possibilities and *none* have actually met those requirements...
The fact that many American politicians openly admit to believing this and striving toward bringing about the apocalypse through statecraft is utterly terrifying. Going about their lives, getting an education, getting elected and learning how to turn the gears of our government (mostly to enrich themselves)... and then deciding that the best thing for their constituents is to try to force the apocalypse. True clown moves. I miss the Enlightenment, having been born 300 years too late, apparently. The Age of Reason traded for Victorian misunderstandings of Mysticism, populist anti-intellectualism and magical thinking. Our society is tailor-made for psychopaths to prosper. The people in charge of aiming our nuclear arsenal really shouldn't be campaigning on thirstiness for the end of all human life on Earth.
@@cartoonhippie6610 a rant is a rant and sometimes you just need to shout into the void. I'm honestly amazed this got any reactions at all. You are correct, there were problems (LOADS!), but that one part of my rant was more for flavor than anything resembling a wholesale endorsement of the worst parts of the French Revolution, etc.
I'm pretty sure it's well accepted that the book of revelation is talking about Caesar Nero; the mark of the beast were the coins with his face on them. Using Gematria(basically ancient numerology), "Nero Caesar" in Aramaic adds up to the number of the beast(666) and in Hebrew it adds up to the other form of the mark of the beast (616). Apocalyptic literature was just another genre of literature in ancient Jewish and Christian literature like sci-fi and fantasy are today.
Mr Joel, I wish I had seen this video about ten years ago. My mom fell deep down into the insane conservative rabbit hole right before 2012 but had been staring Obama was the antichrist for years before that. The way she was interpreting everything was that everything was bad and hopeless and she was happy that she was probably going to die before the worst of it. This was extremely concerning to me as a youth who sure hoped there would be a future to look forward to. What you’ve said in this video is something I’ve had to piece together through her ramblings since she decided it was time to let me in on this apocalypse business. Note that I am still a conservative Christian myself, but Jesus said a few times in our Bible that we would not know the time of his return and to be ready. My cognitive dissonance about pending disaster was relieved, since keeping an eye out for signs was not what he’d asked us to do, instead focus on being the kind of person that Jesus would be happy to surprise with salvation. Anyway, thanks for making this one.
And this is why Pence and Pompeo scare me as much as Trump. We've gotten REALLY lucky so far that nothing has gone 'pear-shaped' considering the number of end-timers who have had roles in strategic/nuclear planning.
Oh, they've literally always been claiming that, going back to Jesus himself. He claimed that the end would come within the lifetime of some of his listeners. He taught people to radically withdraw from the world and purify themselves to face God because he believed that the world was basically done anyway. Jesus ran an apocalypse cult.
Just wanna shout out and say good job to everyone out there currently dealing with deconstructing their religious/cult/abusive family mindsets. Y’all give me some real faith in the ability of humanity to free themselves of this kinda bullshit. Living in reality isn’t always fun but at least it’s reliable… welcome to it, we’re glad to have you 😊
I was only adjacent to it and I'm still trying to unpack it. Growing up with a step-dad who suddenly decided to be a Jehovah's witness was a very strange time in my youth.
@@SleepyMatt-zzz oh man that sounds awful, good on you (and more power to you) for having the strength and awareness to work on your recovery from all that mess. I only ever got forced into going to mass and catholic school but the home dynamics were super abusive so I sorta relate… anyway when you said you were ‘adjacent to it’ I really felt that, I know how hard it is to feel like the shit you went through wasn’t that bad or that others had it worse - I struggled with that for years before I was able to admit to myself that almost nothing in my childhood was healthy or even acceptable. Anyway whatever your situation was, I’m rooting for ya and I offer my solidarity. Good luck going forward 👊
I think it says something kinda sad that there is a not insignificant sect of society that has seemly just completely checked out of life itself and is just waiting for the day some divine calamity will functionally kill them.
thank you for this video. it hits hard. i remember the terror, as a child, of coming home from school, finding no one home yet, and truly believing i had failed to make the rapture. so many times did i face that panic. being free from it is a buoyancy of the spirit that i never thought i’d feel when i was a kid.
