The Tribulation!

Tony Alamo Ministries in California blatantly uses religious delusion to rake in cash. Alamo, in his cowboy get-up, and his side-kick Mr. T the wrestler, distribute colorful little newsletters, some of which make it to Tulsa and end up as litter in the park near 61st Street and Yorktown, which is where I usually find it. And the newsletter I found yesterday announced that “The Tribulation Has Begun!” The implication is that you should support Tony Alamo Ministries because they are the only ones who can reveal the secret of the ages to you.

The newsletter is packed with Bible quotes and footnotes. But what is their evidence that the Tribulation is beginning now, rather than, say, twenty years from now? What is their evidence from current world events? He presents almost no evidence except a vague reference to a Satanic world government supported by a lying media. While I suspect that Alamo is referring to the United Nations or to the Obama Administration, both of which conservatives regularly depict as satanic, he does not actually say so. He just assumes that readers will think, “Heck yeah, there is a satanic world government, so the Tribulation is here, and I’d better join Tony and Mr. T to get ready for the rapture and the end of the world.”

And so I dismissed Tony Alamo ministries as a bunch of fakes. But perhaps I was premature. There was a lunar eclipse last night. And no ordinary one. I’ve seen plenty of orange-moon eclipses, where the moon has passed through the Earth’s penumbra, but this one was blood-red.

The Bible talks about the moon turning into blood. And that is exactly what it did. Of course, literalists would reject this, because it was still the moon rather than a gigantic gob of red and white blood cells. But how likely is it, by chance, that the very evening after I should pick up a Tony Alamo tract off the ground, announcing the Tribulation, that there should just happen to be the biggest eclipse of the century so far, not to be repeated until 2033? Assuming the world lasts that long. Obviously God has chosen Tony Alamo and Mr. T to be His Very Presence upon the Earth!

A whole paragraph of the tract was taken up by an explanation that if you do not tithe (donate ten percent), you are robbing God. And they mean, of course, to send your tithes to Tony. Omigosh! How wrong I’ve been! I’d better liquidate my assets right now and send a bunch of money to Tony Alamo!

Oh, wait. There’s something I have to figure out first. Ten percent of my gross income? My adjusted gross income? My net income?

Of course, a lot—I mean, a lot—of Christian evangelists have gotten in trouble for having rampant and wild sex with their followers. Garner Ted Armstrong fell into infamy when it was revealed that he slept with practically every female undergraduate at Ambassador College. And what about Tony Alamo? Seven women accused him of sexual abuse, sued him, and won $525 million last year. They won easily, since Alamo did not even respond to the lawsuit.

So one might be tempted to believe Tony Alamo to be a fake. But how, then, can you explain the lunar eclipse last night? God must be speaking to us! Or not.

This entry is different from the lunar eclipse entry on the evolution blog.