End times nonsense

Further to the latest post on t-shirt theology (loaded up yesterday), which was all about how annoyed I get by Left Behind books and other rubbish of that ilk, here’s an incomplete list of things I have heard confidently preached and predicted in sermons, or seen presented quite seriously in books, or been earnestly told by well-meaning yet slightly intense people, over the last 20 years or so, relating to the end times:

~ Communism is going to take over the world as the antichrist's empire.

~ The European Union (and before that the EEC) will become the antichrist’s empire.

~ Pope John-Paul II is the antichrist. (And apparently him being dead isn't going to stop this, as he will return as a 'false prophet'.)

~ The Soviet Union is the antichrist’s empire. (That very popular theory disappeared virtually overnight, coincidentally at about the same time as the Soviet Union.)

~ After the rapture all the Jews in the world will immediately realise what a mistake they made and convert to Christianity en masse.

~ The ‘return’ of the Jews to Israel after 1948 is a mark of the end of the age. Which is why it's a good idea to encourage Jews to move to Israel from everywhere else, like Russia, Ethiopia, etc. (Except from America where life is good, obviously.)

~ The British Empire dissolved because Britain opposed the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948.

~ The Palestinians got what was coming to them because they were living in the land God has 'given' the Jews.

~ Barcodes are the mark of the Beast because they have three lots of six lines (which actually they don’t, as you can see by looking at a bar code).

~ We'll all end up having bar codes tattooed, or inserted as a datachip, onto the back of our hands.

~ The internet is the Beast because ‘W’ is the sixth letter of the Hebrew alphabet and so www = 666.

~ Russia will get back on its feet and become the antichrist's empire. (Ah, right, so the whole Soviet Union is the antichrist's empire thing was just a misunderstanding. It's still those damn Russkies!)

~ Babylon will be rebuilt as the home of the antichrist.

~ Saddam Hussein is rebuilding Babylon.

~ Saddam Hussein could be the antichrist. (This one has gone a bit quiet of late.)

~ There will be earthquakes and wars and horrible things happening - usually this can be linked into anything terrible that has just happened.

~ The seasons will change. (Ooh, global warming! Global warming!)

~ America will be on the side of good because the American symbol is an Eagle and there's something nice in Revelation about eagles. Therefore America = good. QED. (Interestingly both Germany and the Czech Republic have an eagle as a national symbol. But obviously it's not them.)

~ Bill Gates is the antichrist and Microsoft is the mark of the Beast. (Mac users don't bother commenting...)

So, what similar bollocks have you heard? Leave a comment.