Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 344: The Book of Revelation

Episode Date: December 15, 2018

Join us today as we explore the infamous Book of Revelation, from the bloody history of the times the book was written to the metal-as-fuck imagery contained therein.

Hey there people Henry Zabrowski here for Trollville the web series created by my beautiful wife Natalie Jean and Sina Ghaznavi and myself. It is the story of Toby McGuire a sweet young troll That is forced to reckon with the consequences of his internet actions It is for rent on Vimeo slash on demand slash Trollville It is a work of love a work of sweat and hate. We have put our bullshit into it We put our own money and it's completely independent production like all of the things here at last podcast network And I hope you could support it. Hail see There's no place to escape to this is the last

On the left That's when the cannon blows and started. What was that? Can you hear me? Can you hear Lord? Can you hear Lord in the house? Can you feel him as the time has come Lord? I'm ready for Lord. CBD's into my syndrome Lord. Let that CBD. Get all down inside my guts Lord. I think our ministers on drugs. I don't know what the hell's going on Welcome to the last podcast on the left everyone. I am Ben Kissel with Marcus Parks. Hello, and we got Henry Zabrowski perfect preacher Trials and tribulations my friend. We see our ways through these days. These days of puzzlement. These days of torture too. But one day all flocks of our shepherds. Oh you shall see the Lord is going to come in. He's going to relieve you of this weight.

Well that would be nice in my case. Alright, well why is Henry doing a minister voice today? We are going to be covering the book of Revelation. It's the most rock chapter of the Bible I think. Oh yeah man, the book of Revelation aka the Revelation of Saint John the Divine is the last, best, and by far the most metal chapter in the New Testament of the Christian Bible Written almost 2000 years ago in what some scholars believe to be between June of 68 AD and January of 69 while others naturally point towards the year 66. I have a question. Why is it that so many characters from the Bible sound like awesome contestants on RuPaul's Drag Race? Saint Paul, Saint John the Divine, you win just immediately. They did that though. They took it back. Oh they took it back. It's nice that they do it. Now Marcus has been waiting to do this topic for a long time haven't you dog? Yes. Very much so. I love the book of Revelation. Now why are we covering this besides just being the most evil fucking ridiculous book ever allowed to be inside of a church? That's it. That's the whole reason why because Revelation is the evilest book around. It's the most metal book around and it's responsible for quite a bit of pain and suffering in this world.

Hey alright, let's get into it. No there's a lot of crazy stuff. When I found out that you have to have a martyr's bone in the main thing in a Catholic church, it's pretty cool. Now in the book the world as we know it ends in a maelstrom of death and chaos when Jesus Christ returns not as the Prince of Peace but as a surreal action hero that bursts forth from heaven riding a horse named Faithful and True while shooting swords out of his mouth all to end the battle of Armageddon. Yeah, ultimate fatality dude. Awesome. Faith and Truth is such a cool name for a horse. There's nothing I love better than when a holy book just ends in Smash Brothers. It really does end like every murder fist sketch where it's like, yes we kill each other, is that how this goes? And the battle is only after seven years of horrific tribulations which is followed by a thousand years of peace, the millennium, which is followed by Satan coming back briefly to stir up the pot before he goes back to hell and then all as well for eternity. But that's if and only if you're a good Christian. Now for some, Revelation is the most terrifying book in existence, painting scenes of destruction and suffering that are specific enough to evoke nightmares but vague enough to let people fill in the blanks with their own imagination.

The Bible is really only good for one thing which is spanking an old man who's been naughty. It's got a nice poundage to it. You can just whack the hell out of him. You know, just some kind of Albert Fish looking man who's going, thank you, thank you. So the old Bible is really good for making God act like Crom from Conan the Barbarian. I love Angry God. Angry God's so much fun because he fucking kills everybody in so many ways. They also use the Bible to pop cysts which is entirely true. I had a Bible blister they called it on my hand when I was a kid. They called it that because they used to smash them with Bibles and then they would pop and then that's true. Would they put a cover on the Bible or is there just Bibles around there covered in cyst pus? No, I don't know what they did but they didn't do that to me. They drained it like an adult because now we have medicine. But before they would just smash it with a Bible. Well for an example of the imagination of Revelation, take this verse, read from the King James Version which in my opinion is far superior to all that new international business.

You are not alone. And don't even get me started on the living translation. Wow, come on. You are not alone in that because there are many people that take the Kim James Bible like I've seen in the YouTube comments of the documentaries I watched where they all say the same thing about the heresy of the other versions of Revelations. Yeah, King James is where it's at. Listen to this, the sun became black as sackcloth of hair and the moon became as blood and the stars of heaven fell onto the earth even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs when she is shaken of a mighty wind. Take these unripe figs! Ooh I love figs. Revelation also gave us such badass imagery as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the Star Wormwood, Hell as the Lake of Fire, and of course the mysterious boogeyman that is the beast 666.

It's my father, I need to meet my father at the end of time. He's gonna turn your butthole inside out. You're gonna be like, what were those dolls growing up that you could like squish them back into like their little, like they cocooned themselves. Mad balls? No, not mad balls, although that would work as well. They're like little stuffed animals. They're called like rolly pets or roll them up, roller downs. I just remember being, it's really weird to be able to take a toy that you love and be able to shove its head up inside its own pussy. That's what you got to do. Not only does Revelations have all that, but Revelation is also the only link that connects the serpent in the Garden of Eden to Satan when it calls the devil quote, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray. No, he was the only one brave enough to tell fucking Eve that her pussy was hanging out.

Honestly, again, we're gonna eventually be covering another topic near and dear to my heart, but Satan was just telling them what was going on, but again, this is not time for my postmodern satanistic revisionary stance on the book of Revelations. Yeah, they did get a good age joke in there on Satan calling him ancient. He wants to be young, that's his whole thing. But this is the fucking, this is the OG origination of all these cool ass characters. This is like the first, what's a great comic book series. This is seeing all the boys. This is like, was an Iron Man like a plumber in Spider-Man 57 or something? I think it's all the boys. That's the best comic book series, I'm pretty sure. I've read, I've thumbed through that one before. I like dude. I like sci-fi books. I didn't read a lot of comic books. The boys is a fantastic comic book series, actually. By Garthen, it's the same guy who wrote Preacher, which is my favorite comic book series, and perhaps why I love Revelation so much. Alright, there it is.

But the thing about Revelation is that a damn near didn't make it into the Bible at all. They were gonna cut it? They were gonna cut it. Ooh, who's editing this goddamn book? That's the best joke. Lord Michaels. Oh my God. A bunch of fat guys around two to three hundred AD. But the reason why it almost didn't make it is because it is fucking insane. Not to mention nearly indecipherable. But it's not even the only apocalyptic book that was considered for the Bible.

There were a whole bunch of them up for it. Ooh. Twenty other stories, similar to Revelation, were found amongst the Gnostic Gospels that were discovered in Egypt in 1945 by a farmer named Muhammad Al-Saman right after he avenged his father's murder. You killed my father! My question, is that the same as the Dead Sea Scrolls? I don't believe so. I don't think so. I don't think so. No, no, no. These are the Al-Hamadi scrolls.

I had a book about that during my fucking, we'll go into it. Do they have a writing competition? How the hell did they get 20? We're looking for an end to this goddamn book. If you can send us the conclusion, we are going through a Stephen King-like mental block right now. Send us the conclusion and you will be published. A part of the reason why I think that, I mean, I would list dog meat as this is sort of, I have now even becoming, I've been infected by dog meat's fucking disease where I'm becoming a history nerd as well over time. And as a part of, as you realize, as you look back in time, you know, the modern people have been around a long time, like modern thinking has been around for a long time. So when they were packaging the Bible, they knew you had to have something to fucking leave them with. Oh yeah. They didn't have a song you're humming when you're walking out of the theater or you're not going to remember it to tell it to other people.

So a part of it is that, is that you needed a nice capper. Interesting. So, but they didn't go with the nice cap. They went with the mean one. They went with the big mean one. So here's Muhammad al-Saman story. He and his brothers found their father's murderer and according to them, they hacked off the murderer's limbs, ripped out his heart and devoured it among them as the ultimate act of blood revenge. They had me until the cannibalism. I was kind of for it, what they were doing, but then they did go ahead and just eat a man's heart. Then they went on a few errands and they traveled out into the desert to dig for a soft soil to fertilize their crops. Can I ask you, what are the errands? Don't you just go out to the desert and be like, it's the desert and go back? Kissel, I don't know if you paid attention to the eight years of us doing the show, but as soon as you have a body, that's when the homework begins. That's the errand they were running. I see, okay.

Well, while they were out in the desert looking for some fertile soil, they found a jar containing 13 papyrus books bound in leather, and those were the Gnostic Gospels. And we will one day cover Gnostic Christianity, which is a something else entirely, and it's a whole side of thought that is a lot to cram into our holes, which I tried to do for OST for the last three weeks, and I tried to explain it, but I seem to be loosening listeners by the barrel, according to some. Uh-huh. Yeah, that'll be fascinating. It's one of those Gnostic Bibles, it's one of those side missions in Red Dead that takes you like two hours, longer than a regular one, when you have to help someone who's fucking lost, and they have to go to the totally opposite direction that you were going, and you already got the cocksucker on your fucking horse. You can shut the game off at any point. It's not really a job, you haven't signed a contract, like you're not a Twitch, one of those like people, you know. But you made the commitment, and then they're like, you're going the wrong way, mister, and then they're annoying you, and then you have to shoot them. Yeah, I've shot a couple of people because they annoyed me as well.

But the thing is about the Gnostic Gospels is there might have been even more apocalyptic stories than just those 20, but a lot of the Gnostic Gospels were lost when Muhammad's mother burned them for cooking fuel, having no idea that they'd found priceless artifacts from the early days of Christianity. It looks like the day I came home from high school one day, and my mom was so mad about me lying about my math grades, because I had been lying about it, and she went ahead of me. She went to my math teacher and found out that I was getting a C, right, because I just wasn't doing my homework. So she came into my fucking room while I was at school and ripped down all of my posters. And some of them are still like, that fear and loathing poster, you can't get anymore. That Area 51 poster that I had, I couldn't get anymore. I got that when we visited Woodstock when I was 10 years old. And you can't go back and get that poster. Now you can with the internet, but at the time, it was far more difficult.

