Many Christians believe Jesus will return to Earth in an event seen as the Second Coming. Strictly speaking, if the resurrection tale was to be believed it ought to be called The Third Coming, as his death on the cross made his return to life pre-Ascension the second coming. (the first being his life from birth (virginal or otherwise) up to his death by crucifixion).
Only the books of Luke and Acts describe the Ascension and promise of another return. In Luke’s account, Jesus departs on the very same day as he is seen resurrected, barely having time to greet and meet the Apostles and few other witnesses who see him. In Acts, he hangs around for 40 Days before departing.
Statue of Christ – The Church Of the Holy Name, Manchester
Luke has Jesus tell the Apostles to wait in Jerusalem to receive the Holy spirit. Acts has two angelic figures appear to those who see Jesus literally ascend (fly) off to Heaven like Superman, and these figures tell them that he will return the same way. There is much promise that the return is imminent, and likely to occur suddenly within the lifetime of the Apostles, and later believers in the return likewise believe that it could occur at any time and that they have to be ready. 2,000 plus years on, the promise of an imminent event is still evangelized. The rule for most Christians is to be a/. baptised, b/. believing in and loving Jesus. c/. have repented for all sins and transgressions up to the final breath breathed. Failure to do this before dying or the second coming commencing damns you to Hell. I only qualify on a/. as I was raised Roman Catholic, but my atheism would mean I’m stuffed as far as b/. and c/. go if this Jesus was to show up.
The question then is what exactly happens as and when Jesus returns anyway. Some seem to believe that he will magic away all the World’s wrongs, poverty, war, famine, inhumanity, corruption in politics, heralding in a golden utopian age, though us unbelievers will be annihilated and excluded from the fun.
For others his arrival will instantly trigger the Apocalypse, killing most of the life on Earth quickly, allowing a rapture for a select few, but subjecting the rest of us to judgement at which we are directed into Heaven or Hell, or for the as yet undecided, an intermediary state of Purgatory.
I am an atheistic secularist. I was secretary of the Manchester Humanist from 1992 to 2000. I rejected my Catholicism when I was about ten. I later got sucked into a Hinduism based cult in the early 80’s but escaped in 1985 and reverted to my Humanistic views.
Me with my Divine Light Mission Guru’s poster and a cults warning leaflet – taken by a reporter.
Other key religions don’t always believe in a Messianic arrival or direct intervention by their god(s). Efforts to shoehorn in other religions is a sweeping generalization doomed to fail.
The idea of depending by blind faith in a saviour simply arriving and sorting out the whole mess is rarely going to end well. A pilot in a stricken plane might well pray to the deity or saints of his choice but not at the expense of pulling the throttle, drawing the plane to a lower altitude and calling ground control for advice and support. The blind hope of a hand coming down from the sky to catch you and gently lower you to the ground is likely to end in painful or fatal disappointment.
I’m not too familiar with the Jewish concept of Tilkkun Olam though it reads like ‘putting your own house in order’ rather than leaving it, or hoping it will be sorted by others. There is a need to try to save yourself and help others in need. If a Messianic hero arrives to complete the task, bonus! If your house is not on fire, get out and call the fire brigade, but by all means try to throw a few buckets of water at the flames if safe to do so before the experts arrive too.
Hinduism (known to me from my time in a Hindu cult), has its cycles of Karma, life, and time itself reincarnates, and there are future chances. The monotheistic faiths have a one shot and that’s your lot stance. That is why the arrival of a saviour figure coming at the 11th hour is more important to their doctrines.
With the Christian second coming, the Messiah was promised to be returning in the life times of the Apostles and other immediate followers, and it has been treated as imminent since. The evangelicals have a rather hysterical cry of repent now, or it will be too late. The question is a/. how do they recognise the Messiah if and when he turns up? b/. When should he come? c/. What happens when he does? What exactly is s/he going to do when turning up anyway?
