Preying on the Weak

Yesterday I was 'blessed' to receive the following letter. Lucky for me (and you!) I opened it.

Of note on the front of the envelope:

• Postage states this is a nonprophet organization (pun intended)


• A 'very old church' - ooh.. must be hundreds of years old, maybe even going all the way back to Jesus' time!


• Vague message. What does it mean to be blessed, anyway?


• My home first! I'm so blessed!


• Someone went super crazy with the red highlighter. Calm down and step away from the office supplies, Jesus Christ!

The back of the envelope is really trying to get my attention, if the front wasn't enough.

Of note on the back of the envelope:

• Very smart. They give me web addresses I can go to.


• More red underlining. Ok, Jesus. Calm the feck down.


• Oh! the letter is blessed! Awesome!


• Very vague

The two websites are similar. They have a lot of bible verses, text in bold, and text in red. They say if you send in your prayer to them, they will pray 5 times a day for you.

BiblicalPrayer.com offers a free gift, a Blessed Cross,  "one of the most beautiful crosses in the world" which looks cheap even in the pictures. It seems like you can get it for free. In the envelope they have for you to print out to send in your request, there's nothing in there about a donation. Even the postage is paid for you.

Apparently, this church started in 1951. That's not what I'd call "very old". They say on the one site that they used to have revivals where up to 20,000 church members would come. Now, for some reason instead of continuing with those, they are mainly by mail. The sentence sort of just ends at the bottom of the page so they don't explain.

Ok, on to the letter that came in the envelope!

It's The End Of The World As We Know It

And I feel fine. (thank you REM)

Let's get serious, now. As of today, we only have 57 days left before the Rapture.

So I thought one thing we could do is look at the bible and see what it says about the Rapture, Armageddon and the End of the World.

The End of the World

The SAB does a great job of summing up what the bible says about the end of the world.

The most important thing is that Jesus said in Matthew (twice), Mark and Luke (twice) that people of that generation would still be alive to see the fulfillment of the Son of Man coming, and the Kingdom of God.

Then it was changed from the end coming during the lifetime of Jesus' followers to within the lifetime of the new testament authors.

This is found in 1 Corinthians (twice), Hebrews (twice), 1 Peter (twice), 1 John and a few other vague references.

Then, more vague references to the end of the world, with no mention of exactly when (but the language repeatedly says it will be 'soon'):

Philippians 4:5 The Lord is at hand.
James 5:8 For the coming of the Lord draweth nigh.
Hebrews 10:37 For yet a little while, and he that shall come will come, and will not tarry.
Revelation 1:1 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass.
Revelation 1:3 The time is at hand.
Revelation 3:11, 22:7, 22:12 Behold, I come quickly.
Revelation 22:20 Surely I come quickly.

The Rapture

The Rapture comes from the following verse by Paul:

2012 Doomsday Fast Approaches!

OMG, yo! Hide the good silver! Run for your lives! The Mayans say the world will end December 21, 2012 and that's only 2 years and a month away! Whatever will we do?!

Of course the Mayans themselves didn't survive till 2012, so maybe they aren't the best group to ask about such things. :P

Recently a friend of mine mentioned the 2012 phenomenon as if it were true. Unfortunately I didn't have the hard facts at my disposal so I told him it's not going to happen and left it at that. But I thought I'd look up some more information so when your mother starts talking about the end of the world, you will have some facts to back you up.

Lucky for me, NASA and Wikipedia have pages to explain where the concept came from and what scientific basis there is for it (none, thank you very much).

Some people seem to love the idea of predicting cataclysmic events and the destruction of the world. Of course, since we're still here, so far they have been wrong every time. That's something in itself to consider.

NASA explains it all very succinctly in FAQ form:

Q: Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
A: Nothing bad will happen to the Earth in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.