Rapture watch
I’m sure you all know that today is the end of the world, per Harold Camping (do-over!). What I’m sure you don’t know, since I haven’t told you and none of you are ceiling cats (fingers crossed on that one), is that I’ve recently developed a strange hobby. I’ve started reading a Rapture forum.
These folks aren’t Camping followers—in fact they tend to get upset with Camping for “setting dates,” which in their minds is totally different from what they do. What they do is “watch” for certain dates. In real terms this means that they think exactly the same way Camping does, but constantly include the caveat that “no man knows the day or hour so we could be totally wrong.” Humility! Always a helpful attribute. Especially since these folks are wrong all the goddamn time. A few weeks ago they were excited because they were convinced that the Rapture was going to happen on Rosh Hashanah. It was a bitter pill when that didn’t happen, but now they’re all wound up about the possibilities for instant death this week.
This is a typical post from a day or two ago:
“7th day” SL-9′s impacts – “7th day” Sukkot!! MAJOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ALL:
From: Friday, July 22, 1994 – “7th day” SL-9′s impacts
To: Friday, October 21, 2011 – “7th day” TabernaclesIt is 6300 days
Or 17 YEARS, 91 DAYS
6300 days
900 weeks
OR 700 X 9
17 = “VICTORY”
91 = PSALM 91
9 = JUDGMENT
7 = SPIRITUAL COMPLETION
100 = THE ELECTPsalm 91 (KJV)
8 Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.
9 Because thou hast made the LORD, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation;
10 There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.
11 FOR HE SHALL GIVE HIS ANGELS CHARGE OVER THEE, to keep thee in all thy ways.
12 THEY SHALL BEAR THEE UP IN THEIR HANDS, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
14 Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.
15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.
16 With long life will I satisfy him, and shew him my salvation.“BLESSINGS!!!”
“COME, LORD JESUS!!!”
Calvin
NOTES:
Escaping wrath / SL-9′s 6th @ 3:33 Israel time & Oct., 2011
1 Thessalonians 1 (Amplified Bible)
10 And [how you] look forward to and await the coming of His
Son from heaven, Whom He raised from the dead–Jesus, Who
personally rescues and delivers us out of and from the wrath
[bringing punishment] which is coming [upon the impenitent]
and draws us to Himself [investing us with all the privileges
and rewards of the new life in Christ, the Messiah].Last night, I went back and looked at the 21 impacts of SL-9 onto Jupiter. Nothing of great note jumped out at me. But this morning, I woke up SOO early and made coffee and looked again, then got back in bed and went to sleep.
Then, I heard what sounded like the “3″ first chimes from my cheap Walmart cell phone. I call it my Walmart walkie-talkie because I like to have it with me while driving places in case I need to make a call or someone needs to get in touch with me but I make VERY few calls with it.
Anyway……..
It wasn’t my phone but it was 3 chimes that softly woke me so that I was looking at the clock next to my bed reading 4:49.
4 = “Earth; door”
49 = “the Son of man; the wrath of God”So I guess the Lord wanted me to get up and post this.
Below are the impact times of Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL-9) which hit the king planet, Jupiter, over “7″ days from 7/16-22/94.
When you count P1 and P2 as just one impact AND when You count Q1 and Q2 as just one impact, the total number of impacts is 21.
Fragment “F” would be the 6th fragment of Shoemaker-Levy 9 to hit Jupiter and it hit at 33 minutes past midnight UTC. Number 6 means “weakness of man; manifestation of sin; evils of satan and his influence”. Number 33 means “promise”. But the time of fragment “F” hitting Jupiter, by Israel time, was 3:33.
Suffice to say that 333 is a VERY prophetic number!!!!
