alarmism?

When the Lamb opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, "Come!" I looked, and there before me was a black horse! Its rider was holding a pair of scales in his hand. Then I heard what sounded like a voice among the four living creatures, saying, "A quart of wheat for a day's wages, and three quarts of barley for a day's wages, and do not damage the oil and the wine!"

— Revelation 6:5-6

Am I being a bit dramatic here? Maybe.

On the other hand, you try living on unemployment checks, a little part-time work that has dried up, and the odd free-lance assignment you can find, for three months, with no insurance for two months. See how calmly you take it when the economy goes to hell in a handbag while leaders of both parties preen and posture and prepare to bail out the wealthy power-brokers who screwed it all up, while accusing each other of posturing and telling the people who need help the most, "Sorry, you have made your bed and now you must lie in it."

Yeah, I'm a little preoccupied about the mess, and I've been praying for grace and faith for myself, wisdom and compassion for our congressional leaders, and common sense and compassion for the fat cats who have driven us to this point.

Still, it's hard not to see some divine action in here. God has used us to judge and lay low a number of empires and evil regimes the last hundred years or more. It's not hard to picture him saying, "And now I shall judge the ax."

We have done a lot on the international scene that we have felt justified in doing simply because we could and it was in our "national interest," as though that meant it automatically was in everyone's best interests -- wholesale destruction of the American Indian nations, for starters, without getting into our colonialesque behaviors in Africa and Asia.

And if I'm being melodramatic and expecting the worst, let me just say that expecting the worst means you're rarely disappointed, and occasionally surprised in a pleasant manner.



Copyright © 2008 by David Learn. Used with permission.

apocalypse of the chaldeans

Taken from the Forum of Iniquity:
¹And as I looked, there arose from the sea a great dragon, and on the dragon were 22 heads. ²And the heads all lived in the basement of the dragon's mother.

³The blue head was made hip and with it, and it was given youth to taunt the older heads with their great senility, which flummoxed them to no end, because the older heads all believed they should be able to hold their own against a teenager.

⁴There arose against the dragon a host of trolls, and the trolls mightily assailed the dragon, but it cared not. ⁵And several of the heads tormented the trolls for their spelling mistakes and basic grammar errors, until the trolls fled in terror.

⁶And a voice from heaven said, "Woe! woe! woe! to the inhabiters of the earth. Behold! The heads of the dragon have eaten the fat of many nations, and still they are not sated!"

⁷And the people beheld it was true, as the twenty-two heads infiltrated the thirty-seven nations and there was defilement of the public forums therein ⁸and the stench did reach to the heavens.

⁹And a chartreuse angel came riding on a dappled horse, bearing with it a book containing the iniquity of the age. ¹⁰And the book was opened.

¹¹The dappled horse read from the book. ¹²With the voice of authority, from the book the dappled horse read.

¹³"Behold," spake the horse, "I tell you of the coming of Fred, that all nations may behold his power, and speak his name with reverence and fear."

¹⁴And on the foreheads and right hands of those who follow Fred and count his heads there was affixed a mark. ¹⁵And those who refused to take the mark could not buy or sell cabbages, newspapers, pet lemurs or escargot. ¹⁶The mark looked like a Nike swoosh, but upon those with blue-dyed hair, it was barely noticeable.

¹⁷Now this requires discernment, plus a moderately elevated blood alcohol level: You shall know the 22 heads of Fred by his number: 42.

¹⁸Blessed are they who do not take the mark, and blessed also are those who do not listen to ccm, for their promos shall be delivered from the hand of Gunter, and they shall know peace.