If you go, can I have your truck?

Rapture Index: The prophetic speedometer of end-time activity

This just in: the Rapture Index closed unchanged yesterday at 157. I have no idea as to what this means, other than it’s just one more thing for hyper-religious Apocalypse-mongers to work themselves into a lather over. For sacrilegious fools like me, it’s just one more thing to milk for comic relief value. I mean, what else could you think about an artificial index that purports to measure events that are completely unrelated to one another?

I understand that there are people out there would truly believe this sort of thing, and who read world events as if they were tea leaves. In the same manner Sovietologists used to parse every available picture, rumor, or shred of information about the Politburo and nomenklatura in order to gain some insight on the state of official affairs in Soviet Russia, so some Evangelcial Christians look upon world events. These folks always have a metaphorical bag packed, for they know that can be called “home” at a moment’s notice. About all this really means to me is that the Colorado Rockies are going to have to make some wholesale call-ups from AAA.

I suppose that, as obsessions go, this could be construed as relatively harmless…until you consider that one of the categories that’s used to calculate the Rapture Index is “Liberalism”. That’s when it dawned on me that the Rapture Index is just another means employed by Evangelical Conservatives to maintain control over their flock. It’s all about keeping the “fear index” high enough so that Evangelicals will unquestioningly follow the marching orders they’re given on Sunday mornings. If they’re convinced that Godless, America-hating Libruls are determined to take over and institute their secular, Satanic moral code…well, it doesn’t take much to figure out that you’re going to have a whole buncha good, God-fearing Christians marching in ideological lockstep, does it?

So what sort of things go into calculating the Rapture Index? Funny you should ask….

• Satanism: Satanism is reported to be flourishing in Russia
• Interest Rates: Federal Reserve raises the core interest rate to 4.75%
• Inflation: Higher inflation has rattled the stock market
• Crime Rate: Murder and general crime in America shows a large increase
• Ecumenism: World religions have been at odds with each other
• Gog: Events in the Middle East are moving closer to the Ezk 38 & 39 prophecy
• Liberalism: The political scene in the U.S. favors liberal candidates
• Mark of the Beast: The U.S. Patriot Act has failed to get enough votes for extension
• Beast Government: The possibility of the EU reforming into a smaller group of core nations has updated this category
• Date Settings: The occurrence of the 06/06/06 date has increased interest in numerical date speculation
• Climate: The increase in the frequency of Hurricanes has experts wondering if there is a connection to climate change

I’m sorry…these people are @!#$%(& Looney Tunes. These are the same sort of folks who hightailed it to Idaho and Montana prior to January 1. 2000, fearing that Y2K would cause all sorts of Hell to break loose and that it would be every man for himself.