It has been overshadowed in the last few days by the passing of a great man. The Duke is rightly to be remembered and his life celebrated for all the good he has done and in the idiosyncrasies that he displayed. His death reminds us that life does not remain the same; time moves on; until now in recent days, and I suppose that it shall return, there had been much talk in these parts about what the new normal will look like. I don’t know what you hear elsewhere, but what we hear doesn’t sound to me very much unlike the old.
Holidays in the sun is good for vitamin D deficient sun lovers unless they also have a melanin deficiency in which case extra strong skin cream is required. Racing to return to the gym, which provides bodily exercise for those who do not have to labour hard in the acre of land that the government allows them on which to grow maize and other crops. Eating out and visits to the cinema, theatre, opera, shows, concerts, dance halls, gigs (is that orthographically correct, or should it be gigues?) and the like are, well, without the need for justification of any sort, a necessary part of the new normal. Let us eat drink and be merry¹, seems to be the message.
Are we any different? There has been much celebrated over the past year of dedication, selfless giving, service, but little (but not nothing) has been said about the cleaner who was no longer needed because her employer now WFH had recovered two hours a day not being required to travel, or the employer who simply told his staff not to bother to return the next day, they would not be paid. The poor still had mouths to feed and bills to pay.
Do not think I am about to suggest that wealth is bad, Abraham² did not berate the rich man for enjoying the things that he enjoyed in this life but for failing to believe in the Son of Man. He was not asked to give half his wealth to Lazarus who sat at his gate, but rather to remember justice, righteousness and compassion. It was this that he forgot.
In the new normal, will we simply revert to type, and behave as we always have done? Noah³ left a world that was filled with violence to sail into a new world. What sort of violence? Physical, economic, emotional, therapeutic? Did Noah hope for better in the new world into which through the flood he had sailed? But his own behaviour and that of his sons soon showed that the world that they had left behind had come with them. The new world was no better. We today seek to deal with violence, but the very need to do so simply exposes our shame that it continues to exist.
The last year is no cure for our condition; it has shown many good things about the image of God in which we are made, but it has also exposed that our condition is unchanged.
There is but one cure, the man, who himself suffered violence at the hands of his own people, is our cure. Jesus now sits at the right hand of God⁴ and will come again to take his people to a world which really shall be new and different than this one, where there shall be no violence, no hurt, no harm. That will be the new normal; it will be an extraordinary, previously unimagined normal⁵, but it is the only new normal for which it is worth waiting.
At great risk of being misunderstood, it is very clear that the age of chivalry is over. The most senior of the other two should have given up his seat for the lady. Perhaps the difficulty they had was that the first one to have stood would have been claiming precedence over the other 😉
It was mentioned one day that a geography teacher had come across some quite interesting statistics. Well, if you are a geography teacher I suppose you would find this sort of statistic to be quite interesting. The question had been asked: How far away from where you are now living were you born? He had noticed that of people living in the UK 60% had been born within 30 miles of where they now live. In France that rose to 70% (presumably the French figure was in kilometres so the extra 1.7km would skew the answer slightly, in fact by about 6%, so even making this allowance and adjusting the 60% by 6% still shows that the French are 6% more indolent (not used pejoratively in case you are wondering) than the British).
Now the question may of course have been asked the other way around: How far away from where you were born are you now living? This produces some quite interesting and different results. The graph below shows the results in percentage terms of birth population movements for a number of different countries and other groupings. Not all nations and grouping are shown. In order to make it easier to read we have only three of the countries of the UK, France, Germany and the world as a whole (the grey line). You may be able to see some faint lines representing other nations, but I shall not comment on them here.
Looking first at the grey world line, we see that roughly 70% of people live within 50 miles of their birth place or as the French would say: accueil familial.
We notice first of all significant disparity within the United Kingdom. Whilst England (the orange line) shows slightly more mobility than the world as a whole (only 63% live within 50 miles of their place of origin) Scotland (the blue line) for example shows great movement, only 15% live within 50 miles. It seems however that most Welsh born are still within the principality (93% within 50 miles). The reasons for these we shall speculate upon shortly.
