L.B.: An Inconvenient Sooth

Left Behind, pp. 308-314

We've noted before that setting a story in the "not-too-distant future" can be particularly tricky. LaHaye and Jenkins faced a particularly daunting task, since back in 1995 they were setting out to produce a 12-book series to be published over the course of the following 12 years. It's hard to fault them for not accurately predicting the technological changes that would occur between then and now, but they might have at least tried.

Before filming Minority Report, Steven Spielberg famously convened a panel of scientists and researchers to help him brainstorm about the year 2054, when his story takes place. Before writing this series, LaHaye and Jenkins didn't even bother flipping through back issues of Scientific American. This lack of research and lack of curiosity makes sense when you consider the way in which L&J are accustomed to thinking about the future, which has more to do with signs and portents than with technology and science. It wouldn't have occurred to LaHaye to worry about how technology might be different in 12 years. His main worry was probably that Jesus would come back before they got around to the book in which Jesus comes back.*

The Internet revolution and the ubiquity of cell phones are probably the biggest changes that Left Behind failed to anticipate, but this passage of the book highlights another, more malevolent, development that L&J did not foresee: the popularity of PowerPoint (if you follow that link, scroll down to Sept. 5).

The Rev. Bruce Barnes has gathered the "core group" of his new congregation to lay out for them an outline of what he believes biblical prophecy foretells the next seven years will bring. He conducts this presentation with nothing more than a flip chart. That's not how Bible Prophecy Seminars work in the age of PowerPoint. In evangelical churches, Bill Gates' computerized Colorforms has supplanted the flip chart and the overhead projector (as well as, disastrously, the hymnal).

The slide here is taken from a PowerPoint presentation from the site Last Days Mystery. It covers the very same territory Bruce's presentation does, the "seven seals" of judgment from Revelation 6, except it uses spiffy bullet-point lists. You can find lots of similar PowerPoint presentations on other "Bible prophecy" Web sites.

This is the ideal technology for this task because, as Edward Miller notes, "PowerPoint ... can give the illusion of coherence and content when there really isn't very much coherence or content." This is, for many PowerPoint enthusiasts, a feature, not a bug. The illusion of coherence and content is precisely why PP is the preferred technology in corporate America and among Bible prophecy "experts" (and why it was used almost exclusively in Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon).

Poor Bruce is forced to give his presentation without the aid of any such tools, so his lack of coherence and content is laid bare:

"The first 21 months encompass what the Bible calls** the seven Seal Judgments, or the Judgments of the Seven-Sealed Scroll. Then comes another 21-month period in which we will see the seven Trumpet Judgments. In the last 42 months of this seven years of tribulation, if we have survived, we will endure the most severe tests, the seven Vial Judgments ..."

If you're trying to follow along in Revelation, you'll notice that Bruce's 21 + 21 + 42 months = 7 years framework is his own embellishment, but you will find all the seals and trumpets and vials (or bowls) of judgment he's talking about -- Chapters 6-16 of Revelation reads like a Jerry Bruckheimer film festival, with ever-escalating calamities and disasters befalling the doomed and the damned.

I mentioned in our last installment that Bruce's seven-year framework comes from the book of Daniel, and not Revelation. That's true, but we also need to account for the numerological creativity of our PMD friends. Revelation does mention that the Gentiles "will trample on the holy city for 42 months," the two witnesses will "prophesy for 1,260 days," and the woman "with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head" will flee to a desert refuge for 1,260 days. Add all that up, round down, subtract shipping, handling and a 6-percent sales tax and you've got seven years.

You're probably at least somewhat familiar with the first four seals Bruce describes, better known as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. John describes the first of these, the rider on a white horse, as a "conqueror bent on conquest." Bruce and the authors take this to mean their Antichrist. "If I'm reading this right," Bruce says:

"... the Antichrist will soon come to power, promising peace and trying to unite the world."

"What's wrong with uniting the world?" someone asked. "At a time like this it seems we need to come together."

"There might be nothing wrong with that, except that the Antichrist will be a great deceiver, and when his true goals are revealed, he will be opposed. This will result in a great war, probably World War III."

I'm glad to see Bruce conceding that unity "might" not be bad, per se. That concession -- as reluctant and half-hearted as it is -- seems out of place after 300+ pages of steady insistence that the United Nations and talk of peace are the tools of Satan. But then as soon as this point is raised (by "someone" -- Bruce conducts this whole lecture as a Socratic dialogue with this unnamed, unidentified, undescribed Someone) we learn that this talk of unity is really just foolishness, the result of Bruce's misplaced enthusiasm for the Sexiest Man Alive:

"We need to watch for the new world leader," Bruce says, prompting Someone to ask whether this new world leader might be, you know, that new world leader:

"What about that young man from Europe who is so popular with the United Nations?"

