Bible Studies

THE BEGINNING OF PROPHECY, A Prologue to the Second Coming Part 2 of 4

by Walter Boswell
06/21/18
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                           THE BEGINNING OF PROPHECY (Part 2 of 4)

                                   A Prologue to the Second Coming

                                             (in excerpted form)

Chapter 5

                Will you be my servant indeed? Deliver this message unto the cities which stretch out below me on the plain. Say, the prophet of the Most High God bids you come out of the cities of sin and join me where we may worship the Lord and learn of his ways, here upon this mountain. When they have ceased to come, for it shall come to pass most shall not hearken unto your words, and when I have become flush with the power of the Lord, I will pass through their lands; and they shall witness God’s mercy. My journey will wind up on the far side of the desert. In time they will forget me, and turn their backs. Then I shall leap upon them with a sudden terror, as a leopard from overhead. Many will fall prey. Many shall die from mere fright.

                Have you not heard,

the Lord is a warrior, and an avenger; Lord is his name?

“Why are you living in this cave,

                only to chant, ‘all men are vanity’, why?”

With what shall I liken man; to whom shall I compare him?

He is like a peasant carrying his goods to market

                who meets a traveler coming the other way, and says,

‘Here, please, help ease my load, kind sir;

                                I will be ever so grateful.

Heedless a reply, the stranger is handed a package.

Further on down the road, the peasant passes onto the stranger

                another sack; then another, then another,

                                                until at last,

the fellow traveler is carrying the whole load.

                When finally they arrive at the marketplace,

the peasant sells his worldly goods,

                then gestures his former load-bearer

                                a thankless goodbye.

The vanity of man has made him imperceptive,

and will not allow him to hear the words of God,

                much less accept all that Christ has done for him.

                                                The Son of Man

was conceived just after two punctual children

and just before two late and worrisome children.

It has crossed his mind often –

                                to which group he rightly belongs.

“Does not the fact that you are able

                to ask yourself this question affirm a normalcy?”

Does it?

Does merely the questioning of right or wrong

                appertaining to any given situation

                                prove righteousness?

All it acknowledges is a familiarity with terms.

                                                                But if he is late …

and the latest of late has founded highways

                                                                in the desert,

are you not all to become my tollpayers?

At this most walk away, being unable to understand his precautions.

Behold the wisdom of the Lord,

                that at a single instance,

one is faced with condemnation or vindication.

                ‘What color are these walls?’

“What is the color of rocks, but a gray, even a blackness?”

                ‘My vision of these walls is a blood red;

for as surely as I live,

the whole earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.’

Chapter 6

                Go forth ye from me,

and rebuild the dilapidated house for which this town was named;

and you, go and restore the local church:

for thus says the Lord,

as I have rebuilt this house, so will I rebuild the house of Israel;

as I have restored the local church, so will I restore the Church of the Living God.

                “Can God also restore lost limbs to these people,

                                to lambs which have run,

                                                to springbuck which have never pronked? Can he?”

Let it be as your faith demands.

“Jesus led a perfect life, have you?”

Hardly, being.

“How then does the imperfect follow the perfect?”

Would you rather I had come from pure goodness?

                And who would have fathomed this?

Our natures have been directed from above.

                                Jesus came into your seeing as God,

whereas I represent Man.

I know what you must be thinking:

                if this is Man, what a sorry state he is.

Who has said, I was a long time in the womb …

but now the universe cannot hold me?

Therefore, I shall say this,

                and praise our Father accordingly.

For with the same instruments He created all things,

                He has begotten the New Man.

                The Lord goeth down into the valley,

                                                into your cities,

into once arable lands, now wet with sodden mudwash –

                                                                and there is

the smell of sin after the flood.

“To the gates, to the gates,” you shouted,

                                “let spring passion in!”

“The closet winter was long,

and our meditations of summer,

                all came to naught.

Suffer a freer translation be devised.”

                The Lord visits the cities of the plain,

to witness the lengths of sobriety,

                                the heights of discovery,

and the breadths of historic memorial.

Were these a people once, a civilization of saints?

Look now at what their zoo without cages have unleashed.

                                                Take up your cross,

                                            and follow me.

I have two thousand years journeyed to meet you here.

For this length of time

                my kingdom has been on the road;

peering in through glazed store windows,

knocking on mansion hardwood doors;

tarrying on street corners or sleeping on concrete benches,

                at the risk of violation and theft;

spending most other nights shelterless, under the weather,

except for those brief stays in occasional wayside inns –

when the owner’s heart opened unto my knocking:

hearing as he would the late company’s arrival, and jumping up

                                                from his own supper table

to prepare us a meal and make ready a room.

                                By my honor,

I was here creating parkland

when your far-seen herds went about baring hillsides,

and the multitudes of your flocks were developing wasteland;

and with flicking tongue

controlling the flies from off your open garbage pits,

when as yet you thought environmental care.

                Now, not even the cool breath of autumn

will make fragrant the stink of your land;

not even the innocent blood of virgins

can hide the horrors of your human sacrifices.

Chapter 7

The glory of God is the honor he keeps.

                Wickedness has no glory to reflect.

Judgement always comes to a life (a nation)

                wherein there is no reflective honor.

                The snows have fallen,

                                and all the evergreens are laden

                                                with the weight of age.

The mountains are clumsy

                and no longer spry to leap and frolic.

