Author Archives: tom

Rapture Update

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On a previous post I talked about Harold Camping who has a program on Family Radio. While having no formal education in Scripture (his background is in civil engineering), he presents himself as an expert on the Bible, and particularly in predicting the Rapture (this is the belief that at a fixed point in time God will take the righteous directly into Heaven and leave Earth in the hands of Satan who will have his way with those remaining before God destroys the world). Mr. Camping predicted that the Rapture would be May 21, 2011 at 6PM.

This should surprise nobody but his deadline came and went without anything happening. For what it’s worth I texted a few of my chaplain colleagues at 6:15PM to make sure we were all still here (and we were). We were amused but not surprised.

Harold was surprised and definitely not amused. After hiding from his followers and the press for a few days, he announced that May 21st was a “spiritual” judgement day and the world will definitely end on October 21st. Since he predicted that he and his followers would be in Heaven by now, watching the rest of us dealing with earthquakes and other disasters, you have to figure it sucks to be him. I can only imagine what he will say on October 22nd.

Finally, here’s my question: before May 21st we were all warned that the Rapture could happen at any time. The message was clear: don’t sin because the Rapture could happen right after your worst sin. That won’t look good to God who decides who goes and who stays. But now we know that the Rapture won’t happen until October. Doesn’t that give us a free summer? Sin with abandon in June, July, August, September, and the first two weeks of October. Then repent by October 21st and be among the saved.

If I were the Las Vegas Visitor’s Bureau I’d be all over this.

By the way, Family Radio still has a web page announcing the end of the world on May 21st.

Am I sinning by laughing at this?

Is There Anyone Not Running For President?

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In my last post I talked about listing the people running for President in 2012. Running for President is fairly easy: you just need to have been born in the United States (which includes our territories) and be 35 years old. There are, currently, two major parties: the Democrats and the Republicans. It’s a virtually certainty that the winner of the 2012 election will be from one of those two parties. Furthermore, I expect I join most Democrats in believing that President Obama will be the Democratic nominee. The Republican nominee is a wide open field.

Nevertheless, I’ve chosen to add other candidates to my list. Some are challengers to major party candidates; others are members of minor parties; finally, others are people who belong to no party and run as independents. I don’t expect any of them to move into the White House on January 20, 2013, but I’m including them to show that there is no reason they can’t.

Frankly, the job of looking at their web pages has been a painful job. I find most of them delusional and think our Founding Fathers would be holding their noses too. Most of them are running on a platform of “the past years/decades/centuries have shown that our forefathers would be horrified at seeing what the government is doing. I’ve arrived just in time to save us. Vote for me.” On the whole they believe that government is too intrusive and that we would do better if nobody told us what to do.

I’m American enough to not like to be told what to do but I also believe that most of us like what the government does when we need something. I like the idea that my local government will send someone to my house of I (or someone else in my family) have a heart attack or if my house catches on fire. I like having a public library system even if I don’t use it very often. I like the idea of having a good school system even if I don’t have children who attend (because, let’s face it, the students in those schools are the people I’m counting on to contribute to social security when we’re retired).

I’m not impressed by all the people who claim to “recapture” the values of the founders of our country and have no intention of voting for them, but I’m American enough to give them a voice. I’m encouraged by the belief that our next President is chosen not by those who chose to run, but by those who choose to vote.

Choose to vote.

Left Behind

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OK, I’m writing this on May 21, 2011 at 6:17 PM. I have to admit a certain amount of disappointment as I was hoping to be raptured by now. According to Family Radio today was supposed to be the day that all those who were “with God” were supposed to be taken to Heaven. The rest, and I guess I am included here, are supposed to endure earthquakes, unreturned phone calls and other natural disasters. I’m kind of OK with that as long as I find someone who was raptured who left their car keys on the front seat.

