Second Coming

And it came to pass that there was indeed a Second Coming, and it happened that at the turn of the millenium, just as the clock struck twelve, the Son revealed himself to them. And there could be no denying that He was the one, because He immediately set about performing all manner of miracles, healing the sick and raising the dead, and it was clear to everyone that He was good incarnate. It was a wondrous event in the hearts of ordinary men and women to know that their champion had arrived. After two thousand years of waiting, the time was finally upon them, and the Messiah had come again.

And once He had healed enough of the sick and raised the required number of dead, and all who knew of Him reckoned Him as God's Son, He came upon the leaders of the world to take his due. And it was then that they knew the full and complete error of their ways.

First, He came upon the pope, who sat in Rome, surrounded by bishops and cardinals. And the pope was glad and knew that the Son came to meet with Him to thank him for ministering to His flock for all these many years.

"You must leave this place, and it must be sundered brick from brick," the Son announced on his arrival at the Vatican.

"Why must these things be done?" asked the pope, and he mocked the Son. "I am the child of God and the leader of Christianity."

"You may be the child of God and the leader of Christianity, but you can make no claim to be my disciple," answered the Son. "You have built my house with the gold you have taken from the people. You have buried my teachings in dogma and kept them from the people. You and your church are evil. They must be destroyed." So sayeth the Son.

And He cast out the pope from the Holy See, and caused lightening bolts to come from the Heavens to break it apart, and angels came from the sky and took the various parts and scattered them to the four corners of the world. And He told the people to worship together in their homes, and to take the tribute for the church and to spread it among the poor, until there were no more poor. And when this had been done, He smiled and was glad. And so were the people.

But the rest of the world's leaders were shaken to the core by the happenings in Rome. How could this Son of God fellow cause such mayhem to come upon the most powerful cardinal in the world? Surely, if He could cause this to happen, He might also cause some unhappiness for them.

And it was true that He next focussed His attention on the president of the United States. He came calling for tea one afternoon, at the invitation of the first lady, who had thought it was better to meet a supposed threat head-on. The president and the Son sat cordially through some pleasant small talk, until, finally, the first lady cut straight to the chase.

"And just what do you mean by giving the common people so darned much hope," she said. "It's more than they can handle. All this "meek will inherit the earth" sort of rubbish."

"Really, you should be more civil to your guests," the Son replied, between sips of tea.

"I think you should stick to dealings with the church," the first lady said, pressing just a little bit. "That pope thing, although a trifle messy, was completely understandable. We'll forgive you on that one. I mean, the man's stand on abortion was intolerable."

"You are a most rude woman," the Son said, and he sent a lightening bolt right through her head. She fell dead.

"What have you done with my wife?" asked the president.

"I've sent her to hell," answered the Son, "and it's a better fate than she deserves."

"But she was the first lady," insisted the president.

"Let she who is first be last," answered the Son. "She had forgotten that. I reminded her."

"And what of me?" asked the president.

"Are you the first man?" asked the Son.

And the president cowered in fear, and threw off his clothes and ran naked and mad into the streets.

The security men came running, but the Son turned their weapons to bread and told them to go out and feed the hungry. And they knew that He was right, and they did as they were told.

Then, the Son left that seat of government, and he went to find the money brokers, to see firsthand the chains of gold that held them to their task. And He came into the stock exchange, where He found them intent on the rape and pillage of the peoples of the world, and he caused all trading to stop. With one wave of His hand, He stopped the world economy in its tracks.

"How dare you stop the commerce of man!" cried out the chairman of the board. "The market is king. It can make men rich."

"It makes far more men poor," thundered the Lord. "Your market decides who eats and who doesn't. Your market decides who works and who doesn't. Your market decides who lives and who doesn't. It is an evil thing, and it must die."

"You cannot destroy the market," argued the chairman. "It is the natural way of things, that some should eat while others do not."

"What if you had been born in a mud hut, and not a golden palace?" asked the Son.

"But that is luck," argued the chairman. "What has that to do with the market?"

"The market decides where the mud hut is located," answered the Lord. "It is inherently unfair. Those who do not possess the commodities desired by your market starve. How is that fair?"

"We believe in philanthropy," said the chairman. "We give much to make sure the starvation is kept to a minimum. We send aid. We send food."

"You send the crumbs you do not want or need," said the Son. "You share nothing from your own plate. You share nothing unless you have something to gain -- unless there is something in it for you."

"We have tried to be fair," said the chairman.

"You have not tried one iota," answered the Son. "You have not lifted even your smallest finger."

"Give us more time," said the chairman, an air of pleading in his voice. "We will hold a conference and decide on a course of action."

"You have held a thousand-thousand conferences," answered the Son. "You are out of time."

The chairman stood silent. And when the silence became too much for him and he tried to speak, likely to change the subject, the Son told him to be quiet, that there was nothing he could say.

Then, the Son held out his hand and offered the thumbs-down sign to the chairman, who stared upon Him with an uncertain look on his face. And suddenly, the sky was filled with the most evil-sounding, bilious creatures that had ever been seen on the earth, and they fell upon the chairman and his board and tore them limb from limb and feasted on their entrails. And the Son watched this spectacle, and saw that it was good. And he smiled a wide, comfortable smile that caused the sky to brighten and the air to warm.

And He decreed that the age of the market was at an end, where only a small number of God's children share in the bounty of His earth, and that every living thing should receive its fair share of the harvest of the land. And when the people saw what the Son had done, they rejoiced and sang praises unto His name, and they knew that He would protect them from ill.

