I went out the other night at 3am to see the Blood Moon. Stood on the stoop for 15 minutes in my undies. It didn’t feel like the end. So I went back to bed.

The world did not end. I’m told it will. Prophet Joel says so: “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.”

Faith is not falsified. Fortified, rather.

But still I wonder, and Jesus asks: “What did you go out into the wilderness to see?” 3 times in 3 verses: “What did you go out to see?”

Wild John had asked Jesus: “Are you the one? … or should we expect someone else?”

What was I expecting? Does what I see depend on what I expect to see?

There was a time in my evangelical childhood when I thought I’d never see 30. Everyone was talking about the end of the world. Back then, in the 80’s, the 2000 millennium seemed so far off, I guess I figured that was a good a time as any for the world to end. The Who wasn’t talking about my generation, but I too could hope I die before I get old. Now, me and Ryan Adams, we’re “too old to die young.”

But it didn’t happen. It never has happened. Kinda makes you wonder if it ever will.

Or if it already has. Peter quotes Joel at Pentecost. To paraphrase Dr. Strange: “We’re in the end times now.”

So now there’s another American Constantine, frothing up his apocalyptic religious fanatics for another war. “In Hoc Signo Vinces” And all the faithful crusaders read their response right off the tattooed arm of their War Secretary: “Deus Vult”

What if you threw him a war and Jesus didn’t show up?

All this time I thought we were building the kingdom of God, we were really just bolstering the ranks of maga? American Babylon. The Beast. The Dragon. The Whore. Great Satan?