Our Future Belongs to the Lord

This 1978 Cantopop song, which I recently learned, has sentiments of James and Ecclesiastes, but in a happy light:

無論有幾多變遷，何必諸多掛牽？
過了今天，再有一天，仲有幾個十年。
願望係做個預算，夢幻係自我去編，
無謂去搵個道理，把你欺騙。

命裡係注定從前，夢境係一片胡言，
唯有我永遠面對目前。
明日話今天，昨天亦提到
想到舊年 更多挑戰。

迎面有幾多變遷，誰知道邊一個先？
這裡高山，那裡滄海，在那天變良田？
實在係話變就變，預伏在樂趣前面，
前面有千變萬化，不會睇見。

(Approximate English translation on Lyrics Translate.)

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This Amazing Lifehack Will Scare All the Leftoid Students

A big, beautiful Anglican gulag will frighten leftoid students more than the darkest Soviet gulag: mandatory attendance at daily Morning and Evening Prayer; Litany on Sundays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; the Commination on Ash Wednesday; orthodox Christian sermons and no phones; pictures of saints in the hallways; Tallis and no pop music; farmwork.

Modern Problems, Traditional Knowledge: Parking Structures

Anyone want to tell me why people don’t build parking structures like this?

I recognize that the ramps between storeys may be a challenging problem architecturally – but that’s just part of the challenge of architecture. I want people to think carefully about solutions to modern problems, solutions that sustainably draw from a genuine knowledge of tradition, without imitating slavishly. It’s a rebuke against the inhuman transhumanist and a call to be human again.

We don’t have to have ugly parking structures: even a parking structure can be made dignified and human. Part of me doesn’t want neoliberal technocrats to use traditional architecture to deceive people, in much the same repulsive way as they try to brand their companies as ‘family’, but I do think orthodox Christians should use traditional architecture to offer a true alternative to the stultifying world offered by the neoliberals – not as a subculture, but as an apocalyptic sign of a coming kingdom, a witness against the wicked.

‘National Conservatism’ II: The National Conservatism That Isn’t

I recently caught wind of some ‘national conservative’ conference, about which Brad Littlejohn seems rather excited:

I am distinctly less impressed. Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Peter Thiel, perhaps US chauvinists – particularly against nations DC wishes to subdue with sanctions, coups, and compradors – but none of them actual nationalists. And of the other speakers, what does Ayaan Hirsi Ali know of nationalism, a 2000s liberal who left her country and religion – indeed, legitimate religion altogether – for a distinctly antinational vision of the United States? (For comparison, see Degtyarov on Geert Wilders in the Netherlands.) What does Dave Rubin, an irreligious Koch-funded sodomite and classical liberal, know of conservatism?

Far from strengthening the foundations for the political place of traditional Christianity as such in America, such a speaker lineup seems designed to sap away at those foundations. Or if its speakers attack even traditional madhhabi Islam, rather than Salafi sectarian violence in particular, then perhaps they will wish also to attack the problematic conduct of Pharisees in Brooklyn and elsewhere. But no: these speakers serve that irreligious thing called The West™, so they could not possibly support the political supremacy in America of the historic Christian faith.

How is this national conservatism? They might as well bring on Ben Shapiro, Charlie Kirk, and the whole Turning Point USA crowd to OWN the liberals with FACTS and LOGIC. They’re free to have such a conference; just don’t call it national conservatism.

Mosaic v. the Place des Vosges

Who wore it better?

Mosaic District, Merrifield, an ‘up-and-coming’ neighbourhood in northern Virginia:

The Place des Vosges, Paris, France:

In terms of a memorable and pleasant look, there is no comparison, I think. Both places are mixed-use developments with commerce on the ground floors and homes on the upper floors, but that is about where the similarity ends. Mosaic is generic drivel of the 2010s, a forgettable piece belonging nowhere; the Place des Vosges is decidedly French, 17th-century but timeless, a place whose very appearance invites you to visit again and again.

And lest it be thought that the Place des Vosges has no parking or anything silly like that, behold, street parking:

And on the lower floors what you see is a covered walkway, separated from the street by an arcade (row of arches), and walking a circuit along this covered walkway you pass by the entrances to cafés, wine bistros, restaurants; art galleries, museums, and a theatre; boutiques for perfumes, clothes, hand-crafted soap, and more.