I think both levels of importance are accurate. There is the C in math class warrants, getting your posters ripped down, and you killed your fucking father, and you're going to get your papyrus. You're going to get your documents burned. But even so, 20 apocalyptic stories survived, and the competition to be the one to definitively describe the second coming existed, even as John was writing Revelation in the book. He calls out two other contemporaries in the text, saying that they were liars, and they would be smitten by God eventually. Oh man, flame wars have always existed. And it's very interesting because why are apocalyptic stories and stories of the end of times have been hand in hand with religion since the very fucking beginning? Everybody seems to have understood. You always need an end to the story that you can scare people with to keep them in line.

Totally. I mean, it's just the macro of all cult thinking, isn't it? Isn't there always an end game in all the cults for the most part? Well, I think it also just has to do with rational human thinking, because if you think, like, okay, well, if my friend dies, then that means that I'm going to die, and if I'm going to die, then that means that everything's going to die, and if everything's going to die, then what is the end going to look like? But it never really makes sense for the end to just kind of be happy. The end is going to look like Jimmy Carter and Willie Nelson hanging out on a beach, and we're all dead. Fuck yeah, dude, and I'm just high as fuck, dude. Well, some of the alternatives to Revelation were actually even weirder than Revelation itself.

Here is a direct translation from one called Discourse on the 8th and 9th. I call your name, hidden within me. That is phonetic, and I did that with the breaks. That is a phonetic translation with the breaks, just a lot of I's, O's, and E's. It just sounds like a guy was just fucking noodling, waiting for inspiration, but you can't do it the same with your words as you can with the sitar, and for a while they just thought, well, if I just keep, like, writing vowels, eventually I'll come up with a prophecy. Absolutely.

But after centuries of arguing, it was decided that the revelation of John should be included in the Bible for the following reasons. One, it was thought to be the writings of the apostle John of Zebedee, he of John 316 fame, so it was given more credence. Yeah, I'll not tell you what, I don't give any credence to anybody named Zippadoo, Zippadaw, because my name's Tom, well, Zippadoo, and I think my verse to the end of the Bible is correct. He nailed it. That, however, is not the case. We now know that the book of Revelation was written by just some dude named John,

who was exiled by the Romans out to an island called Patmos off the coast of Turkey. I like it better now, I actually like that it's just an everyman. Yeah, well, it's an everyman. Did we know, is John of Zebedee, is that also known as the apostle John, is that the same guy? Yes, that's the apostle John. And then, but John Baptist is different than John of Zebedee, right? Yes, John the Baptist is a totally different dude. How many people did John the Baptist accidentally drown?

That's what I want to know, because I did one of those river baptisms. Yeah. The pastor just fucking, he just dumped me and I was wearing a white shirt. I told this story before. They laughed at me. Well, he was trying to establish dominance. They laughed at me, Henry. He was trying to establish dominance like training a dog.

He saw how big you were and how happy you were to be in the water and he wanted to make sure that you knew who the boss was. Well, John of Patmos, it's thought by reading the scripture that John of Patmos was probably known to his followers because he said, I, John, your brother whom you know. So it's thought that Revelation was actually like more of a, like it was kind of a radio play. It was meant to be read aloud. People were supposed to sit around and listen to John of Patmos read this thing. And that implies that, you know, keep at the very least had followers. He had people that listened to what he had to say.

Cool. And in fact, John of Patmos wasn't even a Christian, at least not in the modern sense. He was Jewish because at that time the construct of Christianity as we know it didn't exist yet. His guys like John, they were Jews who thought that Jesus was the actual Messiah. Okay. There wasn't, the split hadn't happened yet. Interesting. See, because these were still in the makeup up times.

Makeup ups as opposed to now. Yeah. Now everything's solid, Kessel, and it will always be this way. Nothing will ever change ever again. Okay. And these guys, I mean, they're just throwing shit against the wall to see what stuck. And that leads us to another reason why Revelation was included in the New Testament. It was partly a reboot of the book of Daniel from the Old Testament with some sprinklings of Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Isaiah thrown in there as well.

They just did a reboot? You know who they got back for it too? Who? Candice Bergen. Really? Yeah. Well, she was actually just in the hospital. I hope she's doing okay.

I hope she's doing okay. Yeah, she just blew out her asshole doing powerless things. She did not do, well, that's it. It didn't happen. Well, Revelation, what it did is it made callbacks to shit people already knew without totally ripping off the Old Testament. So the whole thing wasn't completely out of left field. It's like the willow to the Old Testament's Lord of the Rings. Oh.

If willow had become one of the most successful movies of all time. Honestly, underrated. Highly underrated. But you know, like willow ripped off a lot of stuff from the Lord of the Rings, but wasn't necessarily Lord of the Rings. Okay. But it's also the same thing. It's everybody did, right? And it's also a thing that's been, if they are, if we are going to also talk about the mythos that build the Christian myths, right?

The idea that maybe, you know, Jesus was based off of like, Mithra or any of those other gods and stuff like that. It seems that these are kind of stories from the collective unconsciousness that came being retold in a new fun way. Right. Like, you know, like, here's the revelations, but now with Tom Holland. And it's in high school, you know. All right. Love that. So it was horror movie night.

Yeah. And that's when he would read them. And that's part of the whole thing as well. His third, perhaps most importantly, revelation is a great fucking story. Because it provides the clearest descriptions of heaven and hell that the Bible has to offer. And it provides a fantastic climax to the whole book. Because otherwise, the Bible would just end with a tepid epilogue from Jude, warning about false teachers, and you don't get that feeling of,

oh fuck, I better be a Christian that you get at the end of Revelation. Right, right. But that's not to say that if you take Revelation out of the Bible, you take out the apocalypse. There's plenty of times in the New Testament when Jesus talks about his return and how everything goes to shit immediately afterward. But Revelation is the only time that the Bible tells you what's actually going to happen. Although it does so in the form of someone describing the coolest psychedelic trip in existence. Nice.

So, today's episode will be an exploration of Revelation from the bloody history of the times the book was written to the metalous fuck imagery contained therein to the hucksters throughout the ages who have used Revelation to make themselves feel important. Cool. To me, that is the most interesting part about Revelation is how it was manipulated from then on. And then I wonder, as we're going to get into the reasons and the history behind Revelation, is that almost the guys that wrote it knew that. That they knew that this is a great bunch of content that people could spin off of

making John of Patmos essentially Alex Jones of the biblical times. But before we really get into it, let's acknowledge our two main sources today. The first is Revelations, Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the book of Revelation by Elaine Pogels. Pagels. Pagels. Pagels. This one covers the history surrounding the book. Now it was tackled by research assistant Rachel.

Thank you, Rachel. Thank you, Rachel. The other is Armageddon Now, The End of the World, A to Z by Jim and Barbara Willis, which is a super fun, extremely well researched, rational encyclopedia of the apocalypse written by a Church of Christ minister and his wife. I'm glad that you read books that have good sighting on them. I, for the other hand, did a full on deep dive back into YouTube, which was fun, and it reminded me of, I watched several mysteries of the Bible type documentaries.

Oh, that's great. Remember back in the day, it was like the early 2000s time period of the history channel. After World War II, you know, in our childhood, it was all just World War II. Yeah. And it was during that time period when it was all Nazis in the occult and stuff like, are dragons real? Like, I missed that history channel time period. All of those revelations documentaries are fantastic.

Those reenactors are incredible in that series. Really talented people. Really good. You could barely see the beard tape on a lot of them. And I also say there's a fantastic documentary called Revelation that is about two and a half hours long that is a, you'd say biased, but I'd say researched, Catholic view of Revelation by a man named Doug Batchelor, who is president of a company called Amazing Facts. And a lot of it is very interesting, especially when he talks about the talons of the Jew,

which is controversial. Yeah, it sounds like it. It's a little anti-Semitic perhaps. Well, there is definitely an anti-Semitic reading possible out of Revelation because John of Patmos mentions the synagogue of Satan. People take that to mean that all synagogues are of Satan, but he was actually referencing one of the seven churches of the time, but we'll get into the seven churches later. All right.

Because as, if you'll remember, John of Patmos, Jewish, super, super Jewish. Well, I don't know why you have to say super Jewish. I don't know what that means, exactly. He went to the temple in Jerusalem. He was super Jewish. Yeah, can he bend a menorah with his bare hands? That's how you know. Well, one thing we're going to say right now is we are not biblical nor historical scholars.

Fuck you. In fact, it is worth mentioning again that we are by no means scholars of any kind in any way whatsoever. Well, I'm a little bit of a historical scholar starting from 2000. I remember everything that after 18. Yeah. I remember everything. And that's when you, yeah.

I tell you what, I could do a burrito tour a LA in a van that would warrant people paying ticket prices. Yeah. I'm very good at it. I believe it. Well, I say this because the story of Revelation, both in its history and in its content is horribly complicated, confusing and contradictory. So we're probably not going to get everything right because even Pagels, who literally wrote

the book on the subject, says that anyone who says they figured out Revelations is to say at least overconfident. Whoa. Oh, whoa. That's some fighting words right there. I will say, I'm going to say that I'm going to extend that to anybody who says they figured out anything because there's a lot of things and they're involving the weird amorphous nature of knowledge and what is reality.

So then you're in my world where everything's upside down. In scholarly speak, calling someone overconfident is the equivalent of telling them that you should go suck an egg, which is no, suck an egg, wouldn't you know when I love eggs? Yeah, hell yeah. I'll do more than suck that egg, I'll eat that egg. There are pretty much two ways to look at the book of Revelation. The first is from an historical point of view in which you read it in the context of what was happening in the Roman Empire in the mid-1st century and interpret the imagery as John

of Patmos writing about current events in a coded language that the authorities wouldn't understand. Okay. The second is from the so-called futurist standpoint in which you take the book as a prophecy of things to come and that the reason why it's so bad shit is because John of Patmos was seeing visions of the future and couldn't comprehend the modern world. Which is pretty badass and also kind of points towards the style of like what we see, like the way the oracle Delphi spoke, the way that Nostradamus supposedly spoke and other people

that viewed the future as the sort of allegory, the stories it's supposed to pull hidden meaning out of. And that misunderstanding could be why he wrote things like this. I stood upon the sand of the sea and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. And the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion, and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat and great authority.

And then right after I saw that I went back to eating bad wheat and had a bunch of toxins on there. Well, you see you read it with authority, another way you could possibly read it, Marcus, is and the beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion, and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat and great authority. It's a pretty trippy image, man. It's really trippy.