Fragment Date Impact Time
July (HH:MM:SS)
A 16 20:11:00
B 17 02:50:00
C 17 07:12:00
D 17 11:54:00E 17 15:11:00
F 18 00:33:00
G 18 07:32:00
H 18 19:31:59
J 19 Missing since 12/93
K 19 10:21:00
L 19 22:16:48
M 20 Missing since 7/93
N 20 10:31:00P2 20 15:23:00
P1 20 Missing since 3/94
Q2 20 19:44:00
Q1 20 20:12:00
R 21 05:33:00
S 21 15:15:00
T 21 18:10:00
U 21 21:55:00
V 22 04:22:00W 22 08:05:30
If you remember, the FIRST impact of SL-9 occurred at the time of 11:11 p.m. in Israel AND as Tisha B’Av was beginning on the night of 7/16-17/94. THE WHOLE ASTRONOMY “WORLD” WAS WATCHING!!!
Tisha B’Av LINK
…”Tisha B’Av, the Fast of the Ninth of Av, is a day of
…mourning to commemorate the many tragedies that have
…befallen the Jewish people, many of which coincidentally
…have occurred on the ninth of Av. Tisha B’Av means “the
…ninth (day) of Av.”A “Monday / Monday” type of deal per Glenn Beck?
…From: Mon., July 18, 1994 – 6th impact (33 min. past midnight UTC)
…To: Mon., October 10, 2011 – NYSE threat LINK
…It is 6293 days
…Or 17 years, 2 months, 22 days
…Or 899 weeks
…33 = “promise”
…8 = “new beginning; new birth; re-birth”
…99 = Greek gematria for “AMEN”Looking into Strong’s at 33 and 333 here’s what I found:
Strong’s G33 – age LINK
Outline of Biblical Usage
1) go to, come!, come now!Scripture used here “seems” prophetic:
…Jam 4:13
…Go to [33] now, ye that say, To day or to morrow
…we will go into such a city, and continue there
…a year, and buy and sell, and get gain:…Jam 5:1
…Go to [33] now, [ye] rich men, weep and howl for
…your miseries that shall come upon [you].Anonymous threat to take NYSE off Internet on 10/10 – Glenn Beck LINK
IMF advisor says we face a Worldwide Banking Meltdown LINK
Strong’s G333 LINK
Outline of Biblical Usage
1) to look at attentively, to consider well, to observe accurately…Act 17:23 For as I passed by, and beheld [333] your devotions,
…I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.
…Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.…Hbr 13:7 Remember them which have the rule over you, who have
…spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow,
…considering [333] the end of [their] conversation.From: Monday, July 18, 1994 – moon at the mouth of Scorpio;
…6TH IMPACT OF SL-9 AT 3:33 ISRAEL TIME / 3RD DAY OF IMPACTS
…To: Saturday, October 1, 2011 – moon at the mouth of Scorpio
…NOTE: THE MOON ENTERED THE MOUTH OF EVIL SCORPIO THE NIGHT
…THAT WE ENTERED OCTOBER AND “3″ PROPHETIC YEARS AGO THIS MONTH,
…THE WORLD (through the U.S.) “ACCEPTED THEIR KING”
…It is 6284 days
…Or 17 years, 2 months, 13 days
…6284 days is 230 sidereal moons (“passes through Scorpio”)
…23 = “DEATH”
…230 = “DEATH AMPLIFIED”Last night, when I got through looking at the SL-9 impacts and doing some calculations, I found it interesting that as I climbed into bed, BOTH my plug in clocks were on 9:09. Of course, the number “9″ means “JUDGMENT”.
Today (10/9) is a “9th” and we just finished 40 weeks of year ’11. Number 40 means “probation; testings; trials”. A human “birth
cycle” normally is “40″ weeks or 280 days but can go a few days past. October “9″ is day 282 of year ’11. Is this ALL about to go into MASS “CHAOS” (“11″)?!Psalm 14
4 Do all these evildoers know nothing?
They devour my people as though eating bread;
they never call on the LORD.
5 But there they are, overwhelmed with dread,
for God is present in the company of the righteous.
