Category: nottingham zine fair

Posted in apocalypse, nottingham zine fair, prophecy

Apocalypse fever in 2012

Posted on by elizabethprata

By Elizabeth Prata

Eleven years ago, apocalypse fever was a global phenomenon. The alleged ‘Mayan apocalypse’ of 2012 sparked writings, tv shows, wild social media commentary, and predictions of doom. People really thought the ancient Mayans were right about the world ending in 2012.

During that feverish time, UK graphic designer, fashion student and editor Loren Kristie Aldridge (now Loren Aldridge-Clouston) asked me to contribute an article to her ‘zine which would be sold at the 2nd Annual Nottingham Zine Fair in London, England. She was putting together a ‘zine about the apocalypse and wanted me to contribute something from the Christian point of view. She asked me for a bio and also to spend 800 or so words describing what is going to happen according to the Christian version of the apocalypse, and why I believe the Apocalypse is going to happen. (FYI the Apocalypse IS going to happen but not according to the date the ancient Mayans predicted, it is an unknown date).

The fact that what the Mayans predicted didn’t pan out, nor did any of the other fake prophets like Nostradamus or modern day so-called prophets predictions come true, shows that firstly, the Bible is right (no one knows the day nor hour) and secondly, God is the only One in control of history, time, the earth, and its destiny and all that is within it.

Loren’s request was a tall order to be that broad but have so few words to say it all in, but the Holy Spirit was gracious and led me to what I feel is a good written product.

Her graphic zine product came out great, I really like it from what I could glean from photos. I never got to see the final version of her whole zine. Loren told me the “Apocalypse This” zine sold out quickly. The pages she showed on her social media as they were being created were well done.

Here is what my article’s page looks like. I like it. She took my 800 words and arranged them in the form of a cross.

The Nottingham Zine Fair is still going, eleven years later.

Martin Luther and early American Revolution pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine were technically zinesters. A zine is simply “a self-published print medium of focused theme and small circulation” according to the definition. Often there was only one edition. More often, the minority interest contained in the zine was of a more alternative nature, countercultural, or even anarchic.

In Thomas Paine’s and Martin Luther’s day the ‘minority interest’ of alternative nature contained in pamphlets, or zines, was anti-government or anti-pope, a dangerous position indeed, often carrying with it a death sentence for treason or heresy. This was because small pamphlets had the potential of having a huge impact on capturing the vox populi despite large corporate or governmental control of information and thus perception of the status quo. 

To put it into an example, just think the moment on October 31, 1517, when, according to traditional accounts, Luther’s 95 Theses were nailed to the door of the Castle Church. The rippling reaction turned the world upside down. Just think of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, it having the effect of galvanizing the Colonies toward revolution and separation from England as the mother country.

I was humbled and grateful to have been asked to contribute to Apocalypse This zine. Due to the alternative nature of zines these days, having a piece about Jesus in and amongst the other subjects meant that people will read the Gospel who don’t normally come across it.

Below is what I wrote for the zine –

The Apocalypse has been the source behind some of the greatest poetry, art, and writing. One of Yeats’s greatest poems is called The Second Coming, most of Renaissance art contain Apocalyptic or biblical scenes, and many films these days have apocalyptic storylines. It all comes from the Bible, the world’s greatest selling book. That’s pretty amazing when the fact is the Bible is incomprehensible to any person who doesn’t know Christ.

You heard me. More on that in a second.

But first, what IS Apocalypse?

The word apocalypse comes from the Greek for “revelation,” or “unveiling.” It’s about future things dealing with the return of Christ and the events of the end time. Do you know that a third of the Bible is prophecy? Did you know that every book in the NT except Philemon speaks about the end times? It’s not just a Revelation thing. It’s a Jesus thing, and Jesus is throughout the entire Bible.

So what IS going to happen? Jesus is going to punish sin, plain and simple. Punishment is never pleasant, and Jesus said that the Apocalypse will be the worst time on earth there will ever be. (Matthew 24:21; Daniel 12:1b). Daniel 9:24 explains the 6 things God will do during the Apocalypse punishments. God, who is loving, wants us to be righteous so we can be with Him in heaven, so He sent Jesus. God, who is holy, is going to punish the unholy, who reject Jesus.

