The End Times

 

I confess to getting annoyed at nominal Christians who go on about the end times. Because this goes counter to what the Bible actually says.

The main point in the Bible is “the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him.” (Matthew 24:44). “About that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” (Matthew 24:36) “You do not know when that time will come.” (Mark 13: 33)

So watching for signs of the end is at best ignoring the Bible. Claiming to know is blasphemous.

Millenarians generally point to wars around the world as the sign. Look at Ukraine! And Gaza! “There will be wars and rumours of wars.” But what the Bible says is that, when you hear wars and rumours of wars, “see to it that you are not alarmed.” These are “birth pangs,” not the end. “The end is still to come.” (Matthew 24:6-8)

If wars are signs of the end times, these signs have been present since the day Jesus spoke these words—and for long before. Can anyone claim the level of conflict around the world is greater now than in the 1940s? We are actually in a long period of relative peace. Stephen Pinker has made the argument that violence ha been declining throughout history.

But we must be alert, I am told, to avoid the Tribulation. At a particular sign, everyone has to flee to the mountains. This is from Matthew 24:15-22; Mark 13: 14-23; Like 21:20-24. So it makes sense to be watching for signs.

But what is the sign? Matthew and Mark say “When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong.” This quotes the Book of Daniel; it refers to a statue of the Seleucid emperor being erected in the temple in Jerusalem. More generally, then, the defilement or desolation of the Temple.

One problem: the temple was demolished in 70 AD.

Taken literally, Jesus is predicting some local event. He says “people in Judea” should flee to the mountains. Not everyone around the world: people in Judea. 

Luke serves to clarify. Luke says “When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near.” “Let those in the city get out, and let those in the country not enter the city.” “Jerusalem will be trampled on by the Gentiles until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled.” (Luke 21: 20-24). Jesus is predicting the desolation of Jerusalem, not the end times. This indeed happened, in 70 AD. And it was indeed a bad time to be a Jew in Judea. This is when the diaspora began.

There are, indeed, many more “signs” in Revelations: the four horsemen and the seven seals and so on. But the timeline seems to stretch for thousands of years: “When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison 8and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth—Gog and Magog—and to gather them for battle.” (Rev. 20:7). That’s rather imprecise if you want to use this to predict the end times. All you can say from this is that the end is due in the next few thousand years.

If, indeed, Revelations is really about the future, rather than events in eternity. It seems more reasonable to see things like beasts rising from the sea and so forth as spiritual events, not things that are happening in the material, temporal world.

And how does the doom patrol deal with this?  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus says, “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Some standing there as he spoke. They will not taste death first. How does this tally with waiting now for the kingdom to come? Clearly, by this, it has already come. 

Luke illuminates: “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” (Luke 17:20-21)

The end times are not something coming soon or late, but something in the direct experience of every one of us. And that is where our focus needs to be: on our own hearts, not the news of the day. To project it all on others, in Gaza or in Russia or in Washington or Zurich. is to avoid our own necessary transformation.

The End Is Not Near

 

Many evangelical Protestants are awaiting the End Times. They keep seeing signs of it in the news. Many Catholics are into this too, referring to the prophecies of St. Malachi, and proclaiming this the last pope.

Bad idea.

From the Bible:

“you do not know when your Lord is coming … the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.” – Matthew

“you do not know when that time will come… the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." -- Mark 

“that day will sneak up on you like a trap. For it will come on those who are unsuspecting all over the earth.“ -- Luke

“the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.”—Paul

Aren’t these passages telling us it is foolishness to look for signs? We will not be given signs. It will happen when we least suspect it. The need is to always act as though the next second may be our last. At any moment, we might die and come face to face with our maker.

Which is obviously true.

Jesus actually said “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” (Matthew) “Truly I tell you that there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God come with power” (Mark 9:1). “Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27). That was 2000 years ago.

So we are always in the End Times. We enter the End Times at physical death, death to the world; because we do not die then, we enter eternity. We must always be ready for that hour, because we might die at any time. The end of the world at large is largely irrelevant.