The weirdest thing about all this, to me, as an Episcopalian, is how ungrounded in scripture any of this stuff even is. And honestly whatever, our (Episcopalian) whole theology is built on the idea that scripture will always be filtered through a human lens, both in the sense that it was written by human beings and is being read by human beings. So we place a lot of value in church leadership and personal reflection. So….it isn’t that crazy to me that people could reach their own conclusions on this stuff and have me totally disagree with them. What gets me is that the insist they are following only scripture, when scripture is very clear in that there just isn’t an exact blueprint for all this stuff. What is written in a revelation requires interpretation because, taken literally it is contradictory, and written in outright metaphorical and poetic language. So…they hold this position of biblical inerrancy and also that they have the one true interpretation. And those aren’t mutually exclusive in any rational sense, like I can’t point at an internal contradiction in that logic. But it seems like an awful lot of trust in a very particular set of ideas that has a lot of baggage and I honestly don’t get what they see in it. Is the need to have an “in group” and a set of answers that valuable? That people are willing to cut themselves off from so much of humanity? To never even consider these outside ideas? The Episcopal Church has seen a lot of value in dialog with other faith traditions, Christian and non-Christian. Sometimes even Anti-Christian. We also do good works as much as possible, the idea being that we won’t ever be able to tell you what we are about with words. The world is too cruel for you to believe is. We show you, and hope you will help with the project. Idk, seems more consistent with the ethos of Jesus and I do it that way, in my opinion. If you enter into discussion, we will be passionate and argue our case, but otherwise, we will simply live lives consistent with our philosophy and hope that we are good enough at it that people want to copy it. Toll;dr these guys are big weirdos, even to some branches of Christianity.
As somebody who has seen a LOT of televangelists, this documentary is not an outlier or an exception in terms of the contradictions of content and emotion. They want you to be at peace with the apocalypse while weeping for all your queer family members who won't be able to join you in Heaven, even though we're out here doing all the work for you people! They also claim, "I'm not an end-time preacher, those guys are crazy, but the state of the world is too serious to ignore it anymore." I could go on, but yeah, evangelicalism is WILD when it comes to the End Times.
My high school sunday school class was weirdly obsessed with the rapture. It was a frequent topic and at one point they even had an entirely separate study group to discuss all the signs that we were in the end times. Being young and without much inclination to question what I was told, this terrified me to no end. I dreaded sunday mornings, not wanting it to be a day where they again discuss how the rapture would occur in our lifetime. I couldn't understand how our teacher kept referring to it as a joyous event to be celebrated. Looking back I find it so strange how the staff for the high school classes and events were this eager to tell us high schoolers, people who were a couple years (or less) away from their lives truly opening up and beginning, that the world is coming to an end, and that's something to celebrate & look forward to. I've finally gotten over this fear, but it fucked me up all throughout high school and for years after
People have been saying the world will soon end since revelations was first released. People who lived during Jesus’ lifetime already thought the world would end before they’d die. It just puts one more bar in the “Jesus might have been just another charismatic cult leader” rack from my point of view.
What is a cult? What is a religion? Christians were persecuted as a dangerous cult for years. What changed? Is the difference a matter of worldly authority?
@@chompythebeast A cult is a group of people in an abusive relationship with a (usually religious) leader. A religion is a set of (usually supernatural) beliefs about the world, the nature of reality, and how life ought to be lived. Most cults follow a religion, most religions have cults.
Good video, Joel, but I believe you overlooked the documentary's essential purpose: to reinforce for Christians that they are on the right path, and to bring new followers into the fold. People are meant to think: "If they have the Secret Map of the future and its frightening possibilities, then best to join them before it's too late." The fact that the Apocalypse does not have a consistent moral message is, for them, quite secondary to the belief that God's plan is working itself out in history, and you can be on the right side of that plan.
I like how a cashless society is a sign of the end times. Money has always been just make-believe “value units.” I wonder if they thought it was a sign of the end times when the US took the dollar off the gold standard
