Skeptophilia (skep-to-fil-i-a) (n.) - the love of logical thought, skepticism, and thinking critically. Being an exploration of the applications of skeptical thinking to the world at large, with periodic excursions into linguistics, music, politics, cryptozoology, and why people keep seeing the face of Jesus on grilled cheese sandwiches.

Thursday, October 3, 2013

Smiting San Francisco

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but if you're a reader in the San Francisco area, you're doomed.

Today, in fact.

I know, I know, I should have warned you all sooner.  But I didn't even know until yesterday, and at that point, it seemed kind of late to start a wholesale evacuation.  So this is sort of a "thanks for your readership, hope you don't die too painfully."

You might be wondering how I know all of this.  It's a good question, and of course, the answer is that we have some self-proclaimed Prophets of the Lord who have said that God Almighty has told them that he's about to find downtown San Francisco on Google Maps and then press "Smite" on the Holy Keyboard.  The result, we are told, is that there will be an earthquake along the San Andreas Fault that will measure 9.7 on the Richter Scale (making it the strongest earthquake ever recorded), and a subesquent tsunami will pretty much obliterate anything that survives the initial shock.


Of course, in the scientific world, we always look for corroboration, don't we?  If I claim to have made some kind of groundbreaking discovery, then my fellow scientists will try to replicate my findings.  So just listen up, you naysayers: no less than three prophecies of doom have spelled out clearly that San Francisco has been Naughty In God's Sight, and as a result, the city is more or less screwed.

First, we have "Adam H.:"
This video is about what my mom has been telling me for the last day and a half.  She has been having dreams and visions about a large earthquake off the west coast of the United States.  She has had something like this happened to her once before.  It was right before the Japan earthquake and tsunami.  She basically predicted it.  It was pretty intense.  It was about two days before the event.  This one though she says she has seen numbers and dates and times.  It is early October in the daytime, sometime in the morning, on a Thursday.  The warning we are hearing is a 9.7 earthquake on the West Coast.
He was reluctant to pin down the date, but in the comments section he came out with it -- and today is, in fact, the day.

Then, we have the prophecy by "Pastor Joel:"
I received a call from a sister in the Lord (Kelly) who was frightened at a vision she had recently seen. She saw the upcoming date as October 3, with the Golden Gate Bridge breaking in half and going vertical, a huge tsunami covering San Francisco, an earthquake 9.7 in the city and water flooding the valley. Many souls perished. She felt compelled to warn people. Her fear came largely because she had seen a vision of the Boston Marathon Bombing the night before it happened.

As I was sharing these two events with my wife, she reminded me of a call she had received two weeks before. An intercessor friend (Margaret) from the East Bay area had warned Georgia not to go into San Francisco starting the last week in September through the first three weeks of October. Margaret had seen a tsunami and a devastating earthquake in the city, in a vision. Today Margaret told Georgia that many other intercessors have recently seen the same type of warnings.

Earlier this week, I was sharing some of this with our Tuesday Prophetic Luncheon Group. One of our sisters (Barbara) told me that the Lord had spoken to her clearly recently. He said that the “bowl of iniquity of San Francisco” was now full to the brim!
I didn't know there were "Prophetic Luncheons," did you?  What do you do at a "Prophetic Luncheon?"  Eat cold cuts and potato salad and jello mold, and speak in tongues?  What if you have a "Prophetic Luncheon" and the Lord is otherwise engaged?

It'd be kind of embarrassing to have a "Prophetic Luncheon" and then just sit around, munching potato chips for an hour, before finally giving up and deciding that if the Holy Spirit has anything to say, he would just have to wait until next month.

Then, finally, we have the alarming message from "Cindy Page:"
Wow! I have been given a date to “be prepared” (from the Lord) by October 2nd! In my dream there was chaos and madness going on. I asked the Lord when I should be ready. Will it be early October or late October? He told me the 275th day of the year, which is 10/2. I took that to mean the Lord wanted me to be ready by October 2nd.

In my heart I feel that shortly after October 2nd we are going to experience a great earthquake in California and we need to have food and water stored up. If possible, we should have enough for at least a month or two. If possible, be out of the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay area by October 1-3 and again on October 23-24.
Of course, the danger in all of this -- for the prophets, not for San Francisco -- is in pinning down a specific date.  Especially a date that is really soon.  Because if you put it far enough ahead, you can stir people up for a long while before they get any kind of verification of whether you were correct or not, while if you say that disaster is going to strike today, you damn well better be right or you will lose any credibility you had.

