Sunday, October 12, 2014

Sunday Sermonette: "I'm a Crank for Swank!"*

*Title courtesy Grouchmarxist.

(Originally published February 26, 2009.)

Pastor Swank: I Eat Cannibal, It’s Incredible


This week, things take a dark turn at RenewAmerica, as Pastor Swank acquires a taste for human flesh.
NOTE: Pastor Swank authored MOMENTS TO GO, A STUDY OF THE SECOND COMING, Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 1974, the book now out of print. However, a few copies are available via such venues as Amazon books.
It’s hard to believe that J. Grant Swank had a book published in 1974, when he was young and green and had only begun to experiment with the avant garde literary techniques that would later come to define his unique style.  More to the point, it means that the Pastor has been doing what he does to the English language for 35 years, without once being visited on Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, and William Strunk, Jr., who would all presumably beat him to a pulp with ectoplasmic baseball bats.  But then I saw the cover, and if any book ever screamed “1974″…
Momentstogo.jpg
“Then he (Christ) said to me (John the apostle), ‘Write, Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’
“And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’”
Will you be at the marriage supper of the Lamb? I hope not.
Because you didn’t RSVP, and we’re running out of applesauce and mint jelly.
That is, I hope you will not be eating the marriage supper of the Lamb menu.
The prix fixe is 34.95 and it doesn’t even include the cheese course and coffee!
On the other hand, I do pray that you will be there to see it eaten; but you would not want to partake of the banquet set forth.
Because the Party Platter came from Subway.
Note Revelation 19:17-18: Then I saw an angel standing in the sun, and with a loud voice he called to all the birds that fly in midheaven, “Come, gather for the great supper of God, to eat the flesh of kings, the flesh of captains, the flesh of mighty men, the flesh of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all men, both free and slave, both small and great.”
Can I just have a small mixed green salad?  With the balsamic vinaigrette on the side.
Yes, as the Word states, you as a believer will be “blessed” by being “invited to the marriage supper.” The definition of your blessing will be being in the entourage of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He will be victorious over the AntiChrist and False Prophet. You will rejoice in that win.
And, needless to say, there’ll be an open bar.
I recall since a child hearing preachers deliver sermons on the marriage supper of the Lamb. By the close of their messages, I was salivating for that delicious set-forth.
Why doesn’t the Pastor have his own show on the Food Network?   He’s a natural.
Then when I became an adult to do my own biblical study on the topic, I realized that I did want to be the vultures picking the bones of the defeated dead in the Battle of Armageddon. No, thank you.
“But then I realized they were all out of Chex Mix and Vienna Franks, and Defeated Dead was all that was left in the chafing dish.  I knew I should’ve gotten to Armageddon earlier.”
The closest then that I wanted to get to the supper was to see the vultures taking care of the matter quite fully.
CROW T. ROBOT:  “I think you’ll agree, there are few sights in nature more beautiful than a plump member of the Cathartidae family pulling a fetid string of meat off a week-dead Thompson’s gazelle. ”
The accent of the phrase “marriage supper of the Lamb” is not the word “supper,” though we with gastric juices working at high speed might interpret it as the most significant term.
I often misplace diacritical marks when my stomach acid breaks the speed limit.
The word that needs underlining is “marriage” for it is the union of Groom Christ with Bride believers that is most important. After such a rough ride as the tribulation, it will be high time for the Groom and Bride to be together.
We had a little plastic Jesus in a tuxedo and his post-Apocalyptic bride on our wedding cake too.  Really added a splash of elegance.
At the close of the about-seven year tribulation, Christ will leave the right hand of the Father in heaven. He will descend toward this planet with angels and the saved of all time.
But if he descends during rush hour there will likely be a 15 to 20 delay on the Throg’s Neck, so Jesus and the saved for all time will probably want to take an alternate route.
At His return, passing through the clouds, the dead in Christ will be lifted out of their graves. The believers alive on the planet will be whisked into the clouds to change their clothes from mortal to immortal, from corruptible to incorruptible.
Unfortunately, all my immortal clothes make me look hippy.
Christ will first put his holy feet on the Mount of Olives when touching down on Earth. The Mount will split in half from east to west, signifying His power over His creation.
Christ by that time will have won the Battle of Armageddon in the Valley of Megiddo in Israel’s northwest region. He will have spoken a word. The war will have ceased leaving corpses spread across the valley.
The word, by the way, will be:  “Oops.”
Vultures will be clawing at those dead frames as Christ proceeds to the Mount of Olives, angels and believers accompanying Him.
Then Christ will proceed to the Holy City where He will rule for a thousand years — the millennium.
But he’ll fail to update his computer software and when the millennium hits he won’t be able to access his bank statement.
The saved of all time will rule with Him in the two major societal dimensions — religion and politics. They will rule as “priests” and “kings,” per Revelation’s terminology.
Although Revelations’s terminology also includes “spank,” “touch-hole,” and “Bozo,” so you might not want to take it too literally.
For the first seven months into the millennium, Israeli employees will bury the defeated dead bones
It’s a crappy job, granted.  But hey, in this economy, we’re lucky to be working.
…thus cleansing the Holy Land of every sign of the demonic enemy. The Holy Land then will truly become holy so that heaven’s Holy One may reign in righteousness.
How long will it take the vultures to finish off the marriage supper of the Lamb menu? We do not know.
They’ve been sitting there for 30 minutes already and they haven’t touched their fruit cup.
(Original comments are below the fold)

