“14 Afterward he appeared to the eleven themselves as they were reclining at table, and he rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they had not believed those who saw him after he had risen. 15 And he said to them, “Go into all the world and proclaim the gospel to the whole creation. 16 Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. 17 And these signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; 18 they will pick up serpents with their hands; and if they drink any deadly poison, it will not hurt them; they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”” (Mk 16:14–18 ESV)

First appearances: any credentialing immediately goes Rogue. Who made you king or queen over me? The time necessary to relax into new digs, is the inverse of the principle of capturing the line of thought, the first impressions, the immediate Observations.

We should be enamored of the heaving lava flows and shapeshifting of a world under Birth Pains, under Earthquakes and Catastrophes or Miracles. Instead we cling. Instead we stick with the familiar. Instead we Forego the Invite most divine: join up, and be Renewed. Join up, and Prove the Postulate called Liberty, Progress, Prospectus Divine.

To be readied and prepped for such shapeshifting, is in part also the Purview of the unfortunate ones in the community. The heaving lava flows are Reforming into a New World Order, and our Best Angels on the subject do counsel us to cling to Jesus for the Ride. We do not know what will be the political spiel of the New World Order, what its defining characteristics or human rights record, who will stand Supreme over it all; but we have this Faith within, that All Life is worth living a hundred times over just for One Hour with the Chosen One, with Jesus.

It may be, like in the fallout of the Reformation on the Continent, a Hundred Years war. It may be a war that is plucky and persistent, peaceloving to some measure but Principled to another: a war for the ages, for Humankind to reform and shapeshift into Some New Divinity. Human dignity meets Divinity, the spark in the Human, the halo on the Mind and the thumping drumbeat of the Heart.

We of all people are most to be envied, because we have the day-to-day License to do at a time of our choosing, the kneeling before the Lord. We have this License to Submit, not just to pie-in-the-sky notions of “hearing the voice of God” but to marrying this to Necessity, to Honoring our Rulers as God-ordained.

Still, we as soldiers of the Crown-met-Cross do Believe that Christ-events occur of Necessity, God seeding the Experience with a little more Verite and Genuine Presence of more than a king, of a God, a Man-God, a Woman-God, and Childlike God, a Wise God. Because in fact we are closer to Annihilation than we realize, mutually assured and all that. So we fix our gaze on the simpler Promises, in hopes our Tigers or Aggressive inward tendencies will channel unto Pugnacious Love, to Heart-Pounding Joy, to Invasive Peace. We Invade… the world gesticulates. We Promise… the world doubts. We Plead… the world scoffs, laughing like hyenas because their own deeds are Evil.

We may laugh ourselves, but our deep chuckle and rumbling good cheer is Founded in the Coming Together of the Impossible, and the Enemy, so dastardly good at deducing where lies Power however Not good at bearing such Power themselves (lacking the education or school of good hard knockes), the Enemy would Love to obsess and make this Union the battle for Today. Before anything is accomplished. Before the horses our out of the starting gate. While so many other Authorities are accepted as a done deed, forgotten the First Impressions and Initial Prophecies of a Musk or a Zuckerberg, of a Bezos or an Ellison, of a Gates or a Jobs, of you-name-it coming to real and provable Power.

More, we are of the mind that our own Repentance is plentifully sufficient: that first as a theological principle (not self-serving or self-affirming), those who are saved come probably equally from the churched as from the unchurched. So to complain—you capitalists with all the money—that things were “gotten away with”, a plush and luxuriant childhood you protest… we were Despondent, Seeking, Alone, minus the Accoutrements of Sunday Worship. We may on the other hand have been Free and Liberated from the church’s shackles… but that was our life choice, and yours was different, so let it be! Accept your own choices. And Plead the Blood of a Savior who hears the complaints and cries of a Church Body still petulant at times and worried and discontent. Learn from the outsider, from the New Believer, immediately to Adopt his or her Mindset! Let that be prophecy number one: lived in the moment, deduced innately before Familiarity settles in. The earth is shaking, are you firmly grasped in Christ’s embrace?