Rapture: What if Bush is Sincere? (w/poll)

Remember the late Carl Sagan?

Never afraid to venture into global politics, Sagan warns us at one point of the danger that a leader under the sway of religious fundamentalism might not try too hard to avoid nuclear Armageddon, reasoning that it was G-d’s plan.

"He might be interested to see what that would be like," Sagan wrote.  "Why slow it down?"

• From an article by Dennis Overbye printed in the International Edition of the Miami Herald

An Apologist Speaks...
As a student of Biblical texts primarily interested in writings up until approximately the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD, I have never been able to imagine that Bush or his counselors such as Ted Haggard, Tim LaHaye, Dobson, Robertson and the rest were sincere.  Looking through my own biases, they were too at odds with what Jesus taught, and I imagined that they were hard-boiled politicians blatantly manipulating the public.  Likewise I imagined that the head of state was simply using religion for politics.

But in watching a good number of family and friends adopt a religion of war and terror, and finding that they seemed to be under a spell, why could the same not hold true for the upper echelons of the government?  For the record, I can’t even talk with the afore-mentioned friends anymore, who think abortion is murder but war is not - just for instance.  Although what they speak sounds like pure insanity, I have never doubted their sincerity.

Now I am entertaining the horrible idea that our head of state is actually every bit as sincere as my estranged family and friends in subscribing to the same ideas.  Anyone who listens to Haggard could but believe that way (article on Haggard‘s church).  These are people who hold that the purpose of the second coming has to do with destroying the earth, which forces G-d to bring on the rapture.  

Twenty-five years ago when I attended various congregations, the idea of a rapture (i.e., forever abandoning the planet after the resurrection event described by Paul) was not considered a given, and among those I met, the ones who were certain of a rapture were in the minority.  Now "rapture" culture has saturated our national dialogue and is frequently accepted as solidly Biblical primarily due to LaHaye‘s influence, who was only getting going in the ‘80‘s (here and here). Many rapturists believe in provoking a nuclear Armageddon in order to force G-d to bring on the rapture.  

(Note:  just for scholarship’s sake, the word "rapture" is not in any major translation of the Bible in any translation as such, and only in the romantic sense in the four fringe translations where the word is found (search)).  

There is a series of three articles by the author Jeff Sharlet which profile the kind of religion and thinking exercised by the political religious right known as "dominionists" in light of which belief system one can imagine that our head of state would believe himself to be doing the will of God by provoking a nuclear Armageddon (here, here and here).

Now that I am considering that our head of state may be fully sincere in what I would call his rapture apostasy, the possibility is terrifying.  And I see those who counsel him to believe that he should provoke nuclear apocalypse guilty of  high crimes against humanity and our planet.  

My own study supports the idea that the original beliefs held by the Jewish people (and for the first 70 years until Jerusalem fell, the Christian church was primarily Jewish) shows that around the times of Jesus there was a national expectation among those who held to Messianic beliefs that the Messiah would deliver Israel from the hands of its Roman oppressors (whom many believed were the reincarnation of Babylon), after which a reign of peace would follow upon earth.  Fiery warfare techniques were predicted at the "end of the age" but not the end of the planet.  

Twenty-five years ago what attracted me was the idea that one day, as the Jewish prophets wrote, there would no longer be warfare on earth - forever - a belief to which many Jewish people still hold:

And He will judge between the nations, And will render decisions for many peoples; And they will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, And never again will they learn war.

• Isaiah 2:4

Given the original hope and context of the faith from which Christianity sprang, the current "rapture" religion celebrating the obliteration of the planet and life ever after as some smirking intelligent gas could not be more consummate apostasy.

If I thought Bush were capable of considering new information, I would want to fly a blimp over the White House reminding him of his own source material:

The time has come...for destroying those who destroy the earth."

• Rev 11:18