InsaneJournal

The Last Battle pt 5


Apocalypse, we’ve all been there, the same old thing, why should we care?

But I’m sure a lot of us feel the same way these days...

Jewel,” he said. “What lies before us? Horrible thoughts arise in my heart. If we had died before today, we should have been happy.”


The last time I remember reading this book, it freaked me out so much. Just…very, very bad timing. It was a few years before the new millennium, and everything was “Apocalypse, Apocalypse, we’re all gonna die!” This family friend was stocking up on gold and canned food. A church in my town went nuts and started following the “prophecies” of this blind, paraplegic woman. Our church was doing discussions on Revelation (and you know, we weren’t some freaky cult, we were a normal semi conservative church full of usually sane people) which kept veering in scary directions. And you know, we had The Talk in Sunday School too. The first time someone sits you down and tells you about all that stuff, I mean… I’d been vaguely familiar with both Revelation and TLB before but it had been abstract to me, and now it was personal.

Now the question of what I’d do if we really were living in The End Times meant something. I don’t think it ever occurred to me to turn against everything I believed, but I also wasn’t really sure I could be as brave as Jill. My big plan appeared to mostly consist of running away and hiding. But I got an anxiety attack every time the subject came up.

I thought, “I don’t want to live to see that. I don’t want my generation to be the one that has to deal with this. Why us? It’s not fair, we haven’t even had our chance yet. ” But I knew that the bad stuff was starting-even if it never turned into The Bad Stuff. And just because It still hasn’t happened in any recognizable way doesn’t mean it’s not like waiting for the other shoe to drop. It doesn’t even matter if God wants this, *people* seem to want it, enough people that there is a concerted effort out there to force it, and the sooner the better. I live in a country where presidential candidates spread rumors accusing their opponents of being the Anti Christ.

And little did we know, just because the world didn’t end at midnight on the last day of December, 1999, didn’t mean there wasn’t a whole slew of nasty stuff coming in the next seven years.

Global warming. The rapid melting of the Ice Caps. 9/11. Catastrophic floods. An earthquake that shook half of China. Famine. Disease. Wars upon wars-including people who admit that they’re trying to kickstart the Apocalypse because they think this is a good thing. Governments being influenced by false prophets-did you know that several prominent US neocons attended an event where Rev. Moon was crowned “the Messiah”?

The day I discovered RFID really was real, I think I wanted to throw up. I can tell myself that’s not what the reference means but it doesn’t matter, I can still see it having the same end result because haven’t you seen what happens to people when they get obsessed with a new technology? First, it’s new, then it’s a trend, then it’s entrenched as the new fashion, and then it filters down to where if you don’t have it, you’re a loser…and then to where if you don’t have it, you can’t function unless you’re ready to drop out of society. Take computers- they used to be for scientists and business people. Then they were for geeks in general, then they were for rich, trendy people too, then the average lower middle class person had one too, and now, if you don’t have access to a computer with internet in your home, your kid has no academic future and no social life.

It’s very terrifying that no matter how much I don’t want something, if enough other people want it, eventually I’ll have no choice. Even if it’s not The Mark of the Beast, I don’t want stuff implanted in my body-I don’t even have pierced ears, for Pete’s Sake. But if the technology takes off, and I live to see it, I’ll have two choices- get one, or stop living among other people.

I didn’t feel like I needed an HDTV either but the US government disagrees and now I have to buy one or I can't watch tv at all.

Progress is scary. And inevitable, marching forward- crushing you underneath it if it has to. I'm too young to watch everything I know disappear, my government turn into a lying monster with secret torture prisons, and my religion become infested with murderous, fascist nutcases.

There's no "OFF" switch.