Postcards from Babylon: The Church In American Exile

by Brian Zahnd

Do you see it? Do you see what has happened? Do you see the great reversal of the world order? A single angel comes from heaven and defies the security apparatus of soldiers and seals, of Tiberius and Pilate. The angel rolls back the stone, breaking the imperial seal and revealing a new world order—an order no longer arranged around death. “The guards trembled and became like dead men.” The once-dead man in the tomb is no longer dead, and those who formerly used the fear of death to shape the world now tremble and become like dead men. The fear-mongers are afraid and the death-dealers are dead. Everything is reversed! The angel tells the two Marys to “fear not” and then escorts them over the “dead” soldiers to see the empty tomb. The soldiers aren’t really dead (because heaven doesn’t use the banished weapon of death), but the old way of arranging the world is dead and the kingdom of Satan is coming down. This is Easter.