Can you believe that it is December 2012 tomorrow? I clearly remember the date changing from 31 December 1999 to 1 January 2000, and the buzz that surrounded that eagerly anticipated moment. It is incredible to me how gullible people can be worked into a frenzy by hype. The hype that surrounded the change from the twentieth to the twenty-first century was exacerbated by the change from the second millennium after Christ to the third millennium. Stock up foodstuffs, they told us. Fill every container possible with water. Buy gas lamps and gas, or if you are phobic about gas as I am, (my friend Phil Tennet, who has a greater accumulation of general knowledge and random bits of information than anyone I know, will definitely know what the correct name is for a gas phobia! I could, of course, google it, but that would spoil my and Phil's fun! Goodness, what a digression!)..... , then stock up instead on candles and matches.
A truly intelligent woman I know, the very same with whom I conversed while under the influence of a sleeping pill - see a previous blog - berated me soundly for not browbeating the church into stockpiling necessities. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you!" she said darkly. "When your congregation members are dying of hunger, don't come crying to me!" She attended a very large church in another city, and I have often wondered what thousands of people did with their stockpiles. I would like to think that: (a) their pastor apologised. (b) he used the same zeal with which he urged them to buy up supplies to last a year, to encourage them to go and dispense these necessities of life to the poor. I doubt that either happened. I imagine that instead they heard a sermon that exonerated him, along the lines of the wise always being prepared, just like the Boy Scout he never had been.
The biggest warning, however, was to ensure that you were not to be found in any form of transport as the clock struck midnight!! The theory underlying millennial fever was that the world as we know it would stop functioning because nobody had had the foresight to programme computers to function beyond 1999. A couple of my friends got lucrative employment as they were hired to ensure that computers would handle the switch from 19... to 20...! The warnings were dire, almost apocalyptic. Chaos would reign. Anarchy would prevail. Gangs would go on looting rampages. Electricity would cease to function because power stations would stop churning out power. Security systems would fail, giving criminals access everywhere. If you were on an aeroplane, double trouble! You would surely crash as flight computers and radar systems stopped working. You wouldn't be able to buy or sell. Presumably the Antichrist could arise, because without his mark (possibly drawn on your skin with kokis as electricity was a non-starter), you wouldn't be able to buy or sell because shop assistants can no longer add or subtract without the aid of computers!
So as the final day of 1999 approached, there was a definite sense of being in one of two camps. The first camp gathered together, gas lamps, blankets in the northern hemisphere and battery operated fans in the southern hemisphere, cans of food with hand operated can openers, bottles of water (and for the cheerier souls, bottles of bubbly), waiting in gleeful expectation of BEING RIGHT, watching the world descend into blackouts and terror, while they self-righteously lit their candles, opened their canned tuna, poured their pure water into disposable cups, and felt vindicated.
Then there were the carefree and highly excitable groups who gathered together for the enviable joy of seeing in a new century and a new millennium in the company of friends and revellers. I will leave it to you to guess to which group I belonged. I am fairly sure that when the second struck that brought 1 January 2000 into being in the Pacific Islands, the first place to celebrate the new year, the pessimists kept believing that their frightening scenario COULD STILL HAPPEN, because the Pacific Islands are not really THAT controlled by computers. I am equally
sure that by the time the apple dropped, to the great delight of the partying crowd in The Big Apple, they had given up their morbid expectation of an apocalypse and went to bed, switching off all their electric lights manually as they did so. The rest of the world partied on merrily, enjoying the sense of a brand new date.
Now here we are in 2012, with similar groups of people anticipating the end of the world in light of the Mayan calendar. I have a reservation here. If the Mayans were so clued up that they knew when the world would end, why were they not able to save themselves from extinction. I have serious doubts about the logic of people who will believe the prognostications of an extinct part of the human race.
And of course the church is full of Doomsday prophets. I wonder about preachers and teachers who devote their entire ministries to predicting when the world will end, who draw exact time lines of events, and who die believing them. Among so many views, most HAVE to be wrong. Imagine standing at the Judgment Seat of Christ to receive your rewards for your life's work, only to find that you had been wrong all along? It is one thing to be left with hundreds of kilograms of sugar and cans of tuna, but to stand empty handed before the King you have lived to serve is daunting. And teachers are more strictly judged too - scary thought! All we can know, according to the word of God, is the SEASON we are in, but no one CAN know the day or hour. So let's live to serve Him, enjoying the life He has given us, making the most of every opportunity to share our faith.