I have not included its line as the graph quickly becomes quite hard to read, but China is worth a mention. The figures are perhaps difficult to compare with other nations because of its great size, so greater movement might be expected, but there are a number of conflicting things going on. There are the local restrictions which prevent you from moving far, but on the other hand there are not insignificant large scale centralised movements of population, and nothing very much in between. Interestingly the world total pretty much tracks the results for China and India when taken together; perhaps as they are such vast regions who together comprise 36% of the world’s population it is though interesting unremarkable.
We have already commented on France (the green line) above, but the results for France on this alternate basis bear out the earlier suggestion. 80% of French born are within 80 kilometers of the place of birth. This is not a continental matter, for the results for Germany show only 45% at this point. It is to be understood however, as a desire to remain where you are. The local degustation is familiar to you, as are the cheeses and wines of your own département, why would you move to another one? Quite a contrast with England where the cheese of one area has become quite ubiquitous, so it hardly matters where you live at all. The results in Germany (the dark blue line) clearly show us the effect of unification, with large scale movements crossing what was the border. Only 45% live within 50Km, increasing to 84% within 1000.
When we look at England (the orange line); the figures are, as already noted, below the mean until you get up to over 1000 miles. The conclusion drawn is that the English just want the sun and most of those who went for it now regret that they went to live in France and Spain and so were unable to vote in the referendum which led to their alienation from their homeland of choice rather than of birth.
Turning to Wales (the yellow line) and Scotland (the bright blue) we see that they are even further removed from the world mean, and extremely so. Wales is north of the mean, and Scotland far to the south. The reasons for this if you look at the graph in incremental rather than cumulative form as here (if you are really interested I can let you have the incremental graph, but I decided not to post it here as it is rather lumpy, used in the technical sense beloved of statisticians, which only makes a complex issue even more complex). The most interesting of the two cases however is perhaps Wales, which seems to indicate not an indolent but a contented population. In Wales there seems to be little movement, 93% are within 50 miles, as people want to stay where they are. It cannot be the cheeses and wines, but something else. They are a happy and contented people, and when they do move they have to make sure they are within a couple of hours of Cardiff Arms Park which sets limits on their mobility. Those who do move far make sure that they go far enough away that they do not rue the fact they cannot get back to Cardiff for the Game.
In Scotland however we have quite a different picture. Even at 65 miles we have only 15%, but then a rapid increase; 50% at 300; 84% at 500. Where have they gone? Well such distances can only be achieved by crossing the southern border. It is suggested that it is a fear of secession from the UK hence a desire to move quickly across the border which prompts this demographic change, otherwise there is little movement because there is nowhere to go.
As interesting as such analysis might be, perhaps the conclusion that we can really draw from this is that, even though we can say 60% of people in the UK live within 30 miles of where they were born, 70% live within 100 miles, 90% live within 1000 and 100% live within about 12000 miles of where they were born, that it is astonishing, when we look at the world as a whole, in which live more than 7.1 milliards of living souls, that none of them have moved further than 20 million meters from their place of birth.
With apologies in advance for errors of syntax, orthography and grammar which may be found embedded in this document whether arising from oversight, incorrect application of language packs or any other misadventure; and in general for any offence given, received or taken inadvertently, inappropriately or deliberately and, if you have managed to read this far, for any errors or omissions whether wilful, unintended, innocent or deliberate in the content of this article.
The uncovering of an ancient gold mask in China has caused a few ripples on Weibo, so Coco thought he would join in the activity. However as he does not have a Weibo account, and probably would no longer have one after this post anyway so it makes little difference, the post had to be made elsewhere, and out of respect for anyone who may read this and wishes to retain their own Weibo account, placed his images else where.
For the triptych ‘Behind every smiling face’ please visit Acklam Hall and follow the link to the Chinese mask. You may also follow the other links (not all appear as such), but beware lest you see what you should not see.
It seemed to be an ordinary sort of day, the kind of day when the sun shines, the bees buzz and the lilac blossom falls gently on the ground. Passing a house where several cats make their home, the slave came out angrily spraying a can of noxious vapours at anything that moved. It seemed that the cats had introduced some unwanted guests into their home and the slave was determined to remove them.
Coco watched in astonishment as three free fleas fled.
Further to the mysteries of a past day, Coco read* today ‘that a great and worthy twentieth century’ Irish poet ‘declined to produce a translation of’ Beowulf ‘because it was considered that someone of a different enthnicity, genre and mother tongue’, not to mention culture, to the Old English author ‘could not accurately reflect and interpret’ this great poetry.
