Unlike a certain world figure whose oral girth far surpasses his reservoirs of compassion or basic humanity, the following, though elicited by ongoing media reference to the place by that name presently undergoing the ravages of raging forest fires in California...
...has been penned to simply portray the obvious allegory that that tragic situation inevitably brings to mind (to one like myself - conversant with the biblical narrative - anyway)...
So what have I to say thereabouts? Simply the following:
'Paradise up in smoke...and on fire' (as I could alternatively, justly have titled this opinion piece)...is a fitting allegory for our sin-affected, sin-infested, sin-diseased planet. No, folks, we (homo sapiens) are not evolving into some ever greater being...quite to the contrary, ever since the Fall and our subsequent, consequent, permanent exclusion from Paradise (i.e. the Garden of Eden) we've been going down, down, down...and with no reasonable hope of ever returning...
...unless and until Jesus Christ Himself steps back into human history...and, as promised in The Revelation, Himself personally ushers our first father (Adam) and mother (Eve) back into that idyll.
And thus and so we ourselves - if 'found (justified, sanctified and ultimately glorified by and) in Him' - may one day share that high privilege with the parents of the human race...
Though the title could well have been created 'ex nihilo' (as many suggest God created the heavens and the earth), i.e. simply from being an apposite way of describing the tragic situation referred to above, I nevertheless acknowledge the *seminal work by the justly-famous John Milton (contemporary of that other much-celebrated (later) Middle Ages' John, i.e. John Bunyan (of Pilgrim's Progress fame))...and recall my favourite varsity tutor once gave a post-thesis/PhD discussion thereabouts...
*Admittedly yet to be read - though I did finally obtain a copy thereof at a local Student Christian Movement annual booksale awhile ago...
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