Batshit Bannon was nattering to perplexed Alabamians about the "Fourth Turning" last night

[moriah]

35. The number of people who have wanted a holy war/Apocalypse scare me.

I know they've always been around. I remember when our circumstances made it necessary for me to take the city bus to and from school (5th/6th grade), and getting handed circulars warning how bar codes had the Number of the Beast as part of their code.

But normally they either run around proselytizing until the predicted Armageddon doesn't come, and then disperse or create a new denomination.

Eastern Christians, too, at least of the Orthodox variety, also have a long-standing issues with Islam. My ex was originally from an Eastern Bloc country but escaped, and had been raised Eastern Orthodox. He was also taught that Vlad the Impaler saved Romania from the Islamic invasion, and that the only thing they understood was utter brutality. Then there's the grudge over losing Constantinople. Oh, the Eastern Orthodox are still pissed about that.

But this whole push starting near the time the Left Behind series became popular... and even before... there are so many people who feel there's no hope except for Jesus to come and save them all. And instead of just listening to people who ignore the idea that "No one shall know the day or the hour", they're deciding to take it into their own hands, through the strange interpretation of Revelation encouraged by the people who believe that interpretation and detailed in Left Behind, to make it possible for Armageddon to happen faster.

I honestly like Orson Scott Card's rejection in his futuristic fiction that a war in the Middle East will lead to anything other than both Jerusalem and Mecca being nuked. He's pretty preachy about religion and is a homophobe you can tell in later novels, but even if he is saying that's not going to make Jesus come any faster, but there are enough people saying they want the whole area to be glass....