John Hagee is that car crash you know you should turn away from but still find fascinating. It’s been half a year since his vacuous claims about the invented concept of the four blood moons. Hagee said, without evidence, “God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon,’ ” and “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.”
And yet we’re still here, with the earth spinning pretty much like it did before the dreaded blood moons. Unsurprisingly, no world-shaking event happened. I’m not surprised that Hagee didn’t have the courage to admit his error. What did surprise me, though, is that he didn’t simply ignore reality and declare victory. That’s what the Seventh-day Adventist Church did when it formed out of the ashes of the Millerite movement and its embarrassing prediction of the end of the world in 1844. That’s what the Jehovah’s Witnesses did after the failure of their prediction that the world as we knew it would end in 1914.
Instead, Hagee is just proceeding as if nothing happened, as if milking this two-year prediction to its decrepit close and then moving on is simply what a televangelist does.
And perhaps he’s right. (Background on Hagee’s “prophecy” here, here, and here.)
Pythia, the Oracle of Delphi
Let’s compare Hagee with another famous prophet. The Oracle of Delphi, just one of many oracles in Ancient Greece, was an institution for over a thousand years. The priestess holding the position “was without doubt the most powerful woman of the classical world” (Wikipedia).
When Athens saw the mighty Persian army advancing in 480 BCE, held only briefly at Thermopylae, the Oracle famously told Athens that a “wooden wall” would save them. But what did that mean? A literal wooden wall? A forest? They decided instead that it meant their fleet of wooden triremes, and their naval action was indeed key to turning back the Persians.
About sixty years earlier, King Croesus of Lydia also sought advice from the Oracle. His question was about the wisdom of attacking Persia. The response: “If you cross the river, a great empire will be destroyed.” Thinking that the great empire to be destroyed was Persia, he attacked. Unfortunately, the great empire that was destroyed was his own.
The wisdom at the time declared that the Oracle might be ambiguous but was never wrong. If something bad happened, the fault was your own for misunderstanding. And that’s what we see from Christians: the Bible and God are never wrong, and if something bad happens, the fault was yours.
At worst, the prophet takes the blame and the Bible that he pointed to as his source is untouched. And yet when does a modern prophet ever take any blame?
Contemporary “prophets”
Jim Bakker has also been riding the blood-moon gravy train. Ten weeks after the fourth moon fizzle, he said, “People, it’s all happening, but we’re not looking.” He needs to keep the flock in fear so that they keep buying his buckets of end times provisions.
Another prophet gobbling up scraps from the blood moons flop is Jonathan Cahn. His angle was that the last year in the seven-year Jewish cycle, the Shemitah year, ended near the fourth blood moon (more or less), and that this presaged a financial collapse. But Cahn can’t say those three little words that are difficult for so many men, “I was wrong,” and he doubled down on his claim in the aftermath. He declared victory by arguing that worldwide financial markets in 2015 had the worst performance … since 2008.
That’s it? That’s his world-ending event that God is eager to tell us about?
Revisiting Hagee
What’s up with Hagee? At his web site, there is nothing about picking up the pieces after the chaos from the blood moon or even reading the entrails to see what God was trying to tell us. We find no declaration of victory, no admission that he was wrong, or (and this is the really surprising one) any offer to compensate people who bought his book, sat through his movie, or made any financial donation due to the blood moons hysteria. Immediately after the final blood moon, he tried to change the subject by flogging a new book.
John Hagee, Inc. is back to normal, and all we find at the site are upcoming conferences, rallies, and tours; invitations to prayer requests; pleas for money; and encouragement to shop at the online store.
Hagee has lost all credibility to any thoughtful person. You don’t get more than one chance. Even the Bible agrees:

The prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. (Deuteronomy 18:20)

