#1062: Joel Richardson

Joel Richardson is an anti-abortion activist, decorative painter, armchair apocalyptist and author, who writes for his own blog Joel’s Trumpet, for the WND, as well as for Glenn Beck’s website. His specialty appears to be international politics, on which he takes a decidedly Biblical stance. He has for instance written about how the possible collapse of the European Union may pose a problem for many end-times theologians and their predictions of Biblical prophecy – not for Biblical prophecies per se, to be sure, but for one particular school of endtimes thought. Richardson is himself pretty adamant about the upcoming endtimes, and most of his writings seem to be concerned with how a Muslim Antichrist will lead an army to attack Israel, in fulfillment of the Biblical prophets and the Book of Revelation and usher in the Armageddon. And of course the Muslims are in a revolutionary alliance with the leftists, because they share all the relevant values (i.e. disagreeing with Richardson).

Of course, his columns for WND are primarily advertisements for his own books (e.g. Mideast Beast: The Scriptural Case For an Islamic Antichrist and Islamic Antichrist: The Shocking Truth About the Real Nature of the Beast, which asserts that “90 percent of the current world fighting involves Islamic terror movements,” though the number is made up) and DVDs about the endtimes, but the distinction between editorial content and advertising has never been taken particularly seriously by that particular website. According to WND Islamic Anti-Christ is also “almost certain to be greeted in the Muslim world with the same enthusiasm as Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses.’ And Richardson is prepared. He has written the book under a pseudonym to protect himself and his family.”

Richardson was at least able to see the positive side of an Obama (the “race-baiter”) reelection (which thrilled “millions of pot-heads, sodomites, pro-aborts and all common moochers”) despite his anti-Christian stance: it would help Christians know what it feels like to live in an oppressive state like Iran and take comfort in the fact that the Kingdom of God prophecied in the Bible lies ahead. Obama also foreshadows the Anti-Christ, according to Richardson, but that goes without saying. For an illustration of Richardson’s powers of thought, this one is pretty illuminating.

Diagnosis: Fundamentalist idiot, standard type.