Tagged: second coming
Be ready and waiting
Mother Anne-Marie was preaching at St John’s this week for the third Sunday of Advent. She chose to preach on the epistle. Here’s what she said.
A few years back I bought the most beautiful, religious Advent Calendar I had ever had. It was a crib scene in the style of the old masters – no Santa Claus and elves and definitely no chocolate. This Advent Calendar would, I was sure, keep me focused on what Advent was really about.
But when I opened the first window, I was dismayed to see on the inside of the window the words 24 days to go. My lovely religious Advent Calendar was to be my count down, moving relentlessly on, not quite saying 24 shopping days to Christmas, but certainly reminding me daily of those words we hear so often. It ended up being the most depressing Advent Calendar I had ever had – 12 days to go, 11 days to go, 10 days to go – it was just a relentless reminder of how many days I had left to do everything on my list. As a child this count down to Christmas was so exciting and it went so slowly. Now the count down just whizzes by and the 24 days fly past in a whirl. Such is the effect of ageing.
Continue readingThe end of the world is nigh!
The end of the world is nigh!
There’s always someone, it seems, who believes that they know when the end of the world is coming! All kinds of predictions have been made down the centuries about when the end of the world as we know it was coming, only for nothing to happen.
Take Ronald Weinland, for example. Ronald Weinland is the head of a Christian denomination with the rather long title: Church of God, Preparing for the Kingdom of God. He founded it in 1998 in the United States. So much easier to just be able to say you’re a member of the Church of England. Weinland started predicting that the end of the world was due at any moment in 2008. And then declared that Christ would return and the end of the world would come on the feast of Pentecost in the year 2012.
When that didn’t happen, he changed his prophecy of the end of the world to Pentecost 2013. When that didn’t happen, he then prophesied that the end of the world would happen at Pentecost 2019. Yes – you, like me, may have noticed something of a pattern emerging here. Weinland hasn’t yet got it right yet. Of course, Weinland’s credibility with his fellow church members may have been somewhat undermined by the fact that in 2013 he was imprisoned for 3½ years for tax evasion – something he apparently didn’t see coming.
Continue readingThe end of the world is nigh!
It was Harold Wilson who first uttered the words, “A week is a long time in politics.” Well, the last few days have seemed like an awfully long time – and people on both sides of the Brexit debate are expressing concerns about the future.
If the last few days have left you worried about what thefuture for our country may be then – at least according to Ronald Weinland –there really is no point in worrying at all. For the end of the world is nigh.At least it is according to Ronald Weinland, founder of a religious organisationthat is expecting the Second Coming imminently and which is known as, in full,the Church of God, Preparing for theKingdom of God. (Source: Wikipedia entry)
He apparently predictedthe end of the world as coming in 2011 – and you may have noticed that thatdidn’t happen. Then he predicted it again as coming in 2012 – yes, didn’thappen then either. Then he tried 2013 – and yet again, nothing! It seems hethen spent some time rethinking, and then he amended his predicted date for theend of the world to the 9th of June next year. So, according toWeinland a couple of months after Brexit the world is coming to an end anyway,so not a lot of point in worrying about it.
Continue readingWhat I said this Sunday – 2nd Sunday before Advent
Here’s my sermon for this week.
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
View from the Valley 