The Christians followers of this have been talking about the "end times" with very little explanation. I tried looking into their most recent ranting and raving about the red heifer theory, but I was shocked to find that the most popular results were from people who genuinely believe that shit.

I want an explanation for this insane theory. There's something deeply antisemitic about it and I want to get to the bottom of it.

I don't want to criticize this belief by brushing it off as a bunch of loonies, dismissively pointing to the beliefs as not worth my time. I want to know exactly what it is so I can properly address it, at least mentally.

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[–] Doubledee@hexbear.net 15 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago) (1 children)

The movement owes a lot to the Darbyites, an obscure movement from the 19th century that gained an astonishing amount of influence over Protestant views of eschatology, a fancy way of saying "theology of how the world ends." Dispensationalists systematized their interpretation of how God works in history and came up with an inflexible literal view of prophetic literature, obsessing over making each part of Revelations correlate to a real world person, country, or organization. The Left Behind books, as someone else mentioned, are a great window into this ideology.

The book of Revelations says some stuff about things happening to "Israel" and a specific symbolically loaded number of Israelites being saved from judgement. Christian Zionists interpret these texts literally, meaning they see Israel the modern nation as the subject of this book, and 144,000 Jewish people will thus be saved from a literal apocalyptic war.

This article goes into the theological movement and has helpful links to relevant people and related topics. It's a good place to start I think.

[–] SweetLava@hexbear.net 12 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Yeah, this dispensationalism is pretty much exactly what I hear of the average Christian around me. I'm probably going to move, just to get away from hearing this for a while. It's too much for me, I'd rather be grounded in organizing efforts or discussing ML theory.

[–] Doubledee@hexbear.net 16 points 6 months ago

To be fair I've had moderate success with the Dispensationalists in my life pointing out that it comes almost entirely from this one group 150 years ago. A lot of them don't know that and assume this is just the normal way everyone thought about it forever. It can give people pause and make them reconsider why they think this obscure thing is the only way to see it.

Ymmv though.