An Obadiah Slope column
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Rapturous: Baptist minister (retired) Peter R Green has confessed.
“Well, I missed the latest rapture. It’s getting monotonous.
“When I was editing The Australian Baptist magazine, I was leaving one afternoon and the typesetter, Graham, asked me what I planned for the weekend.
“I said I might start with a little Rapture Practice when I got home.
“As he was curious about Rapture Practice, I said, “Like this!”, leaping skywards.
“There was an almost apocalyptic flashing of lights, appearance of clouds and thunderous noises.
“Not having looked before leaping, I had collided with the hanging light fitting above Graham’s desk, sending it swinging wildly and shaking off about a decade’s worth of dust. My fist against sheet steel added sound to the light show.
“Maybe I’m just not ready.”
Well, Peter, none of us are. Thankfully we have a saviour.
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Rapture rupture: Obadiah has to confess that news of the rapture passed him by, but a little internet research dug up an International Business Times report: “For weeks, anticipation and anxiety swirled online over claims that the Christian Rapture, the belief that Jesus will return to take his followers to heaven, would occur on 23 or 24 September 2025. The prophecy, made by South African preacher Pastor Joshua Mhlakela, spread widely across YouTube, TikTok and church networks, prompting some believers to prepare for the end while others turned the prediction into memes.”
The preacher has changed the date, maybe Pastor Green and Obadiah will be involved thistle: “Responding days later, Mhlakela argued that the Julian calendar, which lags 13 days behind the widely used Gregorian calendar, had caused the miscalculation. In a follow-up video, he announced the new Rapture date as 7 or 8 October, aligning it with what he called the ‘real Feast of Trumpets’.”
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Awesome signs: After church, the Cantonese Service at Ashfield Presbyterian pick up big corflute signs with Christian messages and flood the surrounding streets
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Confused much ? Obadiah is unsure when the Sydney College of Diversity, a collaborative body of colleges became the Australian University ofDivinity.
Which means we now have three main collaborative bodies – The University of Divinity, The Australian University of Theology and the Australian University College of Divinity.
Which Obadiah,being a bear of small brain finds confusing, even if the smart people don’t.
It all is abit like the Bananas in Pyjamas B1 and B2, a bit difficult to tell apart.
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Decades on: Obadiah’s daily battle not to turn into a curmudgeon – and some readers might think that has already happened – is not helped by some changes. He means changes of the strange ideological type. this thought was triggered by an after church chat about how supporting a two state solution in the middle east used to be the conservative option and now it has morphed into a left wing policy stance.
Then there is free speech. The Free Speech Movement was founded in 1964 with the idea that more left wing political voices neede to be heard on campuses. But now it is the right wingers campaigning to be heard on Uni campuses.
Maybe Obadiah is just the victim of a slow moving political pendulum.
But it could snap back. If the Trump style persecution of people – including people being sacked from jobs – for anti Trump or anti Charlie Kirk social media – is an indication of more and more restrictions, them perhaps free speech would becme a left issue again.
Which would be nostalgic for Obadiah.