Lovecraft the prophet

"That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth. The time would be easy to know, for then mankind would have become as the Great Old Ones; free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside and all men shouting and killing and revelling in joy. Then the liberated Old Ones would teach them new ways to shout and kill and revel and enjoy themselves, and all the earth would flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom. Meanwhile the cult, by appropriate rites, must keep alive the memory of those ancient ways and shadow forth the prophecy of their return."

-- from The Call of Cthulhu by H.P. Lovecraft

It was 1928 when Howard Phillips Lovecraft published The Call of Cthulhu: his seminal classic which forever altered the nature of horror fiction.

That passage has stuck with me from the first time that I read this short story in the fall of 1996.  And I've thought about it countlessly in the years since.  It has been difficult not to see mankind through the vision of those cultists waiting for when the stars are right: when the incomprehensible horror that is Cthulhu will arise at last from the cyclopean city of R'yleh far below the waters of the Pacific and lay waste to the Earth.  Until then dead Cthulhu waits, dreaming...

Mankind, "free and wild and beyond good and evil, with laws and morals thrown aside."  Men "shouting and killing and revelling in joy."

It has been eighty-five years since Lovecraft wrote those words.  And with each passing year it seems as if humanity... or at least the civilized realm of it... is descending further and further into the barbaric, unrestrained frenzy of pleasure and pain that he described in his tale.

Slaying the innocent for sake of money and convenience.  Government gone lawless.  Men and women descending beneath their nature.  Wars without reason or end.  Conscience and ethics spurned utterly.  Good proclaimed to be evil, and evil to be good.

Perhaps more than we have realized... maybe more than we would like to acknowledge... H.P. Lovecraft had a prescience of far greater clarity than any prophet or futurist of this age.

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Chuck Baldwin sez: Too many Christians are lazy 'cuz of prophecy

Chuck Baldwin, Baptist minister and brilliant writer, argues in his latest piece that prophecy has driven far too many Christians into a state of apathy. But where Paul wrote in humble reproval to his fellow believers at Thessalonica, Baldwin's is a thunderous condemnation (and in my opinion, rightfully so) aimed especially at those in America who profess to follow Christ. He writes...

In the first place, no one knows when Christ will return, no matter how many books or tapes they have produced to say they do. In Acts chapter 1, Jesus was asked by His disciples if He would, at that time, set up His kingdom. The first words out of His mouth were, "It is not for you to know." Oh, we can speculate, surmise, and make educated guesses, but that's the best we can do. It's time we were honest enough to admit it: only God knows when Christ will return. In fact, Jesus said, "But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only" (Matthew 24:36).

In the meantime, millions of Christians across America are trying to play God. They talk as if they know when Christ will come. It's actually worse than that. They have the attitude that they have no personal responsibility to defend freedom and resist despotism. They seem to look at God as some kind of glorified fireman, who is obligated to rush in at the last minute to rescue them from a burning fire--a fire that they helped ignite, or at least, refused to put out themselves when they had the opportunity to do so. It's the old, "God would not let that happen in America" syndrome...

And later on Baldwin adds this...

I believe the real reason why so many professing Christians are so apathetic and indifferent to what is happening has nothing to do with the teachings of Scripture, Bible doctrine, eschatology, or anything of the like. It has everything to do with old-fashioned laziness. Today's average Christian just flat does not want to be bothered. He has a comfortable house, an easy chair, television, and a set of golf clubs in the closet. He takes two or three weeks' vacation every year, goes to church on Sunday (a church that does not intrude on his comfort zone, of course), pays taxes, and votes for his favorite "pro-life" Republican candidate every two years, and assumes that he is a "good" Christian and "patriotic" American. He is neither!

Hit here for the rest of Baldwin's essay.

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