The belief that the Second Coming is imminent and about to begin a reign of peace and justice on earth, “millennialism,” has been with us for more than the past two thousand years; it was also the essence of the traditional Jewish belief in the coming of the Messiah. It had a great recent resurgence in the US the 19th century. Specific dates were proposed: 1844 was a big one. New denominations were formed on this belief. But it keeps not happening. Encyclopedia Britannica writes “For all the costly failures, … the appeal of millennialism remains, and generation after generation of devotees have sought the chimerical kingdom.” 

It is worth noting that the belief in the imminent dawning of a New Age has sometimes brought more than mere disappointment. It led to the destruction of the ancient state of Judea and the diaspora of the Jews, after the failed Bar Kochba revolt. In China, it led to twenty million deaths in the Taiping Rebellion in the 19th century.

Marxism and Fascism are examples of secular, non-religious millennial movements. They have been responsible for the holocaust of many millions.

The Catholic Church properly considers all millennial movements manifestations of the Antichrist. This has been so since Saint Augustine. The Catechism of the Catholic Church reads:

“The Antichrist's deception already begins to take shape in the world every time the claim is made to realize within history that messianic hope which can only be realized beyond history through the eschatological judgment. The Church has rejected even modified forms of this falsification of the kingdom to come under the name of millenarianism, especially the ‘intrinsically perverse’ political form of a secular messianism.”

Jesus himself came to disprove millenarianism—that is, the Jewish expectation of a messiah who would rule the world.

I think it is true that we are living through a time of epochal change, due to the effects of the new technology. Just as there was a great general change at the Renaissance, arguably due to the invention of printing. Or as a result of the Industrial Revolution in Britain. But the sky is not falling.

Darkness at Noon

 

A leftist friend posts a link to a page from Rolling Stone magazine saying that the upcoming solar eclipse is breeding conspiracy theories on the “far right.” The article is behind a paywall. But the first “conspiracy theory” cited is the only one I’ve seen elsewhere: that the eclipse is a sign of the “end times.”

Why is it that I only ever hear these “far right” conspiracy theories from the left? They never show up on sites the left calls “far right”: The Daily Wire, Steven Crowder, Small Dead Animals, Rebel News, True North, Mark Steyn. Only on the left; yet labelled “far right.”

I suspect left-wing journalists trawl the internet for improbable claims, and when they find one, arbitrarily label it “far right.” Because, after all, anyone who disputes the familiar dogmas on anything is by their definition “far right.” 

The association of the political right with finding signs in the sky significant is surely dubious on any other terms. This is, in a word, astrology. The Age of Aquarius, the Axial Age, and all that bit. Is New Age on the far right now? Has anyone told Marianne Williamson?

It is also clearly not a conspiracy theory. People cannot conspire to move the stars and planets.

The fundamentalist Christian concept of the “End Times” is not a conspiracy theory, either. God is not a conspiracy, by definition; there is only one of him. “Conspiracy theory” is now simply used, just like “far right,” to tar and dismiss any claim or idea disliked by the left.

And speaking of End Times, what makes Protestant fundamentalism either political or specifically “far right”? Only that they dissent from the dominant opinions of folks on the left about life and the universe. Not political issues—except that, to the left, everything is political. The left is intrinsically totalitarian.

For what it is worth, I cannot see a solar eclipse as a special sign from God; except in the sense that all nature speaks of him to us. Although rare, it is as predictable as a celestial clock striking eleven. If God wants to send a warning, I expect some violation of the laws of nature to make the source and urgency clear. 

And as to the end of time, nobody knows the day or the hour. It will come like a thief in the night.

The solar eclipse may have some mass psychological effect. It may make people ready to believe improbable things.

Why Are Pigs Sprouting Wings?

 

There is apocalypse in the air. Governments are doing unaccountable things, as though they know something we don’t. Snow falls in Mecca; lightning strikes the Vatican; maybe such things happen in normal times, but people are now in the mood to notice. And then there are the growing claims about UFOs. Tucker Carlson says he knows things about UFOs so dark he will not even tell his wife, and “there is a spiritual aspect to it.”

Which last comment gets me thinking: here’s one explanation for what is going on.