The thing is, the amount of money put into Mosaic could have built in northern Virginia something as beautiful and worth visiting as the Place des Vosges. Mosaic’s residential buildings go up 6 storeys, comparable to the Haussmann residential buildings seen all over Paris, which usually have 5–7 storeys. For about the same money as it takes to build the mind-numbing houses of Mosaic, suitable for eunuchs and hussies, one can build something dignified and memorable for everyone to enjoy, not to mention more environmentally sustainable. Why was this not done? The only real answer is the depraved spiritual condition of the society in which Mosaic was built.

Why Secondary Burial? Tradition, to Stand Against Globalism

A master of disposal of skeletal remains demonstrates the meticulous sequence for placing the remains in the ‘golden pagoda’ (urn). Photo by 陳亮華, for Apple Daily.

Some people may ask, Why? I ask, Why not? I don’t even care why we deep-southern Chinese originally began to bury the dead and collect their bones seven years later for secondary burial 執骨: if it’s lawful and not burdensome, it should be done, because it’s been done for more than 2000 years, before the region was even Chinese. If we Christians need to, we can invent new Christian reasons for maintaining or reviving the practice. My instinct is just that we have to do this kind of thing to stand against globalist forces bent on destroying our culture.

Against the 1979 Edit to the Prayer of Humble Access

Recently, a friend asked me my opinion on The Episcopal Church’s 1979 Rite 1 edit to the Prayer of Humble Access in the Book of Common Prayer.

The edit

The original says, in the Prayer Books of 1552, 1559, and 1662 (and in America, 1789, 1892, and 1928),

We do not presume to come to this thy Table, O merciful Lord, trusting in our own righteousness, but in thy manifold and great mercies. We are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under thy Table. But thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy: Grant us therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood, and that we may evermore dwell in him, and he in us. Amen.

The 1979 edit omits the purpose clause that says, ‘that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood’.

The friend’s opinion

To my friend, someone who loved the original version, the 1979 edit made quite a bit of sense. The original Prayer of Humble Access, he thought, could easily be ‘misunderstood’ to mean that the body and blood of Christ had different effects from each other: thus, he said, the prayer would give the impression that the bread/body redeemed our bodies and the wine/blood cleansed our souls, when in reality both elements did both things.

My own judgement

On the omission of the clause ‘that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood’, my judgement was completely different.

First, we Anglicans haven’t the notion that one or the other is sufficient. Jesus said eat and drink, not eat or drink. It seems to be that the authors, in the wording of the Prayer of Humble Access, intentionally distinguished the effect of the body and effect of the blood. The two elements’ effects they did not distinguish strictly, but rhetorically. The authors did not deny absolutely that the bread and the wine could be interchangeable (or, in the language of Rome, concomitant), but they did more than merely refer to God’s command to take both bread and wine: going further, they distinguished the effects of bread and wine rhetorically, to connect body with body and blood with blood, the body of Christ with the body of man, and the blood of Christ with the soul of man. The body of Christ is a human body, and the blood is the symbol of the soul (‘but flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat’, Genesis 9.4), and thus the joining of body with body and blood with blood would be the believer’s union with Christ in both body and soul. Thus, distinguishing in words between the effects of the bread and those of the wine encourages people to receive communion in both kinds (i.e., both bread and wine); and not only so, but it implies a theological basis for doing so, a basis more intelligible to us, and apter to help us know God, than simply ‘Jesus said so’.

Second, the effect of the clause’s 1979 omission has been to weaken the worshipper’s sense of original and actual sin’s effects on both body and soul, and that weakening (not all caused by the change in the Prayer of Humble Access, of course) has been devastating in the last 50 years. We need all the help we can get in strengthening the Church’s confession that sin pollutes both our bodies and our souls, and that Christ cleanses both. In terms of our standing before God, he does so through our faith in his promises (without needing to count any good deeds on our part), so that the full promise of the Last Day is ours in potentiality; in terms of our character and knowledge of God, so that we bear God’s image in full, he does so by increasingly filling us with us his own perfect character as we struggle to live as Christians and fight against sin. To omit a clause on how Christ makes our sinful bodies clean by his body, and washes our souls through his most precious blood, is to aid the neglect of this saving doctrine.

