Grammar with the Christadelphians
by phill
Tonight, as I
was driving my father back to his apartment, I saw a large sign outside the Christadelphian congregation hall (which you can see in the picture above, though it was dark and I was driving, so you can’t read the sign–just trust me on this one). Its light shone forth the following proclaimation:
RUSSIA WILL INVADE ISRAEL ONLY TO BE CRUSHED BY CHRIST
Which immediately prompted me to consider exactly what they meant. On the surface, one could suppose that the intended message was one suggesting that the entire Russian forces would invade Israel and, after completing that task, be crushed by the mighty fist of Our Lord. Why Jesus would wait until after an invading army has finished destroying a country is beyond me, perhaps he has a deadline on creation-ey things that week.
But then, as I sat waiting for the red glare of the traffice light to change, I re-examined the text. The thing is, given the propensity of Church message boards to not have punctuation, the message could be interpretted a number of different ways. The first being that Russia is, in actual fact, going to invade somewhere (presumably Australia?) while Israel is going to be crushed by Jesus, i.e.:
RUSSIA WILL INVADE! ISRAEL, ONLY, TO BE CRUSHED BY CHRIST.
Alternatively the crushing of Israel could be completely devoid of Christ’s involvement, instead just being said with real gusto by the signer:
RUSSIA WILL INVADE! ISRAEL, ONLY, TO BE CRUSHED, BY CHRIST!
Or the signer could feel really sorry for Russia being crushed?
RUSSIA WILL INVADE ISRAEL, ONLY TO BE CRUSHED. BY CHRIST. :’(
Okay, so I put that emoticon in there myself. Call it artistic interpretation. Anyway, I think this highlights the importance of grammar. A big thank you to the Christadelphians for their subtle wordplay. I’ll be keeping an eye out for further examples whenever I drive past.
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Comments
Importance of spell-check: traffic, interpreted. If you’re not corrected, you’ll never learn. ;)
Just realised I’d never heard of Christadelphians (was presuming it was people who thought Christ was from Philadelphia, or He really likes soft cheese – Son of Gouda stylings). http://www.christadelphian.org.uk/wcb/why.html Wow. The -only- reasonable explanation.
Even better! http://www.christadelphian.org.uk/net/danger.html#4
Christadelphians?
Yeap. Christadelphians. If they aren’t fundamentalist/slightly wacky Christians, then they’re doing a pretty bloody good job of impersonating some.
This is the first I’ve heard the term. How very strange.
There is one more interpretation, that the church board was written by a dyslexic, hence was actually out of order:
CHRIST WILL INVADE ISRAEL ONLY TO BE CRUSHED BY RUSSIA
Dang it, why didn’t my comments come up? Did you unapprove them Phillis?