But Hagee is simply un-embarrassable. The true tragedy is that the rubes in his flock let him get away with it.
One silver lining of the prophecy insanity is watching the various end times prophets go at each other. Jennifer LeClaire, senior editor of Charisma magazine, sees the lack of accountability as in Hagee’s case with about as much disdain as I do. Though she might then turn around and play up some other groundless prophecy herself, on this point she’s on target.
I’ll celebrate this rare moment of concord by giving her the last word—remember, this is from the Christian editor of a magazine devoted to Christian prophecy:

Why do we make excuses for these prophets? Why is there no repentance? No apology? No accountability? …
Where is the repentance in the prophetic ministry? Why is it OK to get up on a megaplatform and prophesy things with specific date with no way of escape and move on to the next megaplatform (or Internet platform) without ever looking back at the mess you left behind? Why is it OK to charge for personal prophesy at the altar? Why is it OK to scare people half to death in the name of Jesus?

Why indeed?

Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off
as if nothing had happened.
— Winston Churchill

Image credit: Marcel André Briefs, flickr, CC
 

In part 1, I summarized the latest in John Hagee’s “Four Blood Moons” hysteria, which is to culminate with Sunday’s lunar eclipse (totality begins 7:11pm Seattle time).

So what is supposed to happen?

We’ve seen a lot of vague handwaving, but let’s get specific. Reverend Hagee, tell us precisely what will happen and when. Hagee tells us, “The coming four blood moons points to a world-shaking event that will happen between April 2014 and October 2015.”

Okay, but that’s rather vague. Hagee says, “God is literally screaming at the world, ‘I’m coming soon.’”

Surely the creator of the universe can do better? “Something is about to change,” according to the book’s subtitle.

Hagee’s situation is like that in a Ren and Stimpy cartoon. Ren reveals the History Eraser button, and Stimpy asks what will happen if someone presses it. Ren says, “That’s just it—we don’t know! Maybe something bad, maybe something good.” Likewise, Hagee doesn’t know what God is saying will happen—maybe something bad, maybe something good.

Perhaps the purpose of the book wasn’t to enlighten the flock but (dare I say it?) to make money. It turns out that Pastor Hagee wasn’t the first to think up the four blood moons idea, though you wouldn’t know it from his recent movie, where he claims to have come up with this connection. When there’s chum in the water, the sharks will come, and for Pastor Hagee, cash is chum.

Others have piled on and predicted financial disaster after the end of Shemitah (didn’t happen—the Dow was up on the next trading day). Unsurprisingly, those financial prophets didn’t conclude that their game is groundless. One pundit decided that God simply doesn’t want to make himself predictable. It’s clear that no lesson has been learned, and the next breathless, invented crisis is inevitable.

One element of this hysteria is a “the sky is falling” attitude. Prophecy-hungry Christians point to the bad news of the moment—the Iran nuclear deal, the progress of ISIS, Ebola, police shootings, droughts and forest fires, and same-sex marriage—and imagine that these are the signs of the End.

No, that’s not bad. You want bad? How about the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) that killed between three and eleven million people in Europe? That was bad. Or how about 1942–43 when it looked like the Axis powers might succeed and carve up the world? Or the 1918 flu pandemic that killed up to 100 million people? Or the Black Death in Europe (1346–53), which killed 20% of the world’s population?

Sorry, Christian apocalypticists, same-sex marriage doesn’t compare.

Remember when you were a kid in history class, and you asked why you had to learn all that stuff? This is why. It’s so you can be immune from people who are ignorant of the events like these—events so world-shakingly huge that they plausibly could have signaled an end of the world.

Consequences

I believe a quote from the Good Book is relevant here.

The prophet who speaks a word presumptuously in My name which I have not commanded him to speak, or which he speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die. (Deuteronomy 18:20)

Wow—that’s tough love. I imagine pastor David Berzins, who is eager to stone gays to death, would be happy to carry out that punishment if Hagee’s prophecies don’t come true.