Christopher Hitchens, seeking to debunk Christianity, argued the improbability that God would let mankind subsist on Earth for perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, right up until 1 AD, before revealing himself. What about all those previous generations? And why then did he do it in such a backwater, in Palestine?

Hitchens is exactly wrong. The early years of the Roman Empire were probably the first time in history that God could have sent a message to mankind, and expect it to reach from Britain in the West, to China in the East, and down to Ethiopia. The Roman Empire had, for the first time, secured those trade routes. And Christianity did quickly extend this far.

No doubt God was sending local revelations all along—which is why so many of the world’s myths seem to contain elements of the Gospel story, with avatars, virgin births, and the like. But until 1 AD, they inevitably stayed local. 

And Palestine was not a backwater. Jerusalem is actually, literally, the centre of the populated world, now as it was then—the one spot from which it is easiest to get everywhere else. This is why Middle Eastern airlines have been so successful: their headquarters and stopover point is most efficiently located for everywhere else.

And this is true not only by air. Palestine is a land bridge, a funnel, that joins three continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and their trade routes. It is at the crossroads of the three great ancient civilizations, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece-Rome.

And this is true by sea as well: it is roughly the meeting point of the Mediterranean with the Red Sea and the Arabian Sea, the necessary point of portage to go by sea from Europe to East Asia and vice versa. All lines of communication and travel met here. This was God’s megaphone.

Now… if either God or perhaps some alien civilization wants to send all of mankind a further message, we have just now reached a similar, but greater, inflection point. Now, with the internet, with smart phones, is the first time in history he/they could appear to all of us, all at once, without filter by government or earthly authority with their own self-interests. 

We might now be getting the preparatory attention-getting signs; like the herald’s trumpet or the town crier’s bell. Or like John the Baptist in the New Testament. And the panic of Herod at the birth of a more legitimate ruler, or the mind-frame of Dostoyevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, may explain the current actions of governments. 

I don’t jump immediately to the idea that these are the End Times. Perhaps; perhaps the beginning of the thousand-year just reign predicted in Revelations. Yet, more simply, revelation is ongoing, as it is throughout the Bible: there are repeated calls from God to return to faith and fealty, reminders that he is there, new and renewed covenants. In more recent years, we have seen apparitions of Mary calling us back to faith. She has even appeared on Egyptian TV. Now may be the time for an emphatic reminder, a visit from the boss himself, perhaps a renewed covenant. 

Or, alternatively, now may be the opportunity for some more advanced civilization to make itself known and tell us what it feels we need to know.

I think, in the end, aliens are less likely. That hypothesis requires too many assumptions.

The View from Patmos

 

I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures. It said, “A ration of wheat costs a day’s pay,* and three rations of barley cost a day’s pay. But do not damage the olive oil or the wine.”

When he broke open the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature cry out, “Come forward.”

I looked, and there was a pale green* horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades accompanied him. They were given authority over a quarter of the earth, to kill with sword, famine, and plague, and by means of the beasts of the earth.

I try to avoid apocalyptic thinking; old people are too prone to it. But has anyone noticed that we have already seen two of the four horses of the apocalypse canter by?

COVID-19 has decimated us. Just when it looked as if over, it has mutated into something more dangerous than other recent variants, and is surging again in most of the Northern Hemisphere, even though it is summer. If it does not end up killing us all, monkeypox is in the wings. That’s the first horseman, pestilence.

The war in Ukraine continues; it could in principle at any moment become nuclear, or a world war. It is certainly killing a lot of people, displacing more, and disrupting the food supply everywhere. That’s the second horseman, war.

And partly as a result of the first, partly as a result of the second, food shortages are beginning to appear. Many predict worse by the fall, and perhaps famine in some parts of the world. That’s the third horseman, famine.

Is the fourth horseman on the horizon: Death? Perhaps that refers, broadly, to the doctrine of human “overpopulation”; environmentalism, “climate change.” What John Paul II called the “culture of death.” This horse is green, at least in the ASV translation; and he seems to correspond a verse or two later with “the beasts of the earth.” Environmentalism is indeed causing severe problems in the Netherlands. In principle, environmentalism wants to kill most of us. The recently mysteriously destroyed Georgia guidestones advocated a total human population of no more than 500 million.