Yeah. But out of the two, even though the futurist reading is more metal, the historical reading of the book of Revelation is by far the bloodiest. So one of the things that you've probably heard again and again if you were raised in a Christian church is that Christians worshiped in secret in catacombs and caves for hundreds of years until Constantine came along and converted. Now while Christians were indeed killed, it wasn't necessarily just because they were Christian.

It was just that Christians were extremely easy targets because nobody really liked Christians, which made them perfect scapegoats. So everybody's still just kind of bitter over it. Is that where we're at now? Is that even now we're still upset that people didn't like us back in the day? And so all of Christianity's become like a Steve Jobs sort of reigning his vengeance against the world by creating the yoke of technology? Yeah, they got a murder complex for sure.

See sacrifice to the gods. The reason why the Romans didn't like the Christians is because sacrifice to the gods was a big thing in the Roman Empire. And a lot of people believe that the outcome of not only their lives, but the entirety of the empire rested upon those sacrifices being done. But the Christians refused to participate, and some thought that their refusal was going to gum up the works of the whole system. Well they just didn't want to go to the barbecue.

You've got to go along to get along. It's like when you go to, you've got to go to your work parties, and I'm saying this right now, there's a lot of Christmas parties coming up right now, and you're going to say don't go to the Christmas parties, oh I don't want to work, I don't want to hang out with my bosses and stuff after work, but that's when the real deals get done. Well furthermore, a lot of people thought that Christians were a group of incestuous cannibals due to Romans taking certain Christian beliefs, literally. They thought, love thy sister and brother meant, fuck thy sister and brother.

Woo they would love Pornhub today, my god Pornhub, these guys were ahead of the times. And they thought that consuming the body and blood of Christ was actually consuming flesh and drinking blood. Hey man, they're still into it. They still think that. Yeah you still talk to fucking Catholics, they believe that shit, they believe it transmutes, so they're not wrong. They're not wrong.

And it is freaky. But I, you know, I guess it's cool. It is an interesting way to think about it, like a vagabond of these people come over, they're talking about drinking blood, eating flesh, and then talking about all this, have sex with your sister and brother stuff, I can kind of understand, be like, who are you? Why are you here? He's like, no, no, do not make a fucking your brother or sister a law, because I enjoy it too much for it to be my job.

And then if you're a Christian, you have to be like, no man, it's not like I'm gonna have sex with my sister, it's like I like my sister, like I like my sister, I love my sister. So you want to have sex with your sister, no man, like. We here of the Roman Legion, fuck our families on the regular, but we do not need some heretic god to tell us to do so. Well, the things about this is that when Rome was going through shaky times in the centuries before Constantine, because those hundreds of years, those centuries, there was a lot

of shaky times. We learned a little bit when we did our tour of the Colosseum in Rome. That was pretty interesting. Yeah. And so when times were shaky, that would be when the Roman government would say that it was time to return to, quote, traditional Roman values and the easiest way to make Rome great again was to blame the Christians. Now, when it comes to the book of Revelation and what was going on in the Roman Empire

at the time, it's believed by some that Christians had recently gone through a persecution at the hands of the tyrannical Emperor Nero. Oh man, I have fallen down a Nero whole as well, started reading a book called The Confessions of Young Nero by Margaret George. And man, oh man, nothing's like making an actor a dictator. Oh yeah, dude. They hated him. He was horrible.

Yeah. Now, about 20 years before Revelation was written, the city of Rome had suffered a devastating fire that burned for six days and completely leveled a quarter of the city while a further seven districts were rendered uninhabitable. Now, the story that we all know is that while Rome burned, Nero supposedly fiddled, although he actually played a liar as fiddles were not yet invented. Oh, can you actually read it correctly, Marcus? Actually, but the thing is that fiddles actually weren't invented yet when Nero was in power,

so he actually played a liar, which many people erroneously pronounce as leer, but it is actually pronounced liar. All right. Thank you. Very good. Now I've absorbed the knowledge. Now I get it. Because I need to hear it in the town.

Yes. It does make me want to give you an atomic wedgie, but that's okay. And while there is no proof, it's thought by some that Nero ordered the fire to be set for reasons ranging from pure psychopathy to gentrification. He did a lot of shit. He would have built some new temples. Oh, that's what I heard in the Colosseum by our tour guide. Yeah.

It was very nice when I was in Rome. The tour guide was very nice. He was very nice. They'll say anything for your money. No, he already gave them money. He was an actor. He was a performer. Well, yeah, because it's said that Nero possibly paid a bunch of his cronies to act like a

bunch of drunkards going around setting the city on fire. Okay. Either way, Nero supposedly blamed the fire on Christians and punished them all in the classic Roman ways. For example, with these guys in particular, Nero supposedly dressed them up in animal skins and had them torn to death by wild dogs in public. Now while this does sound like an urban legend, the punishment, at least, is very true. Oh, yeah.

I read another story about Nero that I don't know if it's true or not that does involve animal skins, and it's one of those attributed to him, that Nero himself would play these games where he gets slaves and he tied them to pillars, and then he'd put on an animal skin himself like a lion, and literally go like, row, row, meow, meow, meow, and he would walk around and toy with the slaves, slapping at their genitals, going like, errr, errrm, getcha, gotcha, bitch. Having fun tonight, who's the lion tonight, it's me, high five everybody, and then he would take off the skins, and then his main assistant would jay them off while they all

had a watch, and then he'd have all of them decapitate. No kidding. I believe it, man. These Romans were brutal, dude. Yeah, never give an actor power, because this is the problem, you guys all, now we want to believe that actors are pure people, they are not, all actors are evil. Well, here's the reason why the Romans were so brutal. See the Roman Empire was gigantic, it was a big place, and they didn't really have any

desire to maintain a large prison system, so instead to keep their massive population in line, they used corporal punishment, which often resulted in a horrific and terrifying death. And this death sentence could be handed down for the smallest of infractions. For example, if you wrote a dirty song about a minor government official, you could be sentenced to death. They're gonna kill Dave Barry, it would, it's light hearted, it's just good humor. Can you imagine what they do to weirdo?

Oh my god. Can you imagine? Cheating him rive, because what would be a more haunting image than him being disemboweled by a hook, well, while beat it is just playing on the loop. And him as a girl. And death by beast, where you'd be thrown into the arena to be ripped apart by leopards, boars, and or lions, was a pretty common way of handing down that death sentence. And to add insult to injury, these public executions weren't even the main attraction at the arena.

It was a lunchtime intermission. Yeah, dude. When we did that little tour, it was fascinating, because they actually had a pretty big middle class in Rome, they were kind of the first population to do that. And they used to just give out free wine, and then it was free to enter the Coliseum, and no one really had jobs. So they were just fucking like, I'm slightly bored over here, sir, and they'd be like, get another Christian.

And then they just threw him in, and all the animals were super hungry, of course. I mean, it was savage. And then they would go dump in the same line in a bathroom, and you know how they used to shit? Yeah. They used to share the stick, the wiping stick. That's why the term short end of the stick, that's where it comes from. So they would take dumps in like rows, like right by each other with no walls, and then

they would share a wiping stick. So they were nasty. I tell you what, man, that's just a freer group of people. That's why I hear when I hear what you say. It's like a group of people with less hang ups, bro. But I'm going to say full disclosure, if I was a middle class non-Christian in Rome, I would be front row every single day. Would you go now?

Like would you go? Like, because it's not so much, it's like, I don't want to like pick a group who should be subjugated to this, but like mostly I would say it's people who drive too slow in the left lane on the 405, you take those people, and you take all of them out there, and you have them all massacred and massed. I would enjoy it. I'd sit and watch it for a second, but I don't necessarily want to watch death all the time. I like it a little bit more fake nowadays, I think.

But one of the big misconceptions is that it was just Christians getting thrown to the lions. It was not. It was that Christians were a small part of it. It was mostly, it was criminals. Like it was just criminals of all stripes that were thrown to the lions or the leopards. Because I think we're actually like a special attraction. You know, they didn't always have lions, it was usually just like boars or leopards.

Elephants coming through there, and they could even do water wars, because they could fill up the Colosseum with water, because there's an aquifer underneath it. It's totally true. That's cool. And they could drain it in like three hours, and so like they could have like a ground battle at night, so they would fake naval battles, and the whole thing where they would tie up a slave on one end of the boats, and then they would just shoot him a bunch. Isn't that crazy?

You know what I find interesting is that you can't remember our birthdays, but you can remember every word that this man, this one thing you remember, this tour guide at the Colosseum, downloaded this information into you. It was so, it's just crazy. Another favorite method of executions for the Romans was of course crucifixion. And this right here is a bit of a preview of next week's episode. Now it really can't be understated how terrible death by crucifixion really was. Try to.

These people put up on a stick and whatever, it's whatever, it's whatever. First of all, the nails were a very real thing. Sometimes the people crucified would just have their wrists tied to the crossbeam with cords, but when the Romans were feeling particularly frisky or angry, that's when they'd bring out the nails. And that wasn't necessarily just nails in the hands. One translation of John 2025 suggests that the nails went into the lower forearm between the radius and ulna, but it wasn't the nails up top that kept the criminals on the cross.

That job was left to the feet. Now the feet were not laid over one another and hammered in with one big nail like the classic crucifix, nor was it likely that there was a little footrest to hold up the body. The feet were actually set to the sides of the cross and nailed in sideways. And that was what held the majority of the body weight. And someone actually did an experiment recently with the dummy that proved that this was in fact possible. You could.

Oh my. Yeah. With the nails in the feet and the nails in the arms together, the body weight was distributed evenly enough where the nails wouldn't just rip out of the sides of the arms when the body weight came down. That was just, that was the first billboard for Jesus Christ because whenever we travel around you see all those billboards with Jesus with outstretched hands. I want to see the cross.

Yeah. I want to see the real cross. Yeah, dude. And it has got to be, first of all, these horny, wicked scientists doing this study. Why are we doing it? So there's no reason to do this. But the second of all, the worst thing I think about it is the knees being extended and then the dick being out.

Yeah. And that was in the end of it. Sometimes they'd scourge the face with hooks on chains. It was a practice that later inspired the imagery of Hellraiser. That's where all the hooks and chains go. And the ultimate pleasure of pain. So they got all this shit done to the dude. He's hanging up their foot arms and feet or nailed it.

And then some jackass is like, what about the hooks? What about the hooks? And you're just like, shut up, shut the fuck up, shut up. I'm just saying, I didn't get to scourge your face with hooks, and that's what I'm here for. I brought all these hooks. Just some dumb waterboy accidentally knocks over a box. It just happens to be hooks.

