I never formally attended Vacation Bible School, but my house was across the street from the Lutheran church, so sometimes I was tempted. There were kids playing outside! They were playing a beanbag game! So I wandered over a few times, and I was encouraged by the sunday school to do so. Forgive me, for I sinned.
It was mostly harmless, I think — the theme was just to have fun while under the umbrella of the church. That’s all. I guess the church has gotten more aggressive nowadays.
In a bizarre, disturbing scene that’s gone viral on TikTok, a church appeared to stage a fake execution of a man—involving realistic-looking guns and military uniforms—during Vacation Bible School. As the man is being murdered, the children are cheering in unison, “Take him out! Blow him up!” The military men then take the body outside (and out of view), where it’s suggested by the pastor they’re going to “blow him up.”
Bro, wtf is happening here pic.twitter.com/mSZ6xRpbXI
— Boston Smalls (@smalls2672) June 28, 2026
It’s disturbing that children were not only watching this scene, they were encouraged to cheer on the players machine-gunning the victim. Is this where a faith centered on the public execution of a disruptor of the status quo leads us?
The preacher at that church rationalizes the scene by saying that murdered man represented sin or satan, so it was OK to kill them. I’m sure Jesus would agree that children should be taught to kill sinners. They deserve death, after all.
I wonder if this church teaches that LGBTQ+ people are sinners?
Remember kids, gun solve all your problems. Don’t need a trial. Just shoot the person you told was evil.
Imagine if they were Muslim.
Taking folks out back to be shot. How Saddam Husseinesk.
They couldn’t have just…DRESSED THE GUY AS SATAN?
Not like their version of a Muslim or Antifa?
Imagine if it was a guy with a blond toupee and orange skin…
The preacher at that church rationalizes the scene by saying that murdered man represented sin or satan…
If he had explained that to the audience in advance, the cameraperson didn’t record it. Not that such context (or any other context for that matter) would have made this disgraceful fiasco any less disgraceful. Whatever message that idiot preacher was trying to convey, he did an absolutely horrid, inexcusable job of it. I’m inclined to think this guy is so full of incoherent unfocused hate as to be unable to properly express or articulate himself at all.
Luke 19:27 But those mine enemies, who would not that I should reign over them, bring them hither and slay them before me.
No doubt Stephen Miller is on the phone now: “Pastor Walker, could you come to DC to share your wisdom with the Oklahoma National Guard troops protecting our precious Reflecting Pool?”
The previous “Friendly Atheist” post is just as alarming, in a different way –
When I saw the post title, my ready referent was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VBScript
—
david @5, indeed. But, you see, it’s a parable. Metaphorical.
Just because the putative King clearly represents Jebus does not mean the sentiment applies, apparently.
(Always have been amused when bad bits are allegory, but the good bits are just bits when interpreting the Babble)
It is a dark place inside the heads of people like these.
The Bible says we’re all sinners. Perhaps President Trump will see the video and decide to launch all our ICBMs and just take the the whole damned human race out of the picture once and for all. The good news? SCOTUS will be gone, too.
Religion of Peace. /s
Rev 6:9-11: The fifth seal: Martyrs beg God for vengeance, to kill their friends and neighbors.
Rev 14:14-20: Jesus and an angel kill trillions with their sickles, then juice the corpses in a winepress. Based on the volume of blood produced, it was 24 trillion adults.
What. The. Actual. Fuck.
I don’t.
I also don’t think they emphasise forgiveness or often teach the old “Let he who is without sin throw the first stone” or “Live by the sword,and you die by the sword” or parable of the Samaritan verses there.
CA7746, nope. Not Jeebus.
Here, my emphasis, quoting your own adduced citation:
“And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.”
It’s basically recapitulating the Old Testament, specifically Daniel 7:13:
“I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.”
Definitely not Jesus.
The KJV NT was translated from the Koine Greek, and in that language they are:
ho huios tou anthrōpou, literally “the Son of the Man.”
vs
homoion huion anthrōpou,literally “one like a son of man” (a human figure)
Does anyone else see the grooming going on?
[meta]
Reminds me of the idiom “not one iota of difference” , which is from similar Babblical discussions in C4.
Trinitarians held that Jesus was homoousios (ὁμοούσιος), that is “of the same substance” or “same essence” as God, whereas the rest held he was homoiousios (ὁμοιούσιος): Meaning “of a similar substance” or “similar essence”. See? One iota.
