What if we allowed ourselves to imagine the resurrection of Jesus really is what the church claims it to be: the first movement in God's symphony of all-embracing love and reconciliation?
Eschatology, the study of the end of the world, can seem a little heavy duty but these days it seems to me that discussions of apocalypse can be pretty significant, if not actually sexy.
In addition to his famed tirades was Jobs' "reality distortion field." Jobs would draw a picture of the world that seemed to defy all reality. At worst, he simply lied. At best, he cast a vision of what could be and then got others caught up in making that vision a new reality.
No one understands all of Revelation's numbers and symbols. Still, almost all interpreters have come to a common assessment of several keys: the Lamb, the Beast, the Great Prostitute, the Other Beast and the New Jerusalem.
Around 1830 John Nelson Darby, having selected scripture passages from Daniel, Revelation, 1 and 2 Thessalonians and elsewhere, pasted them together, called them a whole, and invented the Rapture, a word not found in the Bible.
Predictions of the Apocalypse or its personal equivalent of a direct path to heaven have been a common theme throughout human history. We seem determined to keep ourselves in a constant state of preparation for the end of time.
We could see in the coming years the emergence of a new kind of eschatology -- fresh, different, wiser biblically, more mature theologically, and more responsible ethically.
