Bonk Job Tim LaHaye

Reverend Doomsday

If the Bible (Revelation 9:1-11) says that billions of six-inch-long scorpionlike monsters with the heads of men, "flowing hair like that of women" and the teeth of lions, wearing crowns and helmets, will swarm across the globe gnawing on unbelievers...

Odd...the Bible describes an army of Ann(thrax) Coulter clones?

The Act of Marriage, a best seller published in 1976 and co-authored with Beverly LaHaye, is an explicit Christian sex manual, condemning "petting," abortion and homosexuality.

"Explicit"? I'm sure. It must be dripping with such sinfully saucy phrases as "go in unto her" and "he had lain with her". Not that the book would condone good Christian couples engaging in such salacious activities! The message is likely more along the lines of, "Don't touch your wife or you'll go to hell! Don't enjoy sex. In fact, don't even have sex unless you're trying to have children and even then, do not, under an circumstances, enjoy it".

In 1979, he established Californians for Biblical Morality...

I'd like to take a moment to explore what, exactly, "Biblical Morality" might be. Might it be the stoning to death of non-virgin brides? (Deut. 22:20-21) Might it be killing children who curse or disobey their parents? (Ex 21:15, 17...also Lev. 20:9 and Deut. 21:18-21) Or perhaps Biblical morality involves stoning to death a virgin who is engaged but doesn't yell loud enough if she's raped? (Deut 22:23-24) Of course, if the virgin isn't engaged, then her rapist pays her father 50 shekels and then marries her. (same book and chapter, verses 28-29) Both books of Samuel and both books of Kings are rife with incest, rape, incestuous rape, polygamy and murder. In several cases, God has no comment on this behavior by his children. Implied approval? Or maybe the authors were just getting so tired of writing about all this that they didn't have the energy to record God's anger after each act. More Biblical morality: Happiness is smashing little children with stones. (Psalms 137:9)

Well, that was getting old. Of course, it doesn't really matter how many immoral, unethical, incestuous, murderous, polygamous, mysoginist examples a person quotes from the Bible (as examples of things God approved, not as examples of what not to do), the Fundie Bonk Job will always claim that those lessons don't apply. So, it becomes a matter of picking and choosing what parts of the Bible to follow or not. And the Fundie can hardly condemn anyone for their choices of which parts of the Bible to follow and which not, since one choice would appear to be as valid as another. Fundies like to have it both ways: that the Bible is a timeless classic filled with unchanging universal and literal truths, and at the same time that it needs to be interpreted so as to be understood and applied to modern times.

And that is how Left Behind starts. Everywhere, hundreds of millions of people vanish, leaving the unbelievers behind, from insufficiently pious Christians to Muslims, Catholics, Jews and everyone else. What follows is the Tribulation, in which God visits unspeakable plagues on the Earth, amid a climactic worldwide battle waged by a band of new believers, called the Tribulation Force, against Satan and the Antichrist. Seas and rivers turn to blood, searing heat burns men alive, ugly boils erupt on the skin of the disfavored, 200 million ghostly, demonic warriors sweep across the planet exterminating one-third of the world's population -- well, you get the idea. And why does a merciful God visit such horrors on mankind? According to LaHaye, "God intends that the terrible plagues and judgments of the Tribulation might cause the people of the world to repent and turn to him."

One wonders...if God is so all-powerful and all-loving, why a demonstration of vengeance and horror as a means to gain converts? Why not a miraculous display of benevolence? Hmm...

Nah, screw it! Boils and rivers of fire are way more fun!

"We have more reason to believe that ours may be the terminal generation than any generation since Jesus founded His church 2,000 years ago," LaHaye told Rolling Stone...

Umm...didn't the writers of the New Testament also make that very same claim? Why, yes they did! And nearly every generation of Fundie Bonk Jobs since has believed that theirs would be the terminal generation.

According to LaHaye, civilization is threatened by a worldwide conspiracy of secret societies and liberal groups intent on destroying "every vestige of Christianity." Among the participants in this conspiracy are the Trilateral Commission, the Illuminati, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the National Organization for Women, Planned Parenthood, "the major TV networks, high-profile newspapers and newsmagazines," the U.S. State Department, major foundations (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Ford), the United Nations, "the left wing of the Democratic Party," Harvard, Yale "and 2,000 other colleges and universities." All of this is assembled to "turn America into an amoral, humanist country, ripe for merger into a one-world socialist state."

If there was ever a time when "Fundie Bonk Job" fit the bill, this is absolutely it.

But wait! Didn't Bush, a member of the Fundie Fold, go to both Harvard and Yale? I wonder how old George escaped those bastions of liberalism unscathed and still palettable to LaHaye. I guess that's where the whole not paying attention in class thing helped him.