There will be earthquakes so bad that entire mountains crumble and islands flee away. One hundred pound hailstones will squash men. Plagues (and wars and beasts) will kill 1/3 of people. Demons will be let out of the abyss to inflict a painful bite so bad that people want to die: but can’t. They’ll chew their tongues in agony. Starving people will die in the streets, but no one will care. Things will come upon the earth so frightening that people have heart attacks on the spot. The sun and moon go dark, stars fall from the sky. Jesus said it will be so bad that if He let it go longer nobody would survive. As it is, 4 billion die within the 7 years. (Revelation 6-19).

Sin is real. God’s judgment of sin is real. Satan is real. Hell is real. The coming Antichrist is real. Everything in the Bible is real. Not any other book. Apocalypse will happen. The rapture will be the signal that it’s beginning.

How can I be so sure? Because for 43 years I had everything I ever wanted. Money, fame, comforts, ease, professional recognition, world travel, and yet I felt empty. I felt in my soul that there had to be something more. What was this longing? This hole I felt within me? (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Is this all there is? Live a life and then die? It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to die. Is there a heaven? Will I go there? I wondered all these things.

It was the lack of knowing Jesus that was the problem. He created us. (Rev 4:11) and because we are born with a sin-nature, I was separate from him. THAT’S what I was feeling. I had been trying to fill that hole with temporary and unfulfilling things. I finally found the answer, at middle age without ever having gone to a church (so I’m not brainwashed into Christianity, lol). When you confess your sins and repent to Jesus, He forgives you and He brings you to fellowship with Him. He sends the Holy Spirit to make the things of God understandable, like the Bible. (2 Corinthians 3:14). Before I was saved, the Bible made no sense. I thought it was stupid. I thought Bible thumpers and Jesus followers were stupid. After I repented, the Bible made total sense and I loved Jesus.

I now see death differently from all the rest of the world that has no hope. It is simply a transition, from something tiring and full of struggle, to something wondrous and glorious beyond compare. I have no fears of the Apocalypse, because I won’t be here to experience it. Those in Christ will be taken out of the way, because He is not angry with us. We’re forgiven sinners. He is angry with unrepentant sinners. O, it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of an angry God!

I am very sure this age will come to a terrible end. I am sure that time is not long away. I am very sure that I will be lifted bodily away from earth to meet Jesus in the air at the rapture to live with Him forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54.) If you want that certainty too, then repent of your sins and turn to Jesus. Believe He is Lord, who sacrificially died to satisfy God’s wrath about sin and who was raised on the third day. I will be in heaven. I hope you will be too.

Posted in nottingham zine fair, prophecy, zine

What is the apocalypse and what is going to happen in it?

Posted on by elizabethprata

Today is the day the Apocalypse This zine goes on sale at the Nottingham Zine Fair. I was asked to contribute a piece for the magazine. Here is the backstory. Below is the article I wrote for the zine.

————–
The Apocalypse has been the source behind some of the greatest poetry, art, and writing. One of Yeats’s greatest poems is called The Second Coming, most of Renaissance art contain Apocalyptic or biblical scenes, and many films these days have apocalyptic storylines. It all comes from the bible, the world’s greatest selling book. That’s pretty amazing when the fact is the bible is unreadable to any person who doesn’t know Christ.

You heard me. More on that in a second.

But first, what IS Apocalypse?

The word apocalypse comes from the Greek for “revelation,” or “unveiling.” It’s about future things dealing with the return of Christ and the events of the end time. Do you know that a third of the bible is prophecy? Did you know that every book in the NT except Philemon speaks about the end times? It’s not just a Revelation thing. It’s a Jesus thing, and Jesus is throughout the entire bible.

So what IS going to happen? Jesus is going to punish sin, plain and simple. Punishment is never pleasant, and Jesus said that the Apocalypse will be the worst time on earth there will ever be. (Matthew 24:21; Daniel 12:1b). Daniel 9:24 explains the 6 things God will do during the Apocalypse punishments. God, who is loving, wants us to be righteous so we can be with Him in heaven, so He sent Jesus. God, who is holy, is going to punish the unholy, who reject Jesus.

