Like much of politics today, the entire story has an air of unreality about it, the kind of unreality that one feels after awaking from a particularly disturbing and frightening nightmare.
From Blumenthal's article:
The game is inspired by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' bestselling pulp fiction series about a blood-soaked Battle of Armageddon pitting born-again Christians against anybody who does not adhere to their particular theology. In LaHaye's and Jenkins' books [which have sold 65 million copies and are second only to the Bible in sales of Christian books], the non-believers are ultimately condemned to "everlasting punishment" while the evangelicals are "raptured" up to heaven.The Left Behind videogame is a real-time strategy game that makes players commanders of a virtual evangelical army in a post-apocalyptic landscape that looks strikingly like New York City after 9/11. With tanks, helicopters and a fearsome arsenal of automatic weapons at their disposal, Left Behind players wage a violent war against United Nations-like peacekeepers who, according to LaHaye's interpretation of Revelation, represent the armies of the Antichrist. Each time a Left Behind player kills a UN soldier, their virtual character exclaims, "Praise the Lord!" To win the game, players must kill or convert all the non-believers left behind after the rapture. They also have the option of reversing roles and commanding the forces of the Antichrist. (Video preview here).
According to some accounts, the video game makers hope to distribute a million copies of this game to churches throughout the U.S., so soldiers will not be alone in getting their chance to fantasize being a soldier of God who gets to kill (or convert -- does one get more points for one over the other?) infidel Jews, Muslims, Hindus, athiests, Wiccans, etc. This should go over big in neighborhoods from Fallujah to Karachi! One wonders how many pimply-faced church goers or bored and terrified soldiers will choose to play the game with the reverse option, as a general serving Antichrist.
More seriously, how many U.S. soldiers will now die because of inflamed passions against this neo-Crusader propaganda?
One of OSU's biggest names is Stephen Baldwin, the actor, whose craft is protected by the same first amendment which, by his organizational affiliations, he desecrates along with unknown Pentagon officials allied with OSU. But then, this is a secular desecration, isn't it?
I'm reminded of a passage by Milton, someone who knew Satan intimately, and Jesus, too.
For neither man nor angel can discern / Hypocrisy, the only evil that walks / Invisible...
Ah, Milton, not invisible anymore, but manipulated by joysticks, right-wing generals, pulp fiction zealots, and oblivious politicians.
Posts
1 comment:
The "Left Behind" millionaire medicine men don't want anyone to know that their money-making "pre-tribulation rapture" theology is less than 200 years old - but this and related facts are documented and out in the open. Just Google "Pretrib Rapture Diehards," "The Rapture Index (Mad Theology)," "Roots of (Warlike) Christian Zionism," and "Deceiving and Being Deceived" - all written by historian David MacPherson who has found more of the earliest 19th century "rapture" documents in libraries in Britain than anyone else. His 300-page book THE RAPTURE PLOT, obtainable via Armageddon Books etc., drowns us with documented facts relative to this 19th century British hoax. (He also documents the rampant plagiarism found in the writings of rapture promoters including LaHaye, Falwell, Lindsey, Van Impe and others!) John
Post a Comment