Hagee has to walk a fine line. He must be specific enough to mesmerize his flock into buying his books and mailing in checks but not so specific that he could be easily called on a prophecy when it doesn’t come to pass. That was the error that Harold Camping made. He spent $100 million on advertising a very specific date for the Rapture, May 21, 2011. Things became uncomfortable when May 22 arrived just like any other day.

Hagee has been planning this for several years, and the last blood moon is just a day away. There must be a crescendo at his web site, right? No—we find as just one more ad in the lineup, “The final blood moon is coming … are you ready?”

Ready? Ready for what? Whatever happens, Hagee will declare victory and look for the chance to launch some new apocalyptic message so we can get good and scared all over again. John Hagee becomes Pastor Freddie Krueger of the (Nightmare on) Elm Street Church. Like the groundless claims in Pastor John Oliver’s recent and much-missed megachurch, Hagee’s far-reaching but empty claims are, incredibly, all legal.

If there were justice where you could pull a stunt like this once but then you’d lose all credibility, I wouldn’t mind. The problem is, there will be no consequences. While it will be amusing seeing Hagee and others tap dance away from their claims, no one will stone them. Their flock will continue to do what they’re told. Hagee has a new book out, and he’ll refocus on that. While I wonder how Hagee can live with himself, I think the whole thing will look like a smart financial move in hindsight.

What’s it like on the inside?

Captain Cassidy recently wrote about what it was like growing up as a Pentecostal teenager during the “88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988” scare. On why this kind of thing is effective, she said that being on the inside flatters one’s ego. You know that you’ve got it figured out and the naysayers will get theirs soon enough, and then who’ll be laughing? Chillingly, she observed, “Fear lies at the heart of Christianity, not love.”

I’ll wrap up with this much-mended “The End is nigh!” sign envisioned by Kyle Hepworth. The End has been predicted more often than you may know.

Christians who know that there’ve been other Rapture scares in the past
look at new Rapture scares like other folks look at lottery tickets:
sure, they’ve always failed to win in the past,
but this time might be the big payoff.
The problem is that their payoff happens for the worst reasons
and at the expense of those who disagree with them.
— Captain Cassidy

If it feels like we’ve been here before, we have. John Hagee imagines that the last 18 months have been a slow-motion display of God saying, “Look out!” (I find it more fun to imagine God’s voice getting really low because it’s stretched out).

Look for a total lunar eclipse on Sunday night (9/27/15). In Seattle, totality begins at 7:11pm and ends at 8:23. The partial eclipse lasts another hour. Add three hours to convert to Eastern time.

Why is this eclipse interesting?

Because the plane that the moon rotates in is off by five degrees from the ecliptic (the plane defined by the orbit of the earth around the sun), an opportunity for either lunar or solar eclipses only happens twice a year. Lunar eclipses are quite common, with total eclipses somewhat less so. Much less likely is when there is a total eclipse and then six months later, another, and then another, and then another—four total lunar eclipses over 18 months. Since the year 1CE, there have been 57 such “tetrads.”

Why is this eclipse interesting religiously?

Now consider the religious connection. The Jewish festivals of Passover and Sukkot begin on full moons, and they are also six months apart. A lunar eclipse tetrad can line up with them, and there have been seven such alignments since 1CE. The eighth concludes on Sunday.

So, what’s the religious significance of this alignment? None. Joel 2:30–31 talks about the moon turning to blood, and Christian Zionist opportunist John Hagee has invented a connection. Since total eclipses usually look red, he calls a lunar eclipse tetrad that aligns with the Jewish festivals “four blood moons,” and he says they line up with significant events in Jewish history. He argues his theory by looking at the last three alignments (the dates below are of the first eclipse in the tetrad).

• 1967 was the Six-Day War.
• 1949 was the establishment of Israel.
• 1493 was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain.

The sharp-eyed reader will notice that the Jews were actually expelled from Spain one year earlier. The date for the establishment of Israel is also off.

