Golden Money Goat Loves You

I think there is literally a story in the bible where someone puts a golden goat in his garden or wherever and then gets punished by god

Edit: It was a golden calf

Congrats, you officially know more about the Bible than most so called Christians!
His name was Mooby
- You didn't say "bless you" when I sneezed!
Any true Christian would know this story. You're either not Christian, or Evangelical Christian.
- Born and raised in fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. The vast majority of evangelicals will know the story of Moses and the golden calf.
  A significant minority of evangelicals actually regularly study the Bible. (I used to be one of them.) They tend to be the core of the membership and teach classes and have leadership positions. See Mike Johnson for an example.
  The level of internal propaganda is wild. To be able to maintain that faith while regularly studying the Bible takes a lot of willing suspension of disbelief. Basically, they live in a bubble where they self-censor incoming information.
  Something like the ex-mormon CES Letter is needed for the evangelicals. Homeschooling also needs to have required curriculum to give children logical tools.
  Conservative cultural christians are a different problem and probably what you're actually thinking of. They're useful idiots for the far right as well as the evangelicals. They really don't know much about the Bible or denominations around them and tend to believe what they were told last by far right media or their smart uncle who's into conspiracy theories and shit. Political and religious outrage as entertainment.
  
  What a wonderful and illuminating reply to my snarky sarcasm! Thank you! That's all very interesting.
When does the punishment part happen
7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’
9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.” ...
25 Moses saw that the people were running wild and that Aaron had let them get out of control and so become a laughingstock to their enemies. 26 So he stood at the entrance to the camp and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.” And all the Levites rallied to him.

I kind of want a compilation of all the signs about the false prophet and trump next to each other.

I sent this one to my Trump supporting family in 2020, it's a bit outdated but useful.
https://www.benjaminlcorey.com/could-american-evangelicals-spot-the-antichrist-heres-the-biblical-predictions/
- And this was written before the Trump assassination attempt. Revelations 13 describes a beast healing from a fatal wound. There's also this bit which could read like it describes a loyalist vice president who prevents economic deals with countries who don't display loyalty to the president (i.e. wearing a hat that displays his name and number "Trump 45-47").
  [11] Then I saw a second beast, coming out of the earth. It had two horns like a lamb, but it spoke like a dragon. [12] It exercised all the authority of the first beast on its behalf, and made the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast, whose fatal wound had been healed. [13] And it performed great signs, even causing fire to come down from heaven to the earth in full view of the people. [14] Because of the signs it was given power to perform on behalf of the first beast, it deceived the inhabitants of the earth. It ordered them to set up an image in honor of the beast who was wounded by the sword and yet lived. [15] The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed. [16] It also forced all people, great and small, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, [17] so that they could not buy or sell unless they had the mark, which is the name of the beast or the number of its name.
  Edit: I see now there are updates at the bottom of the article that mention the same points I did.
  
  Sounds more like Musk than Vance, what with spacex and X(.com), especially if in the future X actually becomes the American equivalent of Wechat and a state funded and required everything app.
  
  True, especially if you consider the line:
  15] The second beast was given power to give breath to the image of the first beast, so that the image could speak and cause all who refused to worship the image to be killed.
  Sounds like Elon's recent AI generated video of Trump cleansing Gaza.
  
  As well as the Mark of the Beast as a Neurolink microchip.
  In the Left Behind series, you had to implant the chip in your forehead or right hand. They guillotined anyone who refused. If you get willingly chipped you are permanently unsaveable (so it must be the “blaspheming against the Holy Spirit” thing that Jesus was on about)
  It’s amazing that I’m not seeing more Christians freak out about this. All of the church basement videos,the Hal Lindsey, … was I the only one who took that shit seriously? Chloe’s death in Left Behind traumatized me - like I don’t think any of the film adaptations have gotten that far but I can picture it like a movie. If they weren’t going to take the warning seriously, why did I wake up some mornings in a quiet house terrified that God had abandoned me?
  
  You seem closer than I am, but my impression was that a lot of Left Behind Christians are excited for the end to come. They can't wait to be raptured, and welcome any signs from Revelations.
  
  They aren’t supposed to be cheering for the antichrist and his companions though! (And the dumbass premillennialism. Sola scriptura my left foot.)
  I had a lot of dreams of standing up to Nicolai Carpathia - the antichrist who is clearly evil because he leads the UN and wants nuclear disarmament and world peace. (He was also conceived via surrogacy for a gay couple IIRC)
  It just felt like the whole point of the series was how badass it was to stand up to the anti-Christ - like when Rayford Steele (author self insert) sneaks some kind of wooden gun to shoot Nicky, even though he know it has to fail through prophecy. Although I guess both main characters do work for the antichrist for the first few books - oh shit. (The token Asian side character gets the mark forced on to him by his parents who are very committed to him being able to get a prestigious career working for the Antichrist is also waived of the normal ramifications of the mark, while keeping its benefits as it benefits the plot)
  IRL there definitely are accelerationists and a desire for the end of the world - those that cheer for events in Palestine and hope that Hamas will perhaps retaliate in a way that would destroy symbolic sites in Jerusalem. There are programs dedicated to breeding a specific red calf for prophecy.
  Everything about Trump just seems like such an in your face deliberate insult to the tenants of the Protestant Christianities that these people claim to be following. Like it just sometimes seems like things are winding down, and that God is playing a joke on them to teach them some sort of lesson. To show that Christianity for many had in practice become a way to cover up a private revulsion/latent guilt related to homosexuality and transgender people. That Christian nationalists are more the latter than the former.
  
