Christian Fundamentalists Believe Oil Spill Heralds The Apocalypse

One third of the 60 million white Christian evangelicals in America believe the world will end in their lifetime , according to a Pew poll.  They subscribe to a theology known as “premillennial dispensationalism”. (h/t Gawker)

Now blogs on the Christian fringe are abuzz with possibility that the oil spill is the realization of Revelation 8:8–11. “The second angel blew his trumpet, and something like a great mountain, burning with fire, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea became blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed … A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter.” According to Revelation, in other words, something terrible happens to the world’s water, a punishment to those of insufficient faith. The foul water, according to the New Oxford Annotated Bible, mirrors one of the plagues God called upon Egypt on behalf of his people Israel.

Then there are the fringies who believe Obama is the anti-Christ, such as the vile Obambi.com blog.

The anti-christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal….the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything.

Mostly these evangelicals blame liberals for the ills that lead to God’s punishing the world with the apocalypse.  Pastor John Hagee pointed out that Katrina occurred right after a gay pride parade. After 9/11 Pastors Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson agreed that God gave us “what we deserve.”

However, as Newsweek’s religion editor Lisa Miller writes:

Yet through a biblical lens, it’s hard to see the oil spill as anything but God’s punishment for greed and a disrespect of Creation—and both of those sins fall mostly on the shoulders of the Republicans, who have been aggressively lobbying for more offshore drilling, without, obviously, ensuring that appropriate safeguards are in place. (Remember “Drill, baby, drill”? According to OpenSecrets.org, Republicans in the last decade have far outstripped Democrats in donations from big oil, sometimes by a factor of four.) So the question for biblical literalists becomes one of political alliances. Does God wreak apocalyptic wrath on members of one’s own party—or only on the opposition?

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.