Another possibility is to use Genesis 6:3:

Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”

And insist that this means that according to the Bible a 'generation' equals 120 years. And that this means that, the rapture will happen by, at the latest 2068. Of course you can keep up the immediacy by emphasizing that this is the LATEST date, and that current events suggest it will happen sooner. This gives you over 50 years of not having to pin down a firm date, but insisting that current events dictate its happening soon.

Yes that does mean that your assertion is open to falsification in 2068, but play your cards right and you'll be comfortably retired long before then.

Hal Lindsey is alive and living in luxury with wife #4 in Palm Beach. Winning.

And he probably opposes gay marriage, I'm guessing?

Dear Fred Clark:

I've never saw how people got such incredible mileage on Mt 24:34. A cursive reading of context shows nearly identical words/meaning in English and Greek in Mt 23:36. The entire passage stands as a solitary literary unit, and reassigning words with radically different meaning can be allowed only on the basis of the most luminescent, incisive and demanding exegetical grounds. You'd think that here and there, a pastor or two would pick up on this.

"Their consensus was also that a “biblical” generation meant roughly 40 years" I'm old enough to remember when the generation was 20 years, and the seven-year tribulation was definitely going to start in 1968, with the end of the world in 1975. The Six Day War in 1967 helps to reinforce this because something-something Ezekiel, and the Antichrist was sure to come out with his fake "peace treaty" with Israel in 1968. Well, the fake peace didn't happen, but so many head-spinning news events did occur in 1968 that talk about the end of the world didn't seem so far-fetched. Unfortunately, by 1975 the world was seeming a little calmer. Armstrong's Worldwide Church of God (originally the Radio Church of God, a Depression-era pioneer of broadcast evangelism along with Aimee Semple Macpherson and Father Coughlin) was the main pusher of the 1975 end-date, although a lot of the JW's were confident about it too (the Watchtower Society itself wisely refrained from officially endorsing the date). The fizzle forced Armstrong to come up with some new arithmetic: his calculation of the intervals from Daniel was off, Armstrong announced, because he had "forgotten the years of Nebuchadnezzar's madness": for a wonder, this actually inspired skepticism among many of his followers, and there was a big schism when Armstrong died (still unraptured) with the main branch settling down into a more normal Christian denomination.

OT: News of my deceased Mother in Law: arrangements have been made to transport her remains to the United States from Venezuela, and for her to be buried next to her sister. We hope that the Venezuelan government doesn't throw up any more obstacles.
On my job, I received the official offer today: $0.21 less an hour on pay, but $1.77 more in 'health benefit', which I can either take as cash or push into my 401K which they will match. (As a retired enlisted man, I have no need for their health plan on top of the socialist one the government gives me). And I kept my seniority, which means that I keep my 3 weeks paid vacation a year (plus the 10 standard federal holidays). So, not a bad offer and I took it. Now all I have to do is deal with the fact that all the senior people on the contract refused to sign on (they got bigger pay cuts than I did), which puts me in a odd position of being most senior while not being in a management.
Thank you for your support, my friends.

Congrats! I feel like a dweeb congratulating you on "It could have been so much worse," but, well, here we are.

So, other than finally being nearly done with the canes (having your shop destroyed delayed that significantly), I'll soon be canvasing for the local Democrat as a precinct chair. Yay!

Interesting. http://www.vox.com/2016/7/2...

It is interesting, but the conclusion is correct. Minorities and other marginalized populations understand that their problems won't get solved without some government intervention. That automatically places them at odds with the ideology Roy is beholden to, even if they are able to separate from white nationalism.

The people who benefit from laissez faire the most are the people who are already rich. The overwhelming majority of already rich people are white. And rich people tend to stay rich, generation after generation. In fact, in Florence the richest five families have maintained being the richest five families for 500 years. In Sweden the richest five families have maintained being the richest five families for 300 years.

The people who benefit the most from active government intervention are people who are already poor. A disproportionate majority of poor people are minorities.

Roy would have to figure out a way to move huge numbers of poor minorities to rich minorities, like, for example, a massive government program, to start selling them on the benefits of laissez faire economics.

(And this does not even get into the fact that conservatism longs for a day when minorities very much worse off).

Matthew 24:34 “This generation will not pass away until all these things have taken
place.”