"I'm impressed with him," Bruce said. "I will have to be careful and study what he says and does. He seems too humble and self-effacing to fit the description of this one who would take over the world."

Like many passages in LB, this bit seems intended to make readers feel smart because they realize the significance of events that the characters haven't yet put together. Like most such passages, the effect of this one is less to make the reader feel smart than to make the characters look dumb.

You may be wondering here how Bruce reads this:

I looked, and there before me was a white horse! It's rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.

And interprets it to mean this:

"The Antichrist will soon come to power, promising peace and trying to unite the world."

Those don't seem like the same thing. The former sounds like Genghis Khan, the latter like Mahatma Gandhi, and those two don't have a lot in common (except for those tricky silent "h"s). How did this verse about a conqueror bent on conquest get transformed into a prediction of a peacemaker preaching unity? The seal judgments of Revelation 6 parallel the woes of Jesus' mini-apocalypse in Matthew's Gospel in which he tells his disciples to watch for "wars and rumors of wars." The word "wars" seems clear but, as the entire Nicolae storyline throughout LB demonstrates, L&J reinterpret this to mean they should watch for peacemakers and rumors of peace. This weird inversion -- which they claim is a simple, literal reading -- arises from a single verse in the latter part of the book of Daniel. That single verse, Daniel 9:27, forms the basis for L&J's entire tribulation timeline -- all those 21-month and 42-month periods Bruce outlines with such certainty. Here is that verse:

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

That right there is why "peacemakers" are suspect. More specifically, that -- precisely that passage of scripture and a supposedly "literal" reading of it -- is why millions of American evangelicals believed it was wrong for President George H.W. Bush to work with the United Nations to build a multinational coalition for the first Gulf War. That verse is why millions of American evangelicals supported President George W. Bush's refusal to do so for the current war in Iraq. It may even be part of why Bush fils himself has such contempt for the U.N.

The second rider, war, on a red horse, carries a sword and "was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other." John has this rider following immediately after the first, which makes sense since conquest and war tend to go hand in hand. But this creates a problem for Bruce and the authors, who believe that the Antichrist will create a 3½-year peace treaty. Bruce has figured out a work-around for that problem, which turns out to be easier to handle than the frantic pace his itinerary requires in order to squeeze all of these calamities -- sequentially and discretely -- into his 21-month window:

"The white horseman apparently is the Antichrist, who ushers in one to three months of diplomacy while getting organized and promising peace.

"The red horse signifies war. The Antichrist will be opposed by three rulers from the south, and millions will be killed."

"In World War III?"

"That's my assumption."

"That would mean within the next six months."

"I'm afraid so. And immediately following that, which will take only three to six months because of the nuclear weaponry available, the Bible predicts inflation and famine -- the black horse. As the rich get richer, the poor starve to death. More millions will die that way."

"So if we survive the war, we need to stockpile food?"

Bruce nodded, "I would."

One of the nice things about being an American is that passages like Revelation 6 can seem so abstract and hypothetical. Privilege has its privileges, after all, including the privilege of reading such descriptions of war and famine and leaping to imagine that they must refer to some distant, yet-to-come future, since nothing here sounds like the world we know. We can read this part of John's Apocalypse and imagine that it, like Thomas Malthus' prophecy of "gigantic inevitable famine," is either a false prophecy or at best a prophecy yet to be fulfilled. But there are 6 billion of us human earthlings, give or take, and most of us aren't Americans. For perhaps a third of us, "gigantic inevitable famine" is a pretty accurate description of how life is. For billions of people, John's vision doesn't seem like the prediction of future events so much as a description of what life is like now, today, with war, famine and -- what was that next one? Oh, yes, plague:

"... it gets worse. That killer famine could be as short as two or three months before the arrival of the fourth Seal Judgment, the fourth horseman on the pale horse -- the symbol of death. Besides the postwar famine, a plague will sweep the entire world. Before the fifth Seal Judgment, a quarter of the world's current population will be dead."

I'm not sure what to make of a two-month famine, particularly one scheduled to arrive -- if I'm following Bruce's itinerary properly -- in the middle of winter. (Isn't winter already a kind of two- or three-month famine?) As dire as Bruce's scenario for the coming year sounds, it must be almost comforting for Rayford to hear that he's still got a 75-percent chance of surviving it. You wouldn't expect your chances to be that good just from a nuclear World War III.

