At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said Thursday.
“They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up,” an official in the local prosecutor’s office told Reuters by telephone. “They threaten to detonate a gas tank and blow themselves up.”
The cult members, who include 29 adults and four children, are hidden inside a snow-covered hillside in the Penza region of central Russia. A Penza police spokeswoman said they had moved into the dug-out on November 7.
What was it Jesus said on this subject? “But of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come” (Mark 13: 32,33)–KSH.
Kendall, I love it when scripturalists walk into this trap.
Jesus also supposedly said that it would be happening Real Soon Now (Mt. 24.3-6, 30-35; Mk 14.61-63). It didn’t.
And the apostles were certainly expecting it to happen Any Day Now (2 Thess. 4.15-17; 1 Peter 1.13, 20; 1 John 2.8; Rev. 3.11). When it didn’t, they got a bit defensive (2 Peter 3:3-10; James 5:7-9).
Skeptics could be forgiven for thinking that the early church was not all that different from later doomsday cults.
On a related note, I’m beginning to wonder whether this might account for the disciples’ shock at ‘seeing’ Jesus. Their reaction is consistent with the following hypothetical explanation: “Of course we expected him to be raised from the dead, but that was going to happen as the ‘first fruits’ of the general resurrection at the end of time&nspb;— and that couldn’t be happening now . . . could it?”
D. C., You’re behind the majority of contemporary biblical exegetes. Schweitzer’s “consistent eschatology” has not been voguish for quite some time.
One does not have to look to Russia to find end-of-the-world crazies. There is a ‘Christian’ preacher right here in the United States, who owns 45 radio stations outright, and uses those stations regularly to proclaim an end-of-the-world scenario to take place in the year 2011.
Sounds like they’re worried about Global Warming.
Poor dears; they heard Katherie Schori was coming to take their real estate..