A/. If he literally descends from the sky like Superman with no way of the coverage being faked, there would be little doubt even for dyed in the wool sceptics. Having him simply starting a religious sect who say, this is He, and he just becomes another religious spokesperson. Unless he throws miracles round like confetti he is likely to have a tough time convincing many that this is really it.
b/. The date of his arrival is obviously a hot potato. Many predicted/prophesised dates have passed with an embarrassing lack of divine activity. The Millennium (2000) was a convenient round number favourite until it wasn’t. Some believe he will come in our hour of greatest need, but the World Wars and even the Holocaust sparked no visible holy or godly intervention. The horrors of the trenches created more atheism than the publication of The Origin Of The Species. The shock reality of Belsen, Cambodia’s Killing Fields, Ethiopia’s famine, the Tsunami of 2004, the current wars in the Ukraine and Gaza, all legitimately lead many to ask why God isn’t helping those affected? It might be asked how such tragedies occur at all under the gaze of a God capable of creating a World free of such conflict and disaster. The question amounts validly to ‘How bad does it have to get before God decides enough is enough, and calls a time out? The Jewish concept of Tilkkun Olam calls on the people to put their own house in order rather than depending on direct intervention from outside forces. If help comes, bonus, but best to act as if you are on your own. If you are in a stricken plane, prayer that God saves you from a crash might bring comfort, but the important thing is that the pilot works the throttle, gains a lower safe altitude and contacts ground control for advice, permission for a landing and runway clearance. Better to call the police than just hope for Batman.
A joke goes that a devout religious chap is caught in a flood when a dam breaks. He is on his roof seeing the waters rapidly rise and has a vision that God will save him. Shortly afterwards, volunteers in a dinghy come and offer him a place in the boat. He declines the invitation as he is promised that God is coming to rescue him. The boat crew save dozens of other grateful people. The devout man similarly rejects aid from a small plane and a helicopter rescue squad. He drowns. Arriving in Heaven he asks God why God didn’t rescue him as promised. God says, “But I sent a boat, a plane and a helicopter. Didn’t you see them?” The moral is grab what help there is, don’t wait for someone or something not yet manifesting. Believe God might come to help if you wish, but still behave as if he isn’t coming.
The danger is that in not intervening to prevent the Holocaust, Jesus only returning when things get really awful, or some other messiah coming for the first time when things get ultra-extreme, suggests nukes have to start flying before the space wizard stages an intervention, but I doubt if that might happen even though the mushroom clouds seem more and more increasingly horribly likely.
Cemetery – Churchstretton
c/. What exactly happens when a/the Messiah arrives anyway?
There seem to be two schools of thought on what the Messiah will do. 1/. He performs huge miracles to herald in a near instant utopian World of plenty free of war, famine, disease, death and Steps albums. 2/. He destroys the World with fire and armour plated locusts, and wipes out all but a chosen few raptured individuals (if that), and subjects the rest of us to Judgement, sending the worthy to Heaven and the rest to Hell, with no hope of parole.
Judgement Day is when Heaven is expected to open, with only a few saints, and prophets having been granted advance entry. The Near death Experience visions of seeing a Heaven where already dead relatives and friends are already floating around happy is a contradiction to the way the New Testament says it will go. The dead just rot in their graves until woken up on Judgement Day.
If Revelation is right, The Second Coming is not something to look forward to if you like life. It amounts to death and a promise of a new beginning which will only be nice for those who believed in and loved God/Jesus. You can come in, but Mum and Aunt Mary have to burn forever, sorry.
God has form on this disgraceful behaviour. He has already wiped out most life on Earth in the Flood, and yet it is unclear just what triggered his genocidal sociopathy then, and why we haven’t yet matched that now. He trashed Sodom & Gomorrah for being evil places, so how much worse do Las Vegas and Blackpool have to get to match that level of depravity?
Blackpool Tower
The most likely explanation is simply that there won’t be a Messianic intervention at all. Nature and human nature don’t work by the same rules and we ought to fix our own World as if God/s are not coming. For atheists like me, that is easier as we already fully expect no supernatural assistance in our hours of need. Surgeons saved me from cancer. God if existing, would never have given me or anyone else cancer in the first place. I won’t be waiting for the second coming, or the first one either.