And the guy's like, god damn it, really going to use those now? Yeah. And another thing they'd do is they'd cover the face of the victim in honey so insects would come and sting and bite their face. And of course, this is all while the victim was totally nude. And sometimes people would show up and they'd sit on the ground and they'd get sticks. And they'd just jab at their dick and balls. Just honestly, just sitting there, just giggling, just jabbing at them.

That's for the kids. The kids got to do something and all this. Just a strange piñata, huh? My god. Oh, Mikey, he flopped at the lathe. You ought me to. Stop it. Stop it.

All right. There it goes on the other side of the balls. Flipping over to the right. There it goes. You got some big balls, mister. I'm pretty sure the sentence, though, this is just so horrible. You got to laugh was made first by someone on the cross. Just being like, well, what else am I going to do?

You got to laugh. I got to laugh here. As insects are eating your face, your face is also covered with hooks, children are poking at your balls with sticks, nails are through your arms and feet. You got to laugh. You got to laugh. Because if you don't laugh, you just end up crying and he's up there watching them flip it back and forth because you know what actually that's what gets people the most

naked and afraid is the little bugs. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So now how long on average are they up there? I heard like four days, five days, they could live for quite a while. Well, it all depends on how the person actually died because death could come in any number of ways. I mean, the causes of death range from anything from heart failure to dehydration to sepsis

from the wounds to, in some cases, slowly being eaten alive by birds and other animals of prey. So it could be because sometimes people would die because there was actually a time where it was fashionable to hang people upside down on the cross, but they stopped doing that because people pass out really fast and then you die. There's no fun in that. Yeah, there's no fun in that and then passing out after 10 minutes. Nice.

Yeah, you don't get any of this screaming. And sometimes when people would asphyxiate as their bodies slowly came down and their arms were outstretched, their lungs would collapse and they'd asphyxiate. But yeah, if you were particularly tough, yeah, you could last for a few days without a doubt. But yeah, you're definitely dying of dehydration eventually, no matter what. You're dying of dehydration. But no matter how it ended, crucifixion was a fucking terrible way to go.

And as far as revelation went, it was said that Nero was particularly fond of the method. It's said that Nero gathered up a bunch of Nazarenes, as the early Christians were called, and crucified them in his garden during a party. Everybody's having fun. Get up. Get up. The screaming is the music, y'all, okay? Now everyone's going to watch me do the president's speech from Independence Day.

All right, because I'm the best actor in the world. Nero is literally if Neil Patrick Harris became a dictator. Eventually it would eventually, you love Neil Patrick Harris, you think he's very charming, but eventually he will kill you for his own enjoyment. Oh, absolutely. I could see it. And then when the light faded, Nero lit the Nazarenes on fire to keep the party going. Wow.

You know, now we just get more vodka back then, light the people on fire. So what does Nero have to do with revelation? Well, it all comes down to the number 666. See a lot of people think that 666 belongs to the devil, but that's not strictly true. And I quote, And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed.

And he caused it all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand or in their foreheads, and that no man might by or sell save he that had the mark or the name of the beast or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him, that hath understanding, count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man. And his number is 666. His number is 666.

Alright, well that reminds me, 666, $6.66, that's all it costs to buy our new special. Fucking Maiden, man, a long time ago we did name Iron Maiden the official band of last podcast on the left and I'm going to continue that with this episode. Yeah, sure, I love Iron Maiden. See back in Nero's time, a fun game that the people of the Roman Empire used to play was to attribute numbers to people's names, giving a numerical value to each letter and add them all up. You say fun, I say a little autistic, but hey, who am I to limit people's fun?

And if you write Nero's Caesar in Hebrew and assign each letter the numerical values that were decided upon for each letter, what does it add up to but 666. And by the way, I checked and out of all our names, my name's the only one that comes close. 645. 645. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 645's nothing. With mine.

I think you're in the 545 hundreds, Henry's up in the 800s, the Z that fucks him up. Oh. Yeah man, I'm past it all. Yeah, Z's, W's, S's, he's done. The thing is, the number of the beast may not even be 666. Don't do this. Uh oh. Don't even do this.

100 years ago, archaeologists in Asia Minor hit upon an ancient trash heap, trash heaps being among the most valuable of all archaeological finds. See, there's, in 5,000 years, there's going to be so many great archaeological finds. It's not that we're ruining the environment. We're making it fun for future architects or what is it? Yes. We're making it fun for future archaeologists. But it takes a while to work through all this stuff carefully, so it wasn't until 1999 that

these guys came across a scrap of papyrus that ended up being an ancient copy of the Book of Revelation. And this copy said that the number of the beast was actually 616. Oh no, the number of the beast can't be the area code for Grand Rapids, Michigan. 616. Yeah, and if you do the number thing, 616 matches up with another Roman emperor, Caligula. Ooh, I almost liked that better. Yeah, now Caligula, I mean, he didn't really give a shit about Christians.

He was just more concerned with like making his horse a government official and fucking his sister. Well, he was having a good time. Yeah. But he did commit an affront to the Jews, and that affront could have really pissed off John of Patmos, Caligula attempted to build a statue to himself in the Jewish temple at Jerusalem, which would have been bad enough to name him the Beast 616. Okay.

But the thing is, it's possible that the persecution of Christians during Nero's time at least might not have even happened. What? That's not what my tour guide said. See, well, I mean, I'm talking about the time of Nero, the time of revelations, because the persecution of Christians, at least in the 200s and the 300s, that definitely happened. But back then, the construct of Christianity was not as established as it was a couple hundred years later.

Yeah, there was no reality shows with fun Christian families. Of course. I know that. See, because we only have one source for Nero's persecution of Christians. That is the annals of Tacitus. And those were... Go to the doctor. Yeah, dude.

I did. I did, Mark. I said, you have the annals of Tacitus, and that's why you had to get that coloconoscopy license. Oh, my goodness. And those were written about 50 years after the reign of Nero, and we have no idea where Tacitus heard about all this. No other writer corroborates his claims and all other ancient sources on the subject just

quote back to Tacitus. And that includes Sulpicious Severus. Just wait until the fucking Internet goes down and Infowars is the only one that was working. It's gonna be the only website that works. That's how this shit all happens. And even if it did happen, Nero didn't burn all those people after the fire for being followers of the Nazarene.

He burned them because he said they were arsonists, and they were pegged as arsonists because they were easy scapegoats, not necessarily because of their beliefs. But if there's one thing Christians love, and this goes double for early Christians, it's martyrs. Oh, they love it. Oh, yeah, man. They're the rock stars. They couldn't get enough of martyrdom to the point where some would beg Roman officials

to execute them for their beliefs. How annoying must that have been to be a centurion and having a bunch of Catholics like, kill me please, please let me go, I want to see Jesus, and they're just like, just get the fuck out of here. I'm trying to make a modigal. That's how all the ghosts that naturally haunt your apartment feel about you, Henry. Or it's like we would, but you want it so much, it's boring now. Yeah, I mean, in one case, a governor in Asia Minor, he executed a few Christians, but when

he suddenly found himself overrun with more Christians wanting the same thing, he told them this, and this is a matter of historical record, quote. You wretches, if you want to die, you have cliffs to leap from and ropes to hang by. I pretty much said, I'm not going to kill you, you dumb sons of bitches, if you want to die so fucking bad, go do it yourself, unless the government to do it. In fact, early Christian church leaders had to make a decree saying that you're not a martyr if you start the fight. Because Christians were attacking pagan temples in the hopes that they'd be killed in the

process. So the idea is that at this time, John of Patmos was, he felt that he was a part of a group of persecuted Christians, right? So this is all kind of written to sort of disseminate, like he was trying to disseminate this information. The idea of kind of like a satire about Nero almost, and the idea is like, but it's essentially just sounds like a revenge fantasy. It's very much a possibility, it's very much a possibility that this is a large revenge

fantasy, anti-Roman propaganda, but martyrdom. There was a lot of persecution of the Christians though. Sure, absolutely. But that, but later on, long after, long after Revelation was written, my mom told me they were alive. I grew up knowing that there was a lot, no number specific, couple hundred years after or at the very least, yeah, I would say 200 years after was when the, it's like saying, what you're saying right now is that you'd like saying like, oh yeah, the old West, yeah,

like Nintendo 64 was super popular then. Yeah, yeah, yeah, my mom didn't tell me that. I'll have to get on the phone with old Laura Kessel and hear her interpretation here. Now the thing is about martyrdom is that it speaks to the heart of Revelation. See, the thing about apocalyptic writings like this is that it's written for and by people who are suffering. It promises that one day everyone is going to get theirs, and while you're going to suffer too, who gives a shit because you're already suffering, but the difference is when it's

all said and done, you're going to come out on top, and everyone else who treated you like shit is going to lose. Oh yeah dude, that's how I used to play Halo, is that I'd run into the corner as I was about to die and I'd throw their fucking grenade between my legs, bounce it off the wall, fucking kill that dude, because if I'm going to fucking die, you're going to fucking die too. And John, he may have had other reasons for writing it, like you said, like it could be that he was just pissed off that the Romans had driven the Jews from Jerusalem, so it was a revenge fantasy.

Because he may have been a part of that group, they said that if you look at some of the writing it may have, it seemed like he had an origin in Palestine, so he may have been a part of that group that was forced out of Judea, so he may have been bitter about that. So Revelation, is it fair to say it's just a really long letter to the editor? Is that what this is? He's just writing to the local paper that happens to be the Bible. He also elevated it himself, because he did list it as a vision. He said he had a vision, this was a holy vision, because Patmos was essentially a prison island

that he was on. It was a fortress island, like it was a fortress island where like the Romans were stationed. He could still move around. Yes, but he was like technically exiled. Yes, he was exiled. He was exiled, so but he could walk around and shit, but all of this was maybe he was a prisoner, so part of it was him, number one, trying to boost his own name, trying to be like anybody who says they have a vision, where a lot of times it does spin off into

a religion, or if you are trying to make it spin off into a religion, we've seen it from John Smith with the Mormons up to LRH, people who said the same thing, having information illuminated to you by another agency. Well, I mean it also could be that John and Patmos was just trying to scare people who were starting to drift and worship the Imperial rulers as gods. That was a big problem at that time as well. But that was an interesting thing, that I guess local guys, like the lower emperor guys, they would start, and the big guys, I'm not sure again, this is, I am not a historian,

but I was reading a little bit about how they would show up, they'd build a statue of themselves and say, I'm a god guys, just so you know, this is the version of me, which is a god. This actual statue is a god, which was a common belief during this time period, which is also how the way people waged war against each other, re-listening to Dan Carlin's King of Kings, which is fantastic as I'm going through this whole series, which has been awesome, but talking about how you have a statue that actually is god, and so people are worshiping it. So he's saying that essentially it's idolatry, it's worshiping of these things, and it's

also anything that isn't the real Christian god, it's deifying emperors and shit like that. It's possibly a protest against that, and that's what the whole seven-headed beast thing is, is that the seven-headed beast is actually the seven hills of Rome and all that bullshit. And now, you know, Starbucks isn't even saying Merry Christmas on their cups. That's what I'm saying, and this is where it started, it's been going since the beginning. Right, that is ridiculous what's happening nowadays, the persecution's real. Oh, it's really real, it's very, very real.

