L.B.: The Watchmen

Slight tangent for a look at an all-too-real example of why the World's Worst Books are worth exploring as more than just a celebration of wretched writing.

Here's CNN host Glenn Beck:

Are the cataclysmic events of 9/11, Katrina, tsunami, famine and the threat of global pandemic signs we`re living in the end times?

One world government, one world economy, one world vision. Are we creeping even closer to the Book of Revelations` countdown to doomsday? And does an age-old prophecy foretell a Russian-Iranian alliance against Israel as well as a nuclear showdown? Apocalypse now?

We`ll search for answers with Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, the authors of the wildly successful "Left Behind" series and acclaimed author Joel Rosenberg.

This is on CNN, "the most trusted name in news."

Beck's introduction carefully frames the discussion that is to follow. He presents this list of calamities and suggests that he's summarizing something from the "Book of Revelations [sic]," a text he describes as a "countdown to doomsday." All of this has less to do with the actual final book of the New Testament than it does with a recent and parochial misreading of that book -- a heresy popularized by his guests.

His guests, our friends L&J and the L&J-wannabe Joel Rosenberg, happily reinforce this idea -- pretending that their garbled eisegesis does not, in fact, contradict what the vast majority of Christians have understood and taught throughout history.

Worse than that, they misrepresent their misreading -- claiming that they differ from the orthodox reading only by interpreting Revelation more "literally." Let's be clear: there is nothing literal about this convoluted, herky-jerky, cut-and-paste collage. Their reading is neither literal nor linear -- arbitrarily leaping about from Revelation to Ezekiel to Zechariah to John Birch, leaving no context intact.

Premillennial dispensationalism is as far from a "literal" reading as you can get. These folks are not orthodox Christians and they're not illiteralist "fundamentalists" either. So don't buy their pose.

Much of Beck's interview with LaHaye and Jenkins is like a second-rate imitation of Jack Van Impe's show. Jack & Rexella are much better at the whole today's-headlines-as-fulfillment-of-last-days-prophecy thing. But Jack has to buy his own airtime -- he doesn't have his own prime-time show on CNN.

The full transcript of Beck's show is worth muddling through for accidental humor, like this choice quote:

The end of the world is anything but entertainment to the people I have at the table with me, Tim LaHaye, Jerry Jenkins, authors of the popular "Left Behind" books ...

It's clear throughout the interview that CNN host Glenn Beck is more than a casual observer of LaHaye's books. He's a true believer. Consider this odd rant about EZ-Pass -- it's not the work of a tourist or outsider, but of a PMD native-speaker:

BECK: Joel, the things like EZ Pass. Imagine what Hitler could have done with EZ Pass?

ROSENBERG: The Book of Revelation, the apostle John, envisions a world as God, I think prophecy is an intercept from the mind of God. And the apostle John envisions a one-world economic system and everybody having a mark on their right hand or on their forehead that allows them to buy and sell goods and services.

Well, we now have the technology, both with credit cards and EZ Pass systems. You don`t really have to stop at a toll booth. You just -- your car is actually swiping through just like an ATM card swipes through. And there -- scientists are actually testing now these types of chips, because if you lose all of your -- you lose your wallet, you lose everything now.

BECK: Yes.

ROSENBERG: And why not just embed things?

BECK: I remember in the late 1990s, Madeleine Albright -- I believe it was Madeleine Albright -- went and saw an RFID chip that you could use for finance where you could go into a store, just grab what you want and walk out, and you`d be checked out automatically.

Follow the fever-stream, EZ-Pass, Hitler, mark of the beast, former U.N. Ambassador. Beck knows this stuff from the inside. He believes it. All of the weird conspiratorial logic we've seen at work in the books is at work here. The U.N. as federation of planets. The paranoid suspicion of "peacemakers." The vigilance against the Antichrist as a wolf-in-sheep's clothing. It's all right there. On CNN. From the CNN host.

Media Matters quotes Beck comparing Al Gore to Hitler:

"Now, I'm not saying that anybody's going to -- you know Al Gore's not going to be rounding up Jews and exterminating them. It is the same tactic, however. The goal is different. The goal is globalization. The goal is global carbon tax. The goal is the United Nations running the world. That is the goal."