We do not need god(s) or religion to be moral or to desire or promote social reform. Pre-18th century, open declaration of secularist, atheistic, Humanistic beliefs could lead to the noose or the bonfire. It was the weakening of dogmatic blind faith by growing non-conformist and experimental churches and sects that paved the way for atheism/agnosticism and freethought. By the 19th century, social reformers were increasingly secular. Bentham and Mill, the founders of Utilitarianism had little truck with religion-driven moralists. They saw the human desire to avoid pain and move towards happiness as the mechanism behind moral behaviour. The Golden Rule of treating others as you would be treated yourself predates religion is quoted in numerous works secular and religious pre-Judaeo-Christianity. Chartism and Marxism grew from class struggle. Feminism, anti-Apartheid, Pride movements, Anti-Fascist movements, etc, grew from good people seeing social injustice and getting together to counter-blast. Many Enlightenment philosophers, Thomas Paine, etc, all took a stand for change. Others have long called for separation of church and state.
Sadly in the UK, media and political debates on issues like A woman’s right to choose abortion, voluntary euthanasia, race relations, immigration, etc, usually involve religious experts and often exclude secular thinkers who are perfectly capable of giving a damn and offering positive policies towards supporting such noble causes.
Religion still has a strangle hold on us. Schools still have to hold religious assemblies etc. We can shake ourselves free from this. If not for George Holyoake we would not have the right to affirm, namely pledging to tell the truth in courts of law without placing our hands on a Bible to show our piety (which can so easily be faked). We are capable of saving ourselves. If Jesus turns up and helps out, yes, we should welcome the extra assistance, but we need to put our own mess right as if we have no back up, because throughout history, we have had to go it alone.
Like many I was a victim of childhood bullying at high school, and to my horror it continued, with periods of truce into adulthood. Even in my bowel cancer recovery period it never fully went away.
The Childhood Years
At junior school, fighting with my mates was a common pastime, and we all gave as good as we got but a/. Remained friends b/. Actually felt concerned if any of us genuinely got hurt or bled. We thought of it as having a scrap or roughhousing.
Then I went to high school, and everything changed. The fights got viscous and the bullying was intense. Some seemed to want to assert their authority from day one, and they not only wanted to hurt and make their victims bleed or go home with a black eye once in a while. Limbs, and in one case, a back was broken. Once supremacy and the cock of the class was established they still tormented those of us not trying to be alpha males. My mum’s naive conviction was that if you gave no cause no one would see fit to hurt you – some sadly just went for you anyway just because you were there.
One incident set the bullies onto me in force, though it took me years to realize why. On the first day in PE (Physical Education), our sports teacher (soon to be arrested for theft) ordered us (all boys) to strip and stand to attention like we were in the army. We were kept standing naked for the full hour, no football or cricket that day). The idea was to get us used to seeing each other naked, which for me felt odd as I was used to my old school where we had private changing cubicles. On beach holidays my Mum had my sister and I change into and out of swimwear behind beach towels. The warmth and unusual situation here gave me an erection, which seemed to trigger laughter from the others, more used to stripping down.
Within days, the bullying started, and only much later did I realize why. My erection made several lads assume I was gay and turned on by the naked male flesh round me. Far from it as I have seen lots of naked men since in changing rooms, etc, without a shred of arousal. Erections van arise anyway for any male. The vibrations oof a bus can trigger one. Nevertheless, events that day got me branded gay and many attacks on me were misguided homophobia. Interestingly, most bullies left me alone after I was seen with my first girlfriend.
School photo – unknown photographer
The staff turned a blind eye to it, even when my parents raised concerns when I came home battered and bruised once too often. My House-Master regarded aggression as a natural way to toughen us up for the hard knocks of life, and believed that being an easy victim just showed us off for being weak. His stance was social Darwinism. His suggested solution to me was to target one of the ring-leader bullies outside school, (telling me that I’d be expelled if I started trouble in school) and beat down on him hard when he was alone. I put it to the test one night and challenged one bully aggressively in the street on my way to the local fish and chip shop with my sister. I was 15. It was 1977. I pinned him against a wall and even kicked him hard up the backside. Far from being cowed by my action, he got clear of me and immediately vowed revenge. I thought it meant i’d be in trouble with him and his gang back at school in the days to come. In fact, he got his revenge by coming into the chippie as my sister and I were being served. He lunged straight at me with a broken milk bottle in front of the customers and gashed my face open, leaving me with an 18 stitch scar on my cheek (now very faint and faded). The doctors said that before stitching they could see the shadows of my teeth through the little tissue left in place inside my jaw. My assaillant was captured by the chippie proprietor (an ex-cop) who also got me an ambulance. The thug was given a suspended two year sentence which was enforced a few months later when he broke another lad’s arm, and he was later re-arrested for burglary too.