For the real story of Beowulf he refers you to Professor Heather O’Donoghue, here and to her book…
Coco is now on the search for an original ancient Greek to labour afresh in the translation of the poetry of [place here the name of your favourite ancient Greek author] but in the words of one Latin translator slightly paraphrased: Don’t worry too much about your pronunciation there are no Romans about today to correct you, and in the Bowdlerised words of a Renaissance writer: My attempt for Greek’s labour to find is vain, for I who myself have deceivèd shall fail.
* The catastrophic and apostrophic additions and amendment in Coco’s first paragraph have been added for clarity.
The heightening of ‘the debate in the Netherlands over the ethics of translation’ probably suggests that the Dutch are expected to read every other language in the original tongue. Given their outstanding ability to speak English, as no true born Englishman can, Coco has no doubt that that every true born Dutchman will rise to the challenge to drive metaphorically the illiterati into the abyss of darkness otherwise known as the North Sea, as they consume with an avarice insatiable for other tongues unknown since the day of Babel.
I thought I would say something really important. After listening to yet another performance of Götterdämmerung, and I hasten to add lest already I have given the wrong impression, that it was a very good performance apart from the ‘Bravo’ hurled out at the end. The voice, by the way, which penetrated the air was very similar to that which resounded at a different, and much reduced, performance in the promenade concerts many years ago. It seemed that the utterer of that earlier bravo may have listened to the rebukes of his peers at the quite untimeliness of the oral intrusion of his voice on the earlier occasion, ah, but me! I have been distracted and consequently left unfinished, an error which my better grammaticastic friends will not let me forget, a sentence which now lacks both a subject and a verb. Let me start again with what I really intended to say. Just for the sake of distraction: Did you notice the importance of the second comma in this paragraph?
Whilst listening, or perhaps more accurately, watching and listening to an audio visual presentation I realised why I do so much dislike the presence of music in the background. It was that that prompted me to think of yet another performance the closing moments, well only about ten minutes worth actually, of the same opera. I remember reading many years ago of one man, Bruckner his name, who on going to the performances of Wagner’s operas only went for the background music. His biographer concluded that had Anton ever opened his eyes during a performance he would have never entered the theatre again. I understand that, I have a similar view, as good as the story may be in itself – and perhaps a few of them are but most can be summed up in three words two of which are power and money and the third is the only one needed for opera buffa – the story is only a hook on which to hang even better music, so when going to the opera, I take quite a similar view to Anton. Audio visual performances consist of two parts, audio and visual. Now whilst the audio part can be split into many tracks, it behoves the engineer to ensure that they produce a homogenous, appropriate and pleasing mixture. I need to return to the point.
Perhaps some, or even many of you, have been to a performance of St Anthony’s chorale, in one of its many forms, by a junior school orchestra. If so you will know exactly what perfect fifths should not sound like. If you have never been to such a performance, may I suggest you keep your ears open for one, or indeed any junior school orchestra concert for despite the impurity of the fifths, such orchestras are well worth the listening for the quality of the musicianship will still be appreciated and from which the real music shine, perhaps better sound. Technique can be learned and improved even by the long ears of Mozartian disdain, musicianship is much harder to obtain.
So, to the point, I remembered during this other audio visual presentation listening to a world leader speaking of the overcoming of the will, behind which Götterdämmerung was being played. Whether it was a particularly good performance is neither here nor there, Wagner is almost at his best in this work and the music is captivating even when played badly, more so than St Anthony’s. It was most interesting. It was really quite a clever marketing device, but there was a canny media director managing the public face of the government as one might expect. The music is quite engaging, which is perhaps somewhat of an understatement, but also quite provocative. The speech is also. What struck me though was that though I had been impressed I had completely missed what had been said. For all I knew it might have been a description of antics of the teddy bears at their picnic except that a few phrases did stand out such as ‘They must be careful’, which of course would be true if you are on a picnic playing near water and ‘Don’t play with trifles’, which again surely must be a warning both to those who would fill their bellies before they came to the picnic and to those who simply wanted a custard pie fight, or had already eaten far too much, like most ten year old boys at a picnic, and who really did want to eat the trifle but simply could not manage to swallow another spoonful. The use of background music had this rather unfortunate effect of distracting you from what is actually being said, which if you had heard, rather like Anton you would not want to ever hear again.
