It's Nigh

So Mad Trevor phones me up to try to persuade me that I should be setting up a 'conference on prophecy' and 'preparing people for the End Times'. He's been watching the God Channel and 'real Christians' who have prophecies about the end of the world. I tell him quite calmly what I think of the God Channel, and that I know the end of the world is coming because that's a basic assumption of Christianity, but am not sure that setting up a conference on prophecy is the right way of preparing ourselves. He shouts at me that I and the rest of the Church are blind and ignorant and that he can see that the End is imminent, and hangs up.

Of course no matter how I calm I am about this it still upsets me. I regularly have dreams which hint at, if not the Apocalypse itself, a horrible world-encompassing event whose nature is never quite defined. But thinking about it, I'm not convinced that, even if I knew for certain that the Day of Judgement was tomorrow, or in a week, or a month, or whatever, I would be doing anything differently. I don't believe people are saved by this or that act, so frantic attempts to produce demonstrastions of faith in unbelievers are beside the point, nor do I think walking the streets proclaiming the imminence of the End would be the way to do so. If there is anything I'm doing which is contrary to God's will, or something I'm not doing which I should be, that's true regardless of how near or far away the Eschaton is; the imminence of the End might sharpen the attention, but that's all. It's coming and that's all we need to know.

And living in expectation of the End is always suggested as something fearful. But for Jesus the nearness of the Kingdom (both experientially and eschatogically) is precisely Good News - 'the time is fulfilled, the kingdom is near'. How could the triumph of justice and love, the healing of wounds, the wiping of tears and the vindication of Christ's poor, be anything other than a promise, not a threat?

I walked up the hill from church towards the Rectory and I didn't imagine the houses and people along the road burning and consumed with fire, but burning with light - transfigured into what they are at their very best. Perhaps I just need to pour more of the Eschaton into what I do.