Other thugs at school still went for me. My House-master, smarting at being heavily criticised by the police even in court (which I never had to attend) for his leniency to violence as necessary in life philosophy, actually sent me to a child psychiatrist for being a bullying magnet. The psychiatrist cancelled the appointments on day one and criticised the House-master for off-loading every kid who had issues onto his case files.
Me as a moody 11 year old – taken by my dad.
At the first PE day in the all boys school, we were ordered by the staff to undress and stand naked in front of each other to get used to being seen nude by one another. At junior school we had only ever changed in private cubicles. PE here was like military drill. I was the only boy with an erection, though I was not and still am not gay, but the bullies saw me getting a stiffy in room full of naked boys with no girls present as somehow proof of me being a ‘pouff’ and I suspect that much of my subsequent bullying targeting was rooted in some moronic conviction that this was proof that I was gay.
One day at cricket, I ended up bullied for bowling a bully out fair and square. While very good at batting my fielding and bowling skills were non-existent. The batters I was taking on just stood casually leaning on the bat knowing the ball would go wildly to the left or right of them. When one of my most aggressive assailants was in bat, by a sheer fluke I took down the wickets. Had he even tried to bat he might have survived it. He kicked off so much at the teacher that it was unfair because it was me bowling him out that the teacher gave him a second chance with me bowling again, and he still pushed me down the stairs later in the day for humiliating him on the field.
Some kids faced really viscous treatment. One lad was chased in school and desperately tried hiding in a wooden book cupboard. They caught up with him and instead of dragging him out of the cupboard they threw it out of a first floor window with him inside it. We saw it land in the playground and shatter. Amazingly, he emerged barely hurt. His attackers were expelled.
I took to hiding in vacant unlocked classrooms, where I stayed during breaks and lunch with my books and comics. Occasionally prefects would see me and order me out but I found other rooms and stayed in those instead. I became a living ghost and they were freaked at not being able to find me in the yard all break and the bullies gradually got bored by trying to find me and moved on to find other targets. By hiding I exposed others to the harm I was dodging. They threw one lad in the canal during a sponsored walk I skipped going on because they were loudly boasting that they were going to chuck me in. The poor lad they did attack was just a substitute because I never took what was supposed to be coming to me.
One bully surprisingly became my defender. When we ended up fighting in the playground, on a rare visit I made there we were sent to see the headmaster. As we waited together outside the office to be seen, he burst into tears. I asked him what was wrong. He told me that while I might get a strapping or telling off, he was on a final warning and in danger of getting expelled for getting into a violent situation again. I inexplicably decided to help him. We got our story straight that we had been pretending to fight and only playing. Though they must have known we were talking crap, the head could hardly take action over a fight both participants denied existed. We got out unpunished, and he actually kept several other bullies off my back for the remainder of our time at the school.
My graduation portrait
Years later I met one of my old bullies by chance and we became friends as if nothing ever went on. His mum was very ill and I offered her my support. I asked him if he remembered how much bullying went on at school. He did, though he never twigged or remembered actually being one of the worst offenders. I never reminded him.
6th form and university were bullying free zones and a very happy time for me. The bullies invariably left the first chance they got at 16 and I actually started enjoying education. Better still, the 6th form was a mixed school unit, so there were girls and my first fledgling romances helped bury the notion that I might be gay.
I was always a bit of a loner, drifter and weirdo. As my sister went through her first two of her three marriages and had three kids I drifted into Eastern mysticism in a celibate religious cult I endured for the first half of the 1980’s. I later got some work, but mostly survived on benefits and through contact with the poetry world where I became an active writer and performer. I was and remain a beatnik and daydreamer, half hopeful romantic, half hopeless one, drawn post cult and post Catholic upbringing to Existentialist Atheistic Humanism.