6 You evildoers frustrate the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is their refuge.
7 Oh, that salvation for Israel would come out of Zion!
When the LORD restores his people,
let Jacob rejoice and Israel be glad!The moon today, 10/9, moves into the lower limb of Pisces. Below are pictures of the Pisces “fish stringer”. To me, this “lower limb”
represents Israel (the 144,000 Jewish servants of God) while the other limb represents those with a more “heavenly” bent!!! The
Jews are still VERY “secular” (unbelieving) at this point!!!From: E. W. Bullinger’s, The Gospel in the Stars
Pisces (the Fishes) and The Band
…”The Sign is pictured as two large fishes bound together by a Band,
the ends of which are fastened separately to their tails. One fish is
represented with its head pointing upwards towards the North Polar
Star, the other is shown at right angles, swimming along the line of
the ecliptic, or path of the sun.”…”The fish, shooting upwards to the Polar Star, exquisitely pictures
this “heavenly calling”; while the other fish, keeping on the
horizontal line, answers to those who were content with an earthly
portion.”Let’s hope we move UPWARDS this week!!!
Magical thinking? What’s that?
Just to be clear: my purpose here isn’t to ridicule these people. Really, who doesn’t get messages from their alarm clock? Actually I feel rather sorry for them. I’m not even going to post a link back to the forum, because I don’t want to send any haters their way. Mostly I’m just fascinated by the insight into their thinking.
I believe it was in Breakfast of Champions that Kurt Vonnegut riffed on the problems with our “big brains.” It is utterly human to make connections, create narratives, come up with explanations. The main difference between conspiracy theorists/rapture watchers and, say, the physicists working on a Unified Field Theory is in the quality of the data (and, to be honest, the power of the processor).
29 Responses to “Rapture watch”
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Toonces says:
I don’t understand pro-rapture thinking very well. Do you think it is a form of being suicidal, like for people who believe that suicide is a sin? There seems also to be some resemblance to OCD thinking in that post, with the numbers and whatnot.
October 21st, 2011 at 4:54 pm EST -
Violet Socks says:
I don’t know, Toonces. I think in some ways it’s similar to the thinking of suicide bombers, though of course without the bombing and murdering. These people seem convinced that paradise awaits them, and they are eager to get there.
I often wonder about their home lives. Sometimes they’ll post things like, “After this root canal and with no job, I am SO READY for the Rapture!!!” But others don’t give any hint of that sort of despair, at least not in their posts.
And some of them have been doing this for decades. Really. “I’ve been watching for the Rapture for 45 years,” one of them said.
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Violet Socks says:
What this particular guy reminds me of is the movie A Mighty Wind, when Terry Bohner says:
Our beliefs are fairly commonplace and simple to understand. Humankind is simply materialized color operating on the 49th vibration. You would make that conclusion walking down the street or going to the store.
Everything in his post makes perfect sense to him, and he seems to think some big obvious truth is just there. But what the hell is it?
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tsisageya says:
Ouch!
If these folks would only…hmmm…I got nothin.
I can’t even.
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quixote says:
Well, cognitively (I’m sure everybody was waiting to hear what was going on, cognitively) what’s going on is that humans have the best pattern recognition of any animal or machine. Nothing else even comes close. That’s why we can see faces in clouds and Jesus in pancakes. We’re so good at it that we can see patterns in anything. Science is fundamentally a methodology to filter out the imaginary patterns so we’re left with real ones.
All that said, that’s some pretty stunning pattern detection they’re showing. The Jesus in a pancake people have got nothing on them. Nothing.
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Violet Socks says:
Science is fundamentally a methodology to filter out the imaginary patterns so we’re left with real ones.
I like that. Nicely put.
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Violet Socks says:
Though it does remind me, quixote, of my favorite post EVER on the Rapture forum. I would love to reproduce the whole thing here, but it’s been removed and all that’s left is a snippet view in Google. But it was on the eve of October 1, and the author was explaining how he had figured out that the Rapture was ABSOLUTELY GOING TO HAPPEN within the next 24 hours — in fact he had narrowed it down to a 6-hour window on the morning of Saturday October 1. And he included this statement by way of bona fides:
“Remember that I am highly educated Pharmacist and Pharmacologist with a Masters of Science Degree … I am “trained” to be “hair splittingly” precise…”
He also said (paraphrasing from memory) that it was the Lord’s gift to him to be a “detail person,” and that he was waving his credentials as a Highly Educated Master of Science because it was important for people to know who to trust in these “final hours.”
