A respected pastor, best-selling author and founder of a major ministry to teens predicts an imminent “earth-shattering calamity” centered in New York City that will spread to major urban areas across the country and around the world – part of what he sees as a judgment from God.
This dude, Minister David Wilkerson, is predicting a new, bigger, eviler and nastier 911 which will begin in New York and spread across the globe like a wildfire of locusts. And Dave is no crank, he’s been saving souls for 50 years now and he knows a good apocalypse when he sees one.
Take heed folks. The End is Near. Really. Honest. If you can’t see the signs then you’re going to burn in hell where Jim Cramer will sit on your face for eternity.
“An earth-shattering calamity is about to happen,” he writes. “It is going to be so frightening we are all going to tremble – even the godliest among us.”
Wilkerson’s vision is of fires raging through New York City. “It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires – such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago. There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting – including Times Square, New York City.
What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written, “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?”
Yikes. But at the same time, it’s kind of a no-brainer isn’t it? Lessee – the world is fire, bankrupt, destitute and rotting at the core. Men devour their fellow man for fun and profit. Fear is sold like soda-pop. Sex it at once holy and profane. Love is soap. And anger, greed and hate are happy cancers which get people up in the morning to loathe through another day.
God is an invisible propaganda device for the ignorant to swallow. God provides succor for suckers who wallow in cowardice and call it obedience. Because, the thing is, you don’t need some 76 year-old pastor whose whole life has been spent waiting for the end of the world in a rush of glory to tell you things are fucked and getting fuckter all the time.
The difference is this: some folks pray for the end and some for the beginning. Some want punishment and retribution for what they are taught is wicked and some want mercy and redemption for what we view as ignorance.
“God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations,” claims Wilkerson. “He is destroying the secular foundations.” Wilkerson urges everyone to stockpile a 30-day supply of food and other necessities to deal with the catastrophe he foresees.
In other words, humans are bad. Our original sin, never fully explained, except in childish storybook words, leads us inevitably to destruction because we have abandoned God and only a return to life under god’s will – and because God is invisible, immaterial, voiceless and heedless, then god’s will is communicated to us by those given special sanction to interpret the Will of the invisible; Priests, Rabbis, Pastors, Ministers, Swamis and Imams.
And, frankly, the 30-day stockpile suggestion is not hysterical but prudent and if you want to know how to turn a prophet, uh, profit, during the end-times then take a gander at this and buy right. I have two shipping containers of Charmin in my backyard right now. I’m taking orders.
“I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off,” Wilkerson concluded in his message. “I have unburdened my soul to you. Do with the message as you choose.”
It’s what they always say isn’t it? We can’t exactly pinpoint the exact time and day of all hell breaking loose on Earth, but it’s going to be soon; real soon. All the signs point to it.
There is war and famine. Uh, yup. Just like always. There is pestilence and disease. Uh, yup. Same as ever. There is greed and unbridled hedonism. Uh, where are we going with this?
It’s all been the End. Our entire history has been the end. As a matter of fact, if you believe what the fear and loathing crowd believes our entire history has been nothing but prelude to the preordained END made inevitable by original sin.
So, do with the message as you will. I have done my duty by spreading the word of impending doom. Man bad. God good. Over and out.
And yet, why does God refuse to heed the warnings and proclamations of “His” sanctioned oracles – the aforementioned ministers of religion? Folks are always going off about the END. It’s our sense of drama. This story (of humanity) has got to have a really great end. A Happy Ending. After, you know, all the riff-raff is cleared out with the fire and brimstone.
Despite all the warnings from Bible Belters down through the ages, humanity endures. And though it would be foolish to ignore the New Age we’re in, where our sciences far outstrip our wisdom and we do have the tools to immolate the planet, perhaps it is just this staring our obliteration in the face which, like JFK and Khrushchev during the Missile Crisis, causes us to move us onward in our psychological evolution toward live and let live.
It’s foolish to ignore our times and pretend it’s all just a linear extension from our Cro Magnum roots. We are in Quantum time now. Exponential time. And while the back-story is important, perhaps vital in the Santayana way, our way of extrication from this peril must embrace the future and not rely upon solutions from the past.
So, the end is near. But so is the beginning. The forces in play are those like David Wilkerson who wants us to pay for crimes of the ancestors versus those who understand we are the ancestors and our duty is not to some millennial-aged, archaic religion which demands fealty and obedience, but to our grandchildren’s grandchildren and the potential for a human society which reflects our better angels – peace, justice, equality and joy.
God is my co-pilot. Not my tyrant.