So Hagee’s hypothesis is that tetrads mean either good or bad things happening to the Jewish people, with the date a little fuzzy. Note also that not all significant events get a tetrad. The Holocaust during World War II is glaringly absent. God’s message then becomes, “Something good or bad will soon happen to the Jewish people, or has happened, and I might’ve missed a few.” I have higher standards for Hagee’s god than Hagee does.

It gets worse when we consider the four ignored alignments, which began in the years 162, 795, 842, and 860. Hagee doesn’t bother wondering what God was saying with these, because they don’t support his flabby hypothesis. But if God wanted to point to important events for the Jewish people, obvious candidates would have included the three Jewish-Roman Wars. Hagee doesn’t seem to credit his flock with much knowledge, but even they will know the first omission.

• The First Jewish-Roman War (66–74CE) included the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 70, the deaths of 1.1 million Jews (according to Josephus), and the enslavement of the survivors.
• The Kitos War (115–117CE) began with ethnic Judeans outside of Palestine rising up to slaughter Roman soldiers and noncombatants—reportedly half a million. The empire put down the revolt, violently.
• The Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–136CE) was, like the First War, conducted in Judea. One source called it a genocide and more significant in damaging Judaism in Judea than the First War.

(For further detail on Hagee’s ill-advised dabblings into prophecy, I’ve written more here. And about his movie. And about what actually makes a good prophecy.)

Even more trivia—fun!

This tetrad as a placeholder provides an opportunity to pile on more stuff with no concern for whether Christianity or Judaism says that this is meaningful (they don’t).

• Eclipse opportunities can create solar eclipses as well as lunar, and this tetrad’s 18-month window includes one solar eclipse.
• The moon’s orbit is elliptical, and once a month it reaches its perigee (closest point) which makes it appear 14% wider than at its apogee (farthest point). Sunday’s eclipse will be of such a “supermoon.”
• The last year in a seven-year cycle in the Jewish calendar is a Shemitah year, and this tetrad included such a year (it ended 9/13/15). Shemitah is a time to let the land go fallow and forgive debts with fellow Jews. However, Wikipedia says, “There is little notice of the observance of this year in Biblical history and it appears to have been much neglected.” And why imagine divine wrath when Shemitah is a time of forgiveness?
• This entire celestial farce has been invisible in Israel, with the exception of this final lunar eclipse.
• Here’s interesting data about why the world will end two days ago.

Let’s conclude by trying to figure out what’s actually supposed to happen in Part 2.

There’s a sucker born every minute.
— Barnum 3:16

Image credit: krheesy, flickr, CC

Isaiah 53 is the other chapter that apologists often point to as giving an uncanny summary of the death of Jesus, but, like the claims for Psalm 22, we’ll see that this also falls flat.

First, give the apologists their turn. They’ll point to several phrases in Isaiah 53 (and the last few verses of the preceding chapter) that parallel the crucifixion.

Verse 52:14: “there were many who were appalled at him; his appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being.” Some say that this refers to the beatings Jesus received, though his ugly appearance is never mentioned in the New Testament.

53:3: “He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.” Jesus should have been recognized as the Messiah, but the gospels tell us that his own people rejected him.

On the other hand, “he was despised” doesn’t sound like the charismatic rabbi who preached to thousands of attentive listeners and had a triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. And “a man of suffering … familiar with pain” might’ve been the life of an ascetic like John the Baptist, but this doesn’t describe Jesus.

53:7: “he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent.” The synoptic gospels agree that Jesus was silent before his accusers, though John 18:34–19:11 says the opposite.

53:8: in response to the trial and sentencing of Jesus, “who of his generation protested?” Jesus was on his own, and none of his disciples tried to intervene.

53:9: “He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death.” This is often interpreted to mean that Jesus ought to have been buried with criminals but was actually buried with the rich. This ties in with the burial of Jesus in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

Finally, from 53:5 to the end of the chapter, almost every verse gives some version of the idea of the suffering servant taking on the burdens of his people—“he was pierced for our transgressions … by his wounds we are healed” (53:5), “for the transgression of my people he was punished” (53:8), “he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors” (53:12), and so on.

