Dark clouds: I was expecting the Biblical Armageddon and Independence Day to happen

Sunday. 

Went to church in a good mood which I think was due to the good weather. I was listening to the sermon when all of a sudden strong cold wind blew through the church's window and temperature dropped which made me shivered.  

Looking out through the windows, I saw dark clouds merging into one pregnant super cumulunimbus cloud. My imagination was running wild. I was expecting the four horsemen to emerge racing through the clouds charging with their weapons raised above their heads ready to harvest the unsaved while the heavenly hosts' trumpet corps played the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Armageddon was coming upon us but I was sure that I would be spared because I am one of the elect, that's idea of belonging in a church, by the way. 

But it was just a burst of rainstorm. Maybe next time.

I didn't mean to be irreverent but I had no control over the visualization. Anyway, alien invasion did not kicked in. I guess the...never mind.

There were two things that kept me awake and praying at night when I was little. One was the rapture. I had nightmares about being left behind after the Almighty, in a blink of an eye, teleported all the elect into heaven leaving the dammed to be marked by the beast or, to get another chance to be saved,  by dying in defiance of the anti-Christ. 

This fear was reinforced by rapture and hell movies used by American missionaries to scare the hell out of Filipinos into accepting Jesus as their savior. 

But after the doctrine of assurance calmed my fear of rapture, I was struck by another phobia: fear of alien invasion. 

Thanks to TV series like Space 1999, Battlestar Galactica, Twiligh Zone, Buck Rogers, I spent many nights looking out our window expecting lights to come down from heaven and little green men or metallic centurion to come charging and rounding up people in the neighborhood. 

The idea of being hit by a disintegration laser beam or being host to alien spores gave me nightmares. I guess the images from movies and TV drove my imagination into hyperdrive. 

I think that's one reasons why my notebooks were full of intergalactic battle drawings. I remember my grade three teacher checking my notebook and making a face at the saucers and space battleships exchanging cosmic rays and missiles. But ironically, I see the same drawings from some of my pupils now.

I grew up and with it the fear just went away. That's why I find it hard to relate to religion that preach fear in order to entice or to coerce people into accepting their doctrine or their church. 

They paint this bleak picture of humanity, of life, their insistence on the reward of eternal life and the picture they paint reflected the worldview of their holy books writers' age.  


Well, anyway, same old, same old...How I wished I was a gullible child again.