2015/09/17

Henry's Revelation

We are happy to announce another great discovery of The Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers. Our purchasing agent managed to obtain, and yes, to rescue this surprising manuscript from the well known UWS antiquity dealer who traffics his stuff just outside of our building. Soaking wet, almost disintegrating under piles of old books and magazines was this pearl of Manhattanite apocalyptic prophecy:
A revelation, which I, Henry Rutgers, saw on the eve of the new century. Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared to me in the likeness of my recently departed General George in a white uniform and his head touching the clouds, and he took me by the hand up and up very high and showed me the things which will transpire in and around my Manhattan home in due time.
    I saw my farm, but it did not look like my farm. It was made up of streets with high buildings some seemed to be as high as two and even three floors and there were many Chinese storefronts all around. On the streets I saw horseless coaches with noxious tails. Yea, in my vision people traveled underground in rumbling tubes and in the sky in loud-sounding tubes with metal wings. In those days, I was told, firewood will be in short supply and Pennsylvania anthracite will all but run out. People will be forced to dig for sand and bake it into oil to get warm, they will even overthrow the foundation of the earth and crack the shale to get foul-smelling wind out off the ground as a miserable substitute for firewood. They will poison their water and shake the earth where it never shook before. Age-old ice in the far far north will melt. Animals will get upset, many will depart, some of them for good. Even some trees and plants will walk away to the north.
    Be very concerned in those days, but do not give up, all these trials and tribulations must take place. At times it will look like all the world will end in the cataclysmic poisonous abyss of utter corruption, but don’t lose heart. For those who will persevere and preserve their souls from pollution, and their hands clean of foul smelling oil, they will live to see a new world. The Lord will come and will harness wind-horses in offshore farms and tether sun by its beams to almost every roof. And there will be no more chimneys and smoke stacks and tailpipes belching noisome fumes, all of them will disappear, and before too long birds and butterflies will return.


A note from the editor: 
No doubt, this is just another part of “The Manhattan Gospel of Henry Rutgers”, our spoof religious writing. This time it indirectly illustrates the background, composition and original purpose of biblical apocalyptic literature.
     It fills me with sadness that apocalypses, which were originally intended and written as encouragement and sparks of hope in desperate times, became abused by some religious manipulators to imprison people through religious dread and fear.
     This Sunday we will try to liberate the Revelation of John from their hands and to bring to us its original glorious message of social and environmental healing.

No comments:

Post a Comment