Third, the Church very much needs an emphasis on the sacramental salvation of the body, as against visions of salvation that concern only the naked soul and are curtailed, cut off, to leave only a justification that happens in a moment. Rather than being content with such a mutilated salvation, we need to bear the crucifixion of Christ in our bodies, as St Paul did (Galatians 6.17; Philippians 1.20; 3.17–21; Colossians 1.24), identifying in our very bodies with the body of the Christ who was crucified for our sins and raised on the third day to bring us to peace with God and the full measure of what God intended for man created in his image. This salvation of our body and all its works, this participation in Christ, happens through the sacraments. The two sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion are God’s visible word to us, that we may take his offer of salvation for ourselves and make it our own continually. To cease to mention the cleansing of our human body by the body of Christ, then, would be to refuse a great help to a full understanding of what God in Christ is doing in our bodies by his Holy Spirit.

For these reasons, I think we would gain nothing from allowing that this clause be omitted, and we should give thanks that it remains in many places and in other places (such as those that have switched from the 1979 to the 2019 ACNA Prayer Book) has been restored, that the Lord’s people may better partake of his gifts and thereby know him in body and soul.

Immigration, Citizenship, and the Law of Moses’s Discrimination Among Nations

Deuteronomy 23 discriminates among several nations and their relation to the congregation of Israel and its covenant:

He that is wounded in the stones, or hath his privy member cut off, shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord. A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord.

An Ammonite or Moabite shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall they not enter into the congregation of the Lord for ever: because they met you not with bread and with water in the way, when ye came forth out of Egypt; and because they hired against thee Balaam the son of Beor of Pethor of Mesopotamia, to curse thee. Nevertheless the Lord thy God would not hearken unto Balaam; but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee. Thou shalt not seek their peace nor their prosperity all thy days for ever.

Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite; for he is thy brother: thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian; because thou wast a stranger in his land. The children that are begotten of them shall enter into the congregation of the Lord in their third generation.

Draw your conclusions from this example from the word of God, concerning what laws are lawful according to nature.

Ancestral Religion v. Marketplace of Ideas

On the one hand, some people wanting a religion to practise (or else just affiliate with) go with what their ancestors have done; on the other hand, some go with what appeals to them, with no regard for historical connexion. Many Christians today are likely to think the latter is better, but I disagree. It’s natural to start with the deity worshipped by your ancestors and try to understand that thoroughly first. I have less respect for people who judge all religions on an æqual footing, trying to choose as if religious belief is a ‘marketplace of ideas’. After all, the instinct that your ancestors were probably right about something in religion is a pious one. It’s just that, when the word of God himself comes to you, you must kowtow, because he is the God who made and sustains this whole world, not a god of some but the one God.

This is true even of someone from an Islamic or Hindu or Sikh background: rather than treating all religions as æqual and starting from nowhere, he must start from somewhere, and humanly that somewhere is whatever religious tradition his family and his nation already have. When the ray of God’s word pierces into the darkness, then either he will love the light and discard what’s wrong in his religious tradition, or he will hate the light and set himself against the gospel, to his own destruction. But a person purporting to judge religions out of nowhere, even if he does outwardly become a Christian, will have much difficulty in the Christian life because of his impiety toward his parents and his forefathers. Indeed, such a convert may make shipwreck of his faith and show himself to be reprobate and destined for hellfire. But if God has chosen him to be saved, the word of God is enough, and encouraging him to pose in a false neutrality will tend toward impiety rather than genuine faith in Jesus Christ.

Oratorio Idea: Josiah

I’m imagining an oratorio, Josiah, King of the Jews, the titular character being voiced by a countertenor – in my dreams, someone like Jakub Józef Orliński or Iestyn Davies – and the plot centred around the discovery of the long-lost book of Deuteronomy in the temple of the LORD. The oratorio is set in the 18th year of Josiah’s reign, in the waning years of the Assyrian empire, while Josiah energetically leads a national revival, breaking idols throughout the land and restoring the temple of the LORD.