Rayford, by the way, "was furiously taking notes" through all of this. "He couldn't get enough of this information":

How could he have missed this? God had tried to warn his people by putting his Word in written form centuries before. For all Rayford's education and intelligence, he felt he had been a fool.

That last sentence is again, the major theme of the LB series: You may think you're intelligent and educated, but you're a fool if you don't realize that Tim LaHaye's "biblical" prophecies are the Most Important Thing Ever. You'll see. You're all like, "Oh, la-di-da, I'm an intellectual and I think the Bible is all about like, loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor as yourself," when you should be all like, "Tell me, Rev. LaHaye, sir, do you perhaps have some study tools for sale that might help me to prepare for the coming apocalypse, the coded foretelling of which is the primary purpose of scripture?" Your failure to appreciate my genius will be punished. You just wait.

Bruce quickly summarizes the fifth and sixth seals -- the slaughter of the 144,000 singing virgins and a big old earthquake -- but he stops before getting into the seventh since: A) the seventh seal is the seven trumpets, and he hasn't worked through this second drawer of Pandora's box yet; and B) a quarter of the group won't live to see that bit, so why bother them with the details? All he tells them of the next set of judgments is this:

I warn you they are progressively worse. I want to leave you with a little encouragement.

That non-sequitur, I assure you, is reproduced here exactly as it appeared in the book.

Bruce concludes with a bit of retro-plotting. Rayford has already seen the two witnesses on CNN during his all-nighter the evening before. The authors, somewhat awkwardly, realized that they were getting ahead of themselves, so they had Rayford think to himself that this was something Bruce had begun telling them about, recalling a conversation we readers hadn't previously encountered. Bruce here continues this awkward revision:

"You remember we talked briefly about the two witnesses and I said I would study that more carefully?"

His more in-depth study, presented over the following page, turns out to consist of a crude summary of Revelation 11 (which we already looked at here). It turns out that Bruce and everyone else in the group had also been up all night watching CNN, so they all, like Rayford, recognized that the crazy street preachers in Jerusalem were, in fact, these two witnesses.

Having now ensured that Bruce and the rest of the group are up to speed on what we readers already knew 12 pages ago, the authors allow him to send everybody home for the day to begin stockpiling their food and digging out their bomb shelters.

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

* That's assuming, of course, that LaHaye is a True Believer in his own theories, acting in good faith. One way of exploring whether or not that is indeed the case would be to examine how he is investing the enormous profits he has earned and what kind of estate planning he has set up to ensure that his heirs have a secure future guaranteed by his predictions that no such future would exist.

** Well, no. The Bible doesn't call them that any more than the it calls the story of Noah's ark "The Story of Noah's Ark." This may seem like hair-splitting, but Bruce's misstatement here is emblematic of part of the authors' overall problem: Their inability to distinguish between what the Bible actually says and the interpretive framework through which they view it.

Comments

[Mouse]

Let me guess, not merely content to shoot Suspense dead and leave it in a ditch, LH&J then dug it up and raped its corpse.

[damnedyankee]

Your failure to appreciate my genius will be punished. You just wait.

Funny coincidence: I was planning to say just exactly that before unleashing my army of Atomic Supermen.

Aw, man...! Forget you read that! There is no army of Atomic Supermen! No! Nuh-uh! Not a one! Honest!

[Susan]

"LaHaye and Jenkins faced a particularly daunting task, since back in 1995 they were setting out to produce a 12-book series to be published over the course of the following 12 years."

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but at the time the first book came out, I seem to recall it was to be a six book series - which multiplied when it turned out to be an endless well of cash for Jenkins and LaHaye. That might (only might) explain some of the tediousness of the ensuing books.

[aunursa]

As dire as Bruce's scenario for the coming year sounds, it must be almost comforting for Rayford to hear that he's still got a 75-percent chance of surviving it.

At the beginning of the sequel Tribulation Force, Bruce predicts that three out of every four people will die before the end of the Tribulation. This is an indication that only one of the four initial Tribulation Force members -- Bruce, Rayford, Chloe, and Buck -- will survive the entire series.

That's assuming, of course, that LaHaye is a True Believer in his own theories, acting in good faith. One way of exploring whether or not that is indeed the case would be to examine how he is investing the enormous profits he has earned and what kind of estate planning he has set up to ensure that his heirs have a secure future guaranteed by his predictions that no such future would exist.