Or, you know, it could also be that John of Patmost was a true believer, and when he looked at the world around him, he might have actually thought that the world truly was coming to an end. So with that, let's get into the actual meat of Revelation itself. Alright. Yay! See, Revelation is essentially a letter to the seven churches at the time. Pargumum, Ephesus, Thyatira, Laodicea, Sardis, Smyrna, and Philadelphia.

Now while Smyrna and Philly were doing great, like, God was perfectly alright with them, the other five were either like, eh, I kinda sow sow, or full on corrupt. And so, God sent John on a wicked psychedelic trip to show them the events that were to come, so John could let them know what was going to happen to those who didn't shape up. And we can't go through all of Revelation's line by line, and admittedly, we're going to yada yada yada over large parts of it. No, Marcus, no!

You can go read it if you like, I mean, it's a short read, you can read it in about like 30 minutes. Okay. But yeah, it's 22 chapters, it's a fun little read. But at the start, essentially, John meets Jesus, and Jesus shows him how he and God plan to wipe us all out. Fuck yeah, dude, that's fucked up! Why are you just doing this?

Why would you do that? I'd be like, yeah buddy, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to kill like a lot of you. Yeah man, I mean. Just to do this. You gotta walk out, you gotta report to the FBI, you gotta report to the authorities, otherwise you're complicit. I mean, this is a conspiracy. And it all begins with the seven seals.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. It's a funny joke. It's a funny joke. Oh, I see your seals. Seventh is. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh my. But I actually did not truly understand what the fucking seals were for a while, I didn't

realize that it was, the way it's always, it's shown to me in these various documentaries I saw is that it's like Monty Python, God and the angels like, they show up in front of everyone and then God has a scroll. Yep. That has seven of the wax seals on it, which I for some reason did not understand because I'm dumb. Yeah. Now the seven seals are fastened upon a scroll apartment, as he said, and when each seal

is opened, something God awful happens here on earth. Oh, it's like a demonic hell, admin calendar. That's exciting. But now what we're trying to do here, now this is if it actually does go down. Yeah. This is what revelations would actually be. There are some people that say they are trying to, they modernize it with theories about what these mean as allegories and we'll try to hit that as we go.

The first four seals bring the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Cool. Kidding Marcus. Come on. Lay down. Lay down Marcus. And I quote, and I saw and behold a white horse and he that sat on him had a bow and a crown was given unto him and he went forth conquering and to conquer.

And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second be say, come and see. And there went out another horse that was red and power was given to him that sat there on to take peace from the earth and that they should kill one another. And there was given unto him a great sword. And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third be say, come and see. And I beheld and lo a black horse and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth be say, come

and see. And I looked and behold a pale horse and his name that sat on him was death and hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth to kill with sword and with hunger and with death and with the beast of the earth. Cool. Now these are maybe but they're also possibly allegorical, correct? In other words, you got war, famine, pestilence and death.

I want the sword. I think I did have a really good picture of the second horse, right? The horse of the red. And he does look a lot like me, a little man with a wicked beard and long hair and a sword and shit. Oh, man, I fit it. It'd be a lot of fun. I get the story.

I mean, this is awesome stuff. Yeah. It's one of the harbingers of the apocalypse and this is when the seven years of tribulations begin. Okay. It's pretty much just seven years. It just got awful shit happen to happens to the people of earth over and over and over and over again.

A lot of us die. Most of us die. All of us die. Well, it says, well, according to them, it's one third of the human population will die. I guess they have very exact numbers. A lot of these documentaries, quote unquote, on YouTube have a lot of exact numbers where they say like, and this will last for 30 minutes and this will last for six months and this will last for seven years.

And then when they do this, it's like, again, it's a third of humanity is wiped out for what reason? Well, the third of humanity that is a part of the book of revelations and the book of revelations does actually set out some very specific time limits. So it does say at certain times, half an hour does say at certain times like 1245 days. So it is very specific with times, which is important. It's like when you're asking for money on the subway, you got a hit with him and like, I need $7.13 for a bus ticket to Milwaukee.

Like you have to keep it specific. More specific, but that means they're also lying. Yes. Now the fifth seal reveals what I think are Christian martyrs. And when they complain that their deaths have not been avenged, they're given white robes and their murders are all put to death. So they're bitchy martyrs. No, you guys didn't even, I murdered myself over here.

I'm murdering myself. The fifth, the fifth seal technically is should be called the nerd's revenge. No one even cared that I murdered myself. You know what Tony? No one cared that I did either. Can you even believe that? Here's your robe. Don't worry.

We're killing those guys from the 7-11 that called you queers for getting the soda slushy. Six seal brings a great earthquake and the sky turns black as sackcloth, the moon turns blood red and the stars fall from the sky. And all the kings, princes, generals and the wealthy run away and hide in caves. Then an angel comes forth and puts a pause on the whole thing, saying that the apocalypse is not to continue until the angel has placed the mark of God on God's servants. And those servants are numbered at 144,000. Oh, it's a lot of work for that angel.

Yes, pop it. That is such a fucking menial labor job for an angel. Well, you think that angel is going to be doing that, no, that angel is going to be getting a temp. And that temp is going to be chosen and then he's going to go because I've done that in retail with the fucking price gun. Oh yeah. Check, check, check.

This is the Christian equivalent of the price gun. That's amazing. Now as you probably know, 144,000 is central to the faith of the Jehovah's Witnesses. They take this passage literally, meaning that they believe that only 144,000 people will be allowed into heaven. And even then, most of the spots have already been filled, but that doesn't mean that everyone else goes to hell. Those who are not anointed but are still of the faith are known as, quote, the other

sheep, as stated in John 10, 16. And those other sheep will be resurrected after Armageddon to live forever on Paradise Earth. That's what the Jehovah's Witnesses believe. I see. Because the other sheep is obviously a Sony animation title starting The Rock and Kevin Hart as the other sheep. So you've just made that a reality.

Right. So they've got a little class system there. They can't be getting into the first class. Yeah. No, it's very much a class system. Now the 144,000 have also been attached at times to another famous biblical event, the rapture. That's when the righteous are scooped up into heaven right before the apocalypse while

the rest of us are left to suffer down below. Right. And according to Dr. Harry Ironside, D.D., Lit D., I don't know, I don't think he is a really doctor. A doctor. He wrote a book called The Lamb of Prophecy or Signs of the Times and he did a revelation chart. Now, if you look at this chart, it does not make what one would call a niota of sense.

But apparently there is going to be two raptures. But actually the first rapture did happen when Christ was murdered and that when he was resurrected he actually came back and took dudes with him, the saints. He took guys with him up and that now we're waiting on that there's going to be the second rapture in the middle all this, which is essentially being like, okay, you guys got the hors d'oeuvres of torture, but that's enough. You can come to heaven now. I'll tell you, man, it's going to be a heavy load, elevator at full capacity.

I have seen some of these, some of the Christians in the Midwest. A warning in case of rapture, this car will be unmanned. Yeah, well, that's dangerous for the road, sir. But the thing is, neither the word nor even the concept of rapture is mentioned in Revelation. In fact, the word rapture is never mentioned at all in the Bible, although the concept is certainly discussed because see, there was a question. If things were going to go to shit when Jesus came back, because that's what Jesus was saying, I'm going to die and when I come back, everything's going to be fucking awful.

The question was, what was going to happen? All the Christians still alive, we were just going about their business. Well it is answered thus. And this is not in Revelation. I believe this is either in Matthew, Mark, Luke, one of those. One of the Ninja Turtles. For as in the days that were before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving and marriage until the day that Noah entered into the ark and knew not until the

flood came and took them all away. So shall also the coming of the Son of Man be, then shall to be in the field, the one shall be taken and the other left. Two women shall be grinding at the mill, the one shall be taken and the other left. So in other words, people are just going to disappear. But for centuries, this concept was not a main thrust of the Christian church. It was the concept of the pre-tribulation rapture in which good Christians will be taken away to heaven while the rest of us have to deal with all that bullshit.

That didn't even exist until the 1830s. You know, it was funny, Henry mentioned the history channel earlier. History channel also went through a phase of finding Noah's Ark and there were so many frickin' episodes and every one of them ended with like, it's plywood. This is from 1936. It was so anticlimactic. Well, I'll also say this, saying that you are, according to David J. Stewart, who is a Bible scholar, in his words alone, he said, looking at the Bible and saying, you don't

see any mention of the word rapture nor teaching of the tribulation period in the Holy Bible. They said that, but it's almost as if people who look at the ocean and say, oh, I love the ocean, but never see how many jellyfish are in the ocean. What the hell is he talking about? Yeah, and how much water is in the ocean, how many jellyfish, how much corals in there, and how much treasures in the ocean. It's trash. They're not looking deep enough.

They're just looking at the surface. They're looking at the surface. Yeah, you gotta look in and then when you go in, you can find anything you want. Amen. Yeah, anything that's in there. Well, what many evangelicals believe today about, you know, the rapture and all that was actually invented by a sour old Irishman named John Nelson Darby, who believes that the invention of the telegraph was a harbinger of the apocalypse.

I honestly love this man. Yeah? I would go back in time and nip it all in the bud. There's just no telegraph, nothing. Yeah, this guy mixed and matched various verses from different books of the Old Testament and the New and came up with the concept of the apocalyptic rapture, which of course reached its apex with the 12 book long left behind series that was written by the same guy who wrote the act of marriage after 40.