While at work in various places I faced little bullying, I had many issues with management eager to abuse their authority. I was quite militant and even referred to as a trade union of one. At one company managers put in a petition because they were afraid of how much I openly questioned their decisions at staff meetings. I helped get two very nasty bosses forced to resign. (separate occasions). I went on to work in a call centre where I flat refused to follow the regime for removing chairs to punish poor sales by making staff stand up all day, and forced an end to humiliation tactics by formally complaining when a girl was forced to wear a chicken costume for not hitting her sales targets – they never tried that again.
Mt worst receiving end bullying as an adult came from less expected sources, first and most severely, at home. My sister became quite a svengali over my mother, threatening to cut her off from contact with her three sons (my nephews). My Mum doted on the grandkids, even in their thirties. My sister used her sons as leverage over my Mum (one relative described her antics as the most blatant display of emotional blackmail he ever saw). Unfortunately, my sister had no such power over me, so she chose instead to let her sons run riot round me, often messing with my books, CD’s and DVD’s. If I criticised her my Mum automatically accused me of rocking the boat and trying to break up the family as she knew my sister might make good on her threats to cut her off if she dared take my side.
Matters peaked at a birthday do for my step-father when my oldest nephew stole a DVD off me that I had recently bought and which was a/. Still wrapped in its cellophane packaging and b/. Needed by me for a writing assignment I had to complete for financial reward within a few days. He not only took the DVD, but left instructions with his brothers that they should tell me he had taken it after he had left the party for his home by taxi. I immediately went to my sister and mother to insist that they get it back off him and initially my sister promised to do so, but as days went by, it was obvious she wasn’t going to do anything. I asked my Mum for my nephew’s home address so I could go and confront him and get it back myself. She refused to co-operate and told me again to stop stirring up trouble for the family. I sent my sister a final angry e-mail requesting my property back right away. No reply for weeks. My deadline passed and I lost not only that assignment but the potential to write any more projects that online publisher assigned as well. My main passion is writing and a simple nasty gesture had lost me a writing job, informal and low paid but a writing job nevertheless.
Then my reply came from my sister’s husband telling me that they would bring me my DVD soon, agreeing that my nephew was wrong to take it, and adding that none of them, my sister her husband, all three nephews and their partners (now their wives, some of who I had never met) would now only talk to me at all if absolutely necessary. I had eight people all willing to send me completely to Coventry for daring to complain about an act of theft and intimidation to me that at least some of them were a party to.
That Christmas, they all came to my parents for the Xmas. They had no cards or presents for me but did silently return my DVD, along with a few others I gadn’t even notice were missing. They greedily took the cards and presents I gave them but offered me nothing at any Xmas or birthday again and treated me with abject silence on every visit. My Mum and step-father talked to me OK.
My sister, frequently referred to me openly as a freeloader, sponging off the State when unemployed, and exploiting my Mum for lodgings – my academic degree was seen as proof that I was clever, so therefore I must be a career sponger. Bizarrely when Ed Milliband beat his brother David to leadership of the Labour Party and then cut him out of office, my sister loudly ranted that she couldn’t see how anyone could treat a sibling that way with no sense of the irony of me being in the room listening to this rant going on for some time, and no one else present picking up on it either.
After my step-father died, matters escalated. My sister told my Mum that she was unhappy with me being round at family Xmas dinners. She pointed out to my Mum that unless I was kicked out on the December 25th’s she, her husband, sons and wives, eight people in all, would not come, and invited my Mum to do the maths. Lose one (me) or 8. Reluctantly my mum conformed, and fortunately friends invited me to Xmas dinner with them.
In 2016, my Mum’s health deteriorated when she had a severe heart attack in her late 70’s. She ended up reduced to 40% heart capacity on top of her established diabetes and brittle bone condition (to which can now be added dementia). My sister initially offered me lifts to the hospital to see my Mum, knowing that getting their by public transport was bad for me, and for a brief time she was relaxing into talking to me freely as if there was no trouble between us at all. It felt like a reconciliation was in the air at last, but that hope was cruelly dashed aside. One day, after agreeing to pick me up to see my mum at a set time, she failed to turn up for me. I phoned her up thinking there might just be a delay to find that she was by my mum’s bedside already and had simply arbitrarily decided that she was not my personal taxi service and I would have to now find my own way to get to be withy my mum. My visits were expensive, involving multiple tram journeys each way, and therefore few and far between. My sister actually criticised me to others for not seeing my mum as often as she did and therefore not loving my mum enough.