Not necessarily. LaHaye may be confident that the Rapture will happen imminently and yet realize that he doesn't know for sure. Evangelicals cite a NT passage to indicate that no one knows the actual time of the Rapture, all guesses are just that. It reminds me of the insurance and investment advice I received years ago: invest as if you're going to live forever; buy insurance as if you're gonna die tomorrow.

[aunursa]

Someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but at the time the first book came out, I seem to recall it was to be a six book series

Origin of the Left Behind Series
When writing began, the thought was a single book that would tell the story of the rapture, the tribulation, and Christ's Glorious Appearing. Here's how Jerry describes the process and the realization that one book was just not enough: "I remember I was halfway through book one and I had only covered one week! I called Dr. LaHaye and said, 'We've got a problem.' We talked to Tyndale. So, before I even finished book one, we agreed on a trilogy. By the time I finished book two, I wasn't much further, and we agreed there would be six books. And then we locked in at seven books. We finally had that figured out. I had finished Soul Harvest, Book 4."

"The first four books were a year apart, and at the end of the fourth book I was only 2-1/2 years into the tribulation. Ron Beers, Vice President for Editorial at Tyndale, said 'Do you really think you can get 4-1/2 more years into three more books?' And I said, Well, it's going to change the pace. It will have to be more action-oriented, a little less character-driven. And he said, 'We think that's part of the secret of the success. People care about the characters, they fall in love with the characters, they want to know what happens. So, if you didn't change the pace, how many?' So, I said, 'It will take six books to get to the half-way point, thus another six to finish—so, twelve.'"

I should also point out again that, while Left Behind was written in 1995, the authors have indicated that the story is supposed to take place sometime during the first half of the 21st century. Thus, it's even more striking that they didn't consider future technological advances.

[Richard Hershberger]

Unfortunately, PowerPoint is not just in evangelical churches. More and more mainline churches are adopting it. This, for me, is a deal killer. Barring extraordinary circumstances (e.g. no better church within a hundred miles) I would not be a member of any church that promises me dumbed-down content free services.

[Richard Hershberger]

"Not necessarily. LaHaye may be confident that the Rapture will happen imminently and yet realize that he doesn't know for sure."

Isn't that like me saying I am confident that my wife is faithful, but I will set a private investigator to follow her because I don't know for sure?

"Evangelicals cite a NT passage to indicate that no one knows the actual time of the Rapture, all guesses are just that."

Do they? I normally see that cited by non-evangelicals in a resigned tone of voice, as explanation for why we declined to get too excited about the imminent End Times. The usual response in my experience has been a blank stare, so I always assumed that verse doesn't get much play in such circles.

[Jon]

The whole PowerPoint-hymn-lyrics on the big screen drives me nuts. My mother's huge Six-Flags-Over-Jesus church in Alabama does that, and the two huge screens make it look like you're at a WWF event. It's shallow and horrible of me, I know, but I passed on a small Episcopal congretation because they were projecting lyrics on a screen. I don't know why that's such a hot button, but then, I was raised genetically programmed into the 1940 Broadman Hymnal (and the 1956-edition Baptist Hymnal) - and the Broadman is the Baptist equivalent of the Springfield 1903 rifle, a timeless design that requires no improvement. (Even with shaped notes.)

[Battie]

PowerPoint is nothing more than an enabler for people with no sense of design. I hate being forced to use it in class. My right brain almost died as I tried to convince my presentation group to please not insert that clip art!

[Richard Hershberger]

"I don't know why that's such a hot button"

For me, it is embracing of the trendy and the ephemeral. It is the idea that this is what we are doing this year, but next year it may be something different. That PowerPoint in particular is a dumbing down is that much worse, but not really the point.

It is part and parcel with the idea that the church has to accommodate itself to the popular culture: people in the seats will dress like they are sitting at home watching television, they will listen to the same sort of music they would on the radio, and they will hear comfortable, non-challenging messages confirming their prejudices. Because if you challenge them in any way, some will stay away, and the measure of a successful church is the number of butt cheeks in chairs, right?

feh

[Ken]

I looked, and there before me was a white horse! It's rider held a bow, and he was given a crown, and he rode out as a conqueror bent on conquest.

Ah, "The Forgotten First Horseman", the nameless "Man on the White Horse".

The interpretation of this as a Prophecy of the Coming Antichrist seems to be standard in Dispensationalist circles. I remember first hearing it on a J Vernon Magee "Through the Bible" radio show in the early Seventies.

