Apocalypse When???

According to the Christian organization Family Radio Worldwide, Jesus is coming back on Saturday, May 21, 2011, guaranteed! Five months after that, on October 21, 2011, God will destroy not just planet Earth, but the entire Universe as well! These Christians believe so strongly in this that they’ve bought hundreds of billboards around the country to let people know about Jesus’ return. (Wouldn’t it be great to buy hundreds of billboards to promote Deism?!)

The root of most of the Christian belief in Armageddon or the Apocalypse is found in the last book of the Christian Bible, Revelation. There are probably hundreds of millions of dollars worth of movies, books, videos and magazines offering various interpretations of Revelation all ending in the return of Jesus, the end of the world and a new Jerusalem.

The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, had a very low opinion of the Book of Revelation. In a letter to General Alexander Smyth dated January 17, 1825 Jefferson wrote that he “considered it as merely the ravings of a maniac, no more worthy nor capable of explanation than the incoherences of our own nightly dreams. I was therefore, well pleased to see, in your first proof sheet, that it was said to be not the production of St. John, but of Cerinthus, a century after the death of that apostle. Yet the change of the author’s name does not lessen the extravagances of the composition; and come they from whomsoever they may, I cannot so far respect them as to consider them as an allegorical narrative of events, past or subsequent. There is not coherence enough in them to countenance any suite of rational ideas. You will judge, therefore, from this how impossible I think it that either your explanation or that of any man in ‘the heavens above, or on the earth beneath,’ can be a correct one. What has no meaning admits no explanation; and pardon me if I say, with the candor of friendship, that I think your time too valuable, and your understanding of too high an order, to be wasted on these paralogisms. You will perceive, I hope, also, that I do not consider them as revelations of the Supreme Being, whom I would not so far blaspheme as to impute to Him a pretension of revelation, couched at the same time in terms which, He would know, were never to be understood by those whom they were addressed.”

So based on the genius of the Deist Thomas Jefferson, trying to figure out the Bible’s Book of Revelation is a waste of time and it is blasphemy to attempt to tie it to God.

Over the years so many Christian leaders were self-deluded enough to believe they knew when the return of Jesus and the Rapture would take place that complete new Christian denominations have been formed by those waiting for his return trip. The Seventh Day Adventists were started this way. They were a group of Christians who were caught up in the emotionally charged Second Awakening and falsely believed that Jesus would come back between the Spring of 1843 and the Spring of 1844. He did not return. However, the Christians stuck together and created the Seventh Day Adventist Church.

In a similar error the founder of Jehovah’s Witnesses, Charles Taze Russell, believed that Jesus would come back in 1914. He didn’t.

Russell and the others should not feel bad about making mistakes about the return of Jesus. After all, Jesus himself made the same mistake! In Luke 9:27 we read that Jesus told his followers that some of them standing there that day would not “taste of death till they see the Kingdom of God.”

All of the Bible prophecies regarding Armageddon involve the Jewish state of Israel. The Christian Zionist John Hagee believes the Jewish rabbi Jesus will return to Earth and restore Israel as the leader of nations. On his site he lists many reasons why Gentiles should serve the Jews and Israel. Like the Bible itself, everything is based on fear and greed. We should bless Israel so God will bless us. If we curse Israel, God will curse us. The ancient Hebrews who wrote this nonsense were masters at psychological warfare. They wrote many calls for Gentiles to promote Israel and the Jews. Greedy people like Hagee promote these Jewish lies for financial gain and superstitious believers thoughtlessly obey Hagee’s and the Bible’s teachings. They even obey at the peril of their own children. Not only do the U.S. politicians sacrifice their children on the alter of Judaism through wars for Israel’s benefit such as in Iraq and Afghanistan (the primary reason al Qaeda attacked us was due to U.S. politicians arming Israel with powerful deadly weapons even though Israel uses them to kill Muslim men, women and children), the sheeple don’t even question such anti-Gentile Torah teachings as the Hebrews/Jews being allowed by their god to own, buy and sell Gentiles/heathens as slaves. Leviticus 25:44-46 instructs, “Both thy bondmen, and they bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen forever: but over your brethren the children of Israel ye shall not rule one over another with rigor.” It appears Jews owning Gentiles as slaves is kosher.

If Gentiles turn to their God-given reason and embrace Deism the violent and detrimental realities of the Bible, Torah and Koran will be short-circuited. As the American Revolutionary leader and Deist Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, “We have it in our power to begin the world over again.”

Bob Johnson

Bob Johnson is a freelance writer in the Tampa area of Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after a stint in Marine Corps infantry and reading Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason he became a Deist.

In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists, and in 1996 he launched the first website devoted to Deism. He is the author of God Gave Us Reason, Not Religion, Deism: A Revolution in Religion, A Revolution in You and An Answer to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He has also written the introduction to Thomas Paine’s The Age of Reason, The Complete Edition and Principles of Nature by Elihu Palmer.