That's not just a Hitler reference, that's a Nicolae Carpathia reference. For those of you who were asking about Left Behind fanfic, there it is.

Glenn Beck said that on his radio show as part of his promotion of his CNN special on global warming, which he says presents "the other side of the debate" on the subject.

So there you have it. This is the "other side" of the debate: Global warming is part of Nicolae Carpathia's conspiracy to create a one-world government through the U.N. Once you realize that there's really no need to look any closer at what all his scientist/atheist pawns are saying. Your only duty, as a member of the Tribulation Force, is to warn others of the danger represented by Gore and Stonagal, the Trilateral Commission and the interJnationEal banWkerS as they set the stage for Carpathia's reign.

Beck explicitly calls for such vigilance by attempting to cite a passage from the prophet Ezekiel:

BECK: This is why -- and I'm sorry, I think it's at the beginning of Ezekiel 34, or is it 35, where it says, "There will be watchmen, and I will appoint a watchman." Is it 34?

LAHAYE: Thirty-four.

BECK: Yes, right at the beginning. That's us, isn't it? I mean, that's the people who -- anybody who's watching this and going, "I believe. You know what? I got to start reading up, and find out what's going on in the world, and find out all the events, and then tie it in." That's who you are.

If you are one of these people that are at all connecting with it, you've got to read Ezekiel 34, because it has quite a promise and quite a -- it's a commandment. It's got a promise and a warning. And if you don't stand up and say something, you're in trouble.

Actually, the "watchman" bit is in Ezekiel 33. Beck's interpretation of this passage is rather novel. Ezekiel himself would not have taken kindly to the idea that his calling as a prophet was merely that of a soothsayer or augurer.*

But the delightful thing here is not just that LaHaye was so confidently wrong about the chapter in question (you'd never see Jack Van Impe making that kind of rookie mistake), the really delightful thing is what Ezekiel 34 has to say. Here the watchman Ezekiel has been told to prophesy to the "shepherds" of Israel -- those who bear responsibility for the people, whether that responsibility be spiritual or temporal, ecclesiastical or political. Ezekiel 34, in other words, is addressed to people like the Rev. Tim LaHaye:

Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd ...

Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD ... I am against the shepherds and will hold them accountable for my flock. I will remove them from tending the flock ... I will rescue my flock from their mouths, and it will no longer be food for them.

Ezekiel 34 is about a day of reckoning, a judgment day, an apocalypse. Like every apocalypse, it offers the hope of justice, the hope that the weak, the sick, the injured and the lost will finally get what's coming to them. And the fat and negligent powerful? They'll get what's coming to them. That's what Ezekiel's apocalypse means and that's what John's Apocalypse means.

To say it means something else, as LaHaye and Jenkins do, is to be a bad shepherd. And bad shepherds, the watchman says, will be held accountable.

- - - - - - - - - - - -

* Based on Beck's fuzzy recalling of this text, and especially that hortatory summary about "a promise and a warning," I'd guess that he's repeating something he heard in a sermon. Some preacher, realizing that he had an influential journalist TV host sitting in the pews, turned to Ezekiel's "watchman" passage as a way of reminding this prominent parishioner of his responsibility to "the people" and the truth. It was a noble attempt, but the message got reinterpreted through the filter of L&J's End Times mania, so it didn't take.

Comments

[inge]

Well, we now have the technology, both with credit cards and EZ Pass systems. You don't really have to stop at a toll booth.

Obviously toll booths are godly. Maybe because they house tax collectors?

[Geds]

It's funny how the later prophets often talked about social justice issues and caring about the less fortunate, but now their words are twisted to mean something completely different. Uneducated people, and that's using the term to basically mean people who were never taught or never learned to think critically, make mistakes like thinking that everything has to be taken literally. I don't care where L&J went to school, they're prime examples of being uneducated. Sadly, it appears that there are prominent newspeople who are also equally uneducated.