It was finding myself distracted by some very well performed, unlike the St Anthony’s, but completely inane, unlike the St Anthony’s, trivia to which my ears had become attuned and which as a consequence caused them not to listen to the words which then themselves became the background, it was that that reminded me of the matter of the overcoming of the will, and why background music is, well abhorrent. In some circumstances of course the use of this phenomena is completely intentional. If you listen to ‘Einstein on the Beach’ then you may realise after a time, if you ever thought that this was in some way akin to opera or rap where the words do have meaning, and so tried to listen to the words being spoken, despite the constant shifting of the repetitive patterns in Glass’s music, that the words are really quite inconsequential and a reading of ‘The Hunting of the Snark’ would have sufficed. We have in Einstein what is a wonderful inversion of the idea of background music, which gives the impression that the music is there simply to provide a foil for the words. The reality is quite the opposite. If you are a lover of Glass then you may, feel free to, disagree with my conclusion, I shall not be offended nor inclined to think otherwise for reasons which I have already set out.
In the audio visual presentation which is the subject of this report, it was the words that mattered, the music was merely incidental, and not incidental take note. Much incidental music is quite consequential as Midsummer Night’s Dream or the Peer Gynt suite, which are worthy works in their own right. The presence of the merely incidental sounds here, was both unnecessary and distracting. Now, it is as true that if one of the auditors was distracted then it must be the case that others were too, as it is that if in class you have a question someone else shall too, and therefore you need to speak out because the other person is too shy to do so. But it has become the ‘norm’, would that it were ‘Norn’ instead, to underlie many oral presentations with this kind of thing. Even news reports will be adulterated by background noise. I wonder whether the producers ask themselves whether the music that has been chosen for them is appropriate for that report. Prokofieff and Korngold may have been able to write background music appropriate for a film scene, but for a real life report? HItchcock knew the value of getting the music right. Do the even more ephemeral news reports have the budgets to produce just the right underlying sounds? If not, why add these sounds and alienate your auditors from what is actually being said, unless all you really want is for your auditors to have a good feeling about what was said, as in the overcoming of the will, and so return for more of your news.
Perhaps the ephemerality of the news reports is the only reason that no-one really cares. Tomorrow no-one will remember that all they heard was the background and the real message, as they say, went in by one ear and out by the other.
If the message matters, speak the message not something else. And of course, you will say to me, Physician, heal thyself! And quite rightly too for this note, article, post, report or whatever else you may wish to call it contains much that is neither relevant nor important, having nothing to do with the conclusion or message I wished to convey, and which you will no doubt not remember, so to conclude then with the message of the message:
If the message matters, speak the message.
From which what do you conclude about this message?
Where Coco first published this he was going to use the word kongratulations, correctly spelt of course, but something in the system insisted that it become a word of colour rather than an ordinarily coloured word in black ink. As Coco is the writer, he thinks that it should be for him not an editor with whom he cannot speak to decide whether a word required some form of emphasis, and in any event, emphasis in a sentence can often be achieved for a word simply by a repositioning or change of word order, so of something else Coco had to think.
To congratulate the gold awards winners at the JWC WU WHS (https://www.jwcwuwhsawards.com/) awards ceremony would be insufficient, they have worked hard for what they have achieved, but not in order to win an award, but rather to further the health of men and women. We were reminded this evening that John prayed for the Gaius (3 John 2) that he should prosper and be well [in his body] as he is well in his soul. The winners of the awards are engaged in this work.
It is invidious to single any of them out, and who is Coco to judge anyway, but he shall, and in compliance with good statistical practice he shall declare a significant data selection bias, and mention the ILF (https://www.lympho.org/), where Professor Christine Moffatt CBE is a trustee, and UTokyo, where Dr Gojiro Nakagami works on BioFilms which as you will all know are even more scary than Hitchcock films.
Finally, Coco takes the opportunity to remind you that should you know any young people with lymphoedema who have not yet completed the QOL survey, please do ask them to consider the LYMPHOQOL (https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/LYMPHOQOL) questionnaire. PostScript: Whilst the official survey closed late in 2022, and the results taken for analysis, from which reports are expected early 2024, the questionnaire is still available and entries being monitored. You may find the questions useful and helpful. If you leave personal details then the team may be able to follow you up.
If you wish to jump into the video of the awards ceremony, then you will find Professor Moffatt at 2566 and Professor Nakagami at 3282.