By the time these things had happened, and the Son had destroyed the most powerful institutions in the known world, great fear had been struck into the hearts of the other world leaders and the pernicious hoarders of gold. They knew that there was no place for them in the Son's scheme of things. They knew their time was coming, even as their citizens and servants began to question the very order of things.

So, they gathered together in great secret, in the bowels of a mighty mountain, thinking they would plot and plan a way to rid the world of the Son -- to save themselves their ultimate downfall. Gathered together were kings and prime ministers and presidents and captains of industry and the leaders of the world's great churches and other institutions. For while the Son had won the hearts of the ordinary people, he had not enamoured himself with the powerful and the want-to-be powerful.

And when they were all gathered and contemplating the demise of the Son, it was suggested by one of the high priests of the temple that there was only one way to defeat Him.

"We must call upon the forces of evil to defeat one so good," said the high priest.

"And how do we call upon these forces of evil?" asked a recently-deposed world leader. "And isn't this dangerous work?"

"Of course it's dangerous," replied the high priest. "But is it as dangerous as having all this pure goodness parading around telling us what to do?"

And this question raised all sorts of discussion about the nature of goodness.

"The people aren't ready for all this goodness," called out one voice from the back.

"They're already getting fat and lazy with all the food they're getting," commented another.

"I thought somebody just made up all that "meek-will-inherit-the-earth" stuff," said another. "This isn't how it's supposed to be. There's a natural order to things and this fellow is upsetting everything."

And, soon, the clamour of voices had become very, very loud, until it joined together in unison to issue one statement: "Send us the forces of evil!" it said.

And with that, the high priest called together the rest of the high priests and they began pouring over dust-laden manuscripts, searching for the way to call the forces of evil. Until, finally, they had arrived at the appropriate incantation; the one that was to be used to call upon the greatest evil that could be found. Then, they gathered their tools together and made ready to perform their conjuring.

Round and round and over and under they conjured. Up and down and in and out they conjured. And the hiss and jangle of steam rose from deep inside the earth where the evil one had been confined for many an eternity. And it was said that it could only return when called upon by man to defeat the forces of pure good.

And, at the end of all this conjuring, a great pillar of fire rose up out of the earth and transformed itself into the body of great lizard, which sat sublimely upon a large rock and looked out over the malcontents.

"Who has called me here?" it asked, its voice echoing and reverberating off the walls deep inside the mighty mountain.

"We have called you, great one, we, the people of the earth," said the high priest, stepping gingerly forward, somewhat afraid of the giant beast.

"Why have you called me?" the beast asked.

"Because a great malady has come upon the earth, and we require your assistance in dealing with it," answered the high priest.

"I thought I was the greatest malady to come upon the earth," answered the lizard, "and I was cast out a thousand eternities ago. I am pure evil and can only be called to defeat pure good."

"But this one who purports to be pure good has destroyed the natural order of things," said the high priest. "The world is in chaos and ruin. You must help us to restore order."

The great lizard laughed a deep, course laugh that caused the high priest to drop to his knees and cower in fear. "Please, no more," he wept. "What is so funny?"

"You are," laughed the lizard. "I find it amusing that man would search for pure goodness for thousands of years, then when it is at hand, he would want only to forsake it -- to cast it out. I have been held in my pit for all these years to determine the true nature of your species – and it has been determined."

"What do you mean?" asked the high priest.

"I am the brother of God -- He is good and I am evil," said the lizard. "We made a pact in the beginning of your time, my brother and I, that you must choose your own way. It would seem that you have chosen. You chose evil, just as I predicted. And now the world is mine. Those were the stakes."

And with that, there was a huge tumult within the mountain, and the evil one rose up to his full glory, shattering the mountain top into a million pieces, and bursting out into the wide world to claim his tribute. He rose up into the sky and surveyed all around.

And he saw nothing that he wanted to see. The world was empty of all living creatures and even the fishes of the sea. No living being existed on all the planet.

"Where are they?" he cried out, his voice causing the very world to shake on its foundation.

"I have taken them," answered the Son, who now made his presence known.

The evil one whirled to face the Son.

"Who have you taken?" the evil one bellowed, and he cast off the skin of the lizard and was revealed in all his awful glory.

"I have taken every good soul on this earth to be with the Father," answered the Son.

"They have chosen my way," said the evil one.

"No," answered the Son. "Those who were already evil have chosen your way, and they have been left behind for your pleasure. They cannot enter the gates of Heaven. They would not forsake their evil ways. I came upon this earth to separate the good from the evil, so that you might have your kingdom and my Father might have his. The plan has worked."

"You can't do this," cried the evil one. "I need good souls to exist -- I must have good souls to tempt and persuade with my evil ways. Without good, there can be no evil."

"And so the evil in the world is finally destroyed," said the Son. "By revealing itself, it has come to ruin. The earth is yours, foul beast."

"You can't leave me here like this," cried out the monster.

"You have your minions," said the Son. "Be content."

And with these final words, a great light came from the sky, and the Son rose up to be with the Father, and to join the good souls who had gone before.

And the world was lost in that moment. But nobody cared. It was the end of time, and it came too suddenly for some, but far too slowly for most. But the most were saved and that was what mattered. And evil came out of evil, just as it always does. And good won out -- just as it always does.

And the Lord was content.

And the evil beast was no more.

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