Читать книгу Much Ado About Everything - Peter Milward - Страница 7

From the beginning to the end, from the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation, from the Creation to the Consummation, we come at length to Non-Being, Nothing, Annihilation.

Already in the Old Testament the prophets are speaking no longer of Creation. That is, like Clementine, “lost and gone forever” with the banishment of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, and the murder of Abel by Cain in the outer wilderness of the world. Already, in the words of the prophet, the day of the Lord is imminent, “a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of darkness and gloom, a day of clouds and thick darkness,” in a word, a day that is more like night than what we mean by day.

Already, even in the account of Creation, when we read the first utterance of the Word, “Let there be light!” even out of the created light there emerges a darkness that was never created by God. Even out of the cosmos of whirling galaxies there emerges a series – if “series” it can be called – of dark holes, swallowing the stars. Even in the beginning there is found defect among the angels, and there is the eschatological war in heaven recorded in the other account of Revelation, when Lucifer and his rebelling angels fight against Michael and the good angels, and the former are hurled headlong down out of heaven into hell.

Subsequently, as sin has prevailed on the earth, from Adam to Noah, from Noah to Abraham, from the successive patriarchs to the people of Israel, from Moses to Samuel and the other prophets, “from life’s dawn it is drawn down”, and a thick darkness descends on the people, as once it descended on the Egyptians. Then, as the memory of Creation passes away, and the people no longer thank God for his gifts, the foreshadowing of Annihilation looms on the horizon.

Yet the day of the Lord, foretold in such gloomy terms by the prophets, comes and goes, and all that is left is the cry of an infant – born in the stable of Bethlehem and laid in a manger, then abruptly snatched up by his mother and taken on a donkey to Egypt, then returning with his parents not to Bethlehem but to Nazareth, so that he may be named “Jesus of Nazareth”. So the prophets have been disproved. Or have they?

Still in the New Testament we have the eschatological sermon of Jesus himself on the end of Jerusalem, and the end of the world. And what Jesus says is echoed by the disciples who renew in their respective epistles the eschatological expectation of what will happen in the last days. What was the point, they must have wondered, in setting down their memories in writing, if the end was imminent? But then a time came when they could wait no longer, and first Matthew, then Mark, then Luke, and lastly John, penned their memoirs, which have come down to us after almost two millennia.

And now, in the twenty-first century, what remains for us? When will the promised end befall us? Will it befall us in our lifetime? Every day we open the newspapers, and every day we read of earthquakes and typhoons, floods and tidal waves, protests and demonstrations, as the world’s politicians strive to keep their respective economies afloat. Every day we read of “wars and rumors of wars”, the very things of which Jesus warned us as signs of the approaching end.

So when will the end come? Will it be caused by natural calamities or by man-made disasters or both together? Certainly, we human beings seem to be doing our best, all unwittingly, to hasten the approach of that end. Now not only the politicians, or the military, or the scientists, who are more responsible, but also the man in the street, who knows nothing of what is going on around him, feels ill at ease. All are hastening “the day of the Lord”.

And then, as Peter says in his second epistle, “the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night, in which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth and the elements that are therein shall be burnt up”.

And what Peter says is echoed by Shakespeare in his last complete play, The Tempest, in the words of Prospero to the young couple, Ferdinand and Miranda. Then, he declares, in divinely inspired words, “The cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn temples, the great globe itself, yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve and… leave not a wrack behind.” As for ourselves, he adds, “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and this our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

Moreover, to the words of Prospero may be added the other words of Macbeth as he, too, approaches his end. He, too, speaks of human life no less pessimistically, as “a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

Is that all, we wonder? Hasn’t the great Shakespeare, with all his reliance on the Bible, anything more to tell us about the end, if only by way of interpreting the words he has read? Well, what does he know, for all his genius? What does anyone know? What does the Son of Man himself know? For what does Jesus say? “Of that day and hour no man knows, no, not the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but only the Father.”

Certainly, the signs of the times have been taking place, in a long-drawn-out succession of calamities, disasters, with woe following upon woe, and they are still taking place, as if to warn us in the words of John the Baptist and of Jesus himself, “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.”