Can I Get a Witness!?

Just as I was beginning to think that my unhealthy obsession with the end of the world (or more specifically, the end of my world!) was a little narcissistic or self-obsessed, a nice man in a hat knocked on my door to give me a leaflet. The elderly grey haired gentleman said softly as he passed the sheet of paper, "I just wanted to give you this, that is all, thank you and have a good day". I replied politely in a similarly vein as I took the leaflet and closed the door.

Expecting the usual double glazing sales patter or political hair-splitting propaganda, I was pleasantly surprised to see a document entitled, "How can you survive the end of the world?". Wow, good question I thought! I'd been wondering about that myself.

On reading it, I was heartened to find that loads of other people had also been thinking about questions like, how, when and where they might meet their end, but from a slightly different perspective. You see, these particular folk are called Jehovah's witnesses, and there's surprisingly quite a lot of them. Surprising, because one of their core beliefs is that heaven only has room for 144,000 people. You would think that they'd stop the recruitment drive?

I didn't have the opportunity to ask the grey haired gentleman why there's only room for 144,000 but I'm sure Jehovah had his reasons. I suppose if he made it any bigger he'd have to think about upgrading the sanitation systems, road access, housing etc. etc., he'd just be making more work for himself in the long run.

On closer examination I noticed the really creepy picture on the front, depicting a queue of families moving in a long line across a field of yellow and red flowers. They're shown heading off to the right of the picture, away from dark clouds in the distant left, which I assumed represented the apocalypse. The family at the front is a young white couple, with each parent holding the hand of an Arian child, who is grinning like an ape with a cup of PG Tips (a bit weird on judgement day, wouldn't you think?).

This got me thinking about the entrance to Jehovah's heaven. That big queue must be there for a reason. I mean let's face it, if fire and brimstone are raining down from the heavens, even us Brits - who think queuing is a form of leisure activity - aren't just going to form an orderly queue when there's a big white sign saying 'This Way to Exit Shitsville'. No way, it's every sinner for himself!

I can only assume that there's some sort of turnstile access at the gates to heaven, in order to stem the inevitable influx of recently reformed heathens. Of course if you haven't got a ticket, you're not getting in, so these Jehovah people have got a serious advantage on your average Tom, Dick or Adolf.

You've got to think though, the numbers just don't add up. There's going to be a lot more than 144,000 people looking for the pearly gates when they open for the main event. So is it first come - first served, or is there some sort of triage system? I can just imagine the queue jumpers on that day, but how ironic if some poor sap invalidated his ticket for cheating.

Well I'm just pleased to know I'm not the only one thinking about these things. When it comes to the crunch, I think this post alone may have invalidated my ticket to the big party in the sky. Shame, these people seem like such fun. In the end I never did accept that warm invitation to hear the answer to "How can you survive the end of the world?", but I'm sure it was very enlightening.