That big, expensive seminary education of yours is paying off Fred. It has certainly helped you to understand the Bible better than L&J. Proper education is the best way to illuminate ignorance, after all.

[Bill]

Damn! you confused me for a second. I see the first line and then the graphic and I'm saying to myself "but, but, but Alan Moore's a GOOD writer. Good article none the less and in regards to the Ezekial quote about the asigning of Watchmen we have to remember the question, as Moore does when he paraphrases Juvenal, sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

[G. Williams]

If CNN is the most trusted name in news, we're in a lot of trouble.

Not as much as if it were FOX, though.

[Zingo Stertch]

Isn't this the same Glenn Beck that wondered aloud whether Keith Ellison(first Muslim elected to congress) was a terrorist? To Ellison's face? Yeah, fuck Glenn Beck. In the ear. Twice. Sideways.

[Jeff Weskamp]

"Woe to the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves! Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd ... "

How can the Fundamentalists and Evangelicals read these verses and oppose universal health care? Come on, they've been COMMANDED to take care of the sick and ill and injured! They have been ORDERED to feed the hungry! How can Bush reconcile this with dismantling health care, neglecting injured veterans, cutting funds for food stamps, slashing money for needy children, etc., etc.

Throughout the Old Testament, kings and rulers were commanded to feed the hungry, tend the sick, comfort the afflicted. Just glance through 1st and 2nd Kings. The Fundangelicals just flat-out ignore those verses. And then they have the unmitigated gall to bitch about other sects disregarding pieces of the Bible that they don't like!

[the opoponax]

oh. my. goddess.

i am SO GLAD i don't have cable. because TVs can do a lot of damage when thrown from a 12-story high rise apartment window.

also, regarding EZ Pass and the like. seriously. you have to REALLY stretch the concept to get anywhere near a "mark of the beast" idea as mainstreamed by PMD's. firstly, the only people who might need EZ Pass are people who want to undertake one very specific kind of financial transaction -- pass over toll bridges by car in the NYC metro area. if you live in Nebraska, you don't need EZ Pass. if you live in Brooklyn, you don't need EZ Pass. if you do in fact live in the NYC suburbs but take the bus or light rail (or don't commute into NYC at all), you don't need EZ Pass. not to mention that you can, in fact, pay tolls in the NYC metro in cash, without EZ Pass. it's merely a way of speeding up the commute for people who do it every day.

the only reason i can come up with that one might be REQUIRED to use EZ Pass would be if you were being reimbursed for driving expenses by your company, as EZ Pass sends you a nice little statement each month which you can then submit rather than having to save dozens of tiny little toll chits. and that nice little statement can in fact be sent directly to your company's accounts payable department, thus eliminating any action on the part of the employee at all.

isn't it a requirement of the Mark Of The Beast that it be something that all humans (even children) are required to have, without which they cannot enter into any sort of financial transaction whatsoever? shit, maybe cash is the mark of the beast, seeing as in most situations in the western world, you can't barter anymore? i should go on the 700 club and talk about how i tried to go into walmart with a goat to trade for the latest LB installment, and they said that i had to use cash in order to be allowed to buy or anything! oh noes!!!eleven!1!

[Jeff Weskamp]

"sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

"But who watches the watchmen themselves?"

[rm]

Shlop. Lep. These guys are Rorschach.

Van Impe's show is so daffy and hallucinatory, it doesn't scare me too much. It's obviously fringe.

But this, on CNN, scares the crap out of me. The antichrist rises by telling everyone "Hey look over there! It's the antichrist!" and proclaiming itself to be godly.

[Gravity]

Oh my goodness, for a minute, I thought you were talking about the Sci-fi author Joel Rosenberg. That was a close one. I didn't want to hear that he'd turned into a hack. I'm glad that it's a different guy!

[Mat]

...There's something called EZPass other than the toll booth thing, right? He's not really calling automated toll paying of the devil, is he?

[LMM]

Joel, the things like EZ Pass. Imagine what Hitler could have done with EZ Pass?

Um, he could have figured out how many people were taking the Chicago toll roads?

I really don't see anything more that can be accomplished here.