Since the summer of 1992, when my retired parents high-pressured me to accept Ross Perot as my personal savior, I have come to conclude he represents a general pattern you see in human history. Just as my parents came to believe that "Once Ross Perot is President, Everything Will be Perfect Forevermore!", we look for a Man on Horseback to take power and Make Everything Perfect. Sometimes he's in it for himself, and we have a charismatic dictator whose yes-men and people shout "The Voice of a God, Not of a Man!". Sometimes he's not necessarily evil, but he's definitely in over his head and listens too much to his own PR spin ("The Voice of a God, Not of a Man!"). Either way, his ego gets too big, he reaches too far, he throws his weight around one time too many, or screws up royally and the other three Horsemen -- War, Famine/Economic Exploitation, and Plague -- follow in his wake. The only winners are Death and Hell, who pick up the casualties of this misplaced faith in The Man on The White Horse. Beware, man, of calling yourself a god.

...what kind of estate planning he has set up to ensure that his heirs have a secure future guaranteed by his predictions that no such future would exist.

I would be interested in seeing that done to ALL big-name "The End is Near!" types -- PMD/RTC, Thirteenth Imam, Population Bomb, Global Warming, etc.

On a much lighter note, here's the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as My Little Ponies!

[aunursa]

Isn't that like me saying I am confident that my wife is faithful, but I will set a private investigator to follow her because I don't know for sure?

Having faith that the Rapture will happen at some vague time in the near future and being certain that the Rapture will happen by a specific date are two different things.

[Redem]

You know I think the term "Rumours of wars" is a more or less outdated to the time were communication were much less developped (hence things took months to go from one point to another hence it's rumour)

But I guess the modern version of rumour of war apply to Africa were we know they are some pretty horrible but have no idea what they are

[Jos]

The second rider, war, on a red horse, carries a sword and "was given power to take peace from the earth and to make men slay each other."

I have to hand it to Pratchett and Gaiman. When they wrote about War, they really nailed her.

I wonder how LH&J will fare. I am, of course, assuming that there will really be someone on a horse carrying a sword. Even though I haven't exactly seen Carpathia take up horseriding just yet.

[Geds]

Broadman is the Baptist equivalent of the Springfield 1903 rifle, a timeless design that requires no improvement.

But wasn't the Springfield 1903 just a copy of the Mauser 1896?

For my money it's all about the M2 .50 cal machine gun. It was nearly in service in time for the U.S. to take it to war in World War I and it's on the roofs of Humvees, Abrams and Bradleys today...

[/pointless diversion]

[Vermic]

I should also point out again that, while Left Behind was written in 1995, the authors have indicated that the story is supposed to take place sometime during the first half of the 21st century. Thus, it's even more striking that they didn't consider future technological advances.

While I don't doubt that authorial laziness/apathy was the main factor here, it may also be that L&J were afraid to make their world seem too futuristic (PowerPoint and internets everywhere, gasp!), for fear of leaving an impression that the End Times are too far off to be worth worrying about. I'm sure they want us to think all this stuff is Just Around The Corner (tm), regardless of when it happens in thir own story.

[Ken]

Because if you challenge them in any way, some will stay away, and the measure of a successful church is the number of butt cheeks in chairs, right?

Well, "butts in seats" was also the justification for the angles you find on

[Ken]

Because if you challenge them in any way, some will stay away, and the measure of a successful church is the number of butt cheeks in chairs, right?

Well, "butts in seats" was also the justification for the angles you find on WrestleCrap!

[vanya]

Unfortunately, PowerPoint is not just in evangelical churches. More and more mainline churches are adopting it.

Well, come back to the Catholic Church, we're bringing back Latin Mass - how do you get more anti-Power point than that. Eum scis!

[cjmr]

I've long said that PowerPoint will be the end of Western Civilization. Or maybe nuclear war will.

And immediately following that, which will take only three to six months because of the nuclear weaponry available, the Bible predicts inflation and famine -- the black horse.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but even with today's reduced stocks of nuclear weaponry, don't the various nuclear nations still have enough warheads to destroy the earth in 3-6 days? Three to six months just seems far too long a time frame for that.

[Richard Hershberger]

"Well, come back to the Catholic Church, we're bringing back Latin Mass - how do you get more anti-Power point than that. Eum scis!"

It depends on where you go. I will happily attend a Latin mass, but walk into a random Catholic church and you are more likely to find some hideous folk guitar monstrosity, with a song leader wildly gesticulating at the congregation to try to get them to sing along.

[patter]

Yea!! LBFriday's back!!

fool if you don't realize that Tim LaHaye's "biblical" prophecies are the Most Important Thing Ever. You'll see. You're all like, "Oh, la-di-da, I'm an intellectual and I think the Bible is all about like, loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor as yourself," when you should be all like, "Tell me, Rev. LaHaye, sir, do you perhaps have some study tools for sale that might help me to prepare for the coming apocalypse

Great picture, Fred -- L&J as junior high girls.