  Dude spoilers! I didn’t know Chloe dies!
  
  She’s a character that seems to want to escape the story she’s in. She starts out as a stereotype of a college student who’s been corrupted by her studies at Yale because you need to be afraid of sending your kids to college, it turns them into liberals.
  She converts with token resistance when her shitty cheating dad “finds” god and then is promptly married off to a guy more than a decade older than her.
  The blog Slacktivist did/does a really long running breakdown of the series, and she was always a popular character in “fan”fiction in the comments.
  
  If you edit your post to use a blockquote instead of a code block, it'll be much easier to read.
  
  Yeah, I wasn't sure how the square brackets would behave in markdown quoteblocks. I don't fully trust the post preview on mobile. Should be fixed now.
- I remember this from back then. The cool thing is, it looks like the author has been keeping it updated!

The whole point of the antichrist is they rise to power by exploiting Christians and their faith...

Like, everything about the two line up that I'm starting to think trump is literally using the myth as a blueprint. Like, at some point someone told him about it, and his first and only thought was:

I bet they're dumb enough to really fall for that

I think it's kind of the opposite. The Bible was written as a response to and warning of human greed. The fashion in which people come to power has changed since then, but human greed doesn't change.
The irony is not lost that the Bible itself was turned into a tool for greed and oppression, but I think that the actual core of the religion (Christ's teachings or whatever) were meant to warn people about the dangers of doing greedy human things.
- Dude has a literal golden goat.... That's would be a pretty big coincidence.
  Don't forget his first Christian supporters was the Evangelicalists. People who got so tired of waiting for the apocalypse they decided to help it along to get to the rapture.
  That's what's up with the Israel support as well, it's supposed to start there, and it's supposed to be a "Jewish Kingdom".
  That and the antichrist coming to power are the two big things, it's not implausible they think trump is the actual antichrist, understand how terrible he is, but want to give him ultimate power to hasten judgement day
  It's not rational, but there's logic to it.

Wasn’t worshipping a false idol considered a BAD thing?

Just don't consider it a false idol. That's the trick.

Stick your money-plated golden calf in a big box and have four old dudes carry it around on a palanquin. Then get a dozen DOGE agents to lead it in front of a government agency, blow their shofars, and pull funding until it collapses.

Boom. Straight out of the Book of Joshua, Chapter 6. Not much more holy than the Siege of Jericho.

Yes, but only if one was actually a believer of said religion.

"Christian" Nationalists are just Nazis With An Excuse.

Yeah. It's one of the few things the Bible is fairly consistent about, along with golden calf/bronze bull imagery. I'm pretty sure there's a historical religious explanation for why the Bible consistently referenced gold/bronze cattle, but I find it fascinating and kinda sad that they're so blatantly worshipping something that the Bible consistently says is wrong. Like, there's a lot of stuff in the Bible where it says one thing and then later says, "actually, wait, just kidding lol"; but it consistently talks about not worshipping idols while using cattle imagery.

Judaism likely developed out of worship of a specific deity in a pantheon. All the idol worship bans are probably a way to distance yahweh worship from everything else. It exists only to be different.
The real trouble comes when Biblical literalists try to apply this to modern situations. There are still major religions that have idols, but they tend not to be anywhere near American Christian nationalists. But when you believe every single part of the Bible is true and meaningful for your life today, you have to find some reason for it to be there.
"Umm, err, do you have a poster of Kobe Bryant on your wall? Totally an idol in the same way the Bible talks about golden calfs."

There's a whole analog horror series that spawned because of that

Which? I love analog horror.
- I know of one :The Left Behind series. Had books for teens and ones for adults.
  
  Oh yeah. I think I read one long ago when I was young and indoctrinated. Maybe even seen a movie? Yes, but not the Nic Cage one, the 2000 one.
  That's something I haven't thought about in a long time. Thanks for bringing it up (not sarcasm). I'll have to look into it from a different perspective.

Worshipping anything else than God is the big super bad. Joshua saw a Jew sleeping with a non-believer and Joshua put a spear through them both. God was like "Hell yeah, dude!" and promoted him to be the new Moses.

True.

But was idolation for a false idol not one off the signes off the anti-christ. And he was also having his own valuta... an other sing.

Stupid Libtard of COURSE NOT! Otherwise we would HATE Trump!