Meet Nutty Mainstream Christians in Waiting for Armageddon

Comments (0) By Ella Taylor Tuesday, Jan 5 2010

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Waiting for Armageddon
Directed by Franco Sacchi, Kate Davis, and David Heilbroner
First Run Features
Opens January 8, Cinema Village

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Line up this terrific documentary about end-times evangelical Christians against Bill Maher's sneering Religulous, and you'll see an excellent argument for restraint and a fair fight. Where Maher set his radar for the crazy fringe, filmmakers Franco Sacchi, Kate Davis, and David Heilbroner focus on the Church's mainstream. A more soberly suited-and-tied, smilier and nuttier crew couldn't be found, from the rosy suburban homemaker who calmly predicts her kids will not live to graduate college, to the pretty software engineer who won't marry her fiancé until he sees the light, to the tourists schlepping to Megiddo, future site of the end of the world. Jews and Israelis who take comfort from the unsolicited affection of evangelical Christians—who give more than $75 million annually to Israel and exert an alarming pull on Washington—might think again after they've seen Waiting for Armageddon, which brings the interesting news that, when the apocalypse comes, Jews will either convert to Christianity or be burned to a crisp along with all the other heathens. With friends like these, enemies need not apply. And with enemies like these, Muslims—repeatedly reviled as "Islamofascists" by the upstanding reverends of the Church as they trudge round Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem—need no others.