Methodist Bishop

Romans 13.8-14 Matthew 18.15-20 ‘The hour of crisis’, is a phrase that can have several meanings. Perhaps uppermost in Paul’s mind was the idea that it can mean the end of human history and God’s final intervention to judge the world. A slew of recent New Age books has been predicting exactly this, for December the 21st 2012. This is the date when a 5,000 year cycle will come to an end in the calendars of the ancient Mayan civilization of Central America. The Mayans probably saw this originally as a an opportunity to have a huge celebration before the calendar was reset to the Year Zero again, but pundits have variously predicted either a global catastrophe or - at the other end of the spectrum - a new equilibrium between the earth and its inhabitants, and perhaps even between the masculine and feminine impulses at work in our society. St Paul didn’t know anything about the Mayans, but he had a similar mindset. He thought the end time for human beings was absolutely immi...