[rampancy]

re: PowerPoint - as a Catholic who went to mass in the West End of Toronto, for me, worship was breaking out the Gather or the Catholic Book of Worship II/III hymnals and singing along. I actually remember a few really nice moments as a kid where a stranger beside me would offer to share their hymnal with me.

I have to say, seeing overhead projectors with PowerPoint overheads at my friends' Baptist services a now, and at iVCF gatherings at university really shook me up - it added so much more glitz and glamour without adding any meaningful content. I just didn't see the point, really. I'm reminded of Apple's famous "1984" ad, with the Real Live British Skinheads staring slackjawed at the screen of Big Brother (complete with spurious text and graphics spewed out of an Apple II). Which makes me wonder if I should bring a sledgehammer next time I go out to church with them again.

Oh, and this:

That last sentence is again, the major theme of the LB series: You may think you're intelligent and educated, but you're a fool if you don't realize that Tim LaHaye's "biblical" prophecies are the Most Important Thing Ever. You'll see. You're all like, "Oh, la-di-da, I'm an intellectual and I think the Bible is all about like, loving the Lord your God and loving your neighbor as yourself," when you should be all like, "Tell me, Rev. LaHaye, sir, do you perhaps have some study tools for sale that might help me to prepare for the coming apocalypse, the coded foretelling of which is the primary purpose of scripture?" Your failure to appreciate my genius will be punished. You just wait.

...was just awesome. :)

[cjmr]

with a song leader wildly gesticulating at the congregation to try to get them to sing along.

Ugh. I hate that too. Our parish sings just fine with minimal cuing, but the Music Director wants us (the cantors) to do more of what you call gesticulating.

[Geds]

Wouldn't that be L&J as the junior high teachers who were either never 13 or forgot about it a long, long time ago and who pretty much hate their jobs and are counting down the days until they can retire and get away from those stupid little snots?

That's how I see it...

[Monty]

I think the "weird inversion " of the anti-christ being a peacemaker may also come from the dispensationalist believer thinking that war is a sign of the end times (and therefore a good thing) and anyone who is trying to stop war is trying to keep the end times from coming (which would be bad). Perhaps you have already said this in an earlier post.

[Bugmaster]

And he shall confirm the covenant with many for one week: and in the midst of the week he shall cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease, and for the overspreading of abominations he shall make it desolate, even until the consummation, and that determined shall be poured upon the desolate.

That right there is why "peacemakers" are suspect.

I don't get it. No sacrifice, no oblation, I get that part, but how does this refer to peacemaking ?

[Fraser]

L&H wouldn't be the first writers to try and avoid making their stories of the future "too futuristic"—the creators of that dreary TV show "Space: Above and Beyond" described their approach as much the same.
Not that that's an excuse. Nora Roberts' "In Death" series is set in mid 21st century and does a very good job creating a plausible near future (enough that even before she stepped from behind the pseudonym I knew non SF readers who were hooked on it).
Reading those verses, I was struck that there's nothing that specifically says the horsemen are individually War, Famine, etc. rather than all working to the same end. And nobody ever mentions Hades coming out to ride after Death.
I suppose it's another example of where what a lot of us think is Biblical is more tradition/pop culture.

[ohiolibrarian]

the Bible predicts inflation and famine -- the black horse.

Inflation? Where's the Fed when you need them?

PowerPoint isn't in the same class as the original 'dumbed-down' version of the Gospels--stained-glass windows and other cathedral art. The least churches could do is create something beautiful to spoon-feed the congregation.

I so miss my hometown church. No PowerPoint, you get the songs from the hymnals. And the pastor actually preached and challenged us to think about the message. The lack of those things in so many other churches is why I have yet to attend a service around here, but when I visit home for the holidays I love attending services in my old church.

And this bit from that "Origin of LB":
"And I said, Well, it's going to change the pace. It will have to be more action-oriented, a little less character-driven. And he said, 'We think that's part of the secret of the success. People care about the characters, they fall in love with the characters, they want to know what happens."

Had me on the floor, laughing.

I so miss my hometown church. No PowerPoint, you get the songs from the hymnals. And the pastor actually preached and challenged us to think about the message. The lack of those things in so many other churches is why I have yet to attend a service around here, but when I visit home for the holidays I love attending services in my old church.

And this bit from that "Origin of LB":
"And I said, Well, it's going to change the pace. It will have to be more action-oriented, a little less character-driven. And he said, 'We think that's part of the secret of the success. People care about the characters, they fall in love with the characters, they want to know what happens."