I bet you a million dollars he’s the kind of pharmacist who refuses to give women Plan B.
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merciless says:
It looked to me like numerology. They’re trying to find numerical patterns in stars and Bible verses, which they think will tell them…something.
The problem with numerology (it goes through phases of popularity) is that there are only 10 digits to work with, and patterns occur constantly. I’ve read numerologists who’ve found messages in Shakespeare, in Moby Dick, you name it. Read Underwood Dudley’s Numerology for a complete and amusing takedown.
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ralphb says:
numerology huh. there are only 10 digits in base10 but what if the cosmos is using base16 or 32 or other? they are all mathematically valid but numerology is a crock.
seems to me rapture is a compensation, as in, my life is not what I desire but when I die my reward will come. basically comfort, like religion in general.
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Riverdaughter says:
{{sigh}}
My mother talks just like this all the damn time. When I lost my job, I seriously considered moving in with her. Her house is paid for and I could have saved a ton of money. Plus, she’s 72 and even though that’s not that old, I could have helped her out. So, I started getting my house ready for a quick sale. Got new carpeting, installed a new kitchen, replaced the appliances, painted the bathrooms. Spent quite a bit of money in anticipation of this move.
I spent a lot of time with her as she helped me empty my garage.
That’s when I realized I couldn’t do it. Her frenzy for the rapture was obsessive. She is always looking for signs. And every time I had a conversation with her, it began with her telling me about the rapture clause in her will. She took great delight in telling me how she, my sister and my brother were all going to be raptured but not me so I would inherit everything. But then she’d follow that with, “but you won’t have time to enjoy it”. She always said that with a self-righteous little smirk.
On the day of the May prediction, she pretended to laugh it off but I caught her sneaking off to the guest room several times to pray. The next day, she was physically Ill. The stress of anticipation and then disappointment wrecks havoc on her blood pressure. To deal with the let down, she takes sleeping aids and sleeps as much as she can.
I couldn’t deal with it. First, there is the crazy talk that sounds as schizophrenic as the thing you posted above. There is no history of schizophrenia in my family at all so I’m pretty sure this is induced. Then there was the unequal nature of my relationship with my mother compared to my siblings. I know she loved me but my resistance to her religious fanaticism, combined with their willing capitulation to it to stay on her good side, puts me in the part of Cordelia to an increasingly mad Queen Lear. Finally, it wasn’t just my religious beliefs that were under assault, it was the way I process information from the world. She was furious at me for correctly predicting the outcome of the Casey Anthony trial. She tried to convince me that evolution wasn’t true after I spent the last 20 years in a profession that relies heavily on natural selection. And she was constantly letting me know that as an unmarried woman, I was not entitled to a sexual companion in the same way that a gay person was not entitled.
I tried being nice and respectful but came to realize that if I actually lived with her, it would take about 48 hours before I’d want to lock her in her room and feed her through a slit in the door. One day, I’d had enough and yelled that I didn’t want to hear anymore religious word salad and she in turn told me to never call her again. I haven’t. It’s been three months. And even though it looks like I will have to sell and downsize anyway, I can’t say I miss the nutty rapture stuff. It’s actually been quite a relief.
I’m sure she’s throwing up today. But that won’t stop her from fixating on another date. For all I know, she’s a frequent poster to that board.
This is what the religious con men and Glenn Becks of the world has brought us to. They have broken up families and made people unbearable rapture tyrants. But even if beck didn’t exist, the vulnerable would only lay dormant until another false prophet comes around. Escaping death and resurrection is what they live for. They are not true Christians. -
Violet Socks says:
Escaping death and resurrection is what they live for.
Do you mean that they’re driven by a fear of death? That they’re anxious to be raptured so they won’t have to actually die?
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Riverdaughter says:
Yes. My mom admitted as much. She is scared to death of death. She’s been this way since she was 4 years old and nearly hemorrhaged to death after a tonsillectomy. She had one of those near death experiences and it left a lasting scar on her psyche. The part that was terrifying to her was that the urge to go to the light was irresistible.