Act 1 opens with Josiah troubled at the prophet and royal kinsman Zephaniah’s words about the day of the LORD in the midst of Judah’s national revival and overlord Assyria’s decline.

In Act 2, while the temple is being repaired upon Josiah’s orders, the young priest and prophet Jeremiah appears at the temple gates; upon those who have ‘healed’ the hurt of the people by putting their confidence in ‘the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD’, he pronounces certain doom. The people and Josiah are perplexed and displeased with Jeremiah’s words, but the oldest councillor remembers his father’s account of how Josiah’s great-grandfather Hezekiah broke the brazen serpent that Moses had made.

In Act 3, the book of the law of the LORD (viz., Deuteronomy) is found in the temple. Josiah tears his clothes and weeps when he hears the word of the LORD, and sends for the prophetess Huldah.

In Act 4, word returns from Huldah, saying that the LORD will surely bring evil upon Jerusalem and its inhabitants thereof, even all the curses that are written in the book which they have read before the king of Judah, because the people have forsaken the LORD; yet, on account of Josiah’s tender heart before the LORD, this evil will not come upon David’s house within Josiah’s reign. Josiah, relieved at the LORD’s kindness but sobered by the calamity that will befall Jerusalem after his time, prays that a future Anointed of the LORD may reverse the fortunes of the house of David according to what is written in the book of the law.

In Act 5, the people observe the Passover exactly 100 years after Josiah’s great-grandfather Hezekiah’s revival of the Passover, and slaughter the Paschal lamb for sacrifice with great rejoicing.

Sing ‘America the Beautiful’ in Church? Don’t Complain About Marian Songs

If your church is going to sing ‘America the Beautiful’ during worship, praising America and expressing a wish for a generic ‘God’ to bless that nation,

then don’t complain when other Christians sing theologically sound songs during worship that praise Mary the Mother of God for the part she had in bringing God’s salvation into the world through her womb:

By all means sing ‘America the Beautiful’ after church, but unlike the excellent British song ‘I Vow to Thee, My Country’ it does not have specifically Christian content that makes it suitable for Christian worship. I would be the last to discourage patriotic sentiment, but ‘America the Beautiful’ does not belong in the Lord’s sanctuary.

On this Lord’s Day and on every day when we worship the Lord, may the purity of the Lord’s sanctuary be kept, to the praise and glory of his holy Name.

Insincere Race-baiting Advertising

This video, which I came across as an advert on YouTube, is so lame but takes itself so seriously:

In solemn tones, it speaks of stopping hatred against Asians in America. Colour me unconvinced.

Mistreatment and violence against Asians has gone on for decades, whether from White Americans or from Black Americans. Culturally, however, feeling bad for Asians is a conveniently recent phænomenon. I don’t trust it one bit.

Announcements from the Pulpit: An Anglican Example

Imagine if the following had been the announcements given from the pulpit this past Sunday before the sermon (notes about their Anglican canonical basis in small type):

Rubric in Holy Communion (BCP, 1662), after the Creed and before the sermon.
Then the Curate shall declare unto the people what Holy-days, or Fasting-days, are in the week following to be observed. And then also (if occasion be) shall notice be given of the Communion; and Briefs, Citations, and Excommunications read. And nothing shall be proclaimed or published in the Church during the time of Divine Service, but by the Minister: nor by him any thing, but what is prescribed in the Rules of this Book, or enjoined by the King, or by the Ordinary of the place.

Canon 64 (1604). Ministers solemnly to bid Holy-days.
Every Parson, Vicar or Curate shall in his several Charge declare to the People every Sunday, at the time appointed in the Communion-Book, whether there be any Holy-days, or Fasting-days the Week following. And if any do hereafter wittingly offend herein, and being once admonished thereof by his Ordinary, shall again omit that Duty, let him be censured according to Law, until he submit himself to the due performance of it.

This Friday, 11 June, is St Barnabas’s Day. Even if ye cannot come to a service at church, I encourage you to observe the day with prayer to God on the day itself and a vigil fast on the day before, according as ye are able, to dispose your minds to thanksgiving for the godly example of St Barnabas the Apostle and Martyr. To this end, to explain the feast more fully and feed your devotions, I will hold a vigil service of instruction after Evening Prayer on Thursday night, the eve of the feast. Nevertheless, this St Barnabas’s Day itself, because this year it falls on a Friday, remains a Friday fast as well, both to remember our Lord’s crucifixion on a Friday and to look forward to his resurrection on the following Sunday. So make your hearts ready, with prayer and fasting, both to remember St Barnabas on Friday and to give glory to God on Sunday for the Lord’s bodily resurrection from the dead.

