After some recent reading, I now think we are standing closer to the Abyss than I thought we were, and that the tipping point is not what I thought it was. Let me explain. I have long been aware of the closing verses of the Old Testament (you may know them):

Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

For some reason, most of commentators I’ve heard focus on the coming of Elijah (and more than one prophecy nut has claimed to be a reincarnation of that prophet). But the last verse is where I am today: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.

I’ve heard various explanations of this, but none of them seemed to draw out the truly shocking statement that is there. And I’ve come to understand something that was slower to come to me than it should have been: God does not have to lift a finger or press a button; the curse follows on our own action. Yes, I know God says through the prophet, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse, but the act of God comes before we have passed the point of no return. In other words, the curse that God sends is an intervention to prevent the continuing slide into oblivion.

Now that is a sobering thought as we find ourselves standing at the edge and staring into the Abyss. What does our future look like, short of divine intervention? For I cannot see a way we can turn this around ourselves. We are too far down the slippery slope to hell. Malachi’s solution was that we should remember the law of Moses. How much chance do we have of that ever happening? So, let’s follow the idea of this curse to see where it leads…