The 2020 JWC WUWHS Awards: ‘The Olympics of Wound Care’ These awards seek to recognise the hard work done by health-care professionals in all fields of wound care over the four years since the WUWHS 2016 conference. As with the JWC awards, these will highlight the great contribution that nurses, clinicians, scientists, researchers and academics make to the development of wound-care research and practice. The 2020 JWC-WUWHS awards are open for nominations now. The deadline is Friday 26 November, after which we will shortlist and ask our editorial board members and representatives of the associated societies to judge the top 5–8 nominees on a number of criteria. We also want to draw your attention to the Most Progressive Society award. This accolade is for the associated society who has made the biggest impact in wound care in the past four years. Download Flyer Here
Offences, which do not like a joke – an open letter
Have you heard the one about the Yorkshireman, the Cornishman and the man of Kent? It doesn’t quite have the ring about it as an opening line as ‘Have you heard the one about the Irishman, the Scotsman and the Englishman?’ But if Coco used the latter, Coco would get away with the rest of it in an English public house, providing none of the English liberal elite were present, and might regret the long, but deserved, stay in hospital if Coco tried it in Clonmel. What the reaction would be in Aberdeen is as clear as whether Schrödinger’s cat is alive or dead.
But, in using the second opener Coco is not being racist, Coco is making a professional judgement; the joke needs something on which to hang the three preposterous remarks, and as we know a joke will not succeed if it is longwinded.
We all characterise others, and recognise characteristics in our own stock. Coco is a man of deep pockets and short arms, which says nothing of Coco’s wealth nor physical incapability, when Coco’s part of the country is the butt of the joke. Does Coco take offence at that? No, why should Coco, when Coco only need to take offence if Coco is insecure in Coco’s belief that all such characterisations are at the same time far from the truth and close to the truth. Schrödinger’s cat lives again.
Some people are though quick to take offence. The BBC, about whom you complained, ran an article some years ago which had a picture of whited up Nigerians. If it is appropriate to white up, then why not also to be able to black up? A more recent report suggested that one ballet dancer felt humiliated that she had been asked to white up in Berlin, but when you look at cosmetics in countries which are populated predominantly by darker skin colours than ours, how many whitening products does one find? Another aspect of the report referenced an idea that when you are on stage you can retain your own identity. Coco had thought that the whole point of being a stage actor was to take on the identity of the person you were to portray, which of necessity requires the giving up of your own. If Coco were to watch a spy film, Coco would not want to see Sean Connery but James Bond. Whiting up for the stage does not imply a loss of identity any more than it did for the Nigerian men, for whom it was probably part of their identity.
The present malaise about racism has much which is unforgiving in it. An elder of a church said recently that these movements have much for which to answer. For years we have had people coming in and out of our church of a huge variety of hues, and all I have ever seen are believers in the Lord Jesus Christ who want to love, serve and worship him. Now I am asked to take note of whether they are black or white – with nothing in between?
Racism is thinking about race as marking someone else different to (and probably also implied less deserving than) me. But this gentleman, and probably many thousands like him, had never had race in his thinking in his dealing with others. Your reported comments suggest that you are probably one like him. Anti-racist sentiment however forces us to think in racist terms. It is not something that either you or Coco want to do.
Recently Coco complained that a professional institute had set up a black section. Coco asked that as it would be considered inappropriate to have a white section, why did they think it appropriate to have a black section. The response did not address the question, but merely referenced the usefulness of the section to the minority group. Coco has no doubt at all that the section is useful, but Coco still considers that it is an inappropriate use of the funds of the organisation. Such a view as Coco has is however unpopular.
The recent mantra that ‘diversity is required for the prosperity of our company etc’, seems to forget that the UK and its companies were at their most prosperous when the very opposite was true. It is not a message that people want to hear today. [For reasons other than diversity Coco would not want to return to those days.]
In Coco’s view you were right to point out that there was a lack of diversity in the Gospel Singer of the Year. Coco was not aware of the event, and Coco has not troubled his own self to find out any more about it yet. It does not really however surprise Coco to hear that the finalists were all black. It is nothing however to do with race but rather with culture and skill. The culture promotes a particular style of gospel singing which is popular today. Coco quite understands that and in some settings quite enjoys listening to it*. There are other styles of gospel singing which probably, due to the preferences of the present day, would not get past the first round. How far would George Beverly Shea have got today? Perhaps even Graham Kendrick or Stuart Townsend would not survive many rounds. A presbyterian a cappella precentor would probably not even have been allowed in the first round, but it seems to Coco that the precentor is much more of a gospel singer in terms of what the Scriptures require than any of the others.