The signs of the apocalypse are so vague that they can probably be made to fit the events of any era. Indeed, I believe they were not meant to be a prediction of the future, but a description of the eternal present as a war against good and evil. Jesus himself warns against trying to predict the end time. “Nobody knows the day or the hour”; he will come “like a thief in the night.” Were things really more orderly and coherent in the 1930s? The 1960s? 

So no, I reject the thought that this is literally apocalyptic. But the Devil is playing his tricks. There is an intelligence behind this; a Satanic weltanschauung. It has many names: “the great reset”; “the new world order”; “critical theory”; “postmodernism”; “social justice.”

More simply, evil is being allowed its day. 

It is given dominion, according to St. John, over a quarter of the earth. That’s enough to do a lot of damage.

Apocalypse Maybe Later

 

My Jehovah’s Witness friend Hadassah is of course convinced the world is about to end. She cites, for example, 2 Timothy:

“But know this: that in the last days, grievous times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, not lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also. For some of these are people who creep into houses and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. … Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”

It does sound like the current situation.

 But people who try to predict the end of days are going against the Bible itself. Jesus says “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” He will come, when he comes again “like a thief in the night.” Of such times of universal tumult as are cited in 2 Timothy, he says “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” (Matthew 24). In other words, general chaos and the breakdown of order and morality are NOT signs of the end.

Jesus also said that those listening to him would not die before the End Times came: “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.” And Paul wrote 2 Timothy not for a distant future, but to someone alive in his day.

I recall a bishop once saying that all millennial movements are manifestations of the Antichrist. I think this is true. Marxism is such a millennial movement. So is "climate change" environmentalism.

I think it is natural for the righteous among us, as we grow older, to develop the impression that the world is falling apart around us. This is largely because the world is always falling apart around us. Any serious study of history must realize this is so. 

In our younger years, we refuse to see this. We must, after all, live in this world for a human lifetime or so, and so we are in denial. As we age, it becomes easier to accept that things are not getting a lot better. Although they are probably not really getting worse, the growing realization of how bad they are gives us this subjective impression. And so old men and women are inclined to see the world as going to hell. It is perhaps a part of the process of letting go.

The End Times are always with us. Although there will necessarily be an end of the world, just as there was a beginning, this is not of great significance to any one of us. The End of Days and the Second Coming that Jesus and Paul refer to in the Bible is our own physical deaths.

The Shape of Things to Come

 

My Austrian Jehovah’s Witness friend Hadassah is convinced we are in the End Times. And I must admit, things are looking rather apocalyptic recently. Last night, learning of William Barr’s resignation as US attorney-general, I sensed this might be a first shoe dropping. It seems otherwise odd for Barr to leave so soon before the (presumed) end of Trump’s administration. Why not stick around for one more month?

Unless something is about to happen in the next month.

Especially since Barr is not leaving in anger, to make a point, and Trump is not asking him to resign in anger, to make a point. It seems, therefore, as though the point comes later.

Might Barr be resigning because Trump wants his AG in the near future to do something that Barr does not want to do? 

The situation in the US is now so disordered that almost nothing seems off the table.

By now, the results of the recent election are surely not credible; at least to roughly half of the US population. Also yesterday, the results of a local Michigan audit of the Dominion voting machines, now made public, claimed that they seemed deliberately designed to allow for fraud. They are used in 28 to 44 states (I see different figures). We have video from Atlanta of ballot stuffing, or something that defies any other explanation. We have expert claims that the election results are statistically improbable to the point of practical impossibility.

That profoundly undermines the social contract, profoundly undermines what holds the USA together. If free speech is no longer permitted, and one cannot any longer vote a government in or out, only one resort is left for the disaffected: group violence.

At the same time, evidence is suddenly—and mysteriously—flooding in that Chinese influence in the US is pervasive. The names of two million Chinese spies have suddenly been discovered. McCarthy himself could not have dreamt of such a figure: I recall his high number as around 200. A video surfaces of a Chinese academic, speaking in China, boasting that they can easily influence US government policy and Wall Street through their connections. A spy is outed who has been sleeping with mayors and congressmen. We suddenly learn that a vital piece of software, Solar Wind, has been hacked and open to unknown parties for the past six months. Solar Wind is used by the US military--and by Dominion Voting Systems. We suddenly learn that Hunter Biden, and James Biden, have been under investigation for possible criminal charges for the past two years, and their relations with China are at the centre of it. Everything seems to be converging.