I guess people can't read. Take any group of people living. When will that group be completely dead? If that group includes babies then the answer is probably no longer than 100 years. It might be less than 100 years, but it's not likely to be more than that.

1948 + 100 = 2048

That's 32 years from now. Between now and then about 2/3 of the planet will be getting wiped out. If that is true then we should be seeing signs of war right about now: http://bit.ly/1Q8PN06

You can ignore Bible prophecy, but can you ignore the real threats of war? Well, yes. We can and will ignore those too.

Oh wait, there's a war going on? Well that proves it. First Horseman, right there.

Been nice knowing you guys.

"But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." - Matthew 24:36; two verses after your quote, Jesus tells his disciples that he himself doesn't know when the end will come. The best we can do, and what we're told to do in the rest of chapter 24 and 25, is go on doing what we should do - whether the world ends ten minutes or ten million years from now.

I guess you never read the bible. GOD who values life so much, he hates abortion. drowned thousands of pregnant women. yeah. Think about that one for a while. You stupid bitch.

We don't do that here.

Flagged.

Ditto.

"Stupid bitch"? Sorry, kid, I'm more of a cat person.

That was kind of a random non-sequitur.

True; intentionally random.

Actually, I was referring to Donovan's comment, but it fits yours too.

Oh, well, Donovan's comment fits his history. Insults R him.

You know that Jesus was telling people that there's no way to know when it's going to happen, so live and stop worrying about it.

Right--it's sort of how I view the Evangelical Bus as the corrupted counterpart of the Anti-Anxiety Bus. (To define that one: the concept that, while some risk aversion is sensible, you could get hit by a bus tomorrow: you can't predict or prevent all danger, so have a frosty beverage of some sort and take a breath.)

There is a Metaphorical Bus, but it's good to remember that there's a Metaphorical Ambulance driving around as well. Sometimes horrible shit happens and you end up okay regardless.

Right--it's a balance, basically. I think it's good to remember that no diet and exercise plan, or other avoidance of potentially harmful activity, is guaranteed to let us live to a hundred and ten and be sexually active the whole damn time.* Conversely, most of the stuff that the magazines say is horrible for you, and even most of the stuff that *is*, will probably not fuck you up horribly in some degree of moderation.

And relatedly, you should apply for that job you really want/ask that person out/read that book you've been meaning to get around to/etc, because you just never know. (Assuming you have time/money/etc to do these things, of course, or that there's even odds the person would be into you.)

"There's no life without risk, but figure out what the Really Stupid point is for you and don't go past it," is what it comes down to for me. Looks crappy on a pillow, though.

*To paraphrase Stephen King.

"You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come." (Matthew 24:6)

So calm the heck down.

"There's always some shits going on, so calm the fucks down." Common sense, 101.

The end of the planet is not yet. Meaning that nuclear wars will wipe out most of the planet but not all of the planet.

I'm not freaked out. But there is real talk about nuclear war going on around the globe:

War Fever: “When are we going to war?” | 1913 Intel - http://bit.ly/29Zy0u3

Radio Station Ekho Moskvy Speaks About Nuclear War “… as if They were Discussing Increases in Parking Fines” | 1913 Intel - http://bit.ly/1QQ2wWG

Assuming you're a US citizen, there's one thing you can do to make nuclear war in the near future less likely:

Vote for Clinton for President.

Donald Trump is impulsive, thin-skinned, and lacking in judgment. He's not fit to be anywhere near the power to start a war. Help save the world, for now: vote against him.

If you wanted Jesus to come back then wouldn't you want people to vote for Trump? Yeah, exactly. Still time to get your GED.

Not sure if you're serious or joking, but (a) some crimes are too awful to be justified by any goal, however pure-hearted (semijoke) (b) we don't control the timing of Jesus' return; God the Father does (c) in any case, our job is to be found doing what we ought to do whenever Jesus does come back. And voting for the likes of Trump isn't what I want God to catch me doing.

Meh. Even with a more aggressive tilt towards each other, it's no where near the point Russia and the US would go to nukes for. Russia looks like it would like a stabile periphery and the US wants a bit more influence there. Neither are, from a world perspective, worth a war over.

Suppose Trump gets in, Putin starts telling him about the trove of blackmail material his hackers have been quietly collecting on him while they were taking down Hillary Clinton, and Trump puts his "withdraw from NATO and hit 'em up for cash" plan into action.