Updating This Page

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A great deal has happened in the past few weeks and I haven’t had time to write much about it. Every year around the first of May I travel with Nancy to the annual Pediatric Academic Society Convention and this year it was in Denver. I’ve gone to enough of these to have become friends with several of her colleagues and I think I look forward to seeing them as much as she does. Denver is a beautiful city but I have to confess it’s not a place I would go to without a reason. Anyway, next year’s meeting is Boston and I’m already looking forward to that.

While we were in Denver we got word that Osama bin Laden was killed in a shootout with a group of Navy Seals. I have to confess that while I normally prefer slow justice over shootouts, I applauded his death that night. The hunt for bin Laden took nearly 10 years and parts of two Presidential administrations (technically it was 13 years and three administrations; President Clinton began the hunt in 1998 after the bombings of our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania). President Obama was rightly concerned that if bin Laden was captured alive he would become a target for Americans being kidnapped and held as hostages. Any trial for bin Laden would have taken years and have given him a platform that the world doesn’t need. As for the Seals who (once again) got the job done: they don’t do press conferences or curtain calls. We likely will never know their names, but I pray they understand the depth of the phrase “a grateful nation.”

It’s also time to update this page. I’ve taken out the casualty counter on the left column. I was hesitant to do that because I didn’t want to give the impression that anyone is forgetting that we still have young men and women fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The problem is that I just can’t find a casualty counter for Afghanistan and that’s where our focus is now. If I can find one, I’ll put it in. In its place I’m putting in the beginnings of stuff for the Presidential race. I recognize that the election isn’t for 17 months, but the race has already begun. For now I’m going to list the candidates; when the major parties start their primary season I hope to keep a delegate count. This was a bit of a nightmare for me in 2008, but I’ll do what I can. My process for listing someone is twofold: I find his/her name using a Google search and the candidate has an active web page. I’m guessing not everyone is happy with this process, but it’s the best I can come up with. If you have a better system, email me.

Of course, according to Family Radio it won’t matter since Judgement Day is a short 3 days away.

It's Tax Day. Do You Know Where Your Money Is Going? You Can Find Out

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Hopefully anyone reading this has already done his taxes, but it’s an interesting point to ask where the money is going. We have a funny attitude in the country: we look at taxes as a personal assault on our checkbooks, and yet we demand that the government fix everything we perceive is wrong. I’m one of those “tax and spend” liberals who actually doesn’t mind paying taxes for the privilege of living in a free country, knowing the local fire department still makes house calls, and exercising freedoms of speech and religion.

The White House has a web page where you can calculate (in general terms) where your money goes. This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise, but the taxes we pay are a bit of a shell game. If you look at your paycheck stub you can see that the federal government takes money out of three different categories: federal tax, social security, and medicare. In reality all three deductions go into the same pot, and this pot pays social security, medicare, medicaid, defense, national parks, foreign aid, and NPR.

It’s a pretty simple formula and I’m a little surprised that nobody thought of this sooner. The percentage of the budget is fixed and this page allows you to put in the taxes you paid into a calculator. Go ahead and try. It could be hopeful or sobering, depending on your views. As for me, I like that Nancy and I paid $879.53 for Veteran’s benefits.

Sesquicentennial of our Darkest Hour

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Today marks the 150th Anniversary (Sesquicentennial) of the Civil War (or War Between the States, or War of Northern Aggression). No event in our history as a nation says more about who we are than this: the time between April 12, 1861 (the attack of Ft. Sumter) and April 9, 1965 (the surrender at Appomattox) we were a country at war with ourselves. By the time it ended 625,000 of us would be dead (more than died in World War I and II combined).

There are probably more books written about these four years than any other time in our history. Here are suggestions from books I’ve read:

Growing up in Northern Virginia (and as an adult living in the city of Manassas) I was struck by how the war continued to live in people who were born 100 years later. I was aware that the war itself was called by different names (Civil War, War Between the States, etc.) and I learned that even the battles had different names: Bull Run vs. Manassas, Chancellorsville vs. Wilderness, and others.