This all looks strangely coordinated. As if some hidden power first fixed the election for Joe Biden, and then some hidden power moved to discredit him and raise the alarm. 

People who scoff at conspiracy theories, and insist they must not be true, have never lived in China. In China, conspiracies are a national sport. Something is always going on.

The pattern suggests that two powers are at war here: presumably the CCP does not want Chinese spies exposed, and whoever exposed the Chinese spying did not want Biden elected. Unless the point was just to foment chaos; but that seems too clever by half. I wonder if we are seeing a covert war not so much between the US and China, as between the CCP and Falun Gong, over the relatively ignorant and blundering USA. It is the Falun Gong, for example, which would have the resources to expose that video of a Chinese academic speaking inside China. The Falun Gong seems strikingly well organized and active above ground currently, with The Epoch Times, the NTD network, regular public protests, and other initiatives. They may amount to a Chinese government in exile.

The mood in the US is now, I suspect, pre-revolutionary. Until now, the Antifa thugs and Black Lives Matter have been able to rule the streets. I think it is a given that they are being backed behind the scene by Chinese interests, among others. But if Biden takes office, it is hard to believe the Proud Boys and others on the right will continue to “stand back and stand down.” Instead, we are going to have competing organized groups squaring off. The violence will probably quickly escalate. Weimar Germany again.

There is currently a visible, audible, palpable push towards radicalism and action on the right. Fox News and Drudge Report are rapidly losing audience to more strident voices: One American News, Newsmax, Citizen Free Press. Barr is too moderate now; the Supreme Court is too moderate now; following the rules and staying polite is too moderate now; there are chants to boycott the Republican Party, and form a new one. The thirst, the demand, is for decisive action.

I suspect Trump is getting ready to invoke his 2018 Executive Order on Foreign Interference. This might also justify, in turn, declaring martial law. Which might be necessary now to maintain order. This might be what prompts Barr’s resignation, as this would require authorization by the Attorney-General. In a sense, I suspect Trump is forced into this; aside from the danger of civil society collapsing into street violence, if he does not, at this point, he is likely to himself be abandoned by his former supporters as just one more squish who has let them down. Some new leader may then may emerge from the streets, the shadows, or the beer halls. Some little corporal.

The left, of course, already has such figures.

It is no doubt not the end of the world. But revolutions are not good times for all non-psychopaths.

The End

 

It is snowing outside my window; the first snow in Toronto this year. This is also the Solemnity of Christ the King, the end of the liturgical year.

The readings reflect what Christians believe will happen at the end of time. 

They give no support for the common secular “I’m OK, you’re OK” attitude. They see good guys, and bad guys, and a war of good against evil.

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory,

and all the angels with him,

he will sit upon his glorious throne,

and all the nations will be assembled before him.

And he will separate them one from another,

as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

He will place the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

Then the king will say to those on his right,

'Come, you who are blessed by my Father.

Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’

…

Then he will say to those on his left,

'Depart from me, you accursed,

into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.’

…

And these will go off to eternal punishment,

but the righteous to eternal life."

And this repeats a motif in the Old Testament reading from Ezekiel:

Thus says the Lord GOD:

I myself will look after and tend my sheep. 

…

The lost I will seek out,

the strayed I will bring back,

the injured I will bind up,

the sick I will heal,

but the sleek and the strong I will destroy,

shepherding them rightly.

As for you, my sheep, says the Lord GOD,

I will judge between one sheep and another,

between rams and goats.”

The middle reading, from the Epistles, says that when Jesus comes again, he will 

“destroy every sovereignty and every authority and power. 

For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet.”

You can’t be complacent or play both sides. Everyone can’t be your friend. You are either a sheep or a goat.

Luke 21: 5-19

Last Sunday's mass readings speak of the end times. We are approaching the end of the liturgical year.

