beyond dumb

I was watching 7th Heaven the other day on WGN (I know!) and saw a commercial for a Sunday morning program called "Beyond Today". I was intrigued enough to tell my DVR to record that shit. This morning before work I watched about half of it and, let me tell you, it was a trip. The host, Darris (I don't know what kind of name that is), has a lot to say into his little microphone headset thing, but I had no idea what he was talking about half the time. If you zone out for a moment, as I am wont to do, you will be completely lost. Probably even if you don't zone out.

He starts out talking about Europe as though its some weird continent we may have never heard of before. It's an emerging Superpower! He says it might make you think of World War II or perhaps that it is a country where a terrorist can board a plane with explosives strapped to his waist. Then he shows this crazy shaky video where the camera is an airplane flying at some buildings. Are you scared yet?

Well, you should be! Because in Europe, they don't care about marriage or whatever. Marriage! A bunch of fornicators, those Europeans! And the Bible says something about the Second Coming of Christ happening after something about ten Kings coming to power or something and so that is happening right now, and the Second Coming is, well, coming.

It's always right around the corner, isn't it? Well, fear not. The Christian God is one of mercy and he will send you signs but you've gotta pay attention. Like the ten Kings. Darris assures us that, although we call them Presidents or Prime Ministers now, this will be one of the clues from the Bible so we'll be ready.

Between terrorists and the End of Days, we really have a lot to worry about, don't we? Oh, and fornicators, of course.

I've not yet finished watching this show, as I mentioned above, so I took a little trip over to the web site to see if they could fill in the gaps for me. Darris seems to have a habit of saying really simple sentences but then launching into a very quick few sentences that carry the bulk of the information. That's where my brain starts going, 'Wait, what??' But it seems as though the Book of Revelations is inherently confusing, as prophecy tends to be, since if anyone's going to buy it then it's got to be pretty vague and cryptic.

And so I read one of the accompanying articles, entitled "Europe: A New Superpower on the Rise". It talks about how in the 60's, the social-ists [sic] took over in Europe and that's when we got all that evil homosexuality and abortion and easy divorce (oh my!). They've also including abolishing the death penalty in that list, which is interesting. I've always found it odd that Christians champion the death penalty, but I suppose if we really are going to take the Bible literally then it does make sense.

Anyway, so I guess they think that there's going to be this United States of Europe, of sorts, with Germany at the helm. They make a point of mentioning that Churchill said Germany would never rise again but an old Christian radio show from the 60's did, so TAKE THAT CHURCHILL. You don't know SHIT.

Basically, the Treaty of Lisbon means that the US is going to keep on declining and Europe is going to rise up as a "new superpower", "rivaling the United States". Ok. So how does Jesus factor in? And wouldn't this seem odd to a person who believes that the Christian God favors countries that live the way he says to, yet Europe is this hot-bed of homosexual activity and abortion and whatnot?

The gist seems to be that the Book of Revelations talks about prostitutes and fornicators but this was supposed to be metaphorical. Isn't that convenient for this argument? Oops, I mean, doesn't that make perfect sense? The Church in Europe is in bed with the State--the Secular State--and this is what the Bible really meant.

Ok, are you confused? Well just wait. See, the Kings are supposed to be with "the beast". The Beast is whoever is leading this whole European Superpower thing. They will have power for one hour (not literally, you imbecile! This is just supposed to imply a short time) and are going to somehow make war with Jesus and then Jesus is going to come back and BAM! Rapture.

So, you see, the economic problems we are having are occurring so that the "revived Roman Empire" (aka Super Europe) can take control of the world so that Jesus can come back.

Yes, there is a weekly TV show for people to spout about this crap. They certainly speak as though they're talking about something real. It's really sort of mind-blowing at the same time as being really scary with just a pinch of sad-that-people-are-so-dumb. I go back and forth between being terrified that people actually think these things and amused.

Today, I am amused.