Man, are you a part of the group of people? Because I think Jackie was too, where we all got the left behind. Jackie really got into the left behind series, but she didn't even realize it was Christian. Really? I also first got the book and I started reading it first because I thought it was cool because I was into all sorts of series at the time as a boy. And then somewhere I've been like, this is about the love of Christ. Oh yeah, how did you realize that was Christian?

It was pretty blatant. I mean, we got delivered those in our church. Yeah, but he wasn't in the same but he was not anywhere near the Christ people that we were near. Kirk Cameron. No, we were Roman Catholic, which is different. Kirk Cameron. We just believe in molest and carbon of the Jesus and if you say the Virgin Mary's name

with an ounce of spite in your voice, you can get slapped by a priest. Absolutely. Kirk Cameron leaned in and he was a God in the evangelical community. We had a celebrity and now I think it's Scott Beyo. But Kirk Cameron was pretty big, big time stuff. Oh yeah. And as far as revelation goes, there's no mention of anyone being taken at all. In fact, God later commands the coming beast to leave the 144,000 alone, so it follows they're

still hanging out during all this. Okay. This is a pain in the ass, man. I guess they're getting box seats. I guess so. Yeah. Okay. So as soon as the 144,000 are anointed, the seventh seal is opened, which is followed

by half an hour of silence. Let's have an example of it. That's what it would be like, but at a half an hour. Half hour of that. Okay. I kind of like it. Kind of peaceful. Can you imagine how fucking creepy that would be with just God, everything all hanging out

and then just silence and you just hear like one angel like shut up. Now they have hour of silence has to begin again. Then the seven angels are handed seven trumpets and what follows now is maybe my favorite set of verses. Okay. I love this so much. All right. The first angel sounded and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood and they

were cast upon the earth and the third part of the trees was burnt up and all green grass was burnt up and the second angel sounded and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea and the third part of the sea became blood and the third part of the creatures which were in the sea and had life died and the third part of the ships were destroyed and the third angel sounded and there fell a great star from heaven burning as it were a lamp and it fell upon the third part of the rivers and upon the fountains of waters and the name of the star is called Wormwood and the third part of the waters became Wormwood and many men died of the waters because they were made bitter.

Yeah, dude. Yeah, dude. Not a good day to go swimming. Very good. Covered in blood when you get out and then there's a Wormwood which what the hell is that? There's a couple of guys you know just jumping in there being like I guess I get my red wings tonight.

Oh my. Now Wormwood is one of the more interesting names in the Bible when it comes to prophecy. See back in 1986 some people believe that the third trumpet had officially gone off. That's because in the Ukrainian language the word for Wormwood is Chernobyl. Oh no. Interesting. I thought it was going to be like Dick Pine or something. Very cool.

And the meltdown of a nuclear facility sure as hell sounds a lot like a star burning like a lamp that poisons the waters. So after that the fourth trumpet goes off and with it went a third of the stars, sun and moon. But the fifth trumpet brought the abyss and when the abyss was opened a plague of locusts swarmed upon the earth led by the demon Abaddon. They are directed to leave alone the 144,000 but as far as the rest goes they are directed to torture them for five months by stinging them as scorpions.

And I quote, And in those days shall men seek death and shall not find it and shall desire to die and death shall flee from them. And the shapes of the locusts were like unto horses prepared unto battle and on their heads were as it were crowns like gold and their faces were as the faces of men. And they had hair as the hair of women and their teeth were as the teeth of lions and they had breast plates as it were breast plates of iron and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots of many horses running to battle.

And they had tails like unto scorpions and they were stings in their tails and their power was to hurt men five months and they had a king over them which is the angel of the bottomless pit whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon. And in the Greek tongue hath his name Apollyon the destroyer. And they had hair as the hair of women and their teeth were as the teeth of lions and they had breast plates as it were breast plates of iron and the sound of their wings was as the sound of chariots. Pretty good but they were called locusts.

Locusts, yeah. Like the insects. It's very confusing. Well now how the hell did locusts win out the name war? Listen, it's just supposed to be scary as fuck. All of us, it's just supposed to be scary. It's supposed to be a train. But it doesn't even resemble a locust.

Back then locusts were a plague animal. So when you imagined locusts you imagine like a large swarm of beasts that are coming to destroy everything. So it may not be a literal locust more like as a plague of locusts. And this whole time you're supposed to be saying I'm sorry again and again and again. For five months. All this is really is God giving you an opportunity to say I'm sorry. Oh I see.

See Abaddon, the guy that heads the entire army of locusts, he comes from the Old Testament. The word Abaddon means destruction. Now some have said throughout the years that Abaddon could be anyone from Satan himself to the Antichrist. And speaking of the Antichrist, here's something else that's interesting. We all know that the Antichrist is the person who brings the world together ushers and appears at peace then deceives us ushering in a period of war that leads to Armageddon. But like the Rapture, the Antichrist is not mentioned in the book of Revelation by name.

In fact, the Antichrist is only mentioned in the Bible four times and in one of those times it's said that anyone who denies Christ is an Antichrist. You're an Antichrist. No kidding. Henry you're an Antichrist. Wow. Yeah I am. Wow.

The second picture here is just the main evil dude from a bug's life. Remember that? He was so mean. I don't remember a bug's life. You didn't watch a bug's life? I didn't watch a bug's life. Oh. He just lost the point of this.

He lost the point of this. Well, it is like that. Well, it's pretty much just assumed that the Beast 666 is the Antichrist because he is the deceiver. Sure. And he fits the bill when you compare that to other mentions of the Antichrist in the Bible. So the plague of locusts commanded by Abaddon are said to be the end of the first woe as

there are still two woes to go. The woe? We have two woes to go. The second woe begins with four angels unleashed who kill a third of mankind by commanding an army numbering, quote, 200,000,000, which is just a weird way of saying 200 million. I don't know why they didn't say 200 million. Maybe they didn't have the number million back then. Maybe not.

I don't know. It's just cool. I think. For sure. And of course, angels unleashed. It's a great series. They sit down with Byron Allen, and they just have one of the craziest conversations about like, how good are you?

This is how good I was today. And I love that because he always tosses to them to their best bits. Yes. Angel number eight, I hear you're having a hard time with your grandkids. Just like grandkids are like kids except they're smaller. You know what I mean? Your calm is getting farther from your body, like hell yeah, hell yeah. This army of 200,000,000 rode horses with the heads of lions, and out of their mouths

came fire and smoke and brimstone. And yet despite all that has already happened, it is said that those still living, they don't stop worshiping demons or idols. They don't stop fucking. They don't stop stealing. And they certainly don't stop doing magic because apparently everybody's doing magic. How good is the fucking? I mean, it can't be that good.

Yeah. They keep on keeping on, living their lives just as they had before with the accession that there are now armies of angels riding horse lions indiscriminately killing them. But even so, up to this point, the book of revelations is, you know, as far as apocalyptic riding goes, pretty straightforward. You know, it's pretty much just horror after horror perpetrated by monsters and angels. But once you get to chapter 10, things start to go off the rails a little bit. Oh, they're going to go off the rails.

Yeah, now it goes off the rails. Okay, so we're on the rails up to this point. And to that point, in that chapter, an angel gives John a little book and tells him, eat it. Are you a bully? You fucking angel? Yeah, pretty much. And we quote.

Yeah, I took the little book out of the angels hands and they ate it up and it was in my mouth. Sweet as honey. And as soon as I had eaten it, my belly was bitter. So they just had biffed had in the angel edition. The book, bitch, I just all right only because you're Jesus Christ, but I don't know why you just shifted character to be like the chill dude that you were in a couple chapters ago. But now you're this fucking bully, but then comes chapter 11, the two witnesses in which

Jesus makes two guys tell prophecies for one thousand two hundred and sixty days straight. Geez. Oh my God. Speaking of Lord Michael's overwork honestly, and if this is just called he makes two people. He forces them to be podcasters. But if anyone tries to harm or stop the prophesizers, fire will shoot from their mouths and destroy those who interfere. Okay.

So he's got security. Yeah. So he's like, we booked you on a fucking long ass show, but we provided the security. But even in after they're done, they're killed quote, and when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascended out of the bottomless pit shall make war against them and shall overcome them and kill them. Hey Earl, why are you reading so slow, bro? I just gotta make it last, I gotta make it count.

Then the bodies are left to lie in the streets for three and a half days before being taken up to heaven. So those are like Jesus's guys. And yet still they have to talk for 12, I guess one thousand two hundred and sixty days straight. That's what, three years? Three, four years? So they just had a bunch of corpses going up to heaven.

Is there someone that's supposed to revitalize these things? Revitalize the corpses? Yeah. Just like pull them in. No man, they get to go to heaven. They get to go to heaven. So when they die, we're forgetting this. It's a privilege to be chosen by Jesus to do those, do all that talking.

And so this is an exalted post, and then when you're murdered you get to go to heaven. But you get murdered by Jesus, or at least you get murdered by the beast from the abyss. It seems like a real abusive relationship, that's the problem. It is. And then after that, there's an earthquake which kills seven thousand people and so ends the second woe. Okay. Then comes the third and final woe.

Woe? Yeah, and that is where the real monsters come, including Satan himself. And I quote, And there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads, and his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth, and the dragon stood before the woman which was ready to be delivered, for to devour her child as soon as it was born, and she brought forth a man child, who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up unto God, and to his throne.

Ladies and gentlemen, the man child, Adam Corolla. I mean, it seems like they were just in a game of yes and, where they're like, my demon has four heads, three tails, eight horns, and the guy's like, honestly, well, you gotta bring out all the stops, right? Yeah. This is Avengers 3. Is that the one with Thanos? I think so.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the third edition. Yeah. It's the other one in Infinity Wars? I don't fucking know. I didn't watch it. Three is with Thanos. That's Infinity War.

Two is Age of Ultron. One is the gist of Avengers. So this is for the millennials. Thanos shows up with the Silver Surfer and the other guy. No, no, no. This is Spider-Man. This is Satan. The dragon is Satan.

That's what I'm saying, but I'm translating it to people. This is for the people who like comic books that got Wolverine there, but he's not gay. He's not gay. Well, I don't even know. I don't think that that's, is that a skeptic? Is there some skepticism on that? I don't know, man. But it's a dated reference, if you wanted to make it.

Is it? Well, because you're clarifying or classifying it as an up-to-date reference. It's not up-to-date. No, it came out two years ago. The Avengers came out last summer. It's not that old. It's dated. Black Panther came out this year.

