A 90-minute walk through the South Georgia woods, as part of this year’s Tribulation Trail offers violence, fear, and an Obama-like Antichrist
http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/3614/the_fear_is_real%3A_a_new_view_of_halloween_%E2%80%9Chell_houses%E2%80%9D/Last week I partook in Tribulation Trail’s brand of hell house pageantry, which brings participants—a total of 25,000 every October—on a 90-minute walk through the South Georgia woods. We observed intensely violent renditions of standard end-times scenarios: the rapture of believers; an ensuing period of torture and tribulation for the faithless “left behind”; a climactic battle between Jesus and Satan; and a final judgment in which Jesus orders a teenage church-girl to be dragged by demons into hell for “knowing me only in your head, and not in your heart.”
Unsurprisingly, scenes from the “tribulation” make up the majority of the walk. Our tour group was asked to imagine that we were in the days just following the rapture, and the Antichrist (whose speeches involved a lot of Obama-flavored language about “change”) had established a totalitarian government after duping the masses with his political charm.
Based on the Antichrist’s orders, our tour group was being initiated into something called “Citizen Change Camp.” A main part of our “initiation” was witnessing the execution and torture of people who refused to denounce their Christian faith.
Six out of twelve total Tribulation Trail scenes involved executions. During one scene we saw a middle-aged male soldier throw a preteen girl into a coffin and spray her with blank bullets. In another scene, soldiers played by teen boys forced a fellow teen to watch his younger sister beaten to death with a club. In yet another, soldiers executed a girl—played by a child who could not have been more than eight years old—in order to pressure her mother into renouncing Christianity. Between scenes, men and teenage boys wearing camouflage and carrying automatic rifles surrounded our group, pointed their guns at us, and herded us to the next station. Along the pathways, we heard the groans of child actors locked up in cages and people begging us for water.