The
Book of Revelation almost didn’t make it into the Bible at all, and no wonder:
it is a wild, hallucinatory vision, going much further than even the wildest
Old Testament prophets like Zechariah ever did. Animals with multiple heads,
staggering plagues and disasters killing almost all of mankind (except the
believers), a vision of God on his throne, an angel fighting a dragon, war with
Satan, the horsemen of fate, a thousand-year hiatus before the war resumes with
Satan, and then Jesus the triumphant ruler, as the holy city descends from
heaven down to Jerusalem.
But
that book highlights a key flaw in the Bible.
The
founders of Christianity took many years to settle on which “holy books” were
going to be included in the Christian Bible. So they had plenty of time to
decide what the message of Christianity would be. During the course of this
examination they considered and rejected a number of texts for the Bible. But
still after all that effort, they made a tragic mistake which, among the
monotheistic faiths, is unique.
The
predicted the end of the world, and they said it would happen soon.
Jesus
told his followers a lot about the kingdom which God would create, when the End
Times came. He gave detailed explanations on who would be welcomed into the
kingdom, and who would not. And, most significantly, he specified that it was
coming any day, in a man’s lifetime, and
that everyone needed to prepare for it, even if that meant ignoring your family
and everything else. Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die, and live on in
some sort of spiritual form. Jesus pointed out that his old recommendation,
that the disciples go out without a purse of money, was no longer valid, now
that the final crisis was coming: take a purse and a sword both, he said.
John
in the Book of Revelation echoed that sentiment, warning right off the bat that
the End Times were coming soon. The other major religions ruminate about the
end of the world, but only Christianity made it that specific – it’s coming
soon, so get ready!
Coming
soon.
On
the basis of that prediction, many disciples abandoned their families to go
preach the word – if the world was ending any day, what did their wives and
children matter?
Then
the disciples got old, wondering why the kingdom hadn’t come as promised, and
then they died. How disappointed they must have been – like Red Sox fans of the
last century, they waited for decades, confident, positive that paradise had to
be coming to them….and then nothing.
And
then new Christians came along. Year after year, generation after generation,
the new Christians predicted that Jesus was coming back any old day now. Twenty
eight separate times the faithful got excited over a prediction that “this is
it!” They offered many explanations for the dates they chose as the end of the
world; less often they offered explanations as to why their predictions failed.
So
like Vladimir and Estragon, the Christians wait for Godot to come, and he never
comes. But do they question whether he’s ever coming at all? Do they wonder
what he could be waiting for?
According
to the Bible, a huge proportion of mankind will be killed in the End Times. Is
that the problem? Back in the time of ancient Israel God killed in large
numbers at the drop of a hat – Noah’s flood, Sodom, the Egyptians, the sinning
Israelites in the Sinai desert – and then ordered the Israelites to do even more
mass killing in his name. Has God lost his Mass Murder Mojo?
How
many centuries does Linus sit in the pumpkin patch, before he realizes that the
Great Pumpkin isn’t coming? It’s been two thousand years, so….Another thousand
years? Another ten thousand years? At what point do we openly declare faith to
be insanity? When can we publicly laugh at the Bible and the people who read
it?