[J]

Sorry, but it is impossible that E-Z Pass is a tool of Satan and I say that not just because to assert otherwise is goofy but because of the evidence of my senses:

Without E-Z Pass, if you drive south into Chicago from central Wisconsin, you will experience greater and greater delays at each of the I-94 toll stops, until finally, with the skyline of Chicago in glorious view, you will grind to a complete halt for THIRTY MINUTES at the Cumberland Avenue exit, while the Illinois Turnpike people try and funnel SIX lanes of E-Z-Pass-less chumps like me through TWO cash booths. This will happen, more often than not, on one of those Charonically hot days in early summer, when walking outside is like being hit by a freight train made out of boiling water. The sort of glorious Midwestern heat that renders all car air conditioning ineffective.

By contrast, E-Z-Pass bearers zip by at 50 miles an hour just four feet to your left. Satan couldn't have invented E-Z Pass: Satan invented CASH (or the Illinois turnpike; or internal combustion cars).

[the opoponax]

a google search turns up only references to the toll system in the first few pages.

hilarious:

http://donxml.com/grokthis/archive/2006/01/06/2412.aspx

there is another similar idea with a similar name, those new keyrings that are also basically credit cards wherein you don't swipe, wait, and sign, you just swipe and go. those scare me not because they could turn out to be the mark of the beast (they're not fundamentally different from a credit card itself, or cash, or gold, or wampum, or cowrie shells, or whatever), but because it seems like it would be SO EASY for someone to pick your pocket and use the keyring swiper all over town without any way for anyone to determine that it wasn't really you. at least with a name on the card and a need for a signature, there's a slight possibility that some cashier would figure it out, or that you could easily prove to the bank that the purchases were a result of theft.

[the opoponax]

regarding "what the antichrist could figure out" via EZ Pass -- you can actually get all kinds of useful information out of them.

for instance, i believe EZ Pass records are admissible as evidence in a criminal trial as a great way to verify an alibi. if Joe Schmoe is a Manhattanite accused of murdering a hooker in Atlantic City, and Mr. Schmoe has EZ Pass, and EZ Pass puts him in the Queens Midtown tunnel at the time of the murder, it's pretty obvious that Mr. Schmoe cannot possibly be your man. whereas if it puts him on the GWB two hours after the murder, it's entirely possible that he could be your man. (though obviously this is limited in its usefulness, as Mr. Schmoe could have lent someone else his vehicle, taken public transportation, or tampered with the EZ Pass thingie.)

there's also all kinds of paranoid talk about how "They" can monitor your car's wherebouts in general, and all sorts of ways a totalitarian government could use the data generated by EZ Pass to be generally totalitarian and annoying (issuing speeding summons if you pass between two points too quickly, for instance). i can't, however, come up with how the mysterious They could use such data against you if you actually had done nothing wrong.

not to mention that you always have the option of simply taking public transportation or paying the toll in cash. if you want to commit nefarious deeds, drive fast, etc. you are free not to use EZ Pass.

[85% Duane]

Don't forget that Al Gore invented EZ-Pass and is named after Gore Mountain in New York. And he has a bumper sticker on his hybrid that asks in abbreviated format, "What Would I Do?"

[Bruce in South Florida]

Gravity:

The sci-fi Joel Rosenberg is pretty right-wing himself, of the guns and Israel-first variety (though not of the anti-gay variety - that's hard when you have a gay sister). He's pretty much the authority in Minnesota on concealed handgun licenses: his website - which used to be about his books - is now about the courses he teaches on handgun use, permits, etc.

[cjmr]

I love EZ-PASS! I think it must cut 30 minutes off a drive from the DC area to Boston when you don't have to stop at any toll booths. Now if we could just get Ohio into the 21st century, I wouldn't have to stop at any toll booths driving out that way, either.

Now those imbedded RFID chips, I'm not so keen on those. I have a hard time believing (in this day and age when thieves will shoot you for your car or your jacket) that criminals will have any qualms about excising them from your hand/arm/whereever. Don't think they're the 'number of the beast' though.

