The Chinese Menu of Truthiness

Christian and Islamic Endtime prophecies are often so vague that people can interpret them in widely disparate ways. This theme runs throughout the Revelation trilogy . These prophetic seers in effect claim to know the mind of God i.e. Truth with a Capital T. However, scripture also teaches us that human beings are fallible and may just, from time to time, edit the voice of God, Allah, or whomever, to suit their purposes. The characters in the Revelation trilogy , for various reasons, pick prophecies, aphorisms, and truths from a sort of Chinese menu -- the essence of what Steven Colbert labeled truthiness.

This week, the South Carolina government provided a parable of this process. In the state's brief to the Supreme Court opposing same-sex marriage, they have taken an 'originalist' argument that the 14th Amendment clearly allowed discrimination against married women should the states choose to do so. Because the 14th Amendment provided African-American males with the right to own property and contract with whomever they wished, but did not provide the same rights to females of any ancestry, it clearly left to the states the rights to determine marital rights. For the record, the South Carolina Attorney General has made it clear the state does not plan to deprive women of property rights they currently have. He just wants you to know that doing so would not be unconstitutional.

At least one Supreme Court justice has made this argument before. Justice Antonin Scalia, in an interview with California Lawyer made the statement "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws."

I argue to be consistent with that argument, let's do the same with the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment does not guarantee Freedom of Religion to any religion that did not exist in 1787. Similarly, the Right to Bear Arms enshrined in the Second Amendment does not include any weapon that was manufactured after Constitutional ratification. Under the Seventh Amendment all civil trials involving more than $20 must be held before a jury. The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, let's use 1787 values for that as well.

Running the Apocalyptic Numbers

Ever since mankind learned to count, it seems, we have asked numbers to tell us more than how many cows we had in a field. We have in many instances asked them to tell us the future, as if the numbers themselves held some insight into future events or even God.

Numbers, like letters, are symbols. Some numeric symbols take on a meaning all their own. Consider the number 666. It is the mark of the beast from Revelation, a symbol of evil, of man trying to be God. Let's forget for the moment that some Revelation translations use the number 616, it's just not as sexy. The number 666 in various forms seems to have a grip on the Christian imagination.

When a South Carolina boater, the aptly named Louis Jordan, recently claimed to have been rescued after 66 days at sea spent largely reading End Times prophecies, it seemed to tick all the apocalyptic boxes. Some skeptics considered it a little too convenient. Newspapers consistently described him as more "robust" than one would expect a person who survived on rain water, fish and kelp for 66 days to be.According to his story, his boat capsized, but remained afloat. He therefore could get into the boat for shelter from the sun, hence his lack of sunburn or even decent tan. Commenters on the story were already taking bets on when the saved sailor would become a "fisher of men."

The number 6, however, does not have an apocalyptic monopoly. According to another article, a mystic Rabbi in Southern Israel is obsessing over the number 4. He has noted the Blood Moon Tetrad where the blood moons in 2014 and 2015 occurred on Sukkoth and Passover in each year with a solar eclipse in between. Blood moons are lunar eclipses. The Rabbi Amran Vaknin, according to the story, claims that the four blood moons with the 2015 Passover lunar eclipse lasting four minutes and 44 seconds on 4/4/15 means that Jews should pray to repent because the 44th President will bring blood upon Israel.

Time for a deep breath. First, the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar. While the lunar eclipses lining up on the holidays is an unusual event, the phase of the moon is not. It's designed that way. Secondly, the 4/4/15 date is taken from a solar calendar known as the Gregorian calendar or civil calendar. Thou shalt not mix calendars for cheap prophetic thrills.

Finally, as in a previous post, the facts seem a little thin. A search for Rabbi Amran Vaknin seems to indicate that the man came fully blown into existence on or about March 25 of this year. All the articles are almost verbatim recountings of blood moon warnings spiced with hints that a coming messiah will undo all the damage that evil Barack Obama has done. The article claims the Rabbi foretold the Gaza Flotilla and other recent events in Israel, but the modern day's excuse for research, Googling, does not reveal any mention of the good Rabbi before last month. Sadly, he has been accurately prophesying in isolation.

Of course all this coincides with the Iranian nuclear deal. Perhaps all the blood moon hype comes from the Book of Netanyahu.

I understand people want to sell books . So do I. But my books are fiction speculating about how people would react if they believed they were in the End Times. If you find a kernel of truth in them, great. That's what novels are supposed to do. Don't look to them for facts.