While some people were speaking about
how the temple was adorned with costly stones and votive offerings,
Jesus said, "All that you see here--
the days will come when there will not be left
a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down."

Note that this prophecy of Jesus has already come true—long ago, in 70 AD. The temple these people were admiring was indeed torn down, with nothing left but the Western, “Wailing,” Wall, within forty years of the prophecy.

Not incidentally, this fact is used by academics like the Jesus Seminar to prove that the book of Luke was written after 70 AD. But this logic is valid, of course, only if Jesus was not really God, a false prophet, and, indeed, not even a good futurist.

And after all, couldn't any one of us stand beside the World Trade Centre—oops, too late, let's say the Khalifa Tower—and say, “this looks magnificent today, but some day all that will be left of this will be rubble.” And isn't this self-evidently true, in all cases?

In other words, Jesus is not making just one specific prediction about the Temple in Jerusalem. The Temple here is merely representative of the physical world itself—all material things—and the prophecy is eternally true. It is something that is always happening, yet always also in the future.

But in the passage, the destruction of the temple is assumed by his listeners to be a sign of the end times—the end of the world. And Jesus does not deny this. This actually argues against the assumptions of the Jesus Seminar: if the words were written after 70 AD, the writer would know that this had happened and the end of time had not come.

But this leaves us with a puzzle: how can something be continually happening, and yet be a sign of the end times?

Elsewhere, Jesus refers to tearing down the temple, and raising it again in three days. In this latter case, is is fairly clear—the explanation is given in the Bible itself—that the “temple” referred to is his physical being. This is not arbitrary: it is literally true that, if our physical senses cease to exist, our body as the thing through which we make contact with the physical world, all physical things cease to exist so far as we are concerned; up to and including the Temple. So Jesus may be referring here as well not just to the transitory nature of the physical, but to the physical death of each one of us, which is, of course, subjectively, for each one of us the end of the physical world.

Understanding the comment in this way, we also make sense of Jesus's claim that the end times will come within the lifetimes of some of his listeners. Of course it will. That is to say, their deaths will come—and so will ours, his present listeners. We are all, always, living in the end times.

The fact that the Church commemorates the end times liturgically on an annual cycle reminds of us this.

Nobody knows the place or the hour of his own death, just as nobody knows the place or the hour of the end of time itself. It usually comes like a thief in the night. Time ends for each of us at that time.

This is not to say that there will not also, one day, be an end time for the physical world as a whole. But, the instant we each individually die, we are outside of time, as eternity is outside of time; it cannot be an infinite extention of time, because infinite extensions of anything are a logical impossibility. And so, being outside of time, once we die we are at that end time, each of us, individually. All those among Jesus's listeners at that time, and from this time to now, who have died in a state of grace, are already past the tribulations and living in the New Jerusalem, which already exists, and always has, in eternity (and “within us”).

Then they asked him,
"Teacher, when will this happen?
And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?"
He answered,
"See that you not be deceived,
for many will come in my name, saying,
'I am he,’ and 'The time has come.’
Do not follow them!

This seems to literally, plainly and straightforwardly warn that if anyone ever claims to be the Second Coming of Christ, or claims that they know when the end time is to come, and that it is near, this is itself proof that they are a false prophet.

This is, objectively, if you take a glance at history, a good rule to follow. Anyone declaring that, if we do not quickly fall in line behind them, the world will end, and we are all doomed; or, conversely, that if we all fall in behind them, heaven on earth will quickly come, and they will be among the elect; has always been a false prophet. So it is and was with “Global Warming,” Communism, Fascism, the sexual revolution, the Population Bomb, running out of oil, running out of water, and on and on—never mind the many pseudoreligious cults predicting an end to the world next Friday.

I think we can take it that, when the real thing happens, it will not happen in anything like this way. Either it will all be too obvious for doubt, Jesus descending in clouds of glory, or it will be totally unexpected, like that proverbial theif in the night; indeed, it will be both of these things. It will be deux ex machina, based on what the Bible, on close reading, seems to actually say.

When you hear of wars and insurrections,
do not be terrified; for such things must happen first,
but it will not immediately be the end."