[Mark]

One of the best sermons I ever heard on the coming 'day of the Lord', was one on a similar passage to Ezekial 34 in Amos. The basic point; if you look forward to the day of the Lord coming because you'll be proved righteous, then you're screwed.

[Abelardus]

But you tell me over and over and over again, my friend, ah, you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction.

At least not in the terms as cooked up by L&J and Rosenberg.

Which reminds me, and maybe it was Fred who said this in a previous post, that the PMDs should read Amos for a clear picture of what must needs be done in this day and age? Whatever the case, a great dissection as always -- especially that part about Jack Van Impe: I might not agree w/ his vision for how the future will play out, but man if doesn't know his Holy Writ. ...

[kay.c.]

Waitwaitwait, what? Minnesota has nutjobs running around? I thought the very hallmark of Minnesotans was their niceness, y'know? Like, it's a requirement for residency or some such. So.... nyet?

Day-um.

~ kc, rethinking next week's planned trip to Minnesota

[damnedyankee]

I saw a ratings sampling posted at one blog or another (was it Digby? Could have been), that showed Glenn Beck's ratings at the absolute bottom of the barrel when compared to other cable news shows. He's not even picking up the Bill O'Lielly fans who might be looking for someone else to do their thinking prior to Lord Falafel taking the air.

Given this sample, I can see why.

[Stacie]

It would be FANTASTIC if there were the television equivalent of this blog. I have seen alleged journalists (not that I think Glenn Beck is a journalist) swallow the "we read Revelation literally to come up with this crap" line from one RTC after another. It would be nice to see a well-researched, thoughtful expose on RTCs, what they believe, and why it's not a literal reading of Revelation. At the very least, it would be nice to have journalists engage in journalism and to challenge RTCs when they spew that crap.

On a side note, every time I read this blog I think about a friend (not really anymore) who was kind of a fallen RTC (although I think she said the magic words, so I think she's not "fallen" according to their worldview). The more I learn about PMD, the more I understand why she's so screwed up. My favorite anecdote about her is when a friend sent her an article from THE ONION, something to the effect of "Creationist Natural History Musuem Gets 6,000 Year Old T-Rex Skeleton." She forwarded it on to me and to another friend with the commentary "probably closer to the truth than anything else you see in other media." Um. Yeah. That was from The Onion.

[cp1919]

re RFID, there's a grad student working on a jammer:
Guardian

And I never understand the inconsistent logic: if you want Jesus to come, shouldn't you be hastening the mark of the beast? And UN dominance?

Frankly, if you oppose UN overlordship, that leads me to believe that you are a tool of evil!

[Daughter]

<

Jeff,

The rationale is that people (either all of us, as fellow humans, or Christians in particular) have been commanded to feed the hungry, care for the sick, etc., not the government. Therefore, private charity should meet these needs, not tax dollars. That's the religious argument. The practical argument is that government is inefficient and ineffective in doing anything, including caring for the poor, compared to the private sector.

There's two problems with the above arguments. The first is the assumption that private charity can or will meet 100% of the needs of the poor if there were no government support. From my travels in a country (Brazil) with the 2nd largest Christian population in the world but no social safety net, as well as my readings about poverty in the U.S. before the New Deal, I don't think that's true. There will always be some who are very generous, but many others are corrupt and greedy.

The second problem is the fact that a large percentage of tax dollars allotted to human services (sorry, I don't know the exact figures) are re-granted to private charities, including faith-based organizations. So a lot of government funding for the poor is actually carried out by the private sector.

[Richard Hershberger]

"sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"

"But who watches the watchmen themselves?"

And here I always that that translated as "Who's going to clean up after the janitor?"

[Pseudowolf]

Hm. As I read that bit of scripture, God was essentially telling Ezekiel that He had made him a "watchman" in the sense that He was telling him to warn Israel to stop sinning. Of course, L&J's cut-and-pasting ways (and Beck's too apparently) turn this into God saying that L&J and other PMDs are the watchmen he's sent to tell us what coming. Way to make the bible all about yourselves, guys.

[Salamanda]

Satan invented ...internal combustion cars.

