Who Said That?
Tuesday, October 3, 2006 at 08:37AM 
Who Said That?
"After we have proved that the people of flying saucers are none other than demons in human form, and that flying saucers are the flying riding beast or donkey of the Antichrist, which demons made for him to enable him to gain control over the people of the earth, now we need to recognize the goals of the study and the experiment that the demons perform upon human beings and animals in flying saucers. We will relate these goals to the tribulations and the miracles that the Antichrist will bring to humanity."
You know how this works! No cheating or google searches! Leave your answer in the comments section.
Kim Riddlebarger
Believe it or not, this quote is from a very popular Muslim apocalyptic writer (H. 'Abad al-Hamid) who penned these words in 1996. The translation is found in David Cook's excellent book, Contemporary Muslim Apocalyptic Literature (Syracuse University Press, 2005), 81. Cook documents how Muslim writers are now appealing to biblical texts (from Revelation, Daniel, and Ezekiel) to craft bizarre schemes to explain the rise of Israel and the great Satan (America). Some of this stuff is pretty scary.
It just goes to show you that apocalyptic speculation can get pretty loopy whether it comes from a Muslim or an evangelical.
Reader Comments (29)
I'm going to guess Hutchings too.
I imagine most who post at the Riddleblog have a tough time stomaching the dispensational (and the dispensational eschatological) line of thinking ... to say the least ... and rightly so! But surely there are gradations of craziness when it comes to the self-appointed end times gurus. Not all pretribulationists are into speculation; furthermore, some are not into the wild, wild, wild excesses of others.
So the quote in this edition of "Who Said It?" got me to thinking about just who it is that takes the cake when it comes to being utterly off-the-wall in rampant speculation. You know, the no-holds-barred type of speculation that seems to have no controls whatsoever on end times (or other!) scenarios, and seems bent on fabricating the most ludicrous proposals ... and doing so with a ferocity that makes the Energizer Bunny look anemic.
My question then is this: "Who wins the award for this silliness?" Is it a KJV-thumping Texe Marrs? Or are there others that are even worse?
(And who's the most dangerous? I would hope that the really far-out ones would be such a turn-off that people wouldn't bother listening to them. Then again, it's downright scary that anyone listens to any of them. From the sales of their endless stream of books, it really is scary to think about how many people buy into this nonsense.)
One thing that reminds me of the ludicrous nature of such prophets and their prophecies is to engage (just for the fun of it) in spinning some way-out, mindless yarn (where one ridiculous thought leads to another - ad infinitum) ... only to later discover that some prophecy guru had come up with a story that was even more ludicrous.
The imaginations of these people are so fertile that I don't think most of us could out-crazy their craziness if we tried. And they're serious!!!
I also think it might be helpful to point out where theologically they get off the bus and don't follow the interpretation of scripture in light of scripture itself. Instead they interpret scripture with the Bible in one hand and with the newspaper in the other hand... Sometimes I think it's the comics section of the newspaper...
Now if we can just get someone to give us the answer!
Frankly, I think reading the comics might give us something closer to the truth re: the future than the eccentric guesswork of ___________ (whoever he is!).