Here’s my sermon for this week.

Mark 13.1-8

For thousands of years people have been predicting “The end of the world as we know it”. There have always been people who have had some sense that mysterious and destructive events are the beginning of The End. The death of a beloved national leader_, the eruption of a volcano_, comets appearing in the sky have – all been seen as heralding the end of the world. And people are so worried about such events that they can easily be persuaded that they are about to happen. And then when they don’t, they are left feeling rather silly. Most people know of the famous broadcast of October 1938 by Orson Welles of the H. G. Wells book “The War of the Worlds”. It was so convincing a broadcast that many people in America thought Martians really had landed and that the end of the world had come. Panic was widespread and many even fled from their homes as they tried to escape from the Martians. Continue reading →