(Guess which one won)
Son of Man: Meaning and who it is in the Bible
By Joshua Schachterle PhD in NT and Early Christianity
I’m guessing this particular preacher was unfamiliar with Romans 12:19. He needs to RTFM before engaging in complicated maintenance procedures.
CA7746, precisely!
Here, my emphasis, quoting your own adduced citation:
“And I looked, and behold a white cloud, and upon the cloud one sat like unto the Son of man, having on his head a golden crown, and in his hand a sharp sickle.”
It’s basically recapitulating the Old Testament, specifically Daniel 7:13:
“I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him.”
Definitely not Jesus.
The KJV NT was translated from the Koine Greek, and in that language they are:
ho huios tou anthrōpou, literally “the Son of the Man.”
vs
homoion huion anthrōpou,literally “one like a son of man” (a human figure)
<snicker>
That’s retcon. I told you how it is, just above.
The phrase “one like a son of man” (homoion huion anthrōpou) appears only in the Book of Revelation in the New Testament (Revelation 1:13 and Revelation 14:14). 2 times in that allegorical rambling bit, not by Jeebus.
The phrase ‘Son of Man’ (ho huios tou anthrōpou) appears throughout the Gospels as Jesus’s self-designation. 81 times.
—
Basically, like pop science, but for theology.
The claim is clearly wrong, CA7746, outside those weird hermeneutics.
(I did exegesis instead)
The Bobo Doll experiments. Experimental psychology experiments that demonstrated young children can easily taught to become violent by example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobo_doll_experiment
I vaguely remember some church 10 or 15 years ago had some sort of youth oriented activity where they had people pretend to be terrorists to get kids prepared for the Tribulation, or something along those lines.
PZ wrote: in a bizarre, disturbing scene that’s gone viral on TikTok, a church appeared to stage a fake execution of a man
I reply: Murder and Violence – that’s what xtian love is all about. They prove it with their every word and action. Read their book; it’s a huge self-contradictory fiction that chronicles, encourages and tries to justify their superstitious, bloody, incestuous, evil belief system.
@18 As someone recently pointed out, in places I frequent, who studies the stuff extensively, the modern Bibles are almost all KJV, or based on it, and their method of “translation” was not to go through and try to figure out what the F the original meaning was supposed to be, then translate that into other languages, especially English, but rather it was to do the equivalent of going, “Huh, so.. the book says, ‘And so he threw a ball, and those in attendance cheered.’, it must mean, ‘And so he threw a dance, and those who where there where all happy.'”, never mind that the rest of the story was about Baseball, but they “replaced” every word, one by one, with what they “thought” was the equivalent, according to what they “wanted” the story to actually end up being. This is how we get 3 or more different things in the original text, which involve “that which animates”, “that which thinks”, and “that which remembers” (more or less), all of them being distinctly different things in the oldest texts, and they all got translated (conveniently for the church) into either some version “soul”, or “spirit”, which are, instead, all the same damn thing, and thus leading to all sorts of stupid arguments (including irritatingly legal ones, due to religious interference in law) that make no sense at all, unless they are all the same thing.
But, yeah, Revelation is hardly more trustworthy, given not just that its fever dream nonsense, but due to it being written based on prior “creative” reimagining of the older stories and is basically, “What can we take from the old parts, rearrange, and then recast as prophetic, somehow, instead of completely unrelated stories, never mind how absolutely nonsensical it is to do so?”
@20: I recall an incident like that, and found a Usenet discussion of it from 2003, but the link to the original source is 404: https://groups.google.com/g/talk.origins/c/9StefCfYBCo/m/euciXt2oq3IJ?hl=en
[meta]
stevewatson, that link requires signing in to Google.
I do not have a Google account with which to sign in, nor shall I get one until it is necessary.
But I can use Google to search:
https://religionnews.com/2012/03/26/churchs-mock-raid-leaves-teen-traumatized/
John Morales @ # 24 – thanks: your link (as it includes a date) enabled me to find a post about that story a little closer to home –
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2012/03/28/wait-faking-kidnaping-is-better-than-doing-it-for-real-right/
Curiously, neither you nor I left a track in the comment section.
[OT]
We did, Pierce. What you see now is the scrapings that were patched together well after the exodus.
Much was lost, much was deprecated.
Snapshots remain in Wayback, FWTW.
Follow-up to the 2012 church kidnapping story:
Apparently the same “pastor” is doing business at the same location still, though the latest dated report I found came from 2022. Maybe the $10,000 bite helped persuade Jesus to persuade him not to repeat the stunt.