The End Justifies the Means?

I was twenty-six-years old when the infamous book 88 Reasons the Rapture Will Occur in '88 was #1 with a bullet in Christian bookstores, so I actually remember the fallout from it fairly well. People who believed that numerological piece of detritus did all sorts of wacky things. Most of the senior class of Cedarville Bible College not far from me went out and got married rather than die virgins. People by the score around the country euthanized their pets rather than see Fluffy fall into the hands of the animal-sacrificing Satan-worshipers that would run rampant across the country once all the Christians had been raptured. I was working full-time at a Christian camp and that book was all the young summer staff people could talk about. And they changed their behavior--for good or ill--simply because of that book. I was in the midst of a serious relationship at the time and despite the fact that I thought the whole book was utter ungodly hogwash it still crossed my virginal mind once or twice that perhaps I'd never get to...well, you know. Group-think has power, let me tell you....

People's eschatology governs their lives far more than we realize. The old aphorism is that there are no atheists in foxholes. Well, there's no pantribulationists, either.

[via Cerulean Sanctum]