Had me on the floor, laughing.

[Pseudowolf]

That last was me.

[Sagra]

I thought the peace-phobia came from Daniel 8:25. The King James reads

"And through his policy also he shall cause craft to prosper in his hand; and he shall magnify himself in his heart, and by peace shall destroy many: he shall also stand up against the Prince of princes; but he shall be broken without hand."

What I find amusing is that the New King James version substitutes "prosperity" for "peace", giving "He shall destroy many in their prosperity." Imagine if evangelical suspicion was directed toward prosperity rather than peace! SUV sales, sub-prime mortgages and Walmart's profits would plummet.

[sievetronix]

Thank god Ken!
I thought I was the only wrestling dork who read this thing.

[ohiolibrarian]

leaving an impression that the End Times are too far off to be worth worrying about. I'm sure they want us to think all this stuff is Just Around The Corner (tm), regardless of when it happens in thir own story.

Wouldn't it be worse then to be so retro that it seems that The Rapture must have already happened--and nobody noticed? Worse, The Rapture happened and the RTC haven't been raptured!!

[inge]

Bugmaster: You're taking the question right out of my, eh, keyboard. I don't get it, either. So the sacrifices will stop on Wednesday? Which causes an overspreading of abominations? What abominations did they sacrifice that they can overspread in half a week if they stop -- some kinds of insects? And what does that have to do with seven years and peacemakers?

And I thought the four horsepersons were pestilence, war, famine and death...

[the opoponax]

For me, it is embracing of the trendy and the ephemeral. It is the idea that this is what we are doing this year, but next year it may be something different.

Wow. The rest of America doesn't really get out much, in a design sense.

Since when is Power Point "trendy" or "flashy"?

I just think of it as really goddamn fucking ugly as shit. A workaday program for people who can't look beyond the raw (lack of) information they're trying to transmit in order to see the importance of design.

THe reason we all agree that churches that use Power Point are beyond the pale is because Power Point presentations are the opposite of the last 2000 years of religious aesthetics. We are supposed to be impressed, filled with wonderment, or at the very least (if you are a shaker) given a sense of the stillness and peace of the presence of god, all through the design of religious spaces and artifacts. Power Point does none of this -- it's uninspiring and ugly. This is why our spirits flag at the idea of incorporating it into worship.

[mike]

funny and cruel rapture hilarity

[Jeff]

PowerPoint is VERY good at a certain number of things. If you want to present language concepts, it's very easy to build a page that has a word or phrase, a short description and an example. You can then present the concepts in an organized slide-show.

As for hymns, I could see karaoke being used -- most folks don't know how to read music, and a bouncing ball could help keep them together. But PowerPoint I think is definitely the wrong tool.

[Kate]

I'm also coming down heavy on the "no powerpoint!" side of this argument. My reasons are simply that all harmony has been lost in my home church. If no one has to open the hymnal, then no one bothers reading the music. Without that you don't have a guide for how anything but the melody goes (unless you have a very good ear, and the organist plays the music exactly as written). I actually feel rather left out when I bother to pick up the hymn book and sing harmony. I've been asked if I shouldn't be in the choir if I'm that good at singing.... as if I were showing off or something!

The only good thing I can say is that *so far* the powerpoint hasn't been used in the sermon, which is still 20-25 minutes of the service, the monitor simply shows the sermon title while the minister preaches (which can still be a little disconcerting since ocassionally sermon titles are supposed to be the punch-line of the whole thing, so you spend a chunk of the sermon trying to tie what's being said to the sermon title and you get confused and miss things that way... not that I speak from experience or anything...)

What people don't seem to realize is that powerpoint does only two things, first it dumbs things down to sound-bites/one sentence phrases and second it teaches people to expect those short clips, eroding our ability to sit through and really listen to longer, more thoughtful points.

so ya, the short version of all that is "powerpoint=the devil"

[Jeff]

Yeah, mike, let's have a young woman be convinced that she's going to burn in the Fiery Pits of Hell (I don't think so, but you can tell she does). That's real High-Larious.

Jamie Kennedy and Alan Funt never ridiculed their victims' beliefs.

