"A Nice Place to Visit"

There is a Twilight Zone episode from 1960 entitled "A Nice Place to Visit" where a thief dies during a robbery and ends up in this other world where all his whims are met. He can't understand why he has ended up in this paradise, but eventually gets bored and says,

"I don't belong in Heaven, see? I want to go to the other place."

His guide replies, "This is the other place!!"

The thought came to me, as I read the latest news of the intransigence of Republican leaders in Congress as our economy careens towards an economic apocalypse and my daughter sang along to Imagine Dragons latest song, "Radioactive"

This is it, the apocalypse

Some of my friends expected some cataclysm as part of the Mayan Apocalypse in the end of 2012. Others expected a rapture.

In Christian eschatology, there is talk of a time of tribulation and a belief that the rapture occurs either before, after, or in the middle of the tribulation.

Another popular discussion about the end times, more common among the environmentally active is the story of the boiling frog.

Has the apocalypse happened? Are we in the middle of the great tribulation of boiling frogs, where the rate of climate change has reached escape velocity, spawning more and more storms, famines, riots and political change? Has God hardened the hearts of political leaders such that they cannot see the harm they are doing?

With all of this, how should we live? Perhaps no differently than we should otherwise. To borrow from the WESTMINSTER SHORTER CATECHISM,

Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.

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