No, I would think it was last year too. Well, that's it. Well, this chapter, Revelation 12, is the source of one of our most recent Doomsday predictions. A guy who goes by the pseudonym David Mead said that this chapter points towards wholesale planetary destruction. We have no idea what this guy's real name is. Why is he undercover? There is a lot of this.

This is a part of it, right? Why this gets twisted all the time is that it is a great story to attach yourself to. We're going to see a lot of Doomsday cults that use this later on as like the ultimate scary thing that's going to happen and people real excited for it to happen. Yeah, they get really into it. Oh, yeah. Now, we're not going to go into the intense astrology involved in David Mead's theory, but essentially he reads Revelation 12 as evidence that Nibiru, aka Planet X, was going

to crash into the earth on September 23rd, 2017. When that didn't happen, he moved the date to March of 2018, but didn't give an exact date that time. And when March passed, Mead moved it to April 23rd. And when again, nothing happened, he said that he'd never predicted April 23rd as the date of destruction and any report that says he did is, in his words, fake news. Fake news, okay, fake news. But we still have another chance because Mead now says that while Nibiru is out of the

picture, missed us, the rapture is definitely going to happen before 2018 is done. So, uh-oh. Hey guys, enjoy the last couple weeks before the tribulations begin. Any day now, I feel like I'm talking to my mother again. But if I'm reading Revelation 12 correctly, I think it says that the woman gives birth to a full grown man, and that man is Jesus. But I do know that the dragon is Satan, and after the birth, Satan follows the man into heaven.

There, the archangel Michael gathers his army of angels and defeats Satan, who is cast down once more. So in revenge, Satan chases after the woman, but God gives the woman eagle wings, she gets away. What is this fucking shit? And so, Satan calls forth the great beast from the sea, a leopard creature with bears feet and a lion's mouth, and upon its head is a fatal wound that had been healed. And Satan gives the beast his power.

Then came out of the earth the second beast, and this was the great beast 666, the deceiver. And it is said that he had two horns like a lamb, and spake as a dragon, making him less impressive visually, but, in my opinion, far creepier than the beast of the sea. Yeah, but that's what we gotta do, this is me and Kissel, right, cause it's like me sending forth Kissel, Kissel's a leopard creature with bears feet and lion's mouth, and I'm the small evil one, and I have a fun little tail and little horns. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. Well this is the scripture that people point towards, you know, when they always say that

the, and when they were, back when they were saying that Obama was the Antichrist, or they said that the Antichrist is going to be a fantastic public speaker, and they take it from that, he spake as a dragon. And this is, you know, this is the tie to the Antichrist, it was written that the beast performs great wonders and makes fire come down from heaven, and that he will deceive all those left on earth and demand that the people worship the image of the first beast lest they be killed. Ah, well it turns out, hey, to break it to everybody, Obama, the Antichrist, the beast,

is producing for Netflix. That's all you want to do, and I always thought that the end would come in the form of a producer. Yep, I guess so. Then the final climax begins. Seven angels appear with seven plagues in seven vials, and within those vials are God's wrath, and they are poured upon the earth. So they just, everything is so literal, obviously written by man, but the idea of God just like uncorking a bottle that's just like full of plague.

It's even weirder in the new international version, in the new international version they say bowls. And this is what happened when the seven vials were poured. Those who worship the beast were covered in festering boils, the seasoned rivers turned to black corpse blood, killing every living creature within, and the sun intensifies in heat, scorching everyone who's caught outside. That's followed by darkness and the drying up of the river Euphrates, and the whole time the people are cursing God while the angels who were pouring the vials keep seeing how

righteous the whole thing is. When they don't agree. No, there needed to be one angel. One angel like Schwarzenegger in Total Rico. No, one angel like Schwarzenegger in Running Man, who says I'm not going to kill the innocent people. I think that was Satan. That is Satan.

And I also technically, I believe Gabriel Byrne and Arnold Schwarzenegger in a movie about that. End of Days. End of Days. End of Days. And then there was also the Terry Pratchinio Game and Novel Good Omens, which was about an angel and a devil trying to hide the Antichrist because they didn't want the world to end. In the Seventh Seal.

Oh, yeah, yeah. In the Seventh Seal, of course. After all that, this is what happens. And I saw three unclean spirits like frogs come out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, for they are the spirits of devils, working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty. And he gathered them together into a place called in the Hebrew tongue Armageddon.

Geez, I just get the feeling the guy who wrote this needed to go to therapy. Honestly, he was very, very upset. He was extremely upset. And he really wanted people to feel it. Now, did they say that Armageddon's like a place, right? Yeah, Armageddon. It's an actual place in Israel called Megidu, because in the Old Tongue, that place would have been called Har Megidu, meaning Mount Megidu, and eventually that word became Armageddon.

You should have just wrote that. You should have just wrote the actual name of the place and say it's going to be here. Also I don't really like the idea of it just to play in Har Megidu. It just sounds like a Star Wars play. Yeah. It sounds like one of those, you know, I guess it's cool. That's what makes it cool. So this dude, I mean, is it fair to say the dude who wrote this, he's like mentally ill?

No. Is he not mentally ill? No, not at all. He has a great imagination. Oh, okay. Wow. Yeah. That's like saying that David Lynch is mentally ill.

He's not. He's sub-genius. No, he's genius. That makes him ill. It's like a little tightrope one. Well, St. John the Divine is a genius. Okay, all right. This is a genius story.

It is, really. And it's beautifully written. I wish I knew, but I wish I could read it in the original language, how it was originally written. Of course, we have this. God, God, God. God. Like, I just have the King James version.

Right. Yeah. Because like in the time of Patmos, the reason why he put the final battle at Megidu was because this was the world's premier battleground. 12 or 13 major battles have been fought in John of Patmos' lifetime in the Valley of Megidu, so it would make sense that that's where the final battle between heaven and hell would take place. Okay.

But in Revelation, as soon as the armies are gathered, the seventh vial is emptied and God says from his throne, quote, It is done. That's not quite the voice of God that I had in mind. It is done. It's a little more in line. I love it. And with that, another earthquake comes and every city in the world is destroyed.

That's how it goes down. Oh my goodness. Okay. And that includes Babylon, who is both a city and a prostitute in the parlance of the Bible. Under the earthquake, John is taken to Babylon and he says that she was sitting upon a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns covered in blasphemous names. Oh, hell yeah, dude.

In her hand was a golden cup, and this is a quote from the Bible, quote, Full of abominations and the filthiness of her fornication. It's come. It's come. It's come. It's come. It's come and pussy juice. Yeah, hell yeah, dude.

Fuck yeah. And upon her forehead was. This is when he's getting into, like, a line of coke too far, like when Stephen King starts writing about children fucking each other, he's like, let's get some, let's get some cum in here. I'm getting a little horned up. And upon her forehead was written, mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.

That trope still exists today. And I'll tell you what, the sex worker of Babylon, we're here for you. That's exactly who we want to be listening to our show. I hope, hopefully you are in here is the only place in the book wherein the angel actually explains to John what he's seeing is John really wants to drive it home. The Babylon is Rome. Okay. The angel says that the seven heads of the seven hills on which the woman sits into this

day, Rome is known as the city of seven hills. The angel also says that the heads are also seven kings, five of which who have fallen. These are the Roman emperors. He had five Roman emperors that had died by this point. He then says that the kings yet to come will wage war with Jesus and they will lose. And when they do, the beast will eat the whore of Babylon's flesh and burn her with fire. Oh my goodness. So after John's visit with Babylon, it's time for the battle of Armageddon.

Jesus arrives riding a white horse named faithful and true, wearing multiple crowns and a robe dipped in blood. And the armies of heaven followed him. I can't do all of the Evangelion, I can't do all of the Evangelion theme song, but he's imagining a slice. Right. I gotta say, you got to decide on one crown, one crown, you're in multiple crowns. He's right.

Cat in the hat type stuff going on here. This is a big deal. But you can't just wear all of your crowns armageddon. All right. You put on all the crowns, but you just, you are here. This is the medgala of battles. But if you go to the Oscars, it is literally going to the Oscars and wearing all of your clothes and just be like, I couldn't decide what to do.

All of the rest of them are in fancy dress. You have to show up with your shit because if they see that, like, holy shit, he plans to fight from a horse and wear seven hats on top of his. He's very confident. He's dressing like, what is it? David Byrne from the cars. Talking heads. The talking heads.

Of course. Yeah. And Jesus, he wins. He captures the beast and the false prophet. The deceiver captures him on the battlefield and he sends them to hell and he kills the rest of their minions. And this is, yeah, I guess somewhat like Evangelion by shooting swords out of his mouth. Pretty awesome.

Yeah. That's pretty cool. Then he captures Satan, the dragon and binds him in chains and thus begins the 1000 years apiece, the millennium where Jesus is surrounded by true believers resurrected. But after those 1000 years, Satan is released for reasons unknown. They never say why. They just say that after 1000 years, Satan has to be released. You got to give him a shot.

It's like an appeals court or it's like Jason takes Manhattan. So after a short battle, Satan is thrown to the lake of Burning Sulphur where he joins the beast and the false prophet. And then after that, all is well, heaven and earth will now be won, Eden will be restored and God will now live amongst the true followers of Christ while everyone else burns in the lake of fire. Dang. With that, the revelation of John the Divine ends with a warning that all of this was going

to happen soon. And the thing was, kinda already did. See it's fairly obvious that this whole thing was at the very least anti-Roman propaganda. And even though Revelation and Christianity had fuck all to do with the fall of Rome, the Roman Empire still fell. But even though the events of Revelation have already kinda sorta come to pass, that doesn't stop people from claiming that they're still to come and they're the only ones that know when that date's gonna be.

Honestly, and they want it so bad. They want this. They want the tribulations times. They want Jesus to come back to the point where they'll even try to trigger it. The first real exceed to be, one of the first examples was a man named William Miller who basically did his religious math after retiring to only read the Bible. He was a soldier of the New, all he did was sit and read the Bible and he came with his math saying that the revelations were gonna spark between March 21st, 1843, and March

21st, 1844. And when it didn't happen, it led to a literally thing because the Millerites were a big movement inside of America. Yeah, they followed him. Yeah, that on October 22nd, 1844, was finally described as Millerite's great disappointment. And that's the day I switched to Coors Light. And I'll never go back to drinking the Millerite. Well, that is, that's wonderful stuff.

