Read the Book, Ken

I'm sure that the Playboy magazines we used to read back in the day had more than 30 pages in them, and thy weren't all that hard to read. Seriously, you have to read the whole book if you want to know the whole story of how the Israelites got out of Egypt. If you want to know how they got into Egypt in the first place, you have to back up and read the last few chapters of Genesis. I forgot to tell you about that part yesterday. Okay, if you want the cliff notes, they are probably on Wiki somewhere. That reference you gave me about the Israelites had some of it in there. First there was the prevailing modern theory of it then, further down the page, was the Biblical version. Wiki is good about telling both sides of a story like that. I haven't looked up your reference on the Exodus yet, but I suspect it will be similar.

In the days when Jesus walked the Earth, baptism was the way you joined a cult or similar organization. Some of them did it with blood, but I'm pretty sure the Christians all used water. I'm not sure when they started baptizing infants, but it kind of defeated the whole purpose because an infant is incapable of voluntarily joining anything. A few sects still don't baptize infants, but the Methodists aren't one of them. If you are baptized as an infant, it signifies your parents' pledge to raise you as a Christian. Then, when you are about 12 years old, you go through confirmation, which means you are confirming the pledge your parents made, now that you are old enough to make that decision for yourself. If you are baptized later in life, it counts as both ceremonies rolled into one. I don't remember you being part of our confirmation class, which is the protestant version of catechism. I believe our class was the first one that Elsdon had, at least in recent memory, and I'm not sure if they ever had another one. It was Rev. Schact's idea, and she was only there for a year or two.  It wasn't nearly as formal as what the Catholics went through, we just learned some stuff and memorized a couple Bible passages of our own choice. Then we got up in front of the congregation and recited what we had memorized, Rev. Schact said some words, and we became full members of the church.

This is what I've been trying to tell you, the beliefs that many Christians have about Heaven and Hell are not to be found in the Bible. Jesus and Paul talked about the Resurrection, but I got the impression that they assumed that their audience already knew about it. I am only aware of one time that Jesus talked about going to Heaven immediately when you die, and He was being crucified at the time, so He might have gotten a little confused. The book of Revelation (Apocalypse in Greek) is supposed to explain it in detail, but nobody can make any sense out of that thing, although many have tried. I picked up bits and pieces of the scenario, both from the Bible and some ancillary material written in modern times and, as near as I can tell, it goes something like this:

Step 1: There will be wars and rumors of wars, and earthquakes in various places, but this is only the beginning.
Step 2: When "the desolating sacrilege is set up in the place where it ought not to be" ("the abomination that makes desolate" in the KJV), then you know that the shit is about to hit the fan (or words to that effect).
Step 3: The Rapture, which I forgot to tell you about yesterday. That's when the Elect float up to Heaven and are spared all the tribulation that is to follow. I'm not sure how the Elect are chosen but, if we wake up one morning and discover that a few hundred thousand people have mysteriously disappeared without a trace, they are the Elect, and the Rapture has left the station without us.
Step 4: The shit hits the fan. A whole bunch of terrible stuff happens, resulting in the death of most of the people who missed the Rapture.
Step 5: Jesus comes back to Earth and puts an end to all this foolishness. The dead are resurrected and, along with the living, are sorted into two groups by Jesus. The Bible calls them "the sheep" and "the goats", which undoubtedly is a metaphor for the good guy and the bad guys. The bad guys, along with their leader Satan, are cast into the Lake of Fire, and the good guys get to live on a new improved Earth under the leadership of Jesus.

More tomorrow, if there is a tomorrow.