Whilst the organisers have no control over the line-up of finalists, it is difficult however to understand what wisdom the organisers saw in not ensuring that there was ‘diversity’ in the other members of team, judges, presenters etc. unless they wish to say there was diversity as they had representatives of several different racial groups such as Shona, Zulu, Igbo, Fulani, Ethiopic, Somali and the hundreds of others whose names Coco has never known. But would that sort of diversity not in itself be an acknowledgment of racism in their thinking?
Coco is sorry that you were taken to task for merely pointing out the obvious. There are times when the emperor does not wear his clothes and it does no harm to others, but there are times when it does do harm and it behoves us to mention it in the most polite way that we possibly can.
A difficulty we have though is that we know that by speaking in apparently anti-cultural [unpolitically correct is close but not quite right] ways we shall become objects of opprobrium. We can hope however that those that take offence at our words do so only because they have not fully understood what was said, and have not yet understood the contradictions in their own position. Coco is glad to have read that you have discussed the matter you raised with some of these groups of people and are willing to continue to do so. The report on the BBC seems to show that they have failed to understand what you actually said. Coco hopes that does not also reflect an unwillingness to understand, and that by discussion they will learn.
Racism is a problem, and some people are hurt by it. Racism is however not just practiced by white people. You could say that the Atlantic slave trade, for which we are still vilified even though we abolished it, was driven by racism within West Africa. The slave trade across Africa to the east clearly shows all the signs of racism. But it is rife worldwide: the dominance of the Han in China, the endless in fighting between tribes in the African republics, the Iberian dominance in South America; Coco is sure you know of many other specific examples and far more than Coco knows.
For some however it is a tool that can be used for advantage: a complaint is made by A ‘You didn’t choose me because I am a different colour than you’. The complaint is not entirely unfounded. A was not chosen because A was both not the right person for the job and secondly because A is racist. The employer believes in diversity and does not want to employ someone who thinks that race matters and should be brought into the considerations for a job.
But race does matter. You are an Irishman. Coco has often offended an Irishman by saying we are all British here forgetting that my friend is from the south. She is still a friend. Coco cannot enter into the cultural secrets of a Japanese family any more than a South African can understand how a UK business planning meeting works. Where it matters we must recognise it and allow for it, but where it does not we are all equal before a sovereign God to whom we must answer for the way we treat those who have also been made in his image.
Let the world do as it will. If it wants to promote racial differences under the guise of anti-racist sentiment, let it do so. Let us present the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ in whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, male nor female. Let us not regard any man by the flesh, but according to whether they love the Lord. In this way we shall be truly anti-racist whilst celebrating the diversity of culture that God has given to us. The gospel of free grace, an incarnate God and a crucified Saviour has more offence in it than any offence of which the world is capable to the pride of man.
On the day that new opportunities arise for some, this is the day of reckoning for many others. There are but a few hours left to complete your reckoning to HMRC, have you done so? Or are you exempt? If you must still do so, and are not yet ready, do not let Coco delay you any longer.
This day of reckoning reminded Coco of another day, we have heard much of the effect of the consequences of the new coronavirus and of excess deaths. In very broad terms seventy-five thousand excess deaths is a very real and great tragedy. You do know that there were six hundred and fourteen thousand deaths in 2020 – an even greater loss. This reminded Coco of the even greater day of reckoning that is to come to every one of us. You may often hear it said ‘we only live once’ which of course has a corollary ‘we only die once’ and after that there is a crisis. Well, crisis is the original word, it means judgement. There is a day for the reckoning that each one of us must make to his Maker. Are you ready for it?
Between now and the end of the day of reckoning for your tax return in England and Wales there may be a further seventy times seven (one of whom on the basis of statistics alone will not have completed his tax return) who have gone to the ultimate day of reckoning. As the Bible reminds us that just as we must die once, so Jesus Christ has appeared once to take away sins, and shall appear a second time for those who are waiting for him to bring salvation. Are you waiting for him or waiting for judgement?
