Sunday 3 August 2008

Good news: Suffering will end...in 1996

In a not completely surprising story, I was a bit hungover this morning. 2 bottles of wine (each) and a few shots of Sambuca while watching James Bond and playing rummy had left me in a delicate state this morning. That said, I managed to drag myself out of bed, take the piss out of the Mrs for feeling worse and head home.

You can imagine I wasn't entirely enamoured, therefore, when a little old couple knocked on the door. Before I'd opened the door (the window was open and the telly on so I couldn't cower) I spotted the small colourful pamphlet in her hand and knew what was about to happen. They were Jehovah's Witnesses.

To be fair the conversation was done in 30 seconds. They were very friendly and pleasant, passed on the pamphlet and told me to get in touch if I had any questions. I closed the door, fed the paper to the cats and went back to what I was doing.

A bit later I thought I'd have a read of this tripe and was amused to read about how the Bible tells us that suffering will soon be over. Terrorism drugs and STD's are rife in today's society but The Good Book has told us we'll all be alright in a bit. All we need to do is hang on.

All very feasible (if you're a brainwashed prick with tunnel vision) but there was one slight problem. It was exactly the same as the pamphlet I was given by another old couple at my mum and dad's house 12 years ago. As far as predictions for imminent endings go, this was pushing it a bit.

I got the same spiel last time; did I want world peace? Did I think it was possible? Blah fecking blah. It doesn't matter how much you profess the Bible as the universal answer to everything - the simple fact is it's a load of old bollocks. There are no dates or times specified in these amazing predictions, so why should anybody buy the concept of world peace being just around the corner. I was never going to be taken in by something as pathetically myopic and self-serving as this, but for those of a weaker mental structure, you're going to have to work a bit harder to convince them if you ask me.

Nobody I know has any real religious views so I doubt I'm going to upset anyone, but if these God Squadders want us to take them seriously, it might be an idea to update their promotional material every once in, oh I don't know, a decade. Amen.

1 comment:

TJ said...

Hey, sorry to hear about the annoyance. Being one of Jehovah's Witnesses myself, I try to be the least annoying as possible.

As to your objection that 12 years for an imminent end is pushing it, I can understand what you are saying. Yet when you carefully consider what the Bible does say about the last days and the fact that it purposefully does not give an exact date for the end, such a wait is not really to be unexpected. In fact, it even says that people will think the end is delaying.

Still, the Bible has many prophecies that do give specific dates that were fulfilled. If you'd like to see a couple of them I'd be happy to point them out to you.

Thanks,
TJ