Bible Studies

THE ENDING TO PROPHECY, An Epilogue to the Second Coming

by Walter Boswell
07/12/18
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                                            THE ENDING TO PROPHECY

                                                     An Epilogue to the Second Coming

They are a sometimes people, according to a sometimes faith,

                                and next to a sometimes heart.

All deadline have passed, all honor thus expired;

in thy stripping room they have shed all their dreams,

                then comforted themselves with secular logic.

                                                Would it be so much to permit –

                and leave a fig leaf to subdue their shame?

Gone … who drank wild fragrance in the desert,

who tasted the meat of locusts and wild honey,

who carried his mantle like a shroud …

                                as they laid him down in it,

                                still coughing, still choking,

still singing his late father’s virtue.

                Maybe it pleased the Lord

to raise up a fool before wise men.

All their sages bear a black lung;

and the truth they mine is just a compilation

                of all the wasted knowledge that drowned

                                and was buried before them.

Their philosophy ails.

Have you understood really, about infinity,

insuring everything in suring nothing?

                Who can follow these strange ideas –

for ultimately, he desires to return to the dust

                                from whence he came?

The only decay is in your vision,

as in a passover, the things you once did fondly … and well …

                                                no longer involve you.

Come now, and let us reason together.

Let us walk the distance from here to here

                to the place which is still inside.

                                                Reason on;

well be it for this inner mourning to say,

canst thou save me much, O Lord,

or is the little that works the most that lives?

                What now is sacred!

When in the times they have leaned a fraction astern,

the pendulum has sliced off their locks of hair;

while in their bow, to the wicked one,

their fingernails have crossed the cordon wire

lining the rim, the perimeters of the pit to hell.

Drafts of air bring winter spells, intolerably mold,

                an assembly splintered inside – extending

all the way to nightfall; still no healthsome rest.

                                Dream now your condemnation:

self a fragile flask, cracked and broken,

spilling forth its precious ointment.

The blood of Jesus, and the love of his Father,

                how may I know such things

                in the parched reign of summer drought?

Assignment has meant special creation –

                renaming one, ‘Water out of a Clear Sky’.

But your law has wrought only our crucifixion;

your grace has just shaped our molds for the baker’s kiln.

Wood is cut with a saw; metal with a diamond;

                Spirit was gifted save even against a Satan.

Lost in a paradox … and I … asleep in sin,

                                with no morning Elijah call.

And in this vision, Behold my nakedness:

                see me as the Lord of the universe sees me.

Let the whole community take up witness against me.

In reproach and scorn, and other such demeanors,

let sentence be drawn, and he be slain in the shedding.

                                What witnesses to the truth –

                                swearing to call down God from heaven?

Mine holy name has become a curse!

                Now I will swear …

scorpions shall abide in your sanctuaries,

coyotes will hunt within your village walls; the Lord

shall find no substitute for his judgement upon you.

                Behold, I come quickly, says the Lord of hosts,

with before me my sword to divide sheep from goat.

                But what if the sword condemn even the staff?

It shall be no more, says the Lord; it shall be no more.

That in these end-times, surely many shall come,

many false prophets shall come claiming to be the Holy One.

What do you purport to imply, or expect me to dispute:

                                No, you are mistaken;

so then by default, you shall say, Look,

he has made … his first great plunder of prophetic broadcast?

You have eyes, yet you do not see;

you have ears, yet you do not hear;

you have minds, yet you do not understand:

the Written Word must always proceed the Living Word.

                But if  have surprised you, he of whom

the Bible declares to be going forth from beginning to end –

if I have caught you unawares,

how much easier will he who comes in an hour

                                                which no man knoweth?

If the truth you so readily ignore,

how will you recognize Christ when he comes,

though he came riding in upon the clouds of heaven?

This now is strange; you chant, too late.

Because of my divine blessings, and for all hither known,

                forthrightly revealed what God intends,

we will embark on the road of assured heavenly guidance,

                                and bring His will to positive fruition.

Will you, will you yet go up to mountain for wood,

and consign brick and mortar to build me a house,

                that I may take pleasure in,

and I, the Lord, your  God, shall dwell glorified?

Or will you rather run, each man

                unto his own temple-house of luxury,

                while the Lord’s holy ones squander in your midst?

You looked for much … and, lo, it came to little;

and when you brought it home, I did blow upon it.

This, too, you received into windmills,

                and absorbed my hot displeasure into solar panels;

until I must shake this faulty earth off its groundless foundation.

If you are going to live to the limit, then you must give to the limit,

                otherwise, there will be famines, there will be droughts;

otherwise there will be population holocausts

                (in the stead of forsaken spiritual sacrifices).

As the prophet told you, still you did not listen,

surely the days are coming when God shall ask strong things of you.

He shall ask for your life, and the lives of your wife,

                                                your sons and daughters also.

Out of sight, out of mind, out of existence, O Lord;

wherefore do I live except to regard the death of innocents?

                If they do these things in a green tree,

                                what shall be done in the dry?

Plead to the mountains, fall on us;

                                and to the hills, cover us.

Soon the rain of a showering Paradise

                you had only thought to glimpse

                will break upon you with full force.

That river, of which you besought,

a drink would be sufficient, or perhaps to bathe therein,

that mighty ocean will arise like a monsoon

                to sweep away your homes and hearths,

                                your symbols and great works,

and descend upon your heads in overwhelming downpours.

Like a swat of flies, and a den of maggots,

the rotting flesh corrupts the guilty spirit.

Once rooted, and never more dislodged;

Once felt, but never more disowned:

                all these parasites to reasoning and faith.

                                Let these pangs …

stir my body at hard issue –

to echo down a strangled cortex,

and cause my backward spine

                to vibrate to and fro:

resound through swollen legs, my crooked feet awry

with the stones and stumbling blocks

the Lord has so thoughtfully strewn before me.

                                What lame sympathy you breed!

Will there not come a day when the Lord

                                shall scrounge out their insides

                                and oven-cake their minds?

Will he not saltify the still and heartless

                and bury the poor in spirit?

Looking for mercy where there is no mercy,

                                for hope where there is no hope:

the likes of a blessing, now skewered with rods,

                roasting every hope red,

daily spouting, minutely spurting and spraying –

this hemorrhaging within the arteries of my soul.

The sky speaks of necessary rain;

it seems just to be … reading this

                will not prevent, or make it so.

Cynics are want to say, “God is dead”;

                they are your spiritual prophets.

Now that the Word has died, maybe it will go to seed,

                then spring in its perennial season –

or maybe it will turn the shallow page

                                                and all be forgotten in me.

                Self stunned back to self:

                                reminding to remain,

stretching the seams of grace to their breaking point.

                                O, for but a little while,

my blood must flow like rivers;

my breath must glide like the wind.

                The course of lightning splits the air;

                                pain fills our ears.

Heaven is struck; it is the earth which screams.

Dr. Walter Boswell