I’m not fully heathen.  Technically I’m not even what they call “un-churched,” in that on the record I am a member of a specific congregation of a particular denomination.  But by no means could you describe me as “observant” without a pretty strong risk of what Churchill tagged as “terminological inexactitude.”

So imagine my thoughts as I was sitting at this intersection today.  Across the street was a banner inviting the passersby to an Easter observance at one of the larger and more evangelically inclined churches in these parts.  Full-color sign, nice graphics, and so forth.  The sign’s principal exhortation was to “Experience Jesus’s Last Days on Earth.” 

Now, I’m no biblical scholar, but wouldn’t the hitherto-last days of Jesus on earth fall in the period immediately preceding Ascension?  I mean, Jesus arose on Easter Sunday.  Because of when Easter occurs relative to Passover, and because Passover’s observance is pegged to specific phases of the lunar cycle, we can state with absolute certainty when the “original” Easter actually occurred, assuming it occurred in any particular year (I’ve read that the monk feller who originally calculated when A.D. 1 was may have mis-calculated).  But after the Resurrection He hung around for another few weeks

Moreover, if you accept the proposition of the Second Coming, then Jesus still has not had His “last days on earth.”  And this is where, however grateful I am that this church wishes me to experience something so momentous as our Savior’s last days, I really think I’d just as leave miss out on the End Times aspect of the Second Coming.  By all means wake me up for the Last Trumpet, ’cause I’d sure like to put on my incorruptible (or as they sing it in Messiah, “incorrup-TI-ble” (the linked video has been hijacked with some country music singer, but the audio is Christopher Hogwood’s direction of the 1754 Foundling Hospital version; David Thomas absolutely rocking “Behold I tell you a mystery” and “The trumpet shall sound” starts at 7:35).  But all the everything-coming-apart business that is supposed to herald End Times?  Not so much.

Not that I’ve never goofed in print, but I’d like to think that before I splashed a sign up at one of the busiest intersections in this part of the entire state I’d think a bit more carefully about my word-choice.