Taken as this collection of cherry-picked fragments, the case looks intriguing, but taken as a whole—that is, letting the chapter speak for itself—the story falls apart.

First, let’s look at some of the verses discarded by the apologists.

Verse 52:15: “so will many nations be amazed at him and kings will shut their mouths because of him.”

The nations will be amazed and the kings speechless? Nope, not only was Jesus not internationally famous during his lifetime, history records nothing of his life outside the gospels. True, we have evidence of his followers from historians such as Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius, but it is curious that we have nothing about the works of Jesus himself from prolific contemporary authors such as Philo of Alexandria, Seneca, and Pliny the Elder. Apparently he wasn’t as famous as imagined prophecy would have him be.

53:10: “he will see his offspring and prolong his days, and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.” This is a nice thought—Jesus endures great trials but then, like Job, he is rewarded with children, prosperity, and long life. As Proverbs says, “Grandchildren are the crown of old men.”

Unfortunately, this isn’t how the gospel story plays out.

53:11: “my righteous servant will justify many, and he will bear their iniquities.” So Jesus, a person of the Trinity and equal to God the Father, is now God’s servant?

Note that “messiah” simply means “anointed one” and that the Old Testament is fairly liberal with the title messiah. Kings and high priests were anointed as messiahs. Heck, Cyrus the Great of Persia was even a messiah (Isaiah 45:1). But surely no Christian can accept the logic, “Well, David was a messiah, and he was a servant of God; why not Jesus as well?” David was a major figure from the Bible, but Jesus was certainly not in the same category as David.

And here’s the big one: “Therefore I will give him a portion among the great [or many] and he will divide the spoils with the strong [or numerous]” (53:12). Like a warrior who gets a share of the spoils of the battle, the servant will be richly rewarded. This servant is just one among many who gets a portion.

Wait a minute—Jesus has peers? He’s one among equals, just “one of the great”? What kind of nonsense is this? Again, this bears no resemblance to the Jesus of the gospels.

This all makes more sense if the “he” of this chapter is seen as Israel, not Jesus—Israel was punished through the Babylonian exile and will be returned to glory and power.

And, as with our analysis of Psalm 22, the point of any crucifixion story would be the resurrection, which is not present in this chapter. Only with the naïve confidence of a student of Nostradamus could this baggy sack of a “prophecy” be imagined to be a trim fit.

Religion is the diaper of humanity’s childhood;
it’s OK to grow out of it
— PZ Myers

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 9/12/12.)

Image credit: Craig Allen, flickr, CC

The ominous third of John Hagee’s four really scary “blood moons” happens tonight.

In case you’re in the envious position of never having heard of Rev. Hagee’s ill-informed imaginings about how this heralds the end of the world (or something), I invite you to read a few posts of mine that cover the subject.

I introduced the subject in “The World Will End Soon! Again!”

On the eve of the really scary second blood moon, I wrote “Tonight: the Beginning of the End?” which also introduced another end-of-the-world prophet, Ray Comfort. Prophets like Ray must be pretty self-confident, because they know the consequences of being wrong. About those, God says, “That prophet shall die” (Deuteronomy 18:20).

And finally, there was the movie a few weeks ago: “I Watched John Hagee’s “Four Blood Moons” So You Don’t Have To.”

I hope these posts are helpful, but don’t take too long reading them. The eclipse will be total Saturday morning at 5:00 am Seattle time. If it’s clear, take a look—it might be the last thing you ever see. If Hagee is right, tonight’s eclipse means something.

(I think it means that the earth is casting a shadow on the moon.)

If God is a just God, wouldn’t he be more likely to want to share eternity
with someone who honestly disbelieved for lack of evidence
than a liar who pretended to believe
just to get his ass into heaven?
— Victor Stenger

Image credit: Rob Glover, flickr, CC