So, you probably think I’m being flippant. A tool of the Antichrist? Really? What, she’s like, really mad that JJ Abrams has taken over the franchise, or something?
No, it’s much more serious than that.
I just finished reading Have a Nice Doomsday, by Nicholas Guyatt, a British writer who made a jocular jaunt through the fields of American biblical prophecy, especially the end of the world ones. He interviews fans of the Rapture, Armageddon and the Tribulations that follow (no, that’s nothing to do with tribbles). During the Tribulations, the Antichrist will rule the world until Jesus arrives at the head of powerful army, destroys the Antichrist and ushers in a thousand years of prosperity and peace for the godly.
Still not seeing the Star Trek connection, are you? Neither was I until Guyatt provided a handy list of signs to watch for as an indication that the End Times are near. One of the signs is a single world government.
A single world government. . . isn’t that one of the planetary requirements for admission to the Federdation of Planets?
Hmmm.
Not convinced? How about the fact that Star Fleet Academy is located in San Francisco, that veritable hotbed of secular humanism?
Most apocalypse enthusiasts think the United Nations is the one-world government we need to be worried about. I guess this government doesn’t have to actually function in order to start the countdown clock to the End of Days.
In Guyatt’s book, one prophecy guru talks about secular humanism. He acknowledges that lots of secular humanists want to do things that made life better. They want to feed the hungry, heal the sick, practice stewardship of the planet, act as peacemakers, and so on. These goals, however, are worthless, because they only want to do them to help people, not for the greater glory of God. Feed the hungry, heal the sick, bring justice to the oppressed. . . aren’t these Federation values?
Another reason the Federation looks so good for the tool-of-the-Antichrist-rap is because they’re always hanging around with aliens. Prophecy fans don’t like aliens. They don’t like immigration at all. And the idea of everyone coming to understand one another, like maybe via a universal language? Nuh-uh. God already took care of that, thank you, with the Tower of Babel.
(Esperanto, a sign of the End Times!)
Prophecy fans rely heavily on the Book of Daniel (Old Testament), and Ezekiel (Old Testament), with a dash of St Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians (New Testament) and the Book of Revelations (New Testament) thrown in. They leap over the four books of the bible that describe the actions and teaching of Jesus. For example, they don’t do a lot of quoting of Jesus’s two commandments (“Love God with your whole heart and soul, love your neighbor as yourself”), or the Sermon on the Mount, (“blessed are the peacemakers”) very much at all. As one famous apocalypto-guy, John Hagee explains, that’s because the Jesus that’s coming after the Tribulations isn’t the “nice” Jesus. He’s GI Jesus, in full body armor, with a weapon array like something out of a Halo game, coming to kick ass and take names. This, of course, is because he’s going up against the Antichrist and his silent partner, Satan.
But back to this universal language (I think in Star Trek it’s actually a translator) and the Tower of Babel thing. I thought God gave people different languages at Babel not to keep them from understanding one another, but to punish their hubris because they dared to look beyond the boundaries of their world, dared to look up, to reach out to the heavens, to the stars. . . oh. Oh, dear.
Efrain Cochrane, you unwitting minion of Satan, what were you thinking?
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