Live Fire with Chuck Holton

The following letter came a few days ago from a man who read Bulletproof to his ailing father.  I’m so thankful when I get the opportunity to hear how my writing has touched other people…but this was especially touching to me, so with Brian’s permission, I’d like to share it here.

Mr. Holton,

I am writing to express my gratitude from my family and recently deceased father. Dad died on October 9th, 2007 of natural causes. In failing health, I was compelled to get your book “Bullet Proof” to him having only read about 1/4 of it myself. Dad informed me before he passed that he had finished it and his description of the book was “absolutely wonderful”.

You see, my dad was no ordinary man. He was a liberator of the Nazi death camp Dachau, 42nd Rainbow division, 232 inf. Co G. Having been attacked during operation Nordwind, (specifically 5 Jan 1945 between the towns of Heurlsheim and Offendorf), the German counteroffensive. He was one of 29 men from a full strength company of 180, that was alive after 5 days of being run through by Piper’s men(I believe 2nd Panzer Waffen SS), at the Rhine River.

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multi-media cinema

When it comes to predicting what a stock will do in the future, one way is to look at it’s track going backwards and extrapolate that into the future. It’s kind of like driving a winding road by looking in the rear-view mirror, though, so take all this with a grain of salt – I’m going to project the direction of some trends we see today, and see if they don’t coalesce at some point in the future to give us a “perfect storm” for the rapture/tribulation to take place.

Today, let’s consider the explosive growth of technology over the last fifty years, and let our minds wonder what another fifty years of progress will bring. Already we’re on the cusp of having “Ultra-High Definition Television.” and “Ultra-High speed internet.” It’s easy to see them slowly merging into one product, and when they are truly seamless, each will be an order of magnitude better than they are today. What will it be like, for example, when your “media appliance” is as clear as looking through a clean window on a sunny day? And the bandwidth that brings you your video is four hundred times what it is today? How will 1000 petabyte per second bandwidth change the internet?

Stay Home Everybody!

For starters, anyone that doesn’t have to be physically present at their workplace (and that’s a lot more than you think) will work from home. This is a very important concept in my theory – one that will keep coming up. Public schools will be a thing of the past – at least the buildings will be. Schooling will be done over the net, in real time, totally interactive. If you think this bodes well for homeschooling, think again…I think it’ll allow the government a superhighway into your home. But that’s beside the point. If energy costs and taxes continue to skyrocket, it won’t be financially feasible to travel like we do now, for petty things like shopping and work. After all, how much fuel could we save if we cut the number of commuters by seventy or eighty percent? How much more would schools be able to spend on their students without schools to heat, fleets of buses to maintain, and a myriad of teachers?

Mind you, I think it will take several generations (in the neighborhood of fifty years or so) for the culture to evolve into this kind of thinking. If it seems absurd to you now, think back in time fifty years and try to explain our modern lives to your great grandparents. They’d think you were out of your mind.

But cultures evolve based on the external forces at work on them. The internet is an incredibly powerful force. And for good or for ill, it will completely change the way we think by the time my children have grandchildren.

How does this bring about armageddon? I’m not sure it does, but it sure sets the stage for the events described in Revelation to make a lot more sense. We’ll explore that more the next time. Stay tuned.

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originally uploaded by soldiersmediacenter.

Okay, I think I know what I want to be when I grow up.

Okay, before you all think I’ve completely lost it and dropped off the deep end, I’m not becoming some end-times nut. Let me make it clear that I think it’s a futile and destructive exercise to fight about WHEN this burning world will finally collapse, when we’re called to be busy yanking people out of the fire. My intent here is to put forth an interesting theory for the sake of provoking thought, not to alarm anyone or start an argument. I don’t know if I’ll ever write another fiction series, but if I did, this would make an interesting plot.

All of this started a month ago when I was having an interesting discussion with a friend at our Saturday Men’s breakfast. It started out with an observation that many people think of the rapture as a moment when Christ comes back and we’re all caught up to heaven with him…and that’s what the Bible says will happen. But the devil is in the details, as they say, and we were talking about how in every end-times book and movie, when the rapture takes place, all the Christians just “disappear” bodily, leaving nicely-folded clothes and dental fillings in their seats.

Something about that image has never sat well with me…maybe it’s just gross to think we’ll all arrive in Heaven poorly dressed, or worse yet, stark naked and missing our dentures. But when I really thought about it, I don’t recall seeing anywhere that the Bible specifies that our bodies will be in heaven. It says we’ll have new, better bodies, which I think is cool, especially on cold mornings when I sound like a bowl of rice crispies as I get out of bed.

Here’s what the Bible says about the day Christ returns:

1 Thessalonians 4:16-17

16 For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God. First, the Christians who have died will rise from their graves. 17 Then, together with them, we who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. Then we will be with the Lord forever.

Will the Real Chuck Holton please stand up…and fly to Heaven.

No, based on what the Bible says, I think that when the rapture does come, the part of me that IS Chuck Holton – that is, my soul – will be caught up in the heavens with Jesus. This old rental car I call my body just won’t be needed anymore. So from the perspective of those “left behind” it won’t appear that I’ve disappeared, it’ll look like I keeled over and died.

In my next post, I’ll explain why that’s important.

Sheesh.  I never thought I’d blog twice in a row about this subject, but this is getting ridiculous. 

Someone finally said what I’ve been thinking ever since AlGore won a flippin’ Nobel Peace prize for his blatantly self-serving religious environmentalism.  And not just anyone – one of the foremost meteorologists on the planet, who finally said “enough” and had the temerity to call Gore’s theology “ridiculous” and “dangerous,” which it is.  Thank you, Dr. William Gray.

 I’ve been thinking lately that all this nonsense could very well be a lead up to the great tribulation.  Now, I’m not one of those wacky Hal Lindsey “end-times” prognosticators, but I’ve been kicking around an interesting combination of factors lately that I think could coalesce at some point in the future to bring about the rapture.  I’ll have to leave you scratching your head as to what I’m talking about, though, until I have time to post a series of blogs about my crazy theory.   Right now, I have writing to do.