Bible Studies

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

by Walter Boswell
07/06/18
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                                     THE BEGINNING OF PROPHECY (Part 4 of 4)

                                                (in excerpted form)

Chapter 13

                                                O Lord,

who has swallowed thine anger?

Who has eaten up all the sour grapes

                                from the commonplace storeroom?

It has turned my stomach,

                                and my face toward the grave.

I have wandered to the left of God –

                ‘O sit down, child!

ere you spoil the square dance

and trip inside the rotating ring.’

                Yes, Abba.

Admire the dancers;

                pray, paint them on your canvas,

careful to show their sprite feet,

their stiff backs, and their sluggish cheeks.

                Next go stand among the watchers

and the audience. Clap your hands,

make rhythm with your stomping;

whistle, hum, pronounce the speech of the serenade’s caller.

                And after this,

take leave of yourself to the outer chambers,

and listen, as you lay, to the music of the band:

to the guitar, and the banjo,

to the mouth organ, and the fiddle,

to the drums, and the tambourines,

and to the myriad of tinkling bells.

                                When you have finished,

and experienced all these things,

return before me so that I may be entranced

                                                by tales of young amazement.

                My food is natural:

it is gathered of the meadow-lion, of the wild cherry,

and of the breaks in the pine cone.

                My waters take origin from a stay barrel,

which bubbles out into rivulet, through cow lanes,

and into ranchers’ ponds.

                My seed is spent upon dark woods:

there the ants hasten to swallow its juice …

                for my children …

                                they are lost to me.

But who am I to say, “How long?

How long will the promises of Christ be lost,

                                                and not for me?”

It is like tombs to live,

                in dry measures of old pine boxes,

                                planted deep and dark and cold.

It is like you, Lord, everlasting at pain alone.

Where goes God in the evening,

                in the time of my undoing,

                                in the moaning of the unwise?

All that once merited heavenly favor,

                now counsels my demise.

                                I called Jesus to the dispensary.

                There is a need for grace.

Wash them, usher them to seats, address them with honor:

                I will take of some of the spirit on you

                                and put it upon them,

so then they may enter into my presence,

for I cannot be at odds with myself.

Chapter 14

Six days the walls of Jericho stood,

                yet on the seventh they fell.

                                Michael believes

there must be food ahead,

no matter a starving self prays for sustenance.

                Humbly, this desert is long,

where also the deepest waterhole is dry.

During walks I must wear stones for shoes;

                at rest make the thorny cactus my pillow:

                                                that in everyday regards –

he envisions me a leper:

a countenance scaled with guilt,

                a soul disfigured with sin.

For the desolation is not just in the world,

                                                it is in me.

Pardon this servant which is fully evil.

                                How shall the Lord love me?

I am a hollow soul and a dry spirit.

Each morning I must exhort myself to prayer.

I must cover my shoulders with a dark and hairy mantle.

I must gather locusts for my noonday meal.

                Have you no mercy upon me?

Have you no mercy upon yourselves:

can you not see, I am all of thee?

                Every time I convict you of sin,

I convict myself, because I have not likewise

                                an inherent righteousness.

Before the sighted and vital tree of Baal,

the blind and hollow trunk of man bends low.

                                Who did I think I was,

                                the great Philistine fighter?

Thus I boasted, Here is your God,

                and I will make war upon him.

What columns I must tear down,

                two more trusted columns will I place therein.

                                                                Forgive me,

forasmuch as all of me was handicapped,

                                                a bald Samson;

mistake upon mistake, mistake upon mistake,

                                until I forgot my own life,

                                and pleaded for my truant downfall.

Take a knife to my bowels, O Lord,

for they remove not the corruption in me.

                                And the first sentry of my heart

called out to the second sentry, and said,

                Whose voice is that …

crying in the wilderness?

But the second sentry did not answer,

because he wist not the stranger’s howl.

Then the first sentry recalled,

                I perceive him well now

whose voice cries from the wilderness –

know you not, it is God’s?

The wrist is pierced, the vein is severed.

                Let it flow! Let the blood flow!

Let the power of the Lord flow forth upon my people!

Be strong and of good courage: for thou must go with this people unto the land which the Lord hath sworn unto the fathers to give them; and thou shalt cause them to inherit it. And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.

Chapter 15

Your heart must weep, my father told me.

                        I love the honeydew,

            but its earliest blossoms fell fruitless.

Fresh potatoes stand guard upon the watchtower;

corn listens underneath golden hair

            straining for the sounds of his arrival.

                        What have you come out to see?

Set none standards, establish no new faith;

a life to be granted for questions still sought.

