Monday, March 09, 2009

Burn, baby, burn! Hard times inferno!


The prophet of Times Square certainly has been an interesting sideshow.

SURELY YOU'VE HEARD, somewhere on the Internets, the dire prophetic warning from the Holy Spirit -- via the blog of the Rev. David Wilkerson, pastor of New York's Times Square Church:
AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE - EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written,

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (v. 3).

God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations. He is destroying the secular foundations.

The prophet Jeremiah pleaded with wicked Israel, “God is fashioning a calamity against you and devising a plan against you. Oh, turn back each of you from your evil way, and reform your ways and deeds. But they will say, It’s hopeless! For we are going to follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart” (Jeremiah 18:11-12).
MAYBE the good pastor is right. Then again, maybe it wasn't the Holy Spirit whispering in his ear.

In any event, I don't know whether you can call it prophecy if one's reaction to it -- well, at least my reaction to it -- is "Well, DUH!" I think what Pastor Wilkerson really is prophesying would be a triggering event that will cause postmodern Westerners -- raised, by and large, with an entitlement mentality and without God -- to act in an entirely predictable manner when faced with dire circumstances rendering their worldview null and void.

In other words, go apes***.

Look at it this way: For at least a couple of generations, what used to be Christendom has elevated worship of mammon to historically unprecedented heights. And like all belief systems built upon philosophical sand dunes, the foundation was bound to crack.

Crack!

Now the walls are bowing out and the roof ain't looking too good. One good shock -- The Israelis attacking Iran, perhaps, and oil prices again shooting into the stratosphere as a result? -- could cause the whole thing to come down.

Think of it this way: In the absence of the hope derived from the prospect of greater earthly prosperity (an insufficient and fleeting hope, obviously, but you take what's available to you) what real hope does mankind have apart from that won at a terrible price on Calvary, with Jesus Christ hanging dead on a cross for our sins?

What victory can we claim over the natural state of mankind, save that same Jesus' triumph over death and despair on that first Easter morn? Of late, we have put abiding faith in a modern materialistic aberration . . . but what if that all goes away?

And it might, you know.



HOW DOES a people without hope behave?

David Wilkerson had a vision:

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City.
All you need is angry people. Check.

Hopeless people. Getting there.

A match thrown in a puddle of sociological gasoline. ?????

Someone, anyone, tell me: What hope will the people have when the "bubble America" they've so carefully constructed proves to the cruelest of false hopes? In what do people hope when their collective god dies, the house has gone back to the bank, the SUV has been repossessed, they can't put food on the table and the iPod won't answer urgent prayers?

What's left but the abyss when the trend line looks like this, as reported by The Associated Press:

Fifteen percent of respondents said they had no religion, an increase from 14.2 percent in 2001 and 8.2 percent in 1990, according to the American Religious Identification Survey.

Northern New England surpassed the Pacific Northwest as the least religious region, with Vermont reporting the highest share of those claiming no religion, at 34 percent. Still, the study found that the numbers of Americans with no religion rose in every state.

"No other religious bloc has kept such a pace in every state," the study's authors said.


(snip)

The current survey, being released Monday, found traditional organized religion playing less of a role in many lives. Thirty percent of married couples did not have a religious wedding ceremony and 27 percent of respondents said they did not want a religious funeral.

About 12 percent of Americans believe in a higher power but not the personal God at the core of monotheistic faiths. And, since 1990, a slightly greater share of respondents — 1.2 percent — said they were part of new religious movements, including Scientology, Wicca and Santeria.

The study also found signs of a growing influence of churches that either don't belong to a denomination or play down their membership in a religious group.
ANYONE? ANYONE?

It's fitting, actually, that President Obama announced today that it's now full speed ahead for embryonic stem-cell research, otherwise known as cannibalizing the tiniest human beings in hopes of fixing what ails us giant economy-sized human beings.

This triumph of scientific "progress" is an eminently logical progression for the "developed" world, where we've cannibalized the environment to build a planetary Temple of Stuff. And where workers continually are cannibalized (figuratively . . . thus far) by corporate titans in the name of "shareholder value" and "globalism."

Creating embryos just to consume them makes perfect sense to an America where we've cannibalized our surviving progeny's future for the holy cause of tax cuts, elective wars, McMansions and an automobile in every pot.

WHETHER OR NOT it really was the third person of the Holy Trinity -- terminology wholly unfamiliar to a burgeoning demographic -- it seems to me it was perfectly appropriate for Rev. Wilkerson to issue his warning and invoke the prophet Jeremiah.

After all, one of the founding fathers has his back:

"For in a warm climate, no man will labour for himself who can make another labour for him. This is so true, that of the proprietors of slaves a very small proportion indeed are ever seen to labor. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever. . . ."
Thomas Jefferson wrote that. You can find parts of it on the Jefferson Memorial . . . in Washington, D.C. That's where President Obama -- supremely ironically -- has devoted much of his energy to enshrining a new form of slavery, one where humans not even worth three-fifths of a white man satisfy our needs with their lives.

Washington is also where politicians look out for the interests of corporate masters at the expense of a new kind of serf. "Wage slaves," if you happen to be of a Marxist bent.

And Washington is where the government enabled, then bailed out, the Wall Street profiteers who blew up the economy. And, maybe, your job along with it.

Worse, they blew up the gods in which lay our hope. O mighty iPod, o sacred text message, come to our assistance in this our time of travail! Hummer hear our prayer!

Hello? Hello?

No one's there. Burn that mama down.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Quickly! Destroy all copies of Soylent Green before "they" get any more crazy ideas!!

The "latest big thing" here in BR now is the Healing Place church. A great number of Catholics disillusioned by (due to predatory priests) or rejected by (due to abortion or divorce or other act causing excommunication) the Church are finding a home there.

The Mighty Favog said...

I can see disillusionment, if Catholics are so poorly formed in the faith (which many are) to conflate the rat-bastard nature of too many bishops with the actual doctrine and truth claims of the Catholic faith.

As far as people being "rejected" . . . well, that is laughable. Not one person has been excommunicated for getting a divorce. Divorcing and then *remarrying* outside the Church (IOW without having had one's previous marriage annulled, then remarrying in Catholic rites) means that, in the eyes of the Church, you are effectively committing adultery, and you ought not present yourself for communion until you repent and get the situation taken care of).

Abortion? Well, it's homicide, you know. And, yes, it means automatic excommunication.

Thing is, there's a way to get back in the Church's -- and God's -- good graces. It's called confession . . . repentance. And the Church, as a matter of fact, has a nationwide program aimed at helping postabortive women heal -- both spiritually and psychologically.

Yeah, all that just smacks of rejection, dunnit?

Anonymous said...

I totally agree with you. Forgive my casual use of the term "excommunication."

As far as marriage annulment is concerned, that seems very (too) easy to get nowadays. I know of a couple that had grand kids and still had their marriage annulled! It didn't sit very well with the kids, let me tell you.

And still, some in the Church would question one's right to receive holy communion because they voted for Obama. What do you think about this?

I was raised a Catholic, but would consider myself a pretty bad one today. We go to church only when it is convenient for us and only on the major holidays. I consider Catholicism complex in it's rules and regulations by today's standards and I have to admit, I am ignorant to much of this.