These people who think God spoke directly with them terrifies me
The reformation meant recognizing new apostles—men and women believed to have God-given spiritual authority as leaders. It meant modern-day prophets—people believed to be chosen by God to receive revelations through dreams and visions and signs. It meant spiritual warfare, which was not intended to be taken metaphorically, but actually demanded the battling of demons that could possess people and territories and were so real that they could be diagrammed on maps.
It meant portals: specific openings where demonic or angelic forces could enter—eyes or mouths, for instance, or geographic locations such as Azusa Street in Los Angeles, scene of a seminal early-20th-century revival. It meant the rise of the Manifest Sons of God, an elite force that would be endowed with supernatural powers for spiritual and perhaps actual warfare.
Most significant, the new reformation required not just personal salvation but action to transform all of society. Christians were to reclaim the fallen Earth from Satan and advance the Kingdom of God, and this idea was not metaphorical either. The Kingdom would be a social pyramid, at the top of which was a government of godly leaders dispensing biblical laws and at the bottom of which was the full manifestation of heaven on Earth, a glorious world with no poverty, no racism, no crime, no abortion, no homosexuality, two genders, one kind of marriage, and one God: theirs.
Reading this article feels terrifying.....by the sheer ignorance of the people covered. They believe they are acting on behalf of God, literally. It feels like a doomsday cult.
It should terrify you. They are either grifters willing to do anything to anyone in order to prove their beliefs, or they are extremely unwell mentally and would likely do anything to anyone in order to see their imagined reality play out.
I'll let you in on a secret as well... All religions are doomsday cults.
Maybe not for Buddhism or Shinto.
But Abrahamic religions do seem to have that tendency.
Depending on the form and era of buddhism, I do think that some have eschatology rooted in the belief structure.
To your point tho, I don't think its nearly as dogmatic.
Look at the Rohingya Genocide in Myanmar and tell me how peaceful and not doomsday Buddhism is.
All religions are susceptible to manipulation by terrible people.
Fixed. Religions just put religious leaders in a position, where they have authority to push their ideas. Given that religious people are irrational by definition, it makes them easier to manipulate.
I am well aware of the Rohingya genocide. I am only saying they are not “doomsday” as they don’t seem to think the world is ending.
That is closer to ethnic cleansing which is completely wrong but is another issue.
These folks are grifters just as big as televangelists were in the 80's. The only thing is, they figured out that they can get away with a lot more if they don't do the TV circuit, and just act. If you dig a bit (spy on them the way they try to spy on us) you'll learn some very scary things.