The Mormons, like the Christian end-timers, think that Jesus will return someday to Earth, no doubt to collect his laundry or something. Much of the attention has focused on when he will return and not much attention to where.
It turns out that some Mormons have a very good idea of exactly where Jesus will return. While Christians tend to focus on Israel (and the Middle East in general) as where all the fun happens, Mormons think that America was an important focus of Jesus. They believe he appeared to the people in the Americas several times and that his return will take place in rural Missouri, in a pilgrimage spot known as Adam-ondi-Ahman, which is also where Adam and Eve supposedly went after being banished from the Garden of Eden.
Adam-ondi-Ahman is in such a remote part of northwestern Missouri that getting there requires GPS coordinates. Past Nalle’s Feed & Grain, MFA Agri Services and Gallatin Truck & Tractor, a tiny country road leads to a white picket gate. Inside, the grounds are meticulously groomed — neat gravel roads with symmetrically planted trees on both sides lead to an overlook of the valley below.
The site’s plaques mention Adam and Eve, only to say that Smith named the place after Adam. The church leaves it up to Mormons to teach their own children that it is in this valley that a future gathering of Adam and his righteous descendants will meet with Jesus Christ during the last days.
I have written before about the dangers of depending on GPS navigating systems. I hope that Jesus has a backup system so that he doesn’t end up in the wrong place, such as Nalle’s Feed & Grain.
That would be embarrassing.
Vegas, baby, Vegas.
Actually, Jesus has been back for a while. He’s crashing on my couch. I asked him if he wanted to go do the whole “Second Coming” thing, you know with the trumpets and angels and whatnot, but he’s just way too depressed with how religion turned out. He just keeps saying “it seemed like a good idea at the time”.
And when he gets there…
“What, Mormons? I have Mormons waiting for me? No, sorry, guys. You got it wrong on a few little points of dogma. The Reformed Primitive Second Reformed Congregation of Christ Baptist Reformed Methodist Episcopal (Reformed) has the dogma exactly right, every last one of you others is going straight to Hell.”
If Jesus were to return to anywhere on Earth and bump into an American offical, he’d go straight to Guantanamo.
Think about it, he’s swarthy, wears a beard, can’t speak English, is from the Middle East and answers honestly that yes, he is willing to die for his cause.
Extraordinary rendition; Orange pyjamas on; And locked up for life. Tortured, too.
Sorry Christians. You’ll never even know he’d come (re-come?).
.
(thanks to the Irish comedian who first thought of this -- forget his name).
Abie Philbin Bowman
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=972KIlxh4jM
In fact, he might stop by to renew his vows like a celebrity in a Vegas wedding.
Most definitely do not depend on GPS -- if NORAD detects anything incoming and switches selective availability back on there’s no telling where he’ll land, but Moscow or Beijing are likely targets.
This is all very interesting as I just read a Jehova’s Witnesses tract today in the laundry room that said humans do not have immortal souls. God conditionally resurrects to Paradise or exults us to the heavenly host based on his will and our conduct. Unrepentant sinners face the natural anihilation that is the natural lot of human life. Hell is not real, it is a metaphor for following the natural course of destruction that is part of animal life.
But of course they still have Battle-Jesus shooting lasers out of his burning coal eyes, so it’s not all as sophisticated as it seems. But you have to give them credit for rejecting the Trinity and Hell.
Actually I’ve stood right next to the spot where one branch of that church believes jesus will return and it’s actually in Independence, Missouri (otherwise known as the birthplace and now Presidential Library of Harry Truman).
I didn’t know this until visiting Independence that there is a schism in LDS roughly equivalent to the Sunni/Shia schism. When Joseph Smith was killed his window proclaimed her son to be the next leader under a hereditary claim (like the Shia) but Brigham Young was ambitious enough to want the job and so claimed election as the method of replacing a leader (like Sunni). The Brigham Young branch is the main church known today but the other one still exists with a giant (and very strange) church in Independence.
It was such a strange feeling to stand on a spot, totally unconnected with the traditional biblical jesus and a whole ocean away from the birthplace of xtianity to think people actually believe Independence Missouri is the site of the return. Well if it happens I won’t have so far to go. 😉
Why would he return? Why does an omnipotent entity need to be somewhere specific to do something?
I wonder why, if Jesus appeared to the people in America several times, how come they were not already christians when Columbus got here? How come there are no cave paintings of Jesus? Or at least paintings of hands with nail holes in them, since he was supposed to have appeared after his resurrection.
Oh c’mon, we all know he wrote the King James Bible in excellent English.
I am always reminded of Sam Kinison’s voice screaming, “Sure, pa, tell ’em I’ll return JUST AS SOON AS I CAN PLAY THE PIANO AGAIN!”
Jesus made me a coffee at Starbucks in San Jose last year. I bet he gets great tips. He pronounces it “HayZoos” though, not “YeShua”…
Why do the silly christians want him to come back? Is it because they all want to be killed? These crazy death cultists are positively Lovecraftian.
Reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1879, or reformed baptist church of god, reformation of 1915?
That was supposed to go under Zinc Avenger’s neat set-up line @#3…
The joke goes at least as far back as Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes where he reproduces an essay he wrote as a school child in the late 1930 or early 1940s. In it Jesus is persecuted by the Irish Catholics and then dies of consumption. Sounds like this just might be one of those satirical stories that is well suited for the irish catholic culture, and gets reinvented every so often.
Well, you see, at the end of the Book of Mormon all the naughty non-Christians kill all the christian ones in a genocidal civil war for some reason. So that’s why none were left when CC showed up. Kind of weird if you think about it, because throughout the book all the good guys are always winning wars because God sides with them. This implies Jesus wanted his followers to be murdered to extinction. Also there’s some horrible racial stuff where the Christians have light skin and the non-Christians have dark skin, except then it gets reversed due to some interconversion stuff and it gets really confusing.
It’s just a weird book.