So, she became hyper religious. Frankly, she would have been better off in a convent but because she was brought up Lutheran and Catholicism was strictly off limits, she ended up getting married instead. That’s what women did in the 50s. After that, she dropped Lutheranism for the Jehovah’s Witnesses. They’re big into eschatology. For JWs, there won’t be a rapture. They believe that they will go through the Tribulations like everyone else but that God will protect them. After Armageddon, they will colonize a New World and the dead will be resurrected. But not the dead who died during Armageddon. Then, all will live in peace and harmony and there I’ll be no fighting or competition or sex. Even if I believed in that dhit, the no sex thing was a deal breaker for me. I never got baptized in spite of 17 years of relentless psychological manipulation from my mother and the JWs. I could tell you stories that would make your hair curl. It starts when you’re given the pink Paradise book when you’re a little kid. It’s full of pictures of terrified screaming adults in the midst of fiery landscapes and toppling buildings. Gave me nightmares for years. My catholic grandmother saved me from that crap when I was seven and gave me the strength to not give into it.
But when the world did not end in 1975, after the JWs prophesied for decades, my mother suffered a great let down. The date was reset for 1977 but it too came and went. By then, she’d had enough so she started to cast around for a different religion. She even checked out Baha’i. I would have been cool with that but it apparently does not come with enough rules for her to obey so that she doesnt piss off god. So she became a born again evangelical fundamentalist Christian with a strong eschatological bent. You’d think she would have learned her lesson. She hasn’t. I chided her once about it. I said that she wanted all of the benefits of resurrection without having to go through the prerequisite step. She said it was true and asked how I could live with the prospect of death. I told her that most people go through that terror of death stage as teenagers and then realize there’s not a damn thing you can do about it. If even Jesus had to die, so does everyone else. Might as well table that mental item when it comes up and send it to the back of your agenda. She said she couldn’t do that. I assumed she tried.
At first I thought she had a form of Dostoyevsky’s syndrome but in her case, she doesn’t suffer from hypergraphia, although she gets the other symptoms (migraines, visions, auras). She once had a PET scan and the doctors told her she has some kind of lesion, probably from when one of her neighbors clonked her over the head with a heavy glass milk bottle when she was a kid. Gave her a bad concussion and she says that ever since, she’s had a little dead spot on that side of her brain. I think she knows that something that was ther before, isn’t now. But she’s very smart otherwise. Reads voraciously. You’d never know she was batshit crazy with the religion until about 2 minutes into your conversation when she announces completely unprovoked, “I’m a Christian!”. It’s all down hill from there,
Yes, I think many of them are terrified of death and would rather do anything than die. Well, almost anything. It’s almost like OCD with them. Every action is carefully calibrated to keep God appeased. They go through their days looking for ways to be virtuous. And because they make such an effort to avoid sin at any cost, they tend to attribute their prosperity and good fortune to their virtue. Therefore. If you are out of work or losing your home or can’t feed your kids, it’s because you did something to anger God and you don’t deserve any sympathy until you accept Jesus as your personal savior and think just like they do.
That’s another thing that drives them. They are very insistent that all of their friends and family think exactly the way they do. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve told my mother how nutty it sounds to me and she always comes back with,’”Well, aunt Maryellen thinks exactly the way I do” or one of her friends does now or the lady down the street or {{insert someone you used to respect here}}. I think they find it reassuring. They know deep down inside that what they are doing is probably not going to save them because no true Christian is supposed to fear death. But the lengths that they are willing to take on the offside chance that it will work are so extreme that they need to convert other people in order to keep from losing it.