Canon 62 (1604). Ministers not to Marry any Persons without Banns or License.
No Minister upon Pain of Suspension per triennium ipso facto, shall celebrate Matrimony between any Persons, without a Faculty or License granted by some of the Persons in these our Constitutions expressed, except the Banns of Matrimony have been first published three several Sundays or Holy-days in the time of Divine Service, in the Parish Churches or Chapels where the said Parties dwell, according to the Book of Common Prayer. Neither shall any Minister upon the like pain under any Pretence whatsoever, joyn any Persons so Licensed in Marriage at any unseasonable Times, but only between the Hours of Eight and Twelve in the Forenoon, nor in any private Place, but either in the said Churches or Chapels where one of them dwelleth, and likewise in Time of Divine Service: Nor when Banns are thrice asked (and no License in that respect necessary) before the Parents or Governours of the Parties to be married, being under the Age of Twenty and one Years, shall either personally, or by sufficient Testimony, signifie to him their Consents given to the said Marriage.

This Saturday, 12 June, Bryan and Linda intend to marry here at 11 o’clock. Therefore: I publish the banns of marriage between Bryan Wang of this parish and Linda Lee of this parish. This is the third time of asking. If any of you know cause or just impediment why these two persons should not be joined together in Holy Matrimony, ye are to declare it. If no such cause be declared, then after Evensong on the night before the wedding I shall read from the Second Book of Homilies concerning the state of matrimony, that both those intending to be married and those already married may know God’s will for them.

Rubric in Holy Communion (American BCP, 1928).
When the Minister giveth warning for the Celebration of the Holy Communion, (which he shall always do upon the Sunday, or some Holy-day, immediately preceding,) he shall read this Exhortation following, or so much thereof as, in his discretion, he may think convenient.

Finally, dearly beloved, for the following day, 13 June: On Sunday next I purpose, through God’s assistance, to administer to all such as shall be religiously and devoutly disposed the most comfortable Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ; to be by them received in remembrance of his meritorious Cross and Passion; whereby alone we obtain remission of our sins, and are made partakers of the Kingdom of heaven. Wherefore it is our duty to render most humble and hearty thanks to Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that he hath given his Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, not only to die for us, but also to be our spiritual food and sustenance in that holy Sacrament. Which being so divine and comfortable a thing to them who receive it worthily, and so dangerous to those who will presume to receive it unworthily; my duty is to exhort you, in the mean season to consider the dignity of that holy mystery, and the great peril of the unworthy receiving thereof; and so to search and examine your own consciences, and that not lightly, and after the manner of dissemblers with God; but so that ye may come holy and clean to such a heavenly Feast, in the marriage-garment required by God in holy Scripture, and be received as worthy partakers of that holy Table.

The way and means thereto is: First, to examine your lives and conversations by the rule of God’s commandments; and whereinsoever ye shall perceive yourselves to have offended, either by will, word, or deed, there to bewail your own sinfulness, and to confess yourselves to Almighty God, with full purpose of amendment of life. And if ye shall perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God, but also against your neighbours; then ye shall reconcile yourselves unto them; being ready to make restitution and satisfaction, according to the uttermost of your powers, for all injuries and wrongs done by you to any other; and being likewise ready to forgive others who have offended you, as ye would have forgiveness of your offences at God’s hand: for otherwise the receiving of the holy Communion doth nothing else but increase your condemnation. Therefore, if any of you be a blasphemer of God, an hinderer or slanderer of his Word, an adulterer, or be in malice, or envy, or in any other grievous crime; repent you of your sins, or else come not to that holy Table.

And because it is requisite that no man should come to the holy Communion, but with a full trust in God’s mercy, and with a quiet conscience; therefore, if there be any of you, who by this means cannot quiet his own conscience herein, but requireth further comfort or counsel, let him come to me, or to some other Minister of God’s Word, and open his grief; that he may receive such godly counsel and advice, as may tend to the quieting of his conscience, and the removing of all scruple and doubtfulness.

