User talk:Lakefall

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[edit] Rapture Ready

I just saw your comments on the Rapture Ready talk page. It's easy to be baffled by these people. I'm a Christian myself and I have the same core beliefs about the Bible as they do, but their "end times" beliefs are questionable and most are flat out unbiblical. They see most of what is taking place in the world right now as signs that we are very close to a "pre-tribulation rapture," where Jesus will return and take all the Christians to Heaven with Him and 7 years of tribulation will come upon the Earth. After that 7 years, Jesus comes again for a third time to rule for 1,000 years (where the term "premillennialism" comes from). After that 1,000 years, they believe that Satan will come against Jesus, will be eternally defeated, and a new Heaven and Earth will be created.

However, most of what they discuss and interpret as signs of the end are the following:

1. The European Union (a smaller group believe the United Nations) is prophecied in the Bible to become the New World Order that the "antichrist" will rise out of after the rapture has taken place and the world has descended into chaos. This antichrist will make a peace treaty with Israel and its Arab neighbors, he will explain how billions of people have disappared, and the entire world will embrace him. They see the EU and UN becoming so involved in Mideast peace as a sign that we are getting close to this peace treaty they think will take place.
2. Another key belief of theirs is that Russia will eventually form an alliance with Mideast nations (namely Iran and possibly Turkey) and will invade Israel either before the rapture or during the tribulation. Some see the EU becoming involved in this invasion of Israel. This theory comes from their interpretation of Ezekiel 38-39. They see Russia's helping of Iran in building their nuclear program as the Russian-Arab alliance taking shape. They believe it's just a matter of time before this happens. They also fully expect Iran to use nuclear weapons on Israel, which may spark this battle. In fact, most believe that Iran already has nuclear weapons, a statement that is in total error of the facts.
3. Another belief is that Damascus will be completely destroyed and will never again exist as a city. This comes from their interpretation of Isaiah 17.

On their message board, [1] there is endless speculation on and interpretation of every single news headline. For example, Bill Clinton said yesterday that he expects a new plan for Mideast peace to come up in the next couple of months [2]. Most people on the board see this as possibly the peace treaty that the antichrist will make with Israel [3]. This is just one of hundreds of headlines they have attempted to interpret. I've been lurking on the site for a few months now. I can safely say that not one of their speculations have come true.

There are problems with these beliefs, and I can tell you what they are if you wish. Clinevol98 18:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I posted my comments on the talk page of the article Rapture Index, which no longer exists. I was being tongue-in-cheek and trying to point out how the "Rapture Index" makes no sense whatsoever. Even if the core assumptions, which the "index" is based on were true, the "index" would tell us nothing useful. They even admit it themselves! Basically the "index" is nothing but a fraudulent attempt to frighten people. I was too lazy to figure out a good way to add this information to the article, so I simply made a bunch of sarcastic questions kind of hoping somebody might maybe hopefully add some explanations, which themselves would point out the problems, to the article. It doesn't matter that much anymore, as the article doesn't exist, but I guess somebody still should add a mention of the "Rapture Index" being nothing but a bad fraud, which can only fool deeply religious rapture believers and extremely dim-witted people to the Rapture Ready article. I wonder if everyone would agree my way is the NPOV way of saying it... --Lakefall 14:35, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

You're exactly right. As I said before, I am a Christian and would agree with these people about the core beliefs about Christianity, but their end times theology is extremely off base. The "Rapture Index" is a fraud. As you said, they even admit that it doesn't tell us how soon Jesus will be returning but "how fast" we are moving to his return. They say it's a "Dow Jones Industrial Average" of end time activity. But the Dow doesn't tell us "how fast" we are moving to anything. That tells the performance of 30 large cap US stocks. It doesn't take a stock market junkie like me to figure that out.

The scale they set is totally arbitrary. All those categories (some of which shouldn't even be considered end time events) are rated on a scale 1-5. But who says that the scale can't be 1-10 or even 1 to 100? Maybe the "rapture index" has to be at 500 before Jesus returns :) If you think the "rapture index" is absurd, I suggest you go to the message board at rr-bb.com and tell me what you think...currently they are convinced that Barack Obama could be the antichrist. No, I'm not kidding. 00:15, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The order of interlanguage links

from the pump

I would like to have a policy on how to sort interlanguage links. It's obviously a good idea to sort them alphabetically, but on some pages they are sorted by the language code and on some by the language name. This is very notable in the case of Finnish language ("suomi"), which is placed somewhere before French language ("français") by the code but right before Swedish language ("svenska") by the name. I think sorting by the language name is more logical to the reader as the language name is the only thing shown, but there is no written policy. -- Lakefall 18:51, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)

There is no fixed policy yet - but a poll is running for some time already at Wikipedia:Language order poll. Currently the sorting by local language name is leading the poll. andy 19:14, 9 Apr 2004 (UTC)