And no more oceans, either! I was always saddened by that. What about all the dolphins and whales? Do porpoises make baby Jesus cry?

In the last Left Behind book, one of the things Jesus does upon arrival is to cause an earthquake that lifts every ocean basin and flattens every mountain on Earth to the same elevation. It's not explained why this doesn't result in the planet becoming one uniform shallow sea.

Still, I find it particularly ironic. It's as if the authors were unconsciously giving us a vision of unvarying physical conformity to match the unvarying mental conformity they expect the saved will display during the thousand-year earthly kingdom of God.

Every time a story about injecting chips into pets comes up, it initiates another round of "here comes the mark of the Beast." She is absolutely convinced that we are in the "last days."

The fundies must find it quite irritating that, to the extent these chips are proposed for human use at all, the only injection site I've seen discussed is the upper arm. You want a fleshy part of the body that doesn't move too much, which rules out both the forehead and the hand.

I know, wishful thinking. But it is a lazy Sunday afternoon and the Tigers are winning big........

Can't have been many true believers then 'cos I haven't noticed any dip in the world's population. If it's going to happen let it be soon.

I don't know - would a world with ~6 billion in it even notice 144,000 virgin men disappearing... I mean, they wouldn't be politicians or pilots or reporters, would they? "Keeping themselves pure" would be pretty hard for anybody not locked away already.

first time I've heard of King David beign brought into the whole mess. And waht about that 144,000 eunuchs/virgins?

I challenged him about the David thing, but he really insisted it was in the Bible!
It really irritated me that the 144K were described thusly: Rev14:4)These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they kept themselves pure. So, these "pure" people can only be male and they didn't ruin their purity with those evil woman temptresses. How sexist.
Doug Bachelor, 7th Day Adv'ist, is a big one for the Sunday-worship day being an example of the antichrist's "changing the times and laws" and the idea about the Catholic church being the Beast.

nah, not floating, but on the "earth remade". With a lovely view of the fiery pit so people can enjoy the torture.

That's right! I forgot about that. And no more oceans, either! I was always saddened by that. What about all the dolphins and whales? Do porpoises make baby Jesus cry?
And where are all these sinners supposed to be, anyway? Can they grasp at the ankles of people walking by? Can it really be such a nice place with people being tortured right at your doorstep? Geez, so much for empathy!

first time I've heard of King David beign brought into the whole mess. And waht about that 144,000 eunuchs/virgins?

also hadn't heard about the Visa thing either. Hysterical! I've also heard the SSN numbers, UPC symbols, names, the requirement of a Sunday day or worship (go fig, the 7 Day Adventists thought up this one), etc. Heinlein had it being 6 to the power of 6 to the power of 6, 6^6^6^ which would be hmmm, a really really big number.

For those who really njoy stupid prophecy stuff:
I heard once, probably on TBN or Jack Van Impe, that VISA was supposed to be the "Mark." "VI"=6 and "S" and "A" were somehow equivalent to 6 or 66.
The EU, of course, was the Beast with 10 heads (back when there were less than 10 member nations presumably.) And the Catholic church was supposed to give rise to the anti-christ (hehe) the POPE!
During the summer last year, a respected pastor gave a series of Bible studies at my church (I'm still in the closet) on Revelations. Basically, at the end, Jesus will rule over the whole world from Jerusalem with King David as his right hand man. That was the 1st time I had ever heard of that one! What he described was a two-tiered human race. The Jewish people would rule the Earth (my mother also believes this and is honkey-dorey with it) from the (floating?)golden cube city described at the end of Revelations, while the gentile converts would get to live under the benevolent dictatorship of JC and King David in their own lands.
It's been sugested many times that the USA is not mentioned in prophecy because it will no longer be around due to of all of our sin in "letting" homosexuals have rights and the pornography. The stranfe thing is I never hear "greed" as a reason. go figure.

Ah, good times. Sorry to keep posting, but it's all coming back to me. I stopped believing the apocalyptic stuff long before I gave up xianity. You should have seen the bible study leader's face when I even suggested that Revelations was not canonical in some eastern churches and its canonicity was dubious from the beginning - this, while I was still a xian. You'd think I had suggested using scripture for TP.
This post reminded me of all the junk I used to hear. Hopefully this is of some interest or at least amusement.

1/ Rapture (Xians are swept into the clouds with Jesus)
2/ Anti-Christ arrival
3/ 3.5 years of bliss and happiness (everyone gets a mark of 666)
4/ 3.5 years of torture (the horses of the Apocalypse unleashed upon the world)
5/ The Second coming of Christ (not the Rapture but the return of Christ to fight the Anti-christ at Armageddon)
6/ 1000 years of peace under Christ
7/ Satan unleashed from hell to tempt all humans born in this 1000 years
8/ Final battle of Christ against these 'insurgents' and Satan
9/ Great White Throne Judgment

I mention this just to clarify the terminology of Armageddon, Rapture, and Apocalypse.
I think Hal Lindsey's books went into great detail about how modern military vehicles and weapons could be the beasts and angels of death referenced in Revelation...

Here in northern Europe, only Jehowas Wittnesses and individual lunatics have been making these Rapture guesses - and they do it only among themselves.

Quite a many I know are really afraid of those lunies getting the power to "push the button in the name of Christ". Hey, if God doesn't understand when the End is to come, then _someone_ must do it!?