Sunday 7 February 2010

66. The Second Coming

Day 66, i.e. two thirds of the way through. And what's two thirds of 100? 66.6 recurring.


The second coming had not been a roaring success.

For a start, there had been no fiery chariot. That shouldn’t have been important, but it transpired that, without it, the believers were not so believing. And there were an awful lot of others ostensibly like him, asking why people just couldn’t be nice to each other and not try to fill the holes in their hearts with metals and stones.

More pertinently, it also transpired that the people who looked after his Church were not desperately keen on being contradicted, especially about the poverty thing. And so they’d burned him at the stake.

The second second coming had been even worse. He had performed his miracles, but all it had created was disagreements. How had he done it? Was it really a miracle? And there were now all sorts of different groups bickering over the future of his Church with the kind of myopic pedantry that used to amuse but now dismayed.

Indeed, they had agreed on only one thing – turning water into wine was probably blasphemous and most certainly witchcraft. So they’d hung, drawn and quartered him.

But the second second second coming was probably the worst to date. There was a fiery chariot and columns of flames and everything. The people heard. But they didn’t want to listen. It turned out that most of them were quite happy, thank you, with the sinning. And some of those who should have been believers were somewhat cynical about being told that, yes, their lives were cold, brutal, short and basically miserable, but that didn’t matter because as long as they listened to him it would be worth it when they were dead. And some of them just didn’t like him and refused to recognise him.

And with that, and without realising it, they killed their God.

And that is where I make my second coming. Please allow me to introduce myself: I am nothing if not patient.

And I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit; and there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit.

And in those days shall men seek death, and shall not find it; and shall desire to die, and death shall flee from them.

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