There will be earthquakes so bad that entire mountains crumble and islands flee away. One hundred pound hailstones will squash men. Plagues (and wars and beasts) will kill 1/3 of people. Demons will be let out of the abyss to inflict a painful bite so bad that people want to die: but can’t. They’ll chew their tongues in agony. Starving people will die in the streets, but no one will care. Things will come upon the earth so frightening that people have heart attacks on the spot. The sun and moon go dark, stars fall from the sky. Jesus said it will be so bad that if He let it go longer nobody would survive. As it is, 4 billion die within the 7 years. (Revelation 6-19).

Sin is real. God’s judgment of sin is real. Satan is real. Hell is real. The coming Antichrist is real. Everything in the bible is real. Not any other book. Apocalypse will happen. The rapture will be the signal that it’s beginning.

How can I be so sure? Because for 43 years I had everything I ever wanted. Money, fame, comforts, ease, professional recognition, world travel, and yet I felt empty. I felt in my soul that there had to be something more. What was this longing? This hole I felt within me? (Ecclesiastes 3:1). Is this all there is? Live a life and then die? It seemed like a lot of trouble to go through just to die. Is there a heaven? Will I go there? I wondered all these things.

It was the lack of knowing Jesus that was the problem. He created us. (Rev 4:11) and because we are born with a sin-nature, I was separate from him. THAT’S what I was feeling. I had been trying to fill that hole with temporary and unfulfilling things. I finally found the answer, at middle age without ever having gone to a church (so I’m not brainwashed into Christianity, lol). When you confess your sins and repent to Jesus, He forgives you and He brings you to fellowship with Him. He sends the Holy Spirit to make the things of God understandable, like the bible. (2 Corinthians 3:14). Before I was saved, the bible made no sense. I thought it was stupid. I thought bible thumpers and Jesus followers were stupid. After I repented, the bible made total sense and I loved Jesus.

I now see death differently from all the rest of the world that has no hope. It is simply a transition, from something tiring and full of struggle, to something wondrous and glorious beyond compare. I have no fears of the Apocalypse, because I won’t be here to experience it. Those in Christ will be taken out of the way, because He is not angry with us. We’re forgiven sinners. He is angry with unrepentant sinners. O, it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of an angry God!

I am very sure this age will come to a terrible end. I am sure that time is not long away. I am very sure that I will be lifted bodily away from earth to meet Jesus in the air at the rapture to live with Him forever. (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; 1 Corinthians 15:50-54.) If you want that certainty too, then repent of your sins and turn to Jesus. Believe He is Lord, who sacrificially died to satisfy God’s wrath about sin and who was raised on the third day. I will be in heaven. I hope you will be too.

Posted in apocalypse, nottingham zine fair, prophecy

Apocalypse This: at Nottingham Zine Fair today

Posted on by elizabethprata

A little while back, UK graphic designer, fashion student and editor Loren Kristie Aldridge asked me to contribute an article to her zine which would be sold at the 2nd Annual Nottingham Zine Fair. She was putting together a ‘zine about the apocalypse and wanted me to contribute something from the Christian point of view. She asked me for a bio and also to spend 800 or so words describing what is going to happen according to the Christian version of the apocalypse, and why I believe the Apocalypse is going to happen. It was a tall order to be that broad but have so few words to say it all in, but the Holy Spirit was gracious and led me to what I feel is a good product.

Her product came out great, I really like it from what I could glean from photos. Here is her final version of the zine:

Here is what my article’s page looks like. I like it.

This is an article about the Nottingham Zine Fair: “The rise of online publishing’s all very well, if you’re into all that technical rammel but for those with more tactile ambitions, who still hanker after old school printing and the smell of yer actual paper, you might want to get ye sens down to Spanky Van Dykes on the 26 May where the Raw Print Club will host it’s 2nd annual ‘Nottingham Zine Fair’. The event will be a mecca for lovers of zines, indie magazines and artist books of all shapes and sizes. According to Matt Gill, university lecturer, graphic designer and founder of Raw Print Club the day is ‘all about showcasing creativity and also bringing lots of different people together who have a love for print…So don’t tek our word for it, go along and have a proper good day out, read and buy some zines, talk to like minded people over a few jars of ale and dance your self silly at the aftershow party.”