After my mum came home, my sister (a fully trained nurse) became her carer, so she was there daily offering full support to my mum whole being simultaniously hostile and frosty to me. Then she presented a new ultimatum, demanding that my mum prepare the house for possible sale for if she needed to go into a home as may be needed if her health declines much more. The trouble with the sale deal proposed was me being there as a sitting tenant. My sister was engineering my eviction. I spoke with the council who told me that I would be low down the housing list while I still had a roof over my head and that I would need an actual long period homeless and on the streets before they would elevate me to a better housing status. I was at an impasse, but my sister and her husband convinced my mum that I was simply not looking for a new home at all, and pointed out all the empty slum properties on the market as if I could simply get the keys to any I wanted any time, no questions asked. My sister even drafted a letter to me demanding that as she was now my mum’s new official next of kin (a status that had been mine as the older sibling) I was somehow obliged to present her with a full account of my house search efforts or she would take legal action against me.
Unfortunately for her that gave me a trump card. Showing a friend the letter led to my friend saving me from living in a cardboard box in the city centre. Her partner owned a flat in Preston but had to now live and work in Manchester. He was happy to rent his flat to me. Though it meant exile by leaving a city I loved and where I had / have many friends I moved to Preston. My Mum was heartbroken that I wasn’t staying local. My sister met my departure with total silence.
Preston has been good to me. Only one bully here – a neighbour who went from being helpful to being a control freak and then downright nasty when I insisted that he back off. It started in the aftermath of my bowel cancer battle and first months of stoma wearing. (a burden for life now). From doing errands and giving me lifts, my ‘good neighbor’ started getting more dictatorial and possessive. He would return with different shopping than I had requested, deciding for himself what to buy me with my money. He also started scrutinizing my post, examining parcels to see what I was getting. I had some books delivered and he told me I was reading too much before I had even seen what was in my parcels. He later insistantly demanded to know why so much of my post had a Manchester post code. I had to scour the mail closely to see the postcodes and being from Manchester it was hardly surprising I’d get mail from there anyway. He added to this by showing me my post and then pulling it away behind his back like a child playing a game of tease rather than just giving it to me. He was upset when I locked my post’s pigeon hole so he couldn’t get near my mail at all.
After an essential but routine hospital check up I returned home to my Preston flat by taxi, which was to be paid for by the NHS as it was at a more remote medical centre than my usual surgery and the regional hospital. Unfortunately they had not told the driver they were covering the bill, so I had to wait in the taxi outside my flat while he cleared it up – both the driver and I were in good spirits and confident it could be sorted easily as indeed it was, but my neighbour saw something odd was going on and came out pretending to be tending to his flower baskets on his porch while looking round at us, as even the cabbie saw that he was obviously just being nosey.
Stoma bags – legacy of my internal bully’s failure to take me down – photographed by me
As I got out of the cab, the neighbour interrogated me as to what was going on. He ignored my attempts to explain the situation and kept yelling at me that the driver hadn’t believed me, at which I exploded and told him that this and anything else was none of his business. He hasn’t spoken to me since. I have found my washing lines vandalized and been locked out in the block’s communal garden twice with him being the most likely culprit responsible. I did catch him trying to lock me out at one point.
There has only been one bully to contend with since. I was invited to a party with many dear friends at a house towards the end of 2022. It was a great event. Then one guest, known to me for years, arriving later than me walked into the room I happened to be in, walked round loudly and enthusiastically shaking hands with everyone present, but on seeing me (or after purposely saving me for last) held out his hand to me, only to pull it back as I offered mine reciprocally, and loudy growled at me “uuurgh, no, I don’t think so.” Then he just stared at me for a moment before mumbling that I had to understand it was just his idea of a joke, before skulking off still not re-offering to shake hands with me. This is someone who has frequently seen fit to interrupt my conversations, pedantically corrects everything he sees wrong in what I say, offered no words of support or encouragement in my cancer and ongoing recovery struggle, and seems to relish proving me wrong at every opportunity to the point of fetishistic obsession. Fortunately my other friends there and beyond have been hugely supportive and naturally friendy, kindness personified and generous. It is the good, considerate thoughtful people who help me to see that the bullies can never win. They (the bullies) are invariably cowards, and convinced of their alpha-status given to petty jealousy and malice while sadly very good at convincing many that they are much nicer people than they are. Many who they don’t target for their bullying antics think they are so decent that they can’t see the more monstrous aspects of their behaviour which their bullied victims end up enduring. To have rocked him or challenged him with other than my stoic silence at the party would have spoilt events for the wonderful hosts so I gritted my teeth and tolerated an intolerable in my face attitude problem as best I could. It tarnished an otherwise delightful event in my life.