                                                The hills are old …

                and I have grown old with them.

Therefore I will overturn the earth

                                                and begin again.

                                I will see to forever.

                He is also a proprietor come back

after a long absence, after much duty away,

                to reestablish his footstool.

For the land is mine, says the Lord;

you are but aliens, who some have become tenants,

                and some tenants of tenants.

Behold, the Lord is doing a new thing.

Instead of waiting to pick up the pieces from your conflagrations

                                                and vain power wars,

or sifting through the ashes in search of any remaining seeds of life,

the Lord will approve a spraying of grace-led virulence –

to make barren your poison plantings before they flower.

                This He will do not for your sake

or for the merits of your culture,

rather for the sake of His creations: the creatures of the field,

the forests and the mountains, the rivers and the oceans.

Your diseases should not be the cause of their sickness.

                                Who has appointed you governor or judge?

Or has tied you to the post as watchdog for intruders?

Who has anointed you as high priest over sins?

Or as monitor of the fibrillations of patients’ ills?

(He it is that comes in the name of the Lord)

                                If I must mix mortar, and so pour it;

if I must carve timbers, and inset them;

if I must frame windows, and fire up glass;

                then indeed you have found me out.

It warrants a great pity I must reckon human frailty,

                and must bear shame unknown to jaded hearts.

The Lord has himself prophesied,

I know these people; they will deny you as they would deny Me.

                “Nevertheless, I tell you a personal truth,

it is expedient for you that I call you mutants and dimwits;

for if I call not you other than what you are – evil,

He would soon make short work of you.

But since I call you ‘inable’, your sentence is commuted.”

                Calumny must be answered with calamity;

heresy with harshness.

Evil acts invoke vile countermeasures.

                The course is set coarse;

                                                this is funny,

noting the irregular.

In me you are spared the real power –

that I want not to destroy.

To restrain the tide of justified extinction,

I will change the fabric of time by holding back the sun.

                Again, he said, you are an hemophiliac

for whom the slightest scratch will lead to profuse bleeding;

and unless you be filled with new blood, and unless Jesus forms the clot,

                                                you shall surely die.

                The slice is wide, the cut is deep;

Israel is drained … for her wound in incurable.

Foregoing his message,

some in the crowd began to yell and swear and disrupt the audience.

                                The prophet responded,

“if you will not heed the words of the Holy Spirit,

                then your own speech must be without ‘wind’.”

And continuing, “if you cannot see the truth as it is revealed,

                then you must be blind.”

Moreover, “if you still will not stop interrupting,

                then you will find yourself to be not standing still at all.”

[So it was that those he made mute, blind, and halt

                were escorted away in silence.]

Chapter 8

Receive the call, receive the call;

always wait to receive the call!

When will you learn to love the Lord, your God, and enlist?

            Enlist! “Let us go to the summit and enlist.”

            Shall a father pass onto son

                        what was not deeded him?

Shall a mother teach her daughter what herself was not taught?

                                    The plumb line has turned an elbow

                        across the generations.

Recall! Remark! Reset!

            The word is given;

I will see if you honor my law, or no.

As you cherish government programs and privileges

                                                more than God,

you are idolaters of another faith.

As you recreate the Son and mold him to your will,

you are false beings and fallen angels.

As it pleased you,

you wrote your own doctrines,

and spotted your own forgiveness to an easy win.

            Sabbaths are not long remembered;

                                    the store (to store) is selling.

Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood,

            you will have no life in you;

since your grip on me is without back teeth,

            for that you can detect no taste,

                        nor savor my sweetness.

                                    My church is open

                                    across fragile braces,

                        as a card house,

                which in a furnace draft is blown.

The preacher there announces analgesic plans,

                and itchy ears are soothed.

Lo, a waning synagogue in a dim Christendom.

Mighty Rome I conquered once,

                I will conquer again.

Surely this people greatly deceive themselves, shouting,

                “We shall have peace”,

whereas the sword already reaches unto the bone.

                                Feeling

a dry wind out of the high places

toward the daughter of my people – not to fan,

nor to cleanse – even a full wind shall come at my bidding:

now I myself must pronounce sentence against them.

                “The violence in most you have abhorred.

In the past the anger in some you have reprimanded.

Why now does the prophet rage?”

                The prophets which went before me declared,

                                                “Thus says the Lord”,

and the scribes made note thereof, and recorded these things.

They had no real authority, excluding what the Spirit

                                                gave them utterance.

But whereas Jesus spoke even as the Father spoke,

                I am commanded of a distance.

I have ceased to be a flat projection;

but accordingly I have become God’s spoken relief.

                I who am less the Son must amplify the role I play.

His muffled groan must seem like fire from my mouth;

his modest inconvenience a holocaust.

                “By what means am I assured of being saved?”

It should have sufficed you meeting me.

                “What kind of impious talk is this?

Who is this braggart, and by whose authority does he speak?”

                Why have you come asking

unless you believe I am able to answer?

But if not, what does my response matter?

Many’s the time you could take home leftovers

                                from the rich man’s banquet;

although the time is coming when not even an ant could survive

                                                                off table scraps.

What I am telling you is, buy your own seeds and saplings;

start your own garden, grow your own fruit.

                                A favor toward God brings favor.

                The temple overflows with offerings:

                                it is mercy I desire, not sacrifice.

If you love me, keep my commandments.