29 Responses to “Pastor Swank: I Eat Cannibal, It’s Incredible”

CROW T. ROBOT: “I think you’ll agree, there are few sights in nature more beautiful than a plump member of the Cathartidae family pulling a fetid string of meat off a week-dead Thompson’s gazelle. ”
LOL,ROFLOL,LMAO,ROFLMAO!
I think you have found the CRAZIEST thing Swank has ever written, and you managed to a Crow T Robot quote in there as well.
Well played, sir!
Y’know, I’ve always advocated cannibalism as a way to end prison recidivism (rotisserie roast/smoke the death row inmates whose DNA appeals didn’t change anything, feed THEM to the lifers, and make the short-timers WATCH. They won’t wanna come back, unless they’re potential Dahmers, in which case, we’re doing everybody a fucking favor.), but I honestly can’t remember a fucking thing in Revelations about using it as a PARTY TRICK.
Has he been reading that creepy bastard David Copperfield’s“Guide To Kidnapping & Date-Raping Women As You Wow Them With Schmaltzy Magic Tricks”???
Whatever drugs ol’ Swankster’s been doing, I WANT IN. But NOT the drugs he was doing when he chose the cover title for that “book,” that was obviously conceived during a coke-fueled all-nighter down at the original/one-off Kinko’s store.
For the first seven months into the millennium, Israeli employees will bury the defeated dead bones
Just when I think that I have read enough Swank not to be thrown off by one of his non-sequiturs, he completely throws me off with one of his non-sequiturs.
What happens at the end of the 1,000 year reign? Do they move the party up to heaven?
I haven’t eaten a menu in years.
His lurid literalism is more than just a little creepy.
Will you be at the marriage supper of the Lamb?
Unfortunately I was just listening to Black Widow and apparently I should come, come, come to the Sabbath, come to the Sabbath, Satan’s there. So you know, conflicting social obligations, and I hope the Lamb will understand.
St. John eats the menu.
I suggest a new word for the good pastor’s writing: idiotsyncratic.
idiotsyncratic
I bow to you, sir. And, as always, to our host and his gang of ectoplasmic bat-wielding lexicographers.
Two things: first, while Ol’ Glamorshots’ output has been reduced, his recycling of older stuff seems to’ve increased. Could he have blown a gasket (grading on a curve, I mean)?
Second, his earlier stuff is superficially more organized (curve again), but he’s still almost cosmically flummoxed by the prepositional phrase. Long simmering neurological disorder, or Stupid no amount of soap will wash out?
union of Groom Christ with Bride believers
Is Pastor Swank advocating gay marriage or polygamy here?
Like Riley, I bow to Dinglepecker’s creation, idiotsyncratic.
Pastor Swank, like all ravenous preachers (hey, he made me hungry with the gastric juices and the vultures picking at the bones that Jesus defeated, presumably emptying out every Pharaoh’s tomb in Egypt so the fight would at least LOOK hard) should probably step away from the thesaurus and be banned from the Bulwer-Lytton website.
Groom Christ and Bride Believer
Sittin’ in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes tribulation
Then comes end times
Then comes Bride Believer
pushing a Womb Baby carriage!
Do Israeli employees get benefits?
Porn>Food Porn>Biblical Food Porn?
“Hey you got Jesus in my peanut butter!”
“No, you got peanut butter on my Jesus!”
//Skipping lunch
St. John eats the menu.
snicker
How many moments are there 34 years anyway?
“Could he have blown a gasket…?”
I think you’ve got it! his oil and gasoline are mixing and being burned by the engine *seeming* to make it run better, but in a few days…or a thousand years…Ka-Pow!
He will have spoken a word: “Wolverines!”
I’m still blown away by the title. I thought I was the only one who ever bought that. And to tie it in to the Swankster to boot! I salute you, sir…
Has anyone ever heard Pastor Fuzz speak?
It’d be worth setting up an interview w/ him for some bogus thing, ask a few questions calculated to set him off, & see if anything he said was even semi-comprehensible.
Of course, he may be an automatic writer, just letting the spirit take him everywhere & nowhere, & never, ever editing. He might not be any worse “live” than on paper.