The tanks roll into the Baltics, who invoke Article 5 and the West European militaries are the only opposition. Putin calculates that Trump is enough of a feckless idiot that he'll do nothing about it. Trump then decides it's a threat to his manhood after all, and pivots from Muslims and Mexicans to Russia as his great boogeyman, and World War III is on...

Not sure blackmail would work. The man seems to have no shame.

Depends on the angle. He's certainly touchy enough about anything that seems to call his "manhood" into question, and I have no doubt that there are some skeletons in his closet which could be spun that way.

Nah. Putin does have strong enough control of what he already has to simply invade the Baltic Sea.

Leveraging material against Trump as he solidifies his influence with pro-Russian governments would seem more likely as a pull out of NATO shows the US won't have much influence in the area.

Finally!

I grew up in the late '70s, early '80s. I'm a Reagan era Cold War kid. Kids my age just assumed we would experience a nuclear war eventually. We were pretty sure we weren't going to live to see 30.

What I'm trying to say is, I lived this. Don't try to get me worked up about "real talk about nuclear war" in The Year of Our Lord 2016 A.D. You're not even moving the needle for me.

Also, I know it's generally good 'net form to back up your arguments, but I'll admit up front that I'm not going to click your links, so you can save the effort. Thanks.

I'm only a few years younger. Everybody knew that because the local Coast Guard base had been a naval base until relatively recently, the creaking bureaucracy of the USSR still had a nuke pointed at us. I just hoped that it was big enough to burn me up immediately instead of leaving me to die of radiation burns.

When I realized that the Cold War was ending, I couldn't stop smiling for days.

Yes. I'm a bit older than you, Vermic, but I never expected to reach 30; we all expected a nuclear war. (Especially during the Cuban missle crisis, and years later it was chilling to learn that we were nearly right - it did almost go bad.)

Fourth grade, 1979-80, we were still doing "hide under your desks and close your eyes so you kids will be nice and calm when the blast hits us" atomic bomb drills. Everyone knew it was virtually guaranteed that the county seat 20 some miles away would be among the first towns hit because it contained a small plant which manufactured something-something for the military (and microwaves, which of course was part of their cover).

The threat back then was significantly more real than this fantasy Armageddon narrative the end-of-worlder's like to trot out, and even so, even against the everybody knows paranoia, in the backs of our minds we I knew felt like the threat was more distant and vague than present and looming.

Everyone knew it was virtually guaranteed that the county seat 20 some
miles away would be among the first towns hit because it contained a
small plant which manufactured something-something for the military (and
microwaves, which of course was part of their cover).

Oh, Raytheon.

Raytheon is the world's largest producer of guided missiles, and also invented the microwave oven. I gather there was an accident involving a candy bar and a radar dish.

Actually it was a pretty widespread thing with the White Alice network. These were huge curved square dishes that used microwave signals for long-distance communication; there was one just up the mountain from where I sit this morning. Each White Alice rig had concrete posts in front of it to warn off snowplows and also mark where you really didn't want to be standing because microwaves. Crews all over the place, however, realized that if you put a mug of cold coffee on the top of one of those posts you could retrieve it later (no dawdling though!) and the coffee would be hot.

Yup. Somewhere in my hindbrain, I was convinced that I'd never make it to 40. I did. Our stockpiles of nuclear weapons are down. Obama, who also was probably convinced he'd never made it to 40, has done a remarkable -- if quiet -- job of decreasing the nuclear threat over his 8 year term. Russia is occasionally scary, but we're no where near the scaryscary of the USSR. North Korea is...inept at being a global threat. There will likely be a city or two destroyed by a dirty bomb at some point in the future, but as for a global catastrophe? Nukes aren't it. Global Warming? that terrifies me, but I don't fear the nukes.

I grew up in the 60s. We figured the same way.
(Also not going to click on his links.)

I was gonna say: hasn't there been "real talk about nuclear war" for the last sixty years or so?

I mean, I was born in '82, so I didn't get much of it, but the mixed-generation discussions of Watchmen have been pretty interesting in that regard.

I saw a mention of the Doomsday Clock recently - you know, the "it's 5 minutes to nuclear armageddon!" one - and was amazed that's even still a thing.

They take other things than nuclear armageddon into account now. Though frankly, the whole "Global warming will cause massive devestation gradually over the course of a century therefore it's three minutes to armageddon" mapping seems pretty strained these days.