“Wars and insurrections”--that is, wars and revolutions. “It will not immediately be the end” Seems to me the main point to take home to the bank here is not to be misled to suppose that any war or revolution can ever create an ideal society. There will be no “war to end all wars,” no revolution to end all oppression.

And yet, this also apparently says that such wars and revolutions are indeed instrumental, and must take place as part of the plan of salvation. They are not a complete waste of effort and of lives, but something needful. Presumably they do good, but the good they do is incremental. There is still a point to freedom rides, fighting Fascism, and so forth—to political participation.

This has to be so—if the end times and the perfection of the physical and social world were merely a matter of divine fiat, 1 why did God create man? 2 why doesn't God just do it now? So the achievement of the New Jerusalem must require human participation. We must all, indeed, have our part to play. We must “make the ways straight for the Lord,” so that he may come.

Then he said to them,
"Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.
There will be powerful earthquakes, famines, and plagues
from place to place;
and awesome sights and mighty signs will come from the sky.

And have not all these things too already happened? Many times? All Jesus is saying here, perhaps, is that history will continue. The construction strongly suggests that these are additional examples of what must happen first, without suggesting that the end is at hand.

If we are right in identifying the “Fall of the Temple” partly with physical death, the point here may be that each of us who read this can expect to hear of all of these things, in our lifetimes, without it meaning that the end of the world has come; and conversely that the end of time always comes within our lifetime. Which generation has not, from Jesus's time until now, heard of wars, revolutions, earthquakes, famines, plagues, and signs such as eclipses in the sky?

So the point is that none of this ought to get us excited or thinking the world is about to end. Of course it is. So?

"Before all this happens, however,
they will seize and persecute you,
they will hand you over to the synagogues and to prisons,
and they will have you led before kings and governors
because of my name.

Following along, Jesus is therefore saying that this is the fate of any real Christian during his lifetime. It is not limited to those times and places where Christianity is officially under persecution.

Does this really happen to us all? Yes, it does; if not prison, or before the legal authorities, it happens at school. Note that “synagogues” at the time Jesus speaks were not places of worship (and still aren't, technically)—that was reserved for the Temple. The “synagogues” were and are, conceptually, the schools (“schul”). They became more central, of course, once the Temple fell, and the Jews needed to preserve a religious and cultural heritage distinct from their neighbours.

Jesus seems to be saying that, by their nature, schools, civil authorities, and social assemblies as much as prisons will always be oppressive to the truly religious. For us, all are prisons. They are necessarily committed to “this world”; the Christian is committed to the world to come. So, to the extent that any of us indeed must deal with—indeed, is, as we all are, subjected to—schools and courts and governments, we are being persecuted.

When Jesus says “because of my name,” is is silly to think this is the literal name “Jesus of Nazareth.” For one thing, that was not really Jesus's name; nobody ever called him that. And we cannot tell what his name really was, because we do not know his Aramaic dialect. We have no decent .mp3s or audio tapes on file. No--”my name” here means “my logos,” just as doing something “in the name of Elizabeth II” means in accordance with her laws and acknowledging her authority. Logos meaning something like “word” but also “underlying order.” Since Jesus is the way, the truth, and the light, what he means is something like “because of truth and right.”

Though governments and schools may be better or worse, necessarily, truth and right will never fully conform with what is being done in the schools and governments at any given time. The Christian is bound to always do and to say what is true and right, and must therefore always stand to some extent in contradiction to the schools, the courts, the assemblies. This necessarily always puts him at a disadvantage in comparison to the “children of this world,” who have no such constraints. They can always go along with whatever the school or court or law or regulation demands of them, and achieve preferment. For the same reason, they will inevitably rise to the top in any civil system, controlling and guiding it, increasing the dissonance and the difficulty for Christians.

Accordingly, it is the natural condition of the Chistian to be persecuted in this world. If you haven't experienced this, gentle reader, you're not a Christian.

It will lead to your giving testimony.
Remember, you are not to prepare your defense beforehand,
for I myself shall give you a wisdom in speaking
that all your adversaries will be powerless to resist or refute.

This seems a remarkable claim, a promised miracle. Don't get a lawyer? Don't defend yourself? But it also seems to be true.