One thing for sure, if eschatology ever becomes unpopular, like on January 1, 2013, there are going to be a lot of extreemely depressed people around. And the more their friends turn away from them for talking them into the nonsense in the first place, the worse their mental states will be. My mom is going to be a basket case. But there’s nothing I can do about it. She won’t listen to reason and every time the false prophets let her down, she just finds a new one to replace him with. Besides, I knock holes in her rapture narrative and make her question her faith so I’m bad company. -
Riverdaughter says:
Here’s a forum for JW kid that will give you an idea of what the paradise book was all about: http://www.jehovahs-witness.ne.....adise-book
If you survived your childhood as a JW, you find that it has left a kind if PTSD on your personality. Many of us are permanently sworn off of religion, even though some of us are not atheists. It also tends to leave us “hard” and impervious to psychological manipulation. The religion is harsh for children. There’s no softness about it. No relief from the endless bible studies and two hour meetings on Sunday which feature no childrens’ program. No dating. No after school activities. No girl scouts. No holidays, Christmas trees or birthday parties. School means not saluting the flag, abstains for Christmas carols or art projects, sitting out valentines day and Halloween parties in the library. It means being terrified on a daily basis. Every action that is not perfect means ou will not survive Armageddon and this is impressed on you at a very early age. At seven years old, ou know the difference between right and wrong and are responsible for your own salvation. Your parents are no longer accountable for your behavior before god.
Yep, we’re a pretty fucked up bunch.
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Violet Socks says:
One thing for sure, if eschatology ever becomes unpopular, like on January 1, 2013, there are going to be a lot of extreemely depressed people around.
The Rapture board I follow inclines to the belief that it has to be this year. They’ve worked it out according to the date of modern Israel’s founding: 70 years from that, minus 7 for the Trib, and there you are. Gotta happen this year. MUST happen this year. No two ways about it. So I’m a little concerned for their mental health when January 1, 2012 rolls around. However, they seem to be able to pick themselves up each time they’re disappointed and recalibrate, so I’m sure they’ll decide that it’s really supposed to be 2012, not 2011, and go from there.
These folks live on an emotional roller coaster. It must be so exhausting.
By the way, it is interesting that you found relative sanity with your Catholic grandmother. I have lived, worked, studied with, and been married to Catholics, and to me Catholics are about a thousand times more sane than any evangelical Protestant.
Of course I am biased because I was hanging out with theologians and liberation theologists and feminist nuns, so it’s not a fair comparison. There’s a world of difference between Hans Kung and Jerry Falwell. And I realize there are plenty of batshit crazy Catholics. Still, if I had to be a Christian, I would take Catholicism over Protestantism in a heartbeat.
I went to school with a few Jehovah’s Witness kids. I always felt terribly sorry for them; it seemed that they were almost being psychologically abused.
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Riverdaughter says:
Yeah, Catholics are ok. They’ve got a bad attitude about women but on the home front, my catholic grandparents were totally normal. I think the ritual nature of mass was like meditation to them, or at least that’s what it looked like to me. They weren’t obsessed with religion. They just liked going to mass because it made them feel good and connected to people and the parish they were in was a very social one. They were modern Catholics.
Unfortunately, the Catholics in y neighborhood are taking on the characteristics of the evangelicals. It’s creepy.
But my grandparents told me not to worry about the JW stuff because I was baptized Catholic (it’s true) and that would never change. I was immune. I’m.sure it drove my mother nuts. I had this super secret papal protection and a guardian angel. Too funny when I think back on it. But it is very telling that I thought that there was something I needed protection against. Eschatology is very powerful. It’s completely irrational and the irrationality of it can be.very frightening to little kids.
I doubt that my mom will ever snap out of it. It’s part of her personality. And she will also never give up trying to convert me. She really needs to stop trying because I’m as likely to believe in the rapture as I believe in pastafarianism. I won’t even do it to get back in the will. In fact, now that I think of it, my mother has messed up relationships with two of her siblings and their spouses and between me and my siblings, all because she wants the rapture more than anything else in the world, including her family.
I never indulge her. She needs to get a grip. -
quixote says:
Violet, given RD’s stories, I’m not sure why you say *almost* being abused. That is atrocious.
Responsible for your own salvation at seven?! What happened to “suffer the little children”?
I had no idea. Thanks, RD, for giving the rest of us that window on to what goes on.
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Violet Socks says:
Violet, given RD’s stories, I’m not sure why you say *almost* being abused.
Because as a child I didn’t know what was going on with them. They just seemed terribly unhappy all the time, and what little they said about their lives seemed grim.