J, you make me think of a great Cake song...

[Pseudowolf]

My favorite anecdote about her is when a friend sent her an article from THE ONION, something to the effect of "Creationist Natural History Musuem Gets 6,000 Year Old T-Rex Skeleton." She forwarded it on to me and to another friend with the commentary "probably closer to the truth than anything else you see in other media."

Hm. I wonder if she works here.

(Check out the walkthrough!)

[Bryant]

One minor note, I believe Glen Beck is a Mormon, and their (our) belief system about the end days doesn't (or shouldn't anyway) follow the LeHaye-Jenkins model, although there are some similarities obviously.

[hf]

Wow. Maybe I should reconsider attributing the media coverage of Democrats simply to a childlike Versailles-style attitude.

opo, I think the argument says that such technology could produce the Mark of the Beast as they interpret it, if a world government wanted to use it in this manner. They already believe that at some point libruls will show their demonic visage and [insert slander here].

[Dan]

"It would be nice to see a well-researched, thoughtful expose on RTCs, what they believe, and why it's not a literal reading of Revelation. At the very least, it would be nice to have journalists engage in journalism and to challenge RTCs when they spew that crap."

The problem is it takes a little nuance to explain the different options available. These guys can pick out any verse and quickly "prove" how it supports their position. To get at the meaning of the text requires understanding literary types, historical records, and theological strains across the entire Bible. And let's face it - most TV watchers don't want to do that kind of mental work. They can only understand something if it takes less than 3 seconds to explain, so they fall for L&J's line every time. The moment somebody says "let's talk about the nature of apocalyptic literature," their eyes glaze over and they switch channels to watch Little House on the Prairie reruns.

[Stacie]

Pseudowolf: She does not work there, but she does live in the greater Cincinnati area, which freaks me out!

[Abelardus]

Bryant,

Yes, that's about right: He was raised Roman Catholic, and converted to Latter-day Saints after a struggle w/ alcoholism.

Which, in light of his interviews w/ LJ&R, may seem strange, for neither RCs nor Mormons tend to agree w/ that "interpretation" of the end of time; or so I can't help but thinking, la.

[Chan]

I checked out that museum walkthrough. The first slide seems nice enough, a fountain with the earth (spherical, those heretics!) in it. The next slide seems to be calling Parasaurolophus "dreadful." It's a hadrosaur! It's a veggie-tarian! What's so dreadful?

The rest of the slideshow seems to be concerned with arguments, not advertising. They can't present anything without putting their interpretation on it. That doesn't attract me, because I can already tell what the answers are to their rhetorical questions.

This thing is in Louisville, KY. I grew up around Lexington. It makes me angry to see such misinformation being peddled, whether in real estate or on the TeeVee.

[LL]

That Beck idiot is on CNN? Well, now I know for sure that not watching cable news is a good call. If he's the kind of "news" they're talking about, they're not worth my time.

My mother loves Beck, she quotes him at least once every time I visit. Now I guess I know why.

[Pseudowolf]

This thing is in Louisville, KY. I grew up around Lexington. It makes me angry to see such misinformation being peddled, whether in real estate or on the TeeVee.

Actually, it's north of Louisville. It's closer to Cincinatti. But I too get upset with this kind of misinformation. I don't mind if the creationists want to build their own museum, really. What I do mind is they put millions of dollars into this thing. Just think how much good that money could do if they'd decided to use it to help feed the hungry, aid the sick, etc. But I guess it's more important that the homeless guy outside the museum knows about the "truth" of creationism than that he has a place to live.

[Jeff]

you always have the option of simply taking public transportation

Oh, opopo, you KNOW that public transit is a tool of the devil. How could you even consider such an unclean mode of transportation?

My mother loves Beck, she quotes him at least once every time I visit.

"I'm a Loser", "Devil's Haircut" or "Two Turntables and a Microphone"?

[Devon]

Am I the only one that saw 'eisegesis' but read 'sheisegesis?' Either works in context.

[Ken]

The next slide seems to be calling Parasaurolophus "dreadful." It's a hadrosaur! It's a veggie-tarian! What's so dreadful?