Still …
without once being visited on Christmas Eve by the ghosts of Samuel Johnson, Noah Webster, and William Strunk, Jr., who would all presumably beat him to a pulp with ectoplasmic baseball bats.
That was from the end of Scorcese’s “A Casino Carol,” right?
…oooh, that part about men and flesh and mighty men and slaves and all got my juices flowing. Just not the gastric ones.
From a sane quotidian POV, it’s hard for me to say whether Swank or Revelations John sounds nuttier. But what little I’ve read about Revelations includes the notion that it’s partly in a kind of coded/metaphorical language. Maybe that’s Swank’s method too? So if you fill in the missing gerunds (say) in his prose, and string them together – possibly backwards – using their numerical values in Hebrew, you may arrive at the unspeakable Name: David Bossie.
Or maybe Michele Bachman.
“Could he have blown a gasket…?”
No, it was ice-cream –
– Bugger. Lead-up to punchline needs work.
(writing rom my mom’s computer)
Just wanted to let you all know: I’m still alive. In case anybody noticed I haven’t been posting comments in a while and was wondering.
My computer’s been struck by a virus that seems particularly stubborn to remove.
The whole Armagedden thing: ain’t gonna happen. I realize that nobody here’s gonna argue with me on that one. But if we’re to believe God is all-powerful and infinitely wise, why would he waste his time with some full-scale war-why make his own job harder? Couldn’t he just wave his finger and make the world EXACTLY what he wants it to be? Why bother with anything else? Why give an anitchrist free will to fuck everything up?
The whole thing’s too stupid to take seriously.
Oh, and Tom, I have the 12″ single of “I Eat Cannibals”.
Oh, and, just so’s ya knows-my brother’s getting me a new computer for my birthday (March 15).
He meant for it to be a surprise, but told me a couple weeks ago. I kinda wished he’d held out-I mean, he’s holding down two jobs and he’s always busy. It would he been easy for him to give a bullshit reason to hold off trying yet again to fix the old one.
Oh well-the important thing is, he’s awesome for doing it.
Thank for the update, Bill; we were getting a mite concerned.
This whole “computer” thing is pretty much a sucky idea, as Bill has so ably pointed out, & will probably not result in any long-term good.
Congrats on the new ‘puter, Bill, and an early Happy Birfday to you!
I’d wondered where you’d been, but figured that you’d said that you were off on safari or something and I missed it. Or, y’know, re-invading the Chuck E. Cheez’s. Yes, I know, antiquated reference, but it still makes me chortle.
“Of course, he may be an automatic writer, just letting the spirit take him everywhere & nowhere, & never, ever editing.”
May be? You mean there’s a chance that someone might be editing his wordspew? That makes it even worse.
Idiotsyncretic?

5 comments:

Smut Clyde said...

I saw this in February 2012 and thought of Wo'C.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/21542477@N08/10006186003/

Weird Dave said...

Pass the ketchup there Pastor.

Debbi said...

Thank you, thank you ... for making my day!

Li'l Innocent said...

Gosh, I'd forgotten this one.. ah,well, much hassle has passed under the bridge in the interim! It's true that this early stuff seems better organized than his more recent labyrinths, but perhaps he was being reined in by the narrative framework of John of Patmos.

Also, I hadn't remembered that link to the Durer woodcut of John being fed the book by a cloud-wrapped angel with "legs like pillars of fire". The combo of the old Jewish visionary vocabulary (John borrowed a lot from Old Testament prophecies) with Durer's ferocious literalism and driving energy makes for religious imagery that just won't quit. When he created these woodcuts many Europeans were expecting the world to end shortly. The Apocalypse series was an international best-seller and made him a rich man.

grouchomarxist said...

Oddly enough, this seems kind of ... well, subdued, compared to the pastor's usual shtick. Almost as if he's in awe of a writer who did it first, and so much better.

Disqus