This is a promise of direct divine inspiration at the moment of persecution; and that is a good definition of what art is.

It also illuminates the ending of the Beatitudes.

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.... You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.... let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works and praise your Father in heaven.”

Isn't this saying the same thing? “Good works” here (I even faked the translation; in the English of the bible version I quote, it is actually written as “good deeds”) cannot here mean, as you might suppose, acts of charity. For these, Jesus says only a few moments later in the same sermon, are supposed to be concealed, not displayed in public. Your left hand ought not, in charity, to know what your right hand is doing. So what else could he mean? “Good works” here means, broadly, works of art. Physical expressions of the spirit, good in thre sense of being beautiful.

By the same token, Jesus cannot mean hear that such testimony, given in a court or an assembly, will save one from being imprisoned or killed. It is not a matter of coming up with an irrefutably clever case at law. Were this so, how is it that he failed all the martyrs? And how is it that Jesus says in the previous passage that some will indeed be put in prison, and in the next breath that some will be killed?

No; but if a good, sincere person is persecuted, and they open themselves to grace, without cunning, they produce art, and powerful art. It's a deadly accurate description of the creative process. Some of what is esteemed art, it is true, comes from other spirits. But the greatest art is God's ongoing revelation to us, and it indeed cuts through all the social scams to speak directly, irrefutably. It does not necessarily rescue the individual artist from his own persecutions. But, over time, it rescues us all from all. This is the way we build the New Jerusalem, itself described unambiguously as a work of art, a city with walls encrusted with jewels—by singing under the hammer blows.

Inspiration may express itself as well in ways not immediately recognizable as art; little ways, and large ways. Quite literally, for example, Joan of Arc, at her trial, was able to respond immediately to prosecutorial questions with a theological shrewdness that ought to have been far beyond the abilities of an uneducated peasant girl. It did not matter to her fate—but the trial record remains, like a beacon. Divine nspiration can appear, too, in daily conversation, daily work, and in more intimate matters that never reach the world as instances of Art with a big capital A. It can give one a beautiful singing voice, another a fabulous sense of humour, another the ability to teach engagingly, or to heal, and so forth—the gifts of the spirit.

You will even be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends,
and they will put some of you to death.

So much for “family values,” eh? The righteous are not that much less likely to be persecuted within the family as in the school. Any social group carries the plague of “this world.”

Our fairy tales, being art, used to understand this, and warn children of it.

Beware of movements that seek to suppress art. It is a likely sign of the anti-Christ.

You will be hated by all because of my name,
but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.
By your perseverance you will secure your lives."

Jesus seems here to contradict himself: some will be put to death, but not a hair on their head will be destroyed, and if they persevere they will live? Let's parse it: it works if

1. there is life after the physical death, the death of the body, and not just that, but
2. even the death of the body itself is only apparent, not real.

This still seems, at second glance, close to self-contradictory—physical death does not harm the body?

Yet it is true.

Let us simply suppose tha Jesus means the reference to hair instead to serve as a metaphor. After all, the usual signal that a metaphorical sense is intended—in the hands of any good author—is that the literal meaning is not a possible one.

So let's look more closely at hair. Are our bodies like our hair? We can be severed from our hair, after all, at any time, without this meaning that we cease to exist. So perhaps his point is that the death of the physical body is like cutting off one's hair—the hair lies, cold and lifeless, on the barber's floor, but we ourselves, being our souls, sashay out the barber's door into Paradise essentially unchanged and uninjured, not even ill at ease.

But then again, in another hair-exampled sense, neither do even our bodies really die—any more than it makes sense to speak of the hair dying when no longer connected to our bodies. Hairs do not die because they never lived; and the matter which constitutes them is neither created nor destroyed. So too, indeed, with our bodies at and after death. They do not cease to exist, do they? Matter is neither created nor destroyed. They remain what they always were: constantly changing collections of molecules.

Death has no power to sting.

In making this point, Jesus is advising his listeners, as his final point, not to fuss or worry about the end of the world at all, in either sense. Death is not something a Christian need trouble himself with. Let the dead bury their own dead.