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Riverdaughter says:
Quixote, you don’t know the half of it. It’s amazing any of my JW friends turned out normal and in fact, the majority of them didn’t. Most of them quit school at 16 or 17 and took jobs as gas station attendants or construction workers. Or they got married at 16 and had kids right away. There are a couple of reasons for this: 1.) dating is absolutely prohibited. And 2.) higher education was strongly discouraged. There was no need for book learnin’ because Armageddon was going to come.
I didn’t get a rubella shot when I was 11 with the.rest of my class. The vaccination violated their rules about “eating of blood”. If I had been seriously injured in an accident, my mother would have let me die before she had me transfused and she let me know that in no uncertain terms. My dad might have objected because he wasn’t a JW but since he was at sea for 8 months at a stretch there wouldn’t be any way for him to intervene. My grandmother gave me a crucifix when I was living with her for a short time in second grade when my parents were between transfers. It was to be my 1st communion present. My mother took it from me when we moved to San Pedro and destroyed it because to JW’s, Jesus wasn’t crucified. He was hung on a stake. So, a crucifix was a symbol of a false religion and could be possessed by demons. It got really interesting in high school. I won’t go into details but suffice it to say that my mom did something that most 16 year olds would find unforgivable.
But I turned out ok.
And you’re thinking, riiiiiiight, this explains it all. -
Violet Socks says:
One of my JW classmates didn’t know her birthdate. Her parents had withheld this knowledge from her so she wouldn’t be tempted to celebrate her birthday. Riverdaughter, was that common in your mother’s group, to not tell kids their birthdates?
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quixote says:
RD, I know I don’t know the half of it. That’s why I say “window.” There’s a whole landscape out there I didn’t know about. And, uh, the view out the window doesn’t make me want to explore…. But it’s always good to have at least an inkling about what people go through. What I’m thinking is that children are mindbogglingly resistant. Millions of people wade through that garbage as kids, and yet masses of them come out normal, such as, say, RD. It seems like that outcome ought to be about as rare as spontaneous levitation.
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quixote says:
Or maybe the right word is “resilient.”
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riverdaughter says:
It is not common among JWs to not know your birthdate. But it is common for your parents to pretty much tell you that the fact that you were born on a particular date has no meaning to anyone and isn’t important. it’s just another day in the calendar. And by the way, Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist on her birthday and you don’t want to be like HER do you?
As if I could ask for anyone’s head. -
riverdaughter says:
quixote: Yes, we are “resiliant”. We are in no way normal. The reason we are not is that we have had to live in the world without having any opportunity to actually interact with it. Social norms and celebrations and milestones passed over us. To us, the year and years were just one long unbroken stretch of days unpunctuated by anything special. There was never anything to look forward to. Fortunately for me, my mother was not the most observant JW. So, I only had to go door to door with her once. And my parents left me with my grandparents between moves on more than one occasion. And on more than one occasion, I refused to leave them when my mom came back to get me. It didn’t seem to matter to her that I was happier with my grandparents. I think that’s what sets me apart from my siblings. They never lived anywhere else. I knew what the normal world looked like.
Anyway, my sister and brother have lots of friends and normal jobs and all that but when it comes to religion and evolution and homosexuality and politics, they are as nutty as my mother. Very uninformed. I can’t have a conversation with them because I usually end up staring at them in complete disbelief. It’s astonishing that we share the same genes and sometimes, I have my doubts. I could swear I was kidnapped from gypsies. I am much more like my father than my mother. -
Ciardha says:
From what I’ve seen most the kids that grew up Catholic were pretty badly scarred by their religious upbringing too (especially the girls).
I know growing up in a household with a liberal southern Baptist mom (parents moderate southern Baptist pretty much in the same religious vein as President Carter) and an agnostic father (his mom a religiously liberal Methodist,his father vaguely Christian- but passed away when my dad was 18.) and my friends that were in Catholic households talked about what they were led to believe by their church about their role as women sounded incredibly repressive to me. I also thought the kids that grew up in the conservative southern Baptist churches were learning some absolutely crazy stuff. The Southern Baptist churches lost a lot of people (including my mom and eventually even my grandmother. I left the church at 13 before I became an official member of the church- being baptized, because I realized it wasn’t what I believed in my soul. After four years of spiritual research I found my home in paganism, two years later found solitary eclectic Wicca was my path within paganism) when the conservatives took over the Southern Baptist Convention in the early 1980′s, and thus indirectly the seminaries and then most the churches.
