Will Christians Disappear On May 21?

By James Donahue

There has been a lot of ballyhoo lately about a predicted new date of the so-called “rapture of the church.” Many church prognosticators, sparked by a strange math formula developed by Harold Camping, President of Family Radio, are saying that the long awaited rapture of believers is going to happen on May 21, this year.

There appears to be a growing excitement among the fundamentalists as this date approaches. We wouldn’t be surprised to see many of them quitting their jobs, selling all of their belongings and going to a hill or mountain top to welcome Jesus when he supposedly returns in the clouds to call his people home in the sky. This kind of behavior has been witnessed several times in the past.

Indeed, the rapture event has been a malicious story that has hooked Christian believers into doing . . . or not doing the things they ought to have been doing to make things right on this planet for a very long time. Why worry about the pollution of our environment, the depletion of drinking water, oil, forests and the air they reason if believers in Jesus are going to be whisked magically off into the clouds?

The Book of the Revelation suggests that after they disappear, all the believers will be coming back wearing white robes and following their Savior as they do battle with the heathen armies on the plain of Megiddo, Israel. In doing this they expect to leave a field of blood across the landscape. Yippee! The Savior of the world is going to commit mass mayhem and slaughter all the soldiers of the great armies of the world during what is identified as the Battle of Armageddon.

After this, the conquering Jesus is supposed to rule the world from his throne in Jerusalem. Apparently he will be assisted in running his one-world government by the “saints” that return with him to assist in the mass slaughter. After a 1,000-year reign, old Satan is supposed to break from his chains, cause another stir before he is put down one last time. In the end God will build a “new Heaven and a new Earth” and everything will be just fine.

It is a grand thing to believe in if you are a Christian. For those of us who question such a story, we think it might be wonderful if something really did come along on May 21 and “scoop” up all the Christians and make them disappear. Then, if they would just stay away and not come flying back in those white robes to start another world war, those of us left behind might be better off.

Christians have been the force behind all of the great wars, much of the civil strife, the witch hunts and mass murders for the past 2,000 years. Some of the worst serial killers in recent years were clearly motivated by the Christian story. For example John Wayne Gacy raped and murdered 33 young boys, one for each year that Jesus lived.

It was Christianity that sparked the infamous Salem witch trials, drove Andrea Yates to drown her four beautiful children, stirred the Irish Catholics and Protestants to war against each other, and launched the great Crusades.

It has been a pack of Christian Armageddonists controlling the military keys in Washington and the Pentagon that has knowingly or subconsciously resurrected the old concept of the Crusades in the Middle East. The Crusades was a 200-year-long series of wars between the Christian (Roman Catholic) driven armies of Europe against the Moslem "Turks" who controlled the so-called "Holy Land" stretching from Constantinople to Jerusalem.

Although they historically came to an end in 1291, the seven Crusades left scars between the Islamic people, especially throughout the Middle East, that still influence the thinking of many Moslems. To them, Christians are considered "infidels" and representatives of Satan himself.

This is why the Moslem world reacted so harshly to a quote by Pope Benedict XVI in September, 2006, drawn from the writings of a Byzantine emperor of that era. That writing stated that Muhammad brought things "only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

What that old man of the Christian cloth did, by rekindling such an ancient quote that should have been left to smolder in the rotting books of history, was remind everyone, in the midst of the unjust and illegal Bush war against the Iraqi people, just how much the actions by our Christian-driven government paralleled those of Pope Urban II, who along with some French Christian blue-bloods, triggered the first Crusade in 1095.

In a sense the Pope tossed gasoline on flames that were already burning out of control. Indeed, we find ourselves today in the midst of an Eighth Crusade.

The Iraq war itself, stirred by a Christian right-wing conservative faction bought and paid-for by big business interests that profit from war, plus a consideration that control of that nation's oil is vital to our national security, was founded on a lie

We have always wondered if President Bush and his Christian friends in Washington redirected our "War On Terror" originally launched in Afghanistan against a band of rebels that claimed responsibility for the 9-11 attack, into Iraq, as a way of triggering events that might start that final world conflict described in Bible prophecy.

Fundamental Christians believe that this final world war, centered in the Middle East, would bring their god Jesus back to life and get this mess we have made of our planet, and our governments, repaired in one final swoop.

Sadly, President Barack Obama, who came into power on a promise of change that included shutting down those senseless wars, has not only escalated the Afghanistan conflict, but has now gotten the U.S. involved in a civil war in Libya. Mr. Obama also professes to be a “burn-again” Christian.

Jesus had an important message for the world. But that message called for us to love one another, not declare war. He never advocated the terrible things the Christians have done in his name over the past 2,000 years.

Jesus would have surely wept if he knew that accused "witches" would be murdered in his name, or that hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women and children would be slaughtered by swords, bombs and bullets in wars fought in his name throughout the Middle East, or that unnatural sexual suppression would drive so many people to violent and abnormal deviant sexual behavior.

Jesus would have been astounded if he had known the extreme divisions that developed between religious groups, all launched by foolish people who believed that four wonderful "prophets" and teachers, sent to our planet to shift human consciousness on a new spiritual path during a magical period in history, turned entire nations against one another with the stain of bigotry and hatred.

He would have been sad to see Protestant Christians warring against Catholic Christians in Europe and Ireland. Muhammad would have been equally sad to see Christians and Hindu people warring against Islamic believers or the various sects of Islam killing one another in his name.

These prophets of great wisdom were gifts to humanity. They rose among us in an effort to get us all evolving on a higher spiritual path. Instead of learning from their teachings, we made religious cults out of the fact that they lived among us. Each cult believes itself to have the ultimate truth and is intolerant of the others.

There is something very wrong with the way most humans are thinking. If we don't figure this out, and find a way to fix the error, we may soon blow ourselves to smithereens.