Heard the one about the talking carp? According to a Sunday newspaper, one of these ugly fish was about to be slaughtered at an Israeli fishmonger's when it shouted in perfect Hebrew, "Prepare to meet your maker for the end is nigh" - or words to that effect. The non-Jewish customer unto whom it spoke ran to find the shop owner, who also witnessed the fish screaming and promptly cut it into fillets. A silly story, really, not even earning a pre-war place as the "And finally . . ." item on the news.
Normally, after reading something so ridiculous, I'd laugh gaily, "Hahaha!" Not now, though. Now . . . perhaps the end is nigh. Perhaps what we're witnessing on the rolling news channels isn't just desperate time-filling interspersed with bombs falling, but the beginning of the end, John the Divine's revelations made fact, Arma-bloody-geddon.
An ultra-Orthodox Jewish sect is claiming the talking carp as a bona fide prophet of doom. The fish has come at a time, the sect says, when George Bush has created a war with Iraq because (as a member of an extreme religious sect of Christians) he knows that the Messiah's return can only come via a devastating bust-up in the Holy Lands involving Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Bush is clearing the way for the Second Coming! Having heard all the other lame excuses for this war, this is the only one that now seems plausible.
Pulling on my trainers and grabbing the babies, I headed for church. The reverend is an ex-telecom salesman (I kid you not). He wears shiny blue suits. "Hello there," he said, grinning at me from the church door. "You look great. Spot on. Well done." He looks to all intents and purposes more like a Lib Dem councillor than a man in touch with the Almighty.
The mundanity of modern worship was helping to put talking fish, extremist cults and G Dubbya into perspective. "They're all products of overactive imaginations," I thought as the warm, Blue Peter "hymns" made thoughts of an angry God, helped by four horsemen of the apocalypse, seem ridiculous. Embarrassing.
I was free to focus on the conundrums of daily life again. My trainers looked dirty next to the shiny shoes of the elderly ladies next to me (must try harder to be a yummy mummy). My daughter picked her nose then stood on the Bible for a better view of the band, making the old ladies gasp with disapproval (must not use my sleeve to wipe her nose from now on). Life returned to its former petty glory.
The Anglican faith is brilliant. I recommend it to anyone fearing the end of the world. Its services, so middle-of-the-road, dilute God's wrath. But certain tabloids still feed off our deepest religious terrors. "Now an ancient code that links Saddam, Blair and Bush to Armageddon has been discovered . . ." "Where?" I shrieked inwardly when The Bible Code II was published last year. The answer: "In the Bible."
Annie, my born-again friend whose commitment to God meant giving up one-night stands and little else, rang me after she read the book and concluded, "We're all f***ed, so let's get caned."
Perhaps the only mad prophesy that doesn't spook me at the moment is the one that arrived in my e-mail inbox last night via an anonymous sender: "IRAQ IN BIBLE PROPHESY - 2,000-year-old Bible prophecies foretold Iraq's present and her future". Written in golly-gosh Americanese, the e-mail warns that an ancient code revealed how "Iraq would become the centre of Earth's evil . . . Iraq would corrupt the religions of the world" and finally, how "Iraq will rain mass destruction on the human race".
Wow, those guys in the Pentagon press office just never sleep, do they?
