How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [117]
Such prophecies must have been especially reassuring to a people under the yoke. Indeed, Christianity’s founding father, Paul, told the Colossians: “In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins” (1:14). To the Hebrews, Paul said: “Neither by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood he entered at once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us” (9:12). Redemption was not only for individuals, but for all of Israel, as Luke (24:19–21) notes: “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, which was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and have crucified him. But we trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel.” Here we see the foundation of the Christian oppression–redemption myth.
Jesus himself made it clear that ultimate redemption would come within the lifetime of his contemporaries: “Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom” (Matthew 16:28). Two thousand years later over one billion people profess Jesus to be the Messiah who not only redeemed Jews from their Roman oppressors, but who will deliver us from ours. (Such is the power of belief systems to rationalize all discrepancies—one being that this is the Kingdom of God on Earth.) A particularly striking example comes from the Los Angeles Times on the morning of October 8, 1997. In the Sports section, no less, appeared a six-inch by ten-inch advertisement placed by a Bloomington, Indiana–based group called Christ’s Soon Return, announcing:
8 COMPELLING REASONS WHY:
CHRIST IS COMING “VERY, VERY SOON”
HOW TO BE PREPARED FOR HISTORY’S GREATEST EVENT
The evidence for the return of the Messiah, we are told, “is overwhelming. It could be any moment.” Citing a single “scholar” (who goes unnamed) the advertisement explains that there are no less than 167 “converging clues” that the end is nigh. The ad offers eight: 1. Israel’s rebirth. 2. Plummeting morality. 3. Famines, violence and wars. 4. Increasing earthquakes. 5. Explosion of travel and education. 6. Explosion of cults and the occult. 7. The New World Order. 8. Increase in both apostasy and faith. A bonus “clue” is the “Angel Factor,” where “As an angel announced Christ’s First Coming, there have been recently reported visits from angels saying, ‘He is coming very, very soon.’” Why is Christ coming? “Christ will soon come and rescue His people from the approaching ‘Great Tribulation’. He will later rule and bring peace on earth—after he judges the world and every person.” To avoid our fate and “escape God’s judgment, we each must receive His free gift of forgiveness and love.” There is no Ghost Dance involved in the redemption (in this case the tyrants from whom we are to be rescued are ourselves, our sinful nature, and a morally moribund world), but one must pray for forgiveness and accept Christ as the Messiah: “Lord Jesus, I believe you are the Son of God and that you died on the cross for my sins to save me from eternal death. I open the door of my life and receive you as my Savior and Lord. I give you my life. Help me to be what you want me to be. Amen.”
The ultimate extreme expression of such modern millennial beliefs was the Heaven’s Gate calamity of March 27, 1997, when thirty-nine (now forty) members of an end-times cult committed suicide. Instead of the spirit world coming to life and the oppressors disappearing, the members of the Heaven’s Gate cult (also called the “Higher Source”) would escape the tyranny of their bodies and the immorality