So, from those petty minded individuals who had a go at me thinking I was gay, to those who saw me being rubbish at cricket and begrudged a rare instant of me playing well, to those who saw saw me as a threat through lacking leverage to control me to their own agenda, to those who have wanted to micromanage and supervise my life to the point where I had no control of my own post, shopping or travels, and those who just enjoy upstaging me, and treat a simple conversation as a role playing game to win by trash talk grudge-baiting, snide putdowns, to the homophobes, especially those who end up targeting even the not gay at all, and social darwinians, those who thrive on tutting noises of contempt at the very sight of me, interruption, constant back seat driver correction of everything said and done, belittle and resent every minor achievement, treat my cancer recovery with a tone of indifference implying that they wish it had killed me, I am still here, and there are decent people around me who I still love and respect and you have therefore lost the fight you yourself started with zero provocation. To the decent folk, I have you to thank for keeping me from caving in to my own inner bullies – the anxieties and depression and high stress levels that will always be worse than anything any pathetic immature bully will ever cast my way.
At The Sign Of …. Journal of the Inn Sign Society – Sometimes carries my photos and snippets of news.
Bunbury Press – Creative Anthology – Carries some of my work.
Chappell, Arthur – ATHEIST ESSAYS Print: £8.80 Download: £1.88 http://www.lulu.com/content/1124882A comprehensive collection of my atheistic and humanistic essays.
Chappell, Arthur – BRAINWASHED! A CULT SURVIVOR’S TALE http://www.lulu.com/content/757452£8.67 The full detailed story of my own experiences in the Divine Light Mission cult, several features on its leader, Guru Maharaji and a few essays on cults in general too.
Caught In The Net 1 / Caught In The Net 2 / Caught in The Net 3
Chappell, Arthur, Academic Papers, Bolton Institute Chadwick Campus Chadwick Street , Bolton Lancs Desk Reference. 1/. Scientology Religious Cult Ethics 2/. Nilos Kazantzakis And The Last Temptation – A Gospel Contrast.
Chappell, Arthur BARD FOR LIFE CD Collection of Performance Poetry April 2001
Chappell, Arthur – DANGER! VAMPIRE INFESTED QUICKSAND!http://www.lulu.com/content/763953£7.85. Horror, science fiction and fantasy stories.
Chappell, Arthur – GM HUMANIST (Editor/Co_Editor) 1990 1999 Issues 2 to 35 many articles of mine within
Chappell, Arthur – ID CARD UKhttp://www.lulu.com/content/754662 £9.63. My dark satirical short story science fiction. This is a collection of twenty-seven short Orwellian tales about a near future in which everyone carries biometric personal identity cards and people face continual disruptive surveillance and inspection.
Chappell, Arthur – POETRY SLAMS – EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW!http://www.lulu.com/content/758000£7.75 A history of poetry slams and the rules involved in competition level performance poetry.
Chappell, Arthur – RED HOT TONGUES – TWISTED TALES OF EROTICAhttp://www.lulu.com/content/763998£8.24 Very grown up stories. Adults only, please.gn Of…. Inn Sign Society journal, sometimes includes my photos and snippet features.
Chappell, Arthur WATCH THE SIGNS! WATCH THE SIGNS! Shoreline Of Infinity
The Force – Magazine from Margaret Ashton College 1986 – The first time my work appeared in print, with two short stories The Birthday Present and Brotherly Love included.
