"Cha-CHING": Sound of the End Days?

Yes, I do believe Jesus will one day come again. But beyond that, I subscribe to very, very little of what passes for End Days Prophecy these days. End Days Profits is more like it. Tim LaHaye may be king of this lucrative realm, but Hal Lindsey continues to be its Daddy.

For instance, take a few of Hal's comments on post-democracy Russia. Yes, the experiment isn't going well there. (Is it going well here? Hmmm... well, that's a tangent.) Putin seems to have tightened the screws, and though the story is far from over, it isn't looking rosy at present. But check out Hal's twisted take on present-day Russia:

The Western victors of the Cold War are behaving the same way their grandfathers did in 1919. We didn't kill the Russian bear; we just wounded it. After the WWI victory, our flawed diplomacy produced a desperate and angry Germany that embraced Hitler and the Nazis. Today, we are producing a desperate and angry Russian that has a momentous place in Bible prophecy concerning the Last Days. Over 2,600 years ago the Prophet Ezekiel predicted this exact scenario would occur in the Last Days. He foresaw a desperate Russia join forces with nations that are now in the Muslim world and launch a war in the Middle East that will escalate into Armageddon. The current situation appears to be right on track.

Right on track? Hal's almost smacking his lips at the mayhem to come. What I love about Hal's rhetoric is how he turns a nation of a few hundred million souls into a total abstraction: "We didn't kill the Russian Bear; we just wounded it." Guess after WWII we should have used those nukes before Russia had a chance to get any, eh? And as he thrills to the Apocalyptic wonder of an alleged Russian/Muslim alliance, abusing (as usual) the old testament prophets to do so, he gets to sounding nearly orgasmic.

I can't help feeling that this sort of End Times "theology" is in fact quite similar to the God Hates Fags folks' take on homosexuality; it so poisons the waters that serious discussion of such matters becomes the victim of stupidity. In both cases, real human beings become mere cartooned symbols for the Wrath of God. Doesn't it just make you want to rub your hands together in holy glee? Yeeeeach.