I also learned that the reasons for the war were not in agreement. In the north it was viewed as a war about whether or not slavery would exist, and in the south it was about whether states (who voluntarily joined the union) could leave the union. The more I read the more I’m convinced that slavery is the reality that cannot be ignored.

The roots of the Civil War can (and must be) traced back to the writing of our Constitution. The framers who drafted the Constitution in 1787 faced a dilemma when it came to slaves: how can we say all men are created equal when clearly some are the property of others. Several of framers were slave owners themselves, and while they may have found the institution of slavery distasteful, they participated in it. They also believed that the new nation would not survive if they tried to outlaw slavery. Essentially they punted, and hoped the issue would be resolved in future generations. It is interesting to note one compromise in the 1st Article of the Constitution: “Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years [ie, not slaves, but indentured servants], and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other persons.” In other words, if you owned 5 slaves they were counted as 3 persons in the census.

By the time of the Civil War, some 80 years later, slavery had become an institution in the South and most Northerners either had no opinion or found it distasteful but not serious enough to end. It was also a time of Westward expansion into new territories like Missouri and Kansas. Many people in the North, including Abraham Lincoln, wanted to stop slavery where it is and not allow it to move west. Southern slave owners were outraged and believed this discriminated against them. They felt so alienated that they came to the decision that since they voluntarily joined the United States in 1789 they could just as voluntarily pull out and form their own nation. Those in the North disagreed and believed that joining together in 1789 was an irreconcilable covenant that can’t be broken. The war officially started on April 12, 1861 when Southern forces (or members of the newly formed Confederate States of America) began shelling the garrison at Ft. Sumner, South Carolina.

It’s my belief that the South never really believed the North would fight all that hard, and it is generally believed that the South expected a victory in a few weeks or months. It didn’t happen that way. President Lincoln was adamant that the Union be preserved and came only later to the belief that the post war Union would prohibit slavery. By the time the war ended the South was in shambles and the next 12 years would be called “Reconstruction.” In some ways this was as bad a time for the South as the war itself. After President Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865 he was replaced by Andrew Johnson a Southerner who remained in the Senate from Tennessee even after his state seceded. He was a weak man and Radical Republicans made life very difficult in the South. Out of this came a South that wanted to see pre-Civil War days as much better than they were. They saw it as a time when ladies and gentlemen were safe while they cared for slaves who were content with their lives. They denied that the war was about slavery or its westward expansion and that freeing slaves made them into dangerous men roaming the countryside looking for opportunities to harm or kill white people. The 1915 movie Birth of a Nation makes this point and claims the Ku Klux Klan formed as a way of protecting white people from former slaves.

Even today the Confederate Battle Flag draws controversy as some see it as a symbol of slavery while others see it as Southern heritage and tradition.

It's the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)

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Apologies to R.E.M. but it’s always a great story. In the Christian Bible (Matthew 24:36-42) Jesus says this (New American Bible translation):

“As for the exact day or hour, no one knows it, neither the angels in heaven nor the Son, but the Father only. The coming of the Son of Man will repeat what happened in Noah’s time. In the days before the flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and being married, right up to the day Noah entered the ark. They were totally unconcerned until the flood came and destroyed them. So will it be at the coming of the Son of Man. Two men will be out in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal; one will be taken and one will be left. Stay awake, therefore! You cannot know the day your Lord is coming.”

There are countless ways to understand this passage, but there has always been Christians who interpret this in this way:

  • At a time of God’s choosing the world will end.
  • Those who are saved will be taken directly to heaven.
  • Those left behind will face untold tribulations.
  • While the Bible insists that no one knows when this will happen except the Father, there are clues that we can interpret and predict when this will happen

Virtually from the earliest days of the Christian Church there have been those who have predicted that this date is soon. The latest is the folk at Family Radio. They predict the end of the world (or the “Rapture”) will be May 21, 2011. If you click on their web page they give a formula to show how the date is relevant. Just for amusement I looked at their rationale, and here’s what I came up with:

They claim that in God’s mercy He has given us the information we need to predict. In 2 Peter 3:8 it states that for God “a day is as a thousand years.” Therefore we can use this as a calculator. Two days is 2,000 years, etc. They claim that the Noah’s Ark flood was in 4990 BC, and this year, 2011, is exactly 7,000 years later. St. Peter states in 2 Peter 2:5: “Nor did he spare the ancient world – even though he preserved Noah as a preacher of holiness, with seven others, when he brought down the flood on that godless earth.” If you’re wondering how they find Noah’s Ark in the year 4990 BC, they do this through a series of calculations in the Book of Genesis. You can look at a thread in Catholic Answers for more background, but Genesis 7:11 states that the flood started on the 17th day of the 2nd month in the 600th year of Noah’s life. Translating from the ancient Hebrew Calendar to ours makes the 17th day of the 2nd month May 21st.

OK, here’s where it gets fun for me. If they claim that Noah’s Ark was 4990 BC, then 7000 years later would be 2010, not 2011. Why didn’t this happen last year?

OK, maybe it gets fun for me now. They have another proof that begins with the statement that Jesus was crucified on April 1, 33. They don’t give the rational but claim this is the only date that fits when the Bible states Jesus was crucified (let’s put on hold the fact that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke place the Last Supper as Passover and John’s gospel has the Last Supper as the night before the Passover meal).

From April 1, 33 to May 21, 2011 there are 722,500 days. What is the significance of 722,500? Glad you asked. If you multiply 5 X 10 X 17 X 5 X 10 X 17 you get 722,500. For simplicity’s sake it’s really 2 X (5 X 10 X 17). The order of the numbers doesn’t matter, we just need to see the significance of the numbers 2, 5, 10, and 17.

According to these folk, the number 2 signifies doubling and they say: “Remarkably this number sequence is doubled, to indicate it has been established by God and will shortly come to pass.” Proof of this is Genesis 41:32: “That Pharaoh had the same dream twice means that the matter has been reaffirmed by God and that God will soon bring it about.”

The number 5 signifies atonement or redemption. You can see this from Exodus 30:15 where the rich are commanded to give more (money) and the poor shall not give less than one half a shekel (1/2 equals 0.5) in atonement for souls. Also in Numbers 3:47-48:

The Lord said to Moses: “Take the Levites in place of all the first-born of the Israelites, and the Levites’ cattle in place of their cattle, that the Levites may belong to me. I am the LORD. As ransom for the two hundred and seventy-three first-born of the Israelites who outnumber the Levites, you shall take five shekels for each individual, according to the standard of the sanctuary shekel, twenty gerahs to the shekel. Give this silver to Aaron and his sons as ransom for the extra number.” So Moses took the silver as ransom from those who were left when the rest had been redeemed by the Levites. From the first-born of the Israelites he received in silver one thousand three hundred and sixty-five shekels according to the sanctuary standard. He then gave this ransom silver to Aaron and his sons, as the LORD had commanded him.

Still following? OK, the number 10 (or 100 or 1,000) signifies completeness. We find this because the Bible often speaks of 10 coins or 100 sheep or 1,000 years. Also Satan is bound for 1,000 years in Revelation 20:2-3.

Lastly, the number 17 frequently signifies Heaven. This is from Jeremiah 32 where God tells him to purchase a field for 17 silver shekels. You can read this in Jeremiah 32:7-17.

This gives us the formula 2 X (5 X 10 X 17) = 722,500. Therefore since 722,500 days from the crucifixion of Jesus is May 21, 2011, this will be the end of the world.

If you think like me, you’re thinking that this stuff is awfully arbitrary and that these numbers came about because they shopped for numbers to back up their prediction. If God did indeed plant these hints so we could predict, I know I would never have come up with this. I can only assume this means I’ll be left behind. In that case can someone who is being raptured leave his car for me?