In moderate and liberal southern Baptist practices, you cannot be baptized until you are 13 (in church practices called “the age of reason”) They believe all children are innocent and go to heaven, even non Christians adults do if they were good people who didn’t hurt others. (a belief that other religions, if not destructive, just worship God under another name- President Carter often expresses this common belief amongst liberal and moderate southern Baptists in his writings.) Liberal and moderate southern Baptists are taught men and women are equal spiritually, and you see a fair number of women pastors at moderate and liberal southern Baptist churches (despite the extremist take over of the Southern Baptist Convention, all southern Baptist churches are still independent, so a minority- while staying connected to the convention outright reject the weird, freaky guidelines of the convention and continue practicing the moderate and liberal ways. Moderate and liberal southern Baptist teach their children that spirituality comes from within, they must find their own individual path, and will know when they’ve found it when your quiet inner voice- your soul- says this is the right way for you.
I smile in amused irony when I realize my journey to Wicca was done in the very way I was taught to find my spiritual path.
Unlike the conservatives, liberal and moderate southern Baptists do not believe the Bible is literal, but a series of parables to live by. The Old Testament in particular is not taken as in any way literal, and other than pretty Disneyified adaptions of the major stories is not taught much to children, even the New Testament story of Jesus emphasizes the “sweet” parts of the story to kids and kind of skims over the dark parts.
Where the conservatives get into Tim LaHaye type religious novels, the liberal and moderate southern Baptists are fascinated by the Gnostic Gospels (Elaine Pagel’s book is much read by them) and the early and medieval “heretical” Christian sects that leaned gender equal.
The liberal southern Baptists are basically as liberal as Unitarians.I’m kind of rare to have come to Wicca from the liberal southern Baptist faith. The majority that I’ve known were refugees from Catholicism- the repressive attitude toward women drove them away from Catholicism. We tend to practice Wicca outwardly differently, the ex Catholics, influenced by their background tend to have a lot of religious objects and structured rituals, where I from my background have almost no objects, and have a more private meditative approach. I have no official ritual robe, only candles and water in rituals, and only have a few Wiccan objects- the most prominent is a triple moon necklace I have hanging on my bedroom wall.
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Monchichipox says:
I had an extra piece of cake at lunch just in case. I don’t want to go to my grave thinking I should have eaten more.
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propertius says:
Since The Rapture has apparently come and gone, we must now be enduring The Tribulation.
That explains a lot, actually.
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Kiuku says:
Is “the Apocalypse” a self-serving religious belief? Is it made up? Are we making it up because we have to destroy the world because there is nothing out there to grow into? And start all over again? If so, why does it fascinate all others? When will we grow up, I mean. As far as numbers go, I see men do this a lot, I see men see numbers and play numbers games; maybe because there is something to add up and add into, something tangible, but it’s very obviously make believe, besides the problematic “just sum” statement, and all who believe in just sums, Euclid.
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DHM says:
I’m a member of a conservative denomination that doesn’t believe in the Rapture, so while I’m less of an outsider than most of the other commenters, I’m still an outsider.
I’ve had a lot of conversations with friends from other groups who do believe in the rapture, and while the reasons no doubt vary from one person to another, my impression isn’t that it’s a bout being unhappy or having a sort of death wish, at all. It’s the same kind of thinking that gets people wrapped up in conspiracy theories, or esoteric herbal remedies that have only just been discovered- it’s figuring out a secret other people don’t know, it’s being part of an exclusive ‘in’ group that Knows. It’s another way of being a gnostic.
And maybe for some it’s just a giant logic puzzle, without the logic, of course, but they don’t get that.
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Topper Harley says:
@5 The human brain will even identify patterns that aren’t present. I wish I could find the link, but there are some visual images that show how your mind will try and force a pattern even if one doesn’t exist. Combine that with tribalism and it’s easy to see why racism and sexism are so pernicious.