Not that these folks have much anyway, of course.  I mean, even the seismologists can't predict earthquakes very accurately -- they can tell when a fault is showing signs of seismic stress, but they can't say anything close to, "And it's going to give tomorrow morning at 8:30."  Even the non-wingnuts don't quite get that, sometimes -- which is why six Italian scientists were jailed for malfeasance last year for failing to predict the L'Aquila earthquake of 2009, which killed 300 people.

The wingnuts, though... wow.  They just eat this stuff up.  If you don't mind doing repeated headdesks, go to the link I posted above, and read some of the comments.  A few of them questioned the prophets -- one even pointed out how many times (as in, 100%) that such prophecies have been wrong.  But the majority yammered out their thanks to god and to the prophets for giving them warning.  One will suffice, to get the flavor (spelling and punctuation is as written):
If you have made it here or have been led by Holy Spirit to this site, and this article be thankful and prepare. If any Christian will read thru the old testament you will see a pattern of the cause and effect of straying from the laws put in place by God. Sexual immortality, idol worship, and many other sins by the examples given in the Bible all resulted in judgement. We are blessed to know what is coming so we can prepare. We are supposed to stand thru the storm with a peace that only comes by knowing Jesus Christ. Our fellow brothers and sisters who may not be not be saved should be wanting what we have because we have peace thru the storm. Instead of criticizing take prophetic words to the Lord in prayer. .the Lord just may be trying to alert us to be ready so His light can shine thru us.
So, on the whole, they are wholly in favor of an earthquake obliterating the Bay Area.  But these are the same people who think that the whole Noah's Ark thing, with god wiping out virtually every human on Earth (infants included!) for some unspecified "wickedness," is an edifying story, suitable for telling children in Sunday school.

So I don't think this should come as any sort of surprise.

Me, I'm not worried, and I wouldn't be even if I lived in San Francisco.  An earthquake at some point is probably going to hit along the San Andreas Fault, plate tectonics being what it is, but the chances of it happening today are slim.  Of course, that is unlikely to shake the faith of the aforementioned wingnuts, who seem to forget about such failures nearly instantaneously.  And the next time god tells one of their prophets something -- a typhoon, maybe, headed toward Omaha on December 8 -- they'll be right back to believing it and thanking Jesus for warning them in time.

7 comments:

  1. "The bowl of iniquity is full",folks! This great news if, like me, Bowl of Iniquity is your favorite breakfast cereal. Nothing beats a delicious Bowl of Iniquity in the morning.
    (Unless you're talking about the sporting event, but you'll never get tickets at this late a date.)

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    1. I like my Bowl of Iniquity with milk and sugar -- does that make it righteous? Or am I still going to be on the receiving end of a "smite?"

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    2. Probably not, see, in Old Testiment times, the caps-lock was often accidentally left on, on the holy keyboard, leading to unintended shouting and harsher punishments.
      We seldom see smite-idge on that scale anymore for small offenses.

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  2. Interesting, I think i saw the same documentary recently regarding the San Andreas fault line.

    It stated that the pressure point is located near Washington and Oregon, and that the cities when it hits that will be most effected will be Seattle and Portland.

    The only thing pertaining to CA was a pressure point just north of LA that would wreak the LA and central valley areas.

    The talked about San Andreas in the Netflix video Megaquake: Hour That Shook Japan
    came out in 2011. Idk maybe god changed his main and decided to focus his hate on SF

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  3. I've been seeing the same kind of hysteria here in Puerto Rico concerning thousands of alleged plastic coffins shipped by FEMA ahead of a supposed natural event\epidemic\mass murder by the government\Justin Bieber concert.It's supposed to happen around late Sept\Oct 1.Could you write something about it?I think that was a kind of big thing in the States about 2 or 3 years ago.I think that they will move the end of the world date again.

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    1. Thanks! I found some sources that mentioned a tsunami and FEMA coffins in PR, but nothing that connected it to Justin Bieber. That would just be the icing on the cake. Do you have a source that connects Bieber?

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    2. Not really.But I know he has a concert here at the end of the month...Oh,should I be worried???

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