"STAMPEDE!"

[Mirele]

I was living in Salt Lake City when the first LB books were published. One day I happened upon a discussion in my office about the books. One of the admins was telling the other admins (all Mormon, btw) that the first LB started out with "a lot of people being translated into heaven...." Translation is a Mormon concept that if you're righteous and pure enough, you'll be taken up to heaven in a flash. In the Bible, Enoch and Elijah were translated. In the Pearl of Great Price (one of the Mormon scriptures) not only Enoch but his entire city gets taken up into heaven. Which leads to jokes about how Utah Valley would have been translated by now except for the 10% non-Mormons who make their homes there. (Utah Valley is home to Provo and Brigham Young University.)

I was amazed that the books sold well in Utah, because the LB view of The End is not the Mormon view, but if people are "translating" the LB view into the Mormon view as they read (some of it would be difficult), I could see it. And tha's apparently what happened.

[Daniel]

From the full CNN transcript:

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God will come to take his people home. No one knows the day or the hour. Without any warning, all infants, children and many people will disappear.

(Lahaye, a bit later) ...when [Jesus] comes and all the Christians are gone -- and, Glenn, can you imagine what this world will be like with 2 billion missing people, that are all snatched up at one time, and because of their mutual faith in Jesus Christ and his resurrection?

Hilarious, considering that L&J clearly cannot imagine "what this world will be like" in their books.

My other favorite part is where Beck says of Ahmadinejad, "You know what kills me? Every time I see the Iranian leader is, I mean, could they get a guy who looks any more like Satan? It`s amazing to me." Uh, would that be because Ahmadinejad has brown skin, or because Beck has seen Satan to know, or what?

[Daniel]

@Mark: One of the best sermons I ever heard on the coming 'day of the Lord', was one on a similar passage to Ezekial 34 in Amos. The basic point; if you look forward to the day of the Lord coming because you'll be proved righteous, then you're screwed.

Urm, yes and no. The "basic point" of most biblical apocalyptic is a dramatic reversal of fortunes - bad news for the powerful and the oppressors, to be sure, especially "the shepherds of Israel who only take care of themselves" (from Ez 34, Fred's quote above) who justify their oppression in "righteous" language; but vindication and being "proved righteous" for the oppressed..."the last shall be first" and all. Check out Fred's post on the recent Imus controversy - prophecy, as well as comedy, is always on the side of the underdog against the oppressor - The transgressive humor of the underdog is funny. The transgressive "humor" of the upperdog is merely bullying. And that's not funny.

Firstly, the only people who might need EZ Pass are people who want to undertake one very specific kind of financial transaction -- pass over toll bridges by car in the NYC metro area.

Just a note, opoponanx: EZ-Pass is used on highways up the entire east coast from Virginia through Maine, as well as in the Chicago area. Here: http://www.ezpass.com/static/info/facilities.shtml

[Francis]

She forwarded it on to me and to another friend with the commentary "probably closer to the truth than anything else you see in other media." Um. Yeah. That was from The Onion.

The Onion sometimes is closer to the truth than other media. Google "Bush our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over" and then remember what the rest of the media was saying at the time.

[Turcano]

I just have to point out that "interJnationEal banWkerS" is the most hilarious mockery of a code phrase I've ever seen.

Oh, and you're a tease for putting in a graphic from The Watchmen and then not writing about it. Jerk.

[Turcano]

Sorry; forgot to close the italics tag.

[Daniel]

(Closing itals)

[mds]

How could you even consider such an unclean mode of transportation?

Yes, mass transit is treif. But it's so delicious...

Funny how these guys have to rant about the "Mark of the Beast" by talking about EZ-Pass and Madeleine Albright. Whose administration actually implemented RFID passports, while making passports mandatory for Canadian border crossings? Yup, "God in the White House" Himself. Which party finally rammed through national ID card legislation over feeble minority party objections? Yup, the party of JAY-sus (R-USA). Strangely enough, those examples appear to be missing from their tirade. I wish I could figure out why.

[syfr]

EZ Pass is useful for the outer boroughs too!