[Criada]

Not that I think Powerpoint is anything other than the tool of the devil, but I can see how using it to project hymn lyrics could save on printing costs/paper waste. That said, the hymnals were always my favorite part of church. (Not the wildly gesticulating guitar player, who yes, was and still is a part of my home parish. The lousy sound system just made it worse. :-( )

[aunursa]

Monty:
dispensationalist believer thinking that war is a sign of the end times (and therefore a good thing) and anyone who is trying to stop war is trying to keep the end times from coming

Well dispensationalists also think that an increase in pornography and adherence to (what they consider to be) false religions are signs of the end times, but they don't seem to advocate XXX websites or Buddhism. And dispensationalists also think that there is nothing they or anyone else can do to change God's timetable.

[Ecks]

Unfortunately, PowerPoint is not just in evangelical churches. More and more mainline churches are adopting it.

There's at least one catholic church on a campus in Missouri I've seen that used powerpoint - albeit they projected an entirely black background with white text onto a wall, so basically all you had were the words, and no fucking paperclips or what have you. Kinda classy almost. OTOH there was a pentacostal church I saw in Kitchener Canada that had big video screens that I swear almost had that bouncing ball thing moving over the word you were supposed to sing.

PowerPoint is nothing more than an enabler for people with no sense of design.

Speaking as someone with a poor sense of design, I really like it. I used it a lot when I taught, and my powerpoints were actually something the students raved about in their reviews of the course - but then I dont use clipart, I just load it with pictures from google images, and try to interact with it a little like Colbert's word of the day thing (minus the comic genius, plus some academic content).

mass in the West End of Toronto

How west? Dufferin? Etobicoke? Missisauga? Oakville?
Just curious, as a Westie myself :)

[Vermic]

Wouldn't it be worse then to be so retro that it seems that The Rapture must have already happened--and nobody noticed?

I wonder if I'm the only one who remembers a pen-'n'-paper RPG from the '90s called The End, which was set on Earth after the Second Coming. The background was that the end of the world has occurred -- the whole shebang with the Tribulation, and the Apocalypse, and the return of Jesus and the defeat of Satan. Then all of humanity is judged: those who accepted God are taken up to heaven, and those who followed Satan are cast into the fiery pit. Pretty standard stuff.

Except, unexpectedly, there are still people left over. It turns out that a small percentage (about a million people altogether) followed neither God nor Satan, but Reason. They're not damned, but they don't qualify for heaven either. So they inherit the earth -- such as it is, anyway, having gone through plagues and the Apocalypse. As for God, he's done with Earth: he gathers his own flock and splits, forever.

So you roleplay a survivor in a literally Godless world. The setting is mostly your typical post-apocalyptic struggle to survive and rebuild, with a few supernatural elements thrown in. For instance, there are a few lesser angels who chose to stay behind and help people, and there are also a handful of surviving demons. Also there are a few minor pagan gods like Ba'al, who got exiled by Jehovah in the olden days and are returning now that God has left town.

Never bought it, but I flipped through the rulebook once or twice -- they were selling it in front of GenCon that year. Apparently the game's controversial content kept them from getting a booth permit, and they were hyping up that fact as much as they could ("The game GenCon doesn't want you to see!").

I don't recall the game mechanics. It was one of those games that seemed more fun to read about than actually play.

[Pseudowolf]

And dispensationalists also think that there is nothing they or anyone else can do to change God's timetable.

See, I think they *say* that but they don't really *think* that. I mean, they keep saying that this or that has to happen before the Rapture and oppose attempts to prevent things like war and such. The only reason for this is that they think that the Rapture can be prevented or hastened by causing/preventing certain events. If they *really* thought that God's timetable couldn't be changed, then they wouldn't be interested in preventing or causing these "necessary" events.

[Pseudowolf]

And dispensationalists also think that there is nothing they or anyone else can do to change God's timetable.

See, I think they *say* that but they don't really *think* that. I mean, they keep saying that this or that has to happen before the Rapture and oppose attempts to prevent things like war and such. The only reason for this is that they think that the Rapture can be prevented or hastened by causing/preventing certain events. If they *really* thought that God's timetable couldn't be changed, then they wouldn't be interested in preventing or causing these "necessary" events.

[Richard Hershberger]

Pseudowolf, you need to go church shopping. PowerPoint is a weed, but it has not spread everywhere. Try a different church each week. Be willing to look outside your denomination. In any church, either the Gospel is preached or it is not. That is far more important than what is on the sign out front.

Make a list of what is important to you in a church. In my opinion the top item on the list ought to be "The Gospel is preached here." I am Lutheran, and so next would have "the Sacraments are administered here" but there are other traditions. Beyond that, much of it is a matter of personal preference: what makes this feel like a home to you, such that you will joyfully drag yourself out of bed on a Sunday morning?

[Vermic]

Italics, I banish thee!

[Vermic]

Dang. Sorry about that.