There’s a blog out there that I cannot look away from and I really need to. It’s basically a trainwreck and the trainwreck of it all is like crack to me. I keep whipping my head back and forth to get one last look — which, let’s face it, doesn’t exactly make me the poster child for mental health. I’m not going to put a direct link here — because I’m a coward, duh — but I’ll give you the URL like this: newine(dot)wordpress(dot)com.
The blogger is a Bostonian and a Christian who calls himself ultraguy. He seems smart, yet simultaneously insane because he is all about how everything that’s happening now proves we are in the end times. You know, frankly, I’m tired, and I would be okay if these ARE the end times, but when someone constantly barrages their readers with suppositions and never comes to any logical conclusions, it’s exhausting and incomprehensible and a gyp. Now I’m pretty sure the end times are gonna be a gyp for many people in many ways, but if you’re going to write about them, come to some damn conclusions, so I can either agree or disagree. Basically, he’s an apocalypse tease and I am very frustrated. I’m like a guy here. Don’t get me all worked up fer nothin’, okay?
I need release.
I don’t know WHY I’m reading. Maybe I’m looking for something that finally strikes me and makes me say, “Yes! End times! I’m outta here!” Because, again, I’m tired. And lazy.
Why I am relying on ultraguy for this definitive proof, I do not know. I have issues. Issues far beyond the tired and the lazy.
The other day he had a post that drew parallels — follow me if you can — between the location of some boulder that commemorates Jonathan Edwards’ sermon “Sinner in the Hands of an Angry God” and the locations of both the Haitian and Chilean earthquakes. There was an official-looking map involved, with a red line running south from this stone in CT through Haiti to Chile. That was basically it. “Follow the line of sinners” I think is the thought here. Although, again, I never know. I’m never sure with ultraguy.
It’s all ultra something, that’s for sure.
So you draw a red line from CT through Haiti to Chile.
Uhm, so?
So?
SO FREAKIN’ WHAT????
This is what it’s like to read this stuff. Every day it’s some byzantine post that meanders around but never arrives anywhere. (So much for faith being something even a little child can grasp.) It’s always, “Hey! This might be something!” It frustrates me. It makes me angry because it’s cheap and easy to throw out dangerous (and stupid) suppositions when you don’t have to prove them or even logically support them. If the only goal is to work people into a froth, you don’t NEED to be reasonable.
I don’t know why I’m going off on this (ultra)guy. I guess because I think it’s irresponsible — getting susceptible readers to chase their tails and obsess about whether this means it’s the end times or that means it’s the end times. If every thought in your head or everything that happens to you points to the end times, how do you sleep at night?
It’s crazy. Doing that will make you crazy. During the time I’ve read this blog, he’s progressively made less and less sense. I think that’s what obsessing about the unknowable will do to a person: make you nutso.
Obsess about it if you must, but obsess in private. Don’t drag others down with you. Like your formerly sane fellow Christians.
That’s where I have the problem.
Go crazy-ass insane on your own time.
Sigh.
Why don’t these eschaton-immantizing folks ever read their Bibles? There will be wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes in many places… many will come to you saying, lo, there He is, and here is the Savior. Do not listen to them. No man knows the day or the hour; not even the Son, for the Father has reserved that knowledge to Himself.
Hey, if Jesus don’t know when He’s being sent back down here, why should I try to outguess him? Based on some goofy “line of sinners”? Were those who died when the tower fell on them in Siloam worse than any others? By no means!
Line of sinners…. I hate to break it to all y’all but there’s no line of sinners: just one big dot. It’s roughly Earth-sized.
NF — AMEN!!
I thought the fact that a show like “Jersey Shore” came into existence would be enough of a sign we’re in the end times.
Exactly, Nightfly.
I’ve always wondered, if it IS the end times (ARE the end times? which?) just what are we supposed to be doing that we already aren’t?
As long as you’re being a wise virgin, there’s not much to add.
Although, I guess your mileage could vary depending on your personal millenial disposition.
I’ve heard it called headline eschatology – where one pours over the news of the day looking for clues to the end. I’m reading a commentary on Luke written by a Protestant clergyman named J.C. Ryle. In 1858 he thought that the end was near because of the decline of the Turkish Empire and the rise of Popery, and I don’t think he meant the nice smelling stuff you put in the bathroom.
Clearly Bishop Ryle was wrong.
I also have to take into account my own biases. The return of Chriat would solve a lot of my problems. But wishing won’t make it happen any sooner.
On occasion, my pastor teaches on this subject. The intent isn’t figuring out when, but to cause us to be aware of what it will look like when it happens. There will be alot of religious and political BS going around then, and if (I repeat, if) we happen to be around at the end we will be able to cut though it.
This is a few posts ago, so maybe no one will notice it, but I just now came up with this question…Even if it is “The End Times”, just how long does “The End Times” last? A week? A month? A year? A hundred years? I’ll probably be out of laundry detergent before Easter – should I go buy some more, or is it a moot point?