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire: 100 Years Later

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Exactly 100 years ago today there was a fire on 29 Washington Place in New York City. The fire was important for a few reasons: the top three floors of the building housed a factory where immigrant women worked 52 hours per week sewing women’s blouses (called shirtwaists); the women had little or no protection for their safety; when a lit cigarette started a fire they were trapped since the doors were locked to prevent theft or the workers from going to the bathroom. There were also no fire alarms; for many of the workers, their first indication of trouble was the fire itself.

By the time the fire was extinguished 146 people were dead; they were either incinerated by the fire or died by jumping to their deaths to escape the flames.

In the aftermath the factory closed. This did not lead owners and managers of factories to institute reforms. It did, however, give unions (particularly the International Ladies Garment Workers Union) and the state legislators the moral authority to institute reforms to protect workers. Among people who belong to unions, this is an important anniversary.

Unfortunately 100 years after the deaths of these 129 women and 17 men, the union cause is again under attack. Union membership continues to decline and unions continue to be seen as impediments to progress. They are not, however, impediments to safety. This anniversary should remind us that union membership has given all of us many of the things we take for granted: the five day work week, the 8 hour day, and basic safeguards against danger.

Let us all pray for the 146 Americans who died 100 years ago today, and thank them for the awareness they gave us. And think about them whenever you see a fire escape.

The Justice Chronicles Volume 6: The Supreme Court rules on Snyder v. Phelps. Unfortunate But Necessary

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I’ve reported on this case before, and on March 2nd the Supreme Court ruled on the case. By a vote of 8-1 the Court upheld the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest at funerals. They have protested at several funerals of young men and women killed in uniform who died in service to our country, including the funeral of Matthew Snyder. The members of the church (who are mainly members of the family of pastor, Fred Phelps) carry signs that say: “God Hates the USA/Thank God for 9/11” or “God Hates Fags.”

The Court ruled that while this speech is clearly offensive and painful, it’s protected by the First Amendment. At the end of the day, I’m afraid I have to say that I agree.

As a Christian I hate the fact that Fred Phelps claims to worship the same God as me. And while I pray for his conversion from a life of hate to a life of love, as an American citizen I believe he has a right to his hate. He has a right to offend me, and large segments of the population.

The final good news here is that all of us also have the right to offend him. Since this case has made national news, several organizations have promised to show up at these same funerals to shout down Phelps, et. al. They also have First Amendment protection.

The Justice Chronicles Volume 5: Bruesewitz v. Wyeth: The Government Doing What It's Supposed To Do

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Last month the Supreme Court ruled 6-2 in the case of Bruesewitz v. Wyeth and I’m finding great satisfaction over it.

Here some background and the basic facts of the case: In the last few decades there has been an increased belief that there is a link between vaccines and illness, especially autism (you can read more of my views on this in a previous post). Out of this came a well founded fear that drug companies would no longer be willing to develop or manufacture childhood vaccines. In 1986 Congress passed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA). Section 22(b)(1) states this:

[n]o vaccine manufacturer shall be liable in a civil action for damages arising from a vaccine-related injury or death associated with the administration of a vaccine after October 1, 1988, if the injury or death resulted from side effects that were unavoidable even though the vaccine was properly prepared and was accompanied by proper directions and warnings

This act does not prevent anyone from suing a drug company if they did something wrong, but it did say you can’t sue if they did everything right and the person had a bad outcome.

Hannah Bruesewitz received the DPT (diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus) vaccine and later developed seizures. Her parents sued Wyeth claiming the vaccine caused this. Because they could not prove that Wyeth did anything wrong (or for that matter that there was a link between the vaccine and her seizures) the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Wyeth.

This puts me in a strange place as I almost never side with these large drug companies, and I virtually never side with Antonin Scalia, who wrote the majority opinion.

Our nation is currently full of people who believe that the free market can take care of our needs and government shouldn’t interfere. But I find that this was our government doing well what it should be doing. The free market would have made it unprofitable (and therefore impossible) to develop and manufacture vaccines that have become essential to childhood health. Congress passed, the President signed, and the Supreme Court affirmed this legislation.

Way to go.