SARS and Prophecy

[Halfglass]

Although I am not a follower of established religion, I keep finding myself thinking of The Bible as a tool for insight into the End Times. If we could take out the politics and wishful writing/thinking, there may be some things important at the core of some of it...What if some of these proclamations about miracles were made up for the purpose of spreading the Gospel/Power/Political-gain, and the first writings were gleaned through real trances and the like--perhaps even mushroom, datura, nutmeg induced? Christ said in the end times there would be "...earthquakes, famines and PESTILENCE" (we have AIDS now SARS!) "...and fearful events..." (9-11 of course) Luke: 21:11 Anyone else have any thoughts on prophecy in The Bible?

[ April 25, 2003, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]

[Woodpecker]

It ain't necessarily so,
It ain't necessarily so.
The things that you're liable to read in the Bible,
It ain't necessarily so.

--George Gershwin

Biblical end-times prophecies remind me of an experiment conducted by some professional skeptics. They got the birthtimes and places of a class of college students and handed them each a horoscope. "Does this apply to you?" 90% of the students found them amazingly weirdly accurate. But each one had been given a copy of exactly the same text. I.e., they saw what made emotional sense to them.

Earthquakes, famines and pestilence are nothing new. Ditto "fearful events." If you are a tripped out mystic writing in 400 AD, like St. John of Patmos who wrote Revelation, you'll throw in many-headed dragons and plagues and pestilence... and of course the many-headed dragon is Hitler, so the end of the world must be coming in 1944, and of course it's Leonid Brezhnev, so the end of the world is coming in 1982, oops, it didn't happen... and the seven-headed duck will eat the white-faced rhinoceros, and plagues will break out in the South, and the 13-eyed red dragon will make faces at the 25-horned dredlocked mountain goat with a bellybutton piercing... and what it all boils down to is that some tranced-out cat like us was seeing visions some time ago, and the visions are real, and they're connected to our time and every time, but if you think that means that this right now is the end time, IMHO, and with all due respect, Halfglass, you might be mistaken. Those texts are as full of meaning as Rorschach tests or stains on the wallpaper; in a holographic universe, every bit contains an image of the whole, no?.... On December 31, 999, people climbed up on the rooves of their houses waiting to fly up in the air; in the 1800s in Poland, many Jews went nuts about a false messiah, who was supposed to whisk them away on a whirlwind to Jerusalem and a new age of heaven on earth; in 1989, my Texan roommate fully expected to be swept up into heaven the night of the Harmonic Convergence. In the morning he was still with us; a bit crankier perhaps, but definitely on earth.

A prophecy for the general future (tremble, world!!) by Woodpecker:

Events will transpire.
There will be changes.
And much of the same shit will happen, though the day will be a new one.

Peace.

[Halfglass]

I can dig that. There is alot of talk about 2012 now and everyone seems to think there is something to it. I'm merely suggesting that IF any prophecy is true--be it from tripped-out Middle Easterners 2000 years ago, or tripped-out Maya way back when, or Terence McKenna and his Novelty curve, it COULD come from ANY one of these sources. I did try to cover my ass by putting in all that jazz about the problems with the writers of the Bible (or I mean the later scribes) but I'm glad you got a laugh anyway. (Nobody's writing about tripping much here so I figured I'd better get in on something current--LOL) I really don't feel much in the way of any prophecy. (Well actually I do "feel" the unmistakable excelleration of something, towards some zenith or crash-and-burn scenario, I'm not sure which though.)

[ April 25, 2003, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: Halfglass ]