Reply #24: How about this one: "We're closer to the Lord's coming than ever before".

[elocs]

Well, duh. That's pretty obvious if you believe in a second coming. We're also closer to the election on 4 November 2008 than we have ever been before.

That aside, anybody who really believes in a second coming or a "rapture" of believers will hold to the possibility of it happening at any moment, especially in their lifetime.

I have a personal story about the whole rapture and snatched away thing. When I was in my middle 20s I attended a very strict Pentecostal church that taught that women had to wear their hair long and always wear dresses, and also no tv or movies or other worldly entertainment. Eating to excess, though, is something they seemed to encourage. They were big believers in the rapture and the possibility of believers being snatched away at any moment.

I was friends with a family who had a 10 year old son. They were fairly recent converts to the church, so this son was not born into the church, but he really believed. The family was loathe to give up all the worldly entertainment and would simply throw a blanket over their tv (like nobody could figure it out when they visited them). Their son was upset by this hypocrisy, but he was also tempted himself since he had grown up with tv and movies. Well, one Saturday he went with some worldly friends to see the new Superman movie even though he thought it was wrong. When he got home nobody was there and he could not find anyone. He tried calling people and couldn't get through to anyone from the church. By now he was in a near state of panic because he thought that the rapture had happened and that he had been LEFT BEHIND because he went to see a movie. It sounds funny now, but he really believed that then.

His family left the church only a few years later. Today he is 40 and works as a comedian in the Twin Cities of MN and I think he has worked that story into his act over the years, but I remember when it really happened (actually, it was funny to me then too, but this is how they beleive).