ARE WE ON THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
LOOKING OVER TO SEE WHAT’S NEXT
OR IS IT. . .
HOW FAR ARE WE GOING TO FALL. . .
WAIT. . .WHAT
ARE WE EVEN HERE
OR HAS THE END OF THE WORLD
ALREADY TAKEN PLACE. . .
There is no factual or theological basis for the prediction of the Rapture in 2025; rather, it is a modern viral prophecy originating from a South African individual named Joshua Mhlakela who claims to have had a divine revelation that the Rapture would occur on September 23 or 24, 2025, coinciding with the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashanah. This prediction has spread widely on social media, creating a trend called “RaptureTok” where believers and skeptics alike are participating in discussions and creating content related to the concept. However, the Bible itself states that no one knows the day or the hour of the end times, and the concept of the Rapture is a relatively modern evangelical belief.
Poetry prescription: Take a minute today and read William Wordsworth’s “The World Is Too Much With Us” out loud:
The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.
In a lecture called “The Distracted Public,” Saul Bellow said Wordsworth’s poem was his introduction to the subject of distraction, and addressed the problem of living in “the apocalypse of our times,” or what Wyndham Lewis called “the moronic inferno.” Being a novelist, of course, he made the case for reading novels:
“The writer cannot make the seas of distraction stand still, but he can at times come between the madly distracted and their distractions. He does this by opening another world…. When you open a novel–and I mean of course the real thing–you enter into a state of intimacy with its writer. You hear a voice or, more significantly, an individual tone under the words. This tone you, the reader, will identify not so much by a name, the name of the author, as by a distinct and unique human quality. It seems to issue from the bosom, from a place beneath the breastbone. It is more musical than verbal, and it is the characteristic signature of a person, of a soul. Such a writer has power over distraction and fragmentation, and out of distressing unrest, even from the edge of chaos, he can bring unity and carry us into a state of intransitive attention. People hunger for this.”
Any novel would probably work, but the older the better — it’s good to break bread with the dead.
MAYBE THE REAL RAPTURE
ISN’T THE END OF THE WORLD
SO MUCH AS A SPECTACULAR
NEW BEGINNING:
When I came to Westlake, Ohio in 1987, it was to replace the founding minister of Westlake Christian Church, Al Kean who had been there for 27 years. He made it very clear to me that it was now “MY CHURCH” and no longer his and so don’t bother to ask him to perform weddings or funerals. I did coerce him into coming back and doing a couple of Bible studies with us. One of those Bible Studies talked about THE END TIMES and I’ll never forget what Al taught us that night: “The world has ended countless times before, not just in the Bible but also with the Revolutionary War, the Civil War, WWI, WWII, the Korean and Viet Nam wars, Desert Storm and yes, TODAY and yet. . .HERE WE ARE
LET’S DO SOMETHING ABOUT OUR BEGINNINGS
N O W
Leave a Reply