I also think that my Terminator 2 predicted some stuff. Your robots are the devil. Remember that at the end when he goes into the vat of liquid burning stuff? Yeah, this is very deep. Wow. That's cute, too. Very deep symbolism that you found inside of Terminator 2. Well, the most famous recent example of a guy who said, yeah, at the end of the world

all figured out was Harold Camping. Oh, this fucking guy. Just a few years ago, Camping put together a $100 million advertising campaign through his Christian radio network that told people that the Rapture was gonna occur on May 21st, 2011. Mm-hmm. He and his followers rented more than 3,000 billboards across the world in over a dozen countries telling people that the end of was near, and people listened.

People quit their jobs. They sold their houses. Some spent their life savings, including their kids' college funds, just to help buy advertising. They even had like a caravan of RVs that would drive around the United States, handing out pamphlets, telling people that the end was coming. They came to New York, and I have to say this, in full disclosure, a preacher screaming about the end of times, I like it. I love it.

I like to walk down the street. I love it so much. There's something about it that makes me feel like I'm in some bizarre film. Yeah. And it just kind of brings you out of reality, and they were definitely doing that. They were all over the place. Yeah. They were really big in Union Square.

What is more fun than going to school, than going on an RV trip, getting to tell everybody the world's gonna fucking end? Oh, I get that, yeah. It's fucking sweet. I have read stories from people who were children during that time, and they do not describe it as a lot of fun. Oh, okay. Camping was one of the biggest cremations in AM radio history.

Yeah. Well, the whole history of AM radio is nothing but cremations. Yeah. It was horrible. He had done it for years. And speaking of New York City, just here in New York, a retired MTA worker named Robert Fitzpatrick spent $140,000 on local ads, and then camped out in Times Square on the day in question, waiting for the judgment to come.

And when it didn't, I'd seen some YouTube videos. He was miffed, to say the least. Well, miffed, miffed the term for it. Yeah. I guess I'll just go to the M&M store then. My God. Yeah. He really built a lot of people with not a lot of money out of all of the little money

that they have. But that's the things. The money didn't go to camping. The money all went to advertising. Well, yeah. Because, and camping, it wasn't... Well, he died pretty, he was pretty well off. He was pretty well off, but that was from the, what is it, the Christian radio network.

Because a lot of the money he was spent, the $100 million that was spent, that was his own money, because for him it wasn't about money. He wasn't trying to build money out of people. He was trying to make himself be important. It was all about ego for him. And he said that on May 21st, like when he finally emerged from his office, he said he was quote, unquote, flabbergasted. Yeah.

Nothing had happened, but he'd soon get back to everyone with an answer real fast. Of course. And eventually he just kicked the can down the road, said it's going to happen on October 21st. And on May 21st, that was the beginning of the invisible judgment. Real judgment's going to come in October. Of course, it didn't happen then either, but right before camping died in 2013, he released a statement admitting he was wrong.

He apologized to his followers and said that his efforts had been sinful. And in his apology, he quoted the book of Matthew, heaven and earth shall pass away, but of that day and hour, noeth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my father only. Oh, my God knows. Wow. Are you singing a kid rock song? Oh, my God. There it is, folks.

That's it. The book of revelations. That's odd. It is extremely compelling. It is. It's super fun. Yeah. It's very kind.

Of course, we're not here to offend anybody that is of the Christian faith at all. No, of course. Some of us aren't. But I would say, no, I'm not trying to, I understand why you, it's not about Christian faith. It's more just the idea of the book of revelations. And now the way it's spent, it's kind of the way it's spun, right? Because they're the people that truly believe Mike Pence is the warrior of Christ and that's

the reason why they align themselves with attacking the people that are conservationists and people that believe in climate change and all kind of shit. It's basically because they're trying to game the end days. That's where it gets like dangerous. And that is the concern. I mean, there was, I remember a lot of concern during the George W. Bush years that George W. Bush's evangelical faith was actually driving his foreign policy and that the decisions made within the administration were to kickstart revelations, to get it going.

It can be very dangerous to take this stuff literally. Be very careful. But of course. Yeah. And then, but there's, but you know, there are also some people that I read that do absolutely believe in the book of revelations, but they also read the Bible and say like, but God told us to tend the earth and to care for the earth and tell his return. So we're not going to give up just yet.

We're going to keep taking care of the earth until it comes back, but he's going to come back soon, but we're going to keep taking care of it because that's what he told us to do. Yeah. Good luck with Monsanto around. Yeah. Monsanto. Good Lord.

You know, I do find it interesting that maybe we could make the big, because you ever see Peewee's big top. Have I talked about this before about how technically that he is Monsanto in that? No, I don't think so. Yeah. Peewee is Monsanto in Peewee's big top and technically there's a part of it where you could say it would be nice to feed the world with genetically modified huge tomatoes and hot dog tree and stuff like that.

That could help. No, that does tell. I have no problem with genetically modified foods, but this is a whole other conversation by the way. Yeah. But I don't like. They kill the families and they sue them if one of their seeds gets on the wrong farm. That's a whole other conversation.

The business practices are horrific. That's the problem. The concept itself is one of the only things that's going to be able to save us in the future. Anyway, all right. The book of revelations. As mid-30s men, we have to end every conversation with the Monsanto rant, but thank you all so much for listening.

I mentioned it just briefly here in this episode, but we got our special coming out. Yeah, real soon. It's $6.66. We're really excited about it, nearly finished, and please, if you want to support us, purchase that. We won't be doing that show ever again, and I think you guys really like it, so hopefully you guys take a look at it. We're already starting to formulate the dates that we'll be doing in 2019.

We're really excited to see it. Yes. Oh, Lola at the, which I'm hoping to see you, Lola. Yeah. You know what I can say? Yeah. The content is, well, I don't, they still don't know where we're going. I will say that.

And of course, thanks to everyone who supports us on Patreon. If you want to give to our Patreon, five bucks or more, get you all kinds of cool bonus content, including an interview series that Ben and Henry do, and Ben's creepypasta readings. And if you would like to hear me read the Bible more, I've done a lot of readings over on the Patreon page because reading the Bible aloud is something that I enjoy very much. There it is. A million bucks, six flags on us. Don't forget.

Yeah. If you're the son of a billionaire, piss off your dad, give us a million bucks, we'll take it to Six Flags. It's an easy way to do it, and we'll be so thankful for it. We'll be so much fun, and we'll do whatever, and we'll stay in touch, too, afterwards. We'll be friends. But I also remember we've got next week, the birth of the, the birth of the wicked witch of the Middle East is coming upon us again.

That's not a good thing to say. No. And he wasn't even born in December. No. But I would say is that next week we got a special for you. It's a gift. It's a Christmas gift. Yes, we're going to actually, we're going to break down the actual process of birth.

And it is, it's brutal, Marietta, you know, it tears. It tears. They don't talk about that in the Bible. It tears. There's no easy, no easy birth whatsoever. No, we're going to, we're going to give you what you want next week. Absolutely. So be ready to be showered in, showered in blood.

Yay. We are going to open up a fucking throat on top of your heads. Absolutely. Just in time for Christmas. All right. Hail Satan. Hail yourselves, every one of you. Hail Geen.

Hail me. Magustalations, enjoy the December season. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Very good. Enjoy the December season, children.

Weird. Weird. Hey, everyone, how are you doing? This is Ed Larson from The Rowl Table, gentlemen. How you doing, baby? I miss you too, but you don't got to miss me too much because I got another show with Miss Amber Nelson called The Brighter Side. It's a cynic's look at optimism.

And we all need positivity in our life because if you're all negative, it's going to globity gloop in your stomach and you're going to be a miserable, nasty person. Nobody wants to be with the miserable nasties. Boo. They're bad. Skip them away from everyone else. Back. Back.

On our show, on a regular basis, we have this thing called, it's a game we invented. It's called Hoop-a-goo-goo-noo-noo-do-do. How would you say it? Hoop-a-goo-noo-noo-do-do-do-do. There is no way to say it. It's a game we made up and basically it's a rapid fire edition of Finding the Positive and the In-Something Negative. We're going to play a quick version for you right now so you see how it goes.

Amber, could you give me something negative? Something negative. Horse manure. Horse manure. All right. You could throw it at a car. I mean, you shouldn't be throwing horse manure at cars. It's a bad thing to do, but it's probably fun to watch.

Heck yeah. And they got it coming for them, being a car and all. What's your positive of horse manure? You can use it to feed plants that make the food. That's right. That's right. Manure makes food. Isn't that great that poo poo makes food for more poo poo?

Oh. That's so nice. It's a circle of poo poo. I want to say, Amber, what is the brighter side of dirty blankets? Dirty blankets. You can put in a barn and keep a dog warm. You're such a nice person. I'm going to say, I like doing laundry.

I'm going to clean the blanket. Oh, you like doing laundry? I enjoy laundry. It sends me out. It makes me peaceful. Fold it nice, put it in the cabinet. I got a clean blanket for when guests come over or when it gets chilly. What I'm trying to say is, listen to the brighter side.

It's a cynics-looking optimism, and it's on the Last Podcast Network. And also, clean your sheets at least two weeks because you need to sleep in a clean blanket. Be good to yourself, baby. What's up, you Last Podcast fans? My name is Jackie Zabrowski. And my name is Molly Neffle, and we, along with Marcus, host Page 7, a pop culture and celeb gossip podcast that is nestled in the arms of the Last Podcast Network. Everyone listen to Marcus Galpal down with a couple of daddy-thirsty women talking movies

and throwing metaphorical barbs at the sadest industry of Gwyneth Paltrow and discussing our shared love of Jason Momoe's face and body despite his terrible acting skills? Check out Page 7. It's a positive romp through the boob tube and the funny papers that'll be sure to leave you loving Guy Fieri and knowing way too much about what Hulk Hogan said during his sex tape. Oh yeah, he kept burping a barbecue while she boinked on it. Don't worry, we talk pop culture the way that most late 20s, 30s, 40s people talk pop culture.

I may not know exactly what Bella Hadid does, but I know what love is. Now is not the time for Forrest Gump impressions Jackie, we are in the middle of an ad. Okay, don't taze me bro. You are a beauty that's fixin' to get iced by the beast. The only way you're gonna ice me is with a cool tolly of mango Rita. Get off it, everyone knows that grape burrito is the best flavor. Actually, maybe they are all the best flavors. Well, except strawberry, just sayin', try out a new flavor in your brain meat.

If you like the Razzmatazz The Last Podcast, please check out the ridiculousness that is page seven, wherever you listen to your podcasts, as well as the other shows on the last podcast network. I think you might like it.