Vatican Official: No
Second Coming?
By James Donahue
The story is sweeping the
Internet – Cardinal Giorgio Salvadore, a representative of the Vatican, has admitted that Jesus may not return after
all…that he may have been drunk when he said it.
All of the reports, however, are quoting the Waterford Whispers News,
an on-line spoof publication operated by Colm Williamson since 2009. The publication is much like The Onion in the
way Williamson puts hoaxes into print.
The very word “whispers” in the title implies malicious gossip that gets passed
through the grapevine until the story is accepted as a truth.
If the truth be known, there probably is no Cardinal Giorgio Salvadore at the Vatican, and no one at
the seat of the Roman Catholic Church has ever made such a statement . . . at least publicly.
Some of the learned scholars
in those hallowed halls may be thinking it, however.
Indeed, if ever there was a time for a “savior” to sweep down out of
the clouds and rescue mankind from our own foolishness, it probably should be about now. We have overpopulated this planet,
stripped it of most of its natural resources, and polluted the air, water and land to a point where the Mother Earth can no
longer support the living things that walk, swim, creep and fly.
Animal species are going extinct.
The carbon and methane gasses spewing into our atmosphere
are creating a greenhouse effect that is warming our seas and the earth, which in turn is upsetting the natural order of things.
The icecaps are melting, storms are growing in intensity, seasonal weather changes are extreme, and we are beginning to be
besieged by strange new species of biting creatures, disease and toxins.
Farming is getting to be more of a gamble than it ever
was in history. Crops are being hit by floods, drought, hail, wind and the genetic modification of seeds by big corporations
striving to control and world food supply.
World leaders are jockeying for war. More and more nations now possess nuclear weapons and
nuclear power plants. We are on the brink of self-annihilation every day. It is just the push of a button away.
The promise Jesus made to
his disciples, quoted in John 14, may be comforting to the Bible believers who lean on those words during these troubled times:
“Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions:
if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will
come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, ye may be also.”
On these words rests the very core of the Christian
religion. Believers accept the story that Jesus was crucified, died, then rose from the dead after three days and later ascended
into the clouds. Before he lifted off, he promised he would be back.
After 2,000 years, a lot of Christians appear to be getting
skeptical about the story. That is why Williamson’s little bomb raised so much of a ruckus in church circles. While
written as a hoax, there are a lot of people fearing that the story might really be true.