And remember that December is fishing season in the church, so invite someone to a service. You never know how many people just might come with you. And their futures can, like yours, be assured. Have a very, very blessed Christmas, and I will chat to you on 31.12.2012. God bless, Fiona.
A truly intelligent woman I know, the very same with whom I conversed while under the influence of a sleeping pill - see a previous blog - berated me soundly for not browbeating the church into stockpiling necessities. "Well, don't say I didn't warn you!" she said darkly. "When your congregation members are dying of hunger, don't come crying to me!" She attended a very large church in another city, and I have often wondered what thousands of people did with their stockpiles. I would like to think that: (a) their pastor apologised. (b) he used the same zeal with which he urged them to buy up supplies to last a year, to encourage them to go and dispense these necessities of life to the poor. I doubt that either happened. I imagine that instead they heard a sermon that exonerated him, along the lines of the wise always being prepared, just like the Boy Scout he never had been.
The biggest warning, however, was to ensure that you were not to be found in any form of transport as the clock struck midnight!! The theory underlying millennial fever was that the world as we know it would stop functioning because nobody had had the foresight to programme computers to function beyond 1999. A couple of my friends got lucrative employment as they were hired to ensure that computers would handle the switch from 19... to 20...! The warnings were dire, almost apocalyptic. Chaos would reign. Anarchy would prevail. Gangs would go on looting rampages. Electricity would cease to function because power stations would stop churning out power. Security systems would fail, giving criminals access everywhere. If you were on an aeroplane, double trouble! You would surely crash as flight computers and radar systems stopped working. You wouldn't be able to buy or sell. Presumably the Antichrist could arise, because without his mark (possibly drawn on your skin with kokis as electricity was a non-starter), you wouldn't be able to buy or sell because shop assistants can no longer add or subtract without the aid of computers!
So as the final day of 1999 approached, there was a definite sense of being in one of two camps. The first camp gathered together, gas lamps, blankets in the northern hemisphere and battery operated fans in the southern hemisphere, cans of food with hand operated can openers, bottles of water (and for the cheerier souls, bottles of bubbly), waiting in gleeful expectation of BEING RIGHT, watching the world descend into blackouts and terror, while they self-righteously lit their candles, opened their canned tuna, poured their pure water into disposable cups, and felt vindicated.
Then there were the carefree and highly excitable groups who gathered together for the enviable joy of seeing in a new century and a new millennium in the company of friends and revellers. I will leave it to you to guess to which group I belonged. I am fairly sure that when the second struck that brought 1 January 2000 into being in the Pacific Islands, the first place to celebrate the new year, the pessimists kept believing that their frightening scenario COULD STILL HAPPEN, because the Pacific Islands are not really THAT controlled by computers. I am equally
sure that by the time the apple dropped, to the great delight of the partying crowd in The Big Apple, they had given up their morbid expectation of an apocalypse and went to bed, switching off all their electric lights manually as they did so. The rest of the world partied on merrily, enjoying the sense of a brand new date.
Now here we are in 2012, with similar groups of people anticipating the end of the world in light of the Mayan calendar. I have a reservation here. If the Mayans were so clued up that they knew when the world would end, why were they not able to save themselves from extinction. I have serious doubts about the logic of people who will believe the prognostications of an extinct part of the human race.
And of course the church is full of Doomsday prophets. I wonder about preachers and teachers who devote their entire ministries to predicting when the world will end, who draw exact time lines of events, and who die believing them. Among so many views, most HAVE to be wrong. Imagine standing at the Judgment Seat of Christ to receive your rewards for your life's work, only to find that you had been wrong all along? It is one thing to be left with hundreds of kilograms of sugar and cans of tuna, but to stand empty handed before the King you have lived to serve is daunting. And teachers are more strictly judged too - scary thought! All we can know, according to the word of God, is the SEASON we are in, but no one CAN know the day or hour. So let's live to serve Him, enjoying the life He has given us, making the most of every opportunity to share our faith.
And remember that December is fishing season in the church, so invite someone to a service. You never know how many people just might come with you. And their futures can, like yours, be assured. Have a very, very blessed Christmas, and I will chat to you on 31.12.2012. God bless, Fiona.
Comments
Post a Comment