                        Falling down over love,

            face in the mud,

head in a late swing to chime –

because now Spirit is despised of atonement;

bones dissolve upon meeting, heavens open,

lest he shall go the way of all the earth,

            with no one to mark passage.

            Tell the stars, my servants, and message this,

how many of my promises still shine?

            Let not my Lord be angry:

the oath they swore upon thy thigh was but to spear it through.

None toll, sire, only I: thy grace is slighted.

            Why then should he henceforth remain?

Hear the word at my mouth, son of man,

Breed not in front of these gawkers,

lest another child be fed to Molech.

You shall be their final prophet.

                        He that was bathed in uncertainty,

            shall shower in quintessential truth;

he that has never known reproductive life

shall conceive a son in disintegration.

                        Why kick ye?

Have you not been instructed –

of every generation the first-born are sacrificed?

Why struggle against heaven? The death of the antelope

            is eased by the lion’s more vital embrace.

            All one, I too am God:

in ways primitive and prohibited,

in manners lending and mistrustful.

I’m too Lord to pledge no more speak aloud,

                        or in thy name command –

wanting to vent moreover in loose frustration and slight withholding

enough to fill the unconscious void with a knowing heart; so very well

            voice-vow my new pledge to no more spark the senseless …

                                    lest they become heaven-sensitive, where

                                                I too am God, alone.

                        We ate;

and because we ate, we slept.

The morning broke fast for an house of plenty.

                                    Still little made

and rare my ordinances you observe.

Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness,

                                    and are dead;

            for this the journey is taken.

                        Arise, Elijah, and eat!

My flesh is upon the coals.

            Shame is within me for this nation which is both affluent and afflicted. Verily it is a richer nation of people who everyday struggle to feed themselves, who labor long into the evening, to awaken from slumber the next morning refreshed and resolute; who know not great amusement parks, nor fantasy lands, nor virtual realities; still, who on some special holiday, a wedding, an anniversary, a feast of celebration take respite, take delight, take roll call for the countdown of the weeks until another festival … or until the second coming.

            A time to be born, a time to die;

                        gone from your hearts, in your busyness and in your diversions,

                                    a time to listen contritely.

You have heard great men say, “I have a dream”,

            but the prophet says, ‘All who dream are liars,

                        and all who seek higher visions are fools.’

The only vision that matters is in sight of the Lord.

As his heart summons forth to himself,

            even is his love for him.

                        My prayer is to visit stream, and travel gully-way:

mouth full of mosquitoes, chasing the groundhog from his hole.

            Hear his song!

            In a morning I come to the fields, and view Cain,

                                    I will punish him.

            In an afternoon I come to Babel, and hear a worker’s noise,

                                    I will confuse them.

            In an evening I come into the city, and determine Sodom,

                                    I will destroy the place.

Safety lies only in the spot where he perceives not,

as upon your own face you cannot gaze.

                        And it shall come to pass,

the creeper shall be separated from the stalk.

Behold, I will dislodge the honeysuckle vine from around the stem.

                        He is the true Vine,

and our Father is the winegrower. Then I am

become the shears, that from whence I leave, my message culled,

only selected branches remain.

Chapter 16

Mercy blink the eyes of heaven –

whilst I roll back the curtains of the messianic age.

                I cannot live … but chaste … and diseased –

a craven soul,

biding both well and ill; still … stringing self along

                                in artificial humor:

the Spirit truly profaned in me,

                ashamed and despised,

practiced and tightly wrought in me;

                marked and judged,

stoned and wholly martyred in me.

Are the walls still red, O Lord?

Do the churches and towns in the way

                lie ruined and in need of further restoration?

Is your watchdog

                still tied to the chain-post,

                barking out your commands –

fulfilling his rites of stately obedience?

                                An imperative of fate,

that, maybe, because I live, another will survive.

                Then, like a hurt child,

I am drawn back to the parent who abuses me,

                instinctively recognizing this one source of life.

                                Time is a savior of sorts:

from sandbox to sandlot to sandcastle;

the seedling which once atrophied in its mother’s shade

now sinks its roots deep inside her sepulcher.

The moon has ceased to shed its light;

                one must strike the lamp off at bedside.

My Lord gives his servant words what he cannot understand:

                                ‘I am no more writ.’

I have visions afire!

                So water them.

I have a testimony to give!

                So lie with them.

I have prophecies yet addressed!

                So seal the book until the end-moments.

What must be exposed to exist must be sheltered to survive.

Gird thyself, you naked ape.

Stand you up again once more as a man.

                                                Stretch out your blind chains,

and call down destruction upon all the nations of the earth.

                With all due might bid havoc come;

call down destruction upon the entire world,

                                and upon self …

that you have been convicted in your evil also.

Dr. Walter Boswell