HUMANIST NEWS (Later The Humanist)
Covers to The GM Humanist, which I edited and co-edited for a decade
INSPIRATIONS IN VERSE Anchor Books 2001 ISBN 1-85930-889-9
Passages – 1989 poetry collection written and co-edited by me with fellow students at Bolton Institute (Now Bolton University, with my first four poems appearing side by side.
The list is not complete. Many stories and poems went off to have a life of their own, and may have cropped up in print or publication without me knowing, and I have not received or kept hold of copies of some early work.
If you have queries about these works or see my work in print elsewhere, do get in touch, Arthur Chappell
I remember so little of my final moments. There was a little pain, and the sensation of someone clutching my hand. A woman’s voice assured me that our children would remember me with pride. Susan would name her son David in memory of me. A Doctor told them that there was not long to go now and that he would leave them alone with me until they called for him. There was weeping, but the voice grew faint, and soon, there was silence. A young man wept. My son. My son. I tried to will myself to wake up, open my eyes for one last look, but it was hopeless. I was gone.
A warm light, a sense of floating. This was the stuff I had read about as a near-death experience, but I knew that for me it wasn’t a near experience but the full on one way journey. I felt little if any fear. I had done nothing wicked in life, though I was getting worried about my lack of church attendance – any church for that matter.
As I came through the light into the beyond I did not find floaty clouds, golden gates or a host of angelic figures, books of judgement or any other trappings from all the pre-death propaganda. I was in a well carpeted hotel corridor full of doorways.
The closed doors were marked for each state of Heaven & Nirvana you could imagine. I was told that there was an appropriate Paradise for everyone, so whatever your faith, or belief, you could go into that realm for eternity.
I asked the middle aged overweight plain tee-shirt and jeans wearing guide what there was to prevent me entering the wrong eternity. Surely there was no place for me in a Viking Valhalla or the Greek Fields Of Elysium. He shrugged almost indifferently, a hint that he was weary of answering the question for everyone coming his way. “Nothing to stop you changing religions before you step through the door of your liking.”
“Am I able to change rooms later or try more than one before settling on a final choice?”
“Alas no. Once you go through a portal doorway you do not return, at least not this way.”
“Do you ever enter any of the rooms yourself?”
“One day I will have to make the choice myself. I’m not immortal. No one out here ever appears to be eternal.”
He said that with no hint of sorrow. He just presented it as a cold hard fact.
“What about evil-doers? Surely they must go to some kind of Hell?”
“If they want to. We have doors marked Hell, Hades, Sheol, Frigia, Hel, Limbo, Purgatory, and Oblivion, among many others.”
“Oblivion?”
“Some atheists opt for that one.”
“So Hitler could pick any door he likes?”
“He did. He arrived here decades ago, right after his suicide. I believe he chose Heaven. One of my predecessors held the door open for him.”
“And the people in charge of Heaven let him in?”
“If they dismissed or disposed of him it was through some other exit, not this one. No one ever returns this way. Now, which way would you like to go? I have many more people to usher through today so sady I can’t chat much longer.”
I thought against Heaven on principle. No way was I sharing infinity with a dimension willing to accommodate Hitlers.
I spotted a door marked ‘Reincarnation’. A return to the realm of the living had some appeal. I made my preference known. “A popular destination,” my guide said, smiling wryly. “Bon Voyage.”
I hoped to get a glimpse inside as the door opened but the instant he turned the handle and the portal-way was the slightest crack ajar a vacuum-like drag sucked me through, feet first. I fell towards a vast darkness. As I looked up I saw equally naked figures falling through the other doors which sealed instantly behind them. Each body fell into the void too far from me to establish any communication with them. Any effort to talk, shout or scream was lost in the silent vacuum.
Below me, an abyss. Above me, my mind and consciousness were separating and evaporating away. I knew in that final instant that whatever door anyone chose or earned, or fell through, our fate was the same. There would be no clouds, harps, angelic hosts, endless flowing wine, seductive lovers of any gender, milk or honey. Then again, there was no pain, torment, fire or brimstone. The door marked oblivion was the most honest of the labels. I took some comfort and consolation in that. Somewhere in the void, all my old family, friends and enemies were dissipated or destined to rest too. I felt myself atomizing away, happily becoming one with the Univer…..
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