AUTHORS NOTE - Sometimes writing takes the place of spoken word. This insight is really important to not be misunderstood. So I wrote this for you in place of a Thursday podcast.
The first and most powerful of these insights occurred upon a reading and acceptance of The Parable of the Ten Virgins; which formed a certain vigilance and heightened crisis attenuation to the Second Coming of Christ. It also led to a profound escalation of my faith in a secondary spiritual baptism that has been denied and derided by non-stakeholders and unbelievers alike. Many wrongfully substitute this occasion as their personal concern and accuse me of will to produce the international effects of Armageddon. I’m not influential or puppet enough to facilitate WWIII.
I can’t even get Congress to defund idiotic self-dealing corrupt conflicts where the arms spread defeats American self-defense. I am definitely not going to sign up for a theocratic collective to produce war and rumored war effects against my fellow man for the singular temporary profit percentage escalation of 4 arms companies P&L quarterly statements. I am just not that singularly that powerful. If Tori Nuuland can’t break that out for you - well, my small personal devotion to God isn’t going to blow up in any force of numbers to bite off of your news platter.
I count myself lucky at this late date of age to be uncaring of detached opinion concerning the free exercise of private faith. The same people argue privacy for their sex acts. Why can’t I be left alone in matters where they do not benefit? They do not hold any benefit in exchanges that stand the test of time for private practice of faith. Some of them presume themselves better than God. For that sordid delusion, I am no help to them. They should just move on. Their scorn blows away like a burger wrapper in a tornado at this stage in development.
In college, I saw a live performance of the most influential dramatic dark-ages dramas concerning the Faust. The character was beguiled. He traded his soul for the benefits of talent and fame, adulation and adoration among the random throng of humanity. Through dramatized witness of his mistakes we learn that Faust is incapable of amassing intimacy and genial dealing with strong numbers of strangers through his performative acts. He is denied the agency of a monogamous marriage with the one woman he loves and in the end is dragged to hell for his temporal exchange. Of course, we now know that God has the power to interdict in bad faith Satanic contracts, but it was a good illustrative morality play. That’s why its lessons endured.
Today, the last two chapters of the Bible in the Book of Revelations begins to convey like a Groomzilla reality TV drama, where the Son of God returns to collect on his Bride, the Body of Christ. The essence of the Genesis sabotage was to undermine God’s covenant or the most singlar committed relationship between two persons in mating match.
Only the mathematical quantum calculations of singularity AI in HER, the film, has given a frame of possible relationship with millions of singular persons planet-wide. It is barely comprehensible in this rough attempt. So much so, my first inclination is just to give up because the vectors and random outcome displacement is so overwhelming. For God to amass “the Body of Christ” when all you have known are individual people - so flawed and humanly frail - it just doesn’t seem possible. Yet this is the mystery.
In my mind, this mystery is represented by a football and the laces of a traditional football. The laces contain the contents of that football. Inside of the football, is our incomprehensible sacred mystery. To simplify this in conveyances of what-to-do, you are the quarterback. God is your wide-receiver. Your task is not to unpack the football, it’s to run it to the wide-receiver for the win. RUN THE BALL!!
Do as many drills as you have to. You have ONE JOB. Get the ball to the wide-receiver.
If this is the end times, the faithfulness and faithful readiness is exactly what matters. You keep oil fuel in your lamp, trim the wicks and do training drills for “you do not know the day or the hour”. Doomsday prepper, arms, wary friendships ..whatever. You have to be prepared to run TOWARD God in the darkest hour and a dark hour seems predicated. You cannot be faithful to man, spouse, dog, enterprise the way you are faithful to God. If you can only pick one person to be faithful to, be faithful to God because God holds ALL of the cards.
Don’t believe in God? Great. Gamble with that deck. BYE.
For someone like me, who cannot really know what’s ahead in the experience, this represents the veil. The Bride and her senses are shielded from being seen and limited seeing the moments before the ceremony. The not-knowing does not scare me as much as the not-commencing.
Marriage ceremonies are exhausting. They drag on for the families and for the groom. They are a drag on everyone. Everyone celebrates the wedding, because weddings are not pointless in every anthropological tradition. It is a rite of passage. That means there are tests of argument and integration. It is meant to be an endurance ritual.
Honeymoon is rest, relief and reward while all else falls away.
What’s ahead for you? Tell us in the comments section.
Beautifully written and well done. We will never know when the end of time will be, but must be prepared and keep our faith strong. I must read my Bible more, as different passages speak to us when needed. Thanks for your strong reminder to keep our faith and honor God.
Beautifully written and well done. We will never know when the end of time will be, but must be prepared and keep our faith strong. I must read my Bible more, as different passages speak to us when needed. Thanks for your strong reminder to keep our faith and honor God.