[Here begins the short prayer before the sermon.]

*

The Canons of 1604 are not universal, of course, and in the Church of England they have been replaced anyway since the 1960s, but they do show which things are traditionally considered to be suitable announcements for the time after the Nicene Creed and before the sermon. In the 1662 Prayer Book, the exhortation about Holy Communion seems to be ordered after the sermon, but the rubric before the sermon calls for notice of communion then as well; America’s 1928 Prayer Book is more flexible about when the exhortation is to be used. The series of announcements sets the sermon itself within a context of the discipline of the Church. Not least within this discipline are the feasts and fasts set by public authority, whether public worship at church be available for those days or not.

Regardless of which part of the Bible is the source of the sermon to follow, such announcements set a devotional tone that I think useful to Christians’ growth in the ascetical (self-disciplinary) system to which the Church has submitted for the encouragement of holiness. The announcements in that place also call for a harmony, even if a subtle harmony, between the preacher’s sermon and the Church’s feasts and fasts. By setting the sermon within a context of (ideally) the whole Christian body’s discipline, these announcements bring the preached word into churchly discipline, and they bring churchly discipline into the preached word. Both preaching and churchly discipline, after all, whether in absolution of sins or excommunication from the Church, are forms in which the word of God comes to us. Because the announcements before the sermon are not just any announcements – an announcement about the parish potluck is excluded – they serve as an integral part of the Church’s system of spiritual discipline, rather than an insertion of logistically necessary announcements into any ‘convenient’ pause in the service. Thus, the announcements deemed suitable at the time commanded in the Prayer Book are intended to be the ones that pull devout worshippers farther into the devotion necessary for the exalted service of Holy Communion, where they appear.

To approach the announcements at that time as a sabbath from the sabbath, so to speak, is the wrong way to go about it. Instead, the right way is to use the permitted pulpit announcements as part of the exercise of devotion, part of the heavenly rest we take by faith in the Lord’s Day. May it be to the people an occasion not to be distracted, but rather to be devoted to the things of God; not to wander, but to be in wonder; not to loosen, but to fear God.

Chinese Canopy at the Lord’s Table

A Chinese Protestant æsthetic has a lot of opportunity for expressive decoration that promotes biblical reflection on the things done in church.

I’m imagining a Chinese ciborium over the Lord’s Table, at which each of the four posts is a tree, and the column’s bracketing is the tree’s branches, and the leaves are (as St John says) for the healing of the nations. On each tree trunk is a carved dragon-seraph in relief, outlined by gold or mother-of-pearl inlay, with the face of a man, a lion, an ox, or an eagle (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John). The canopy’s pinnacle is in the form of a pearl, the pearl of great price that is the gospel. The altar rail has opportunities for motifs as well: lingzhi for immortality, pomegranates for the blood of abundant martyrs and the resurrection.

Now you just need infinite money to also commission gorgeous pieces of the finest Chinese brocade and embroidery for richly symbolic altar frontals.

Providence: Not Linear Progressive History, but Curved Apocalyptic History

Many people see history as linear, as an advance of ‘progress’. (Progress? To what destination?) In God’s providence there is a direction to it all, but the only thing we know for sure about that direction is what God has specifically revealed in holy Scripture; still less is history, as told by the Bible, composed of straight lines.

Sack of the temple, Arch of Titus.

For example, the Olivet Discourse in Matthew 24–25 speaks mainly of the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70, but of that event in AD 70 as a coming of the Lord in glory to crush his enemies. Within a generation (24.34) ‘shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven: and then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory’ (24.30). Thus, he later says to the high priest, sitting with the scribes and the elders, ‘Thou hast said [that I am the Christ, the Son of God]: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven’ (26.64). Christ’s destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is not just a harbinger of his final return in the flesh at the end of the world, but in an important way the very same event. This is not linear history, but in a sense a curved event that intersects with the linear timeline twice, once in AD 70 and once at the end of the world.

Michelangelo, ‘The Last Judgement’.

If this is the way that Christ teaches us to understand history, then it destroys the myth of history as linear progress.