Still Waiting For Jesus

Well dad gum it!

Another Easter has come and gone and He still has not come down out of the clouds. No doubt some 1977 years after his sojourn on earth, it has occurred to Him that He made some pretty brassy claims and fulfilling them is going to take a little longer than He thought. Otherwise He would have landed by now.


For example one of His claims was that when He returned, the stars would all fall out of the sky. “And the stars of heaven shall fall, and the powers that are in heaven shall be shaken." (Mark 13:25) Making that happen would require some exquisite timing! And preparation! His Father would have been required to set all this in motion billions of years before the earth was even created. Why? Because when we observe a star, we are seeing the state it was in millions, even billions of years ago. It could have already fizzled out as far as we know. I ventured out just before daylight on Easter morning to retrieve the Sunday paper, glanced skyward and was relieved to observe that as far as I could tell, they were all hanging there about where they should be.

So far so good.

All the same, I think I know why we haven't heard from God for something over 4000 years when bushes were burning and donkeys were talking...and even before that when snakes were so articulate and verbose.

I think He has been extremely busy checking His star charts and time tables. As the bible truly teaches us, only He knows when the end will arrive. (Along with the falling stars) So for example, just for arguments sake, let’s suppose he knows His Son will make his grand entry a week from next Thursday. He will need to consult His star chart to see how far in advance the star Arcturus must start falling in order for it to coincide with His Coming. Since Arcturus is 36 light years away, He would have had to set it in motion just after our tax returns were due in April, 1974.

How about the pole star, otherwise know as the North Star? Its light takes around 430 years to arrive. He would need to knock the props out from under that one in the year 1680, which purely by coincidence is the year that the brightest comet ever seen from earth was first spotted by telescope. Newton’s comet, as it came to be known was the brightest comet of the 17th century--visible even in daytime--and noted for its spectacularly long tail.

If readers will forgive the pun, we ain't seen nothin' yet. The farthest known star in the universe is in the galaxy Abell, which lies some 13.2 billion light years from earth. Think of it! That thing was hangin' out there over 13 billion years before God even created our little paradise some 6500 years ago. But let's find one a little closer, say some 4000 light years distant. We could use the star Rho Cassiopeia . It's around that distance...give or take a few billion miles. Standing on Rho Cassiopeia looking back toward earth (not recommended) we would see the earth as it was 4000 years ago. We could actually observe all those little Baptists riding around on their pet triceratops just exactly as the 27 million dollar Creationist Museum near Louisville, KY depicts the scene.

In 1999, Scientists using the Hubble Space Telescope estimated there were 125 billion galaxies in the universe. Since these galaxies are themselves light years across they contain stars that differ in their distance from earth by light years.

Forget light years. Even a light day would make a difference as to whether Christians will see all the stars fall the same day that Jesus arrives. And there are literally trillions of these things. God has to set his magic timer so that each one of them will start falling at exactly the right time to coincide with the arrival of his One and Only Begotten Son. The timing of the fireworks must be so exquisitely precise that only an omnipotent, omniscient being could accomplish the feat. If it took God 40 days and 40 nights to drown all of us, imagine how long it will take for Him to set all those trillions of timers. It’s entirely possible that when Jesus made the claim that on His arrival the stars would fall, he put Big Daddy in the Sky under a time constraint which, lucky for the 4 ½ billion plus on the planet that foolishly reject His Son as their Personal Savior, He bought them more time.

O.K., so Jesus missed his arrival target by a couple thousand years. Compared to the billions of years the Universe has been around, that’s the blink of an eye. We can forgive him this slight oversight. Let’s not look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, count this Easter as reprieve number one thousand, nine hundred and seventy seven. (2010 minus 33)

Billboards all across this country proclaim the good news. He is coming.

Like a thief in the night.

Just as soon as His Daddy gets all those timers set.