It sounds like a lot of fun, actually. I wish I was going.

For the folks who aren’t in the zine world, a zine – pronounced zeen – as derived from magazine – is defined by Wiki as an independently- or self-published booklet, often created by a single person. Zines are customarily created by physically cutting and gluing text and images together onto a master flat for photocopying, but it is also common to produce the master by typing and formatting pages on a computer. The end product is usually folded and stapled. Zines can be printed and bound in any manner. Offset printing is a relatively common alternative to photocopying…” I remember putting together small print zines myself by ditto machine and staples, lol.

Zines are most commonly a small circulation publication of original or appropriated texts and images. More broadly, the term encompasses any self-published work of minority interest usually reproduced via photocopier.

Martin Luther and early American Revolution pamphleteers such as Thomas Paine were technically zinesters. A zine is simply a self-published print medium of focused theme and small circulation. Often there was only one edition. More often, the minority interest contained in the zine was of a more alternative nature.

In Thomas Paine’s and Martin Luther’s day the minority interest of alternative nature was anti-government or anti-pope, a dangerous position indeed, often carrying with it a death sentence for treason or heresy. This was because small pamphlets had the potential of having a huge impact on capturing the vox populi despite large corporate or governmental control of information and thus perception of the status quo. Just think the moment on October 31, 1517, when, according to traditional accounts, Luther’s 95 Theses were nailed to the door of the Castle Church. It turned the world upside down. Just think of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, it having the effect of galvanizing the Colonies toward revolution.

In the modern era of the 1900s and especially by the 1960s and onward, the subject was often was prurient, such as touting homosexuality, lesbianism, or BDSM lifestyles, subjects no standard publishing house would touch. One HAD to self-publish in those days.

I was always involved with print, as a journalist, academic, short story writer and general lover of all things print in the three dimensional media. I was born in 1960, with personal computers coming on the scene soon but before the internet. Getting something published was a hard go, because the NY publishing houses had a lock on the print media in terms of magazines and books, so zines were often the only alternative for the enterprising writer with something to say. As with anything first-generation, self-publishing was crude but satisfying. The 1980s brought punk zines, and computer bulletin boards, and then in the 1990s we had the explosion of self-publishing due to the widespread connectivity of the internet and easily obtained word processing software. In the early 2000s the blog was born. Now we have Facebook, Youtube, blogs, Twitter, personal websites and more. Self-Publishing has had a huge impact on the industry. Now, anyone with a computer can have a voice that may impact the world.

Nowadays, sophisticated software such as Adobe Illustrator allows for more aesthetically pleasing products, such as you see with Ms Aldridge’s Apocalypse This zine above.

As time has gone on, I note that these days, the minority interest subject is often Christianity. The subjects no self-respecting publishing house would touch before 1980, 1970, 1960 are now deemed ‘normal’, such as homosexuality, alternative lifestyles etc. Publishers and broadcasters only produce things with subjects that have wide appeal and thus will make them money. On television we regularly view shows promoting perverted structures of family, showing open sexual acts, and worse subjects, such as cannibalism or serial killing as entertainment, subjects one never even discussed inside a home, never mind touted on a global medium. But it sells. Christianity doesn’t.

I know that in the days to come and after the rapture when the antichrist will control media & information and thus perception, and that self-published small zines, or even portions of the bible will once again attain underground status and will have to be circulated stealthily. The openly circulated is the perverse and the stealthily circulated will be the pure.

Isaiah 5:20 warns, “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.” Jesus warned in Matthew 6:22-23, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!”

I am humbled and grateful to have been asked to contribute to Apocalypse This zine. Due to the alternative nature of zines these days, having a piece about Jesus in and amongst the other subjects means that people will read the Gospel who don’t normally come across it. Please pray that the Spirit sends all the right people to today’s Nottingham Zine Fair whose heart is ready to receive the truth.

I’ll post what I wrote for the zine and  link to it. And also here. Meanwhile, right now there are hordes of youths ambling through aisles under the sun at Nottingham, looking for…something. I pray they find Jesus.