Pray that the Second Coming will be soon, but do not rest with that.
– A Course in Miracles
As a Southern Baptist child, I was told that the Second Coming of Christ would be a bloody affair. First, all the faithful would be raptured to heaven – snatched up from whatever they were doing in that fateful moment and bodily sucked up into the air toward heaven. There were films about it in my Sunday school classes that featured bewildered bystanders seeing people vanish before their eyes, leaving only a pile of clothing behind. (We’re all nekkid in heaven, apparently, or at least while we’re being fitted for our robes and harps!)
I recall one scene in these awful movies where a reporter is doing a live shot on all the sudden vanishing going on when the camera dropped to the ground. The cameraman had been raptured, leaving behind his poor, sputtering reporter friend. I laughed at this many years later after spending some time working in television. There were no camera operators I knew who would qualify for the rapture!
After all the vanishing was over, the vanquishing would begin. I was taught that Jesus would return for the “tribulation,” which would feature the macho, war-mongering Jesus on a valiant steed, leading the battle to slay the infidels. My strain of evangelicals never did take too kindly to the squishy, gentle shepherd image of Jesus. Ours was more like Rambo.
I quit believing in this version of the “Second Coming” a long time ago – many years before I discovered A Course in Miracles. My ideas about it, though, seemed to be similar to the Course even back then. A decade or so ago, a hairdresser I went to at the time asked me what I thought about the rapture and the Second Coming. I replied simply, “I believe Jesus comes back every single day, and every single day we torture and crucify him all over again.”
What I received in reply was a really bad haircut.
The Course is clear, though, that the Second Coming has nothing to do with vanishing faithful and vanquished sinners. It has everything to do with realizing who we all truly are – thoughts in the Mind of God that have never left their Divine Home. We are to pray that the Second Coming will come soon because it will be a joyful time – an event where we all remember that we are created in Love to be the embodiment of Love in this ego-ruled world. The Second Coming simply means that we realize our unity and the world that ends is this ego world that runs on judgment, hatred, fear and division.
This week, we have an opportunity to move toward that kind of Second Coming – a rebirth into the Love that we already have within each of us. We can see it coming on the horizon. Thousands upon thousands have already voted – more than did in 2016 in some areas. We are turning out to make our voices heard – to become the eyes, ears, hands and feet of Love that will create a forgiven world where separation no longer holds any allure for us.
The ego, of course, is fighting back with all its might. Voter suppression in all its forms is raging at the moment with intimidation tactics, legal challenges to ballots and a current White House resident who has vowed to declare an early victory and send in the lawyers to cause mass confusion.
It kind of feels like the beginning of that first Second Coming I was taught about as we teeter on the edge of violence and unrest. I admit I am anxious about the whole thing, but today’s reading reminds me that I need to be praying and working for the true Second Coming to descend upon us – the event that restores the world to its One Identity as innocent, forgiven and beloved Children of God.
Lesson 301 reminds us that “God … shall wipe away all tears.” We weep in this moment because “we did not understand,” this lesson says. We believed the lie that the Second Coming was about some person who comes with a sword and vengeance to wipe out the infidels and evil-doers. No such person exists. The ego wants us to believe that some of us deserve destruction while others deserve redemption. This is the ego’s lie that we have believed.
Indeed, this lesson tells us that “God’s world is happy. Those who look on it can only add their joy to it, and bless it as a cause of further joy in them.”
Again, the ego wants to inject what “happy” means, but this word, in the context of Love means a never-ending joy that is not contingent on whatever is happening around us.
The Second Coming is not about vanishing people – it is about vanishing fear. It is about the disappearance of our tribalism, division and separation. In the Second Coming we see clearly that our judgment of ourselves and others has created this illusion of separateness, but in Reality, we are one being having multiple and disparate experiences.
That is why this lesson invites us to ask God: “Let me see Your world instead of mine. And all the tears I shed will be forgotten.”
Today, of all days, let us not give in to those tears of fear, judgment or anxiety. Instead, may we embrace the Second Coming that reconciles us all to Love and returns us to our true sanity, which we have never lost.
Photo by Drew Hays on Unsplash