Cue the eerie music and TV screen tuning snowstorm … they’re back!
No, not the restless Poltergeist souls dirty about houses being built on their cemetery. Worse.
It’s the faceless fundamentalists filling neighbourhood letterboxes with their glossy 666 pamphlets reminding us we’re deep in the End Times/Armageddon/Final Crisis era.
They’re in the full pre-Yuletide swing of damnation threats if you don’t jump on board their evangelical haycart.
“There are only two eternal destinations – Heaven or Hell. Religion won’t save you,” they’re warning. “Good deeds don’t deliver you. Only faith in Jesus Christ leads to eternal life.”
Well, that’s a new one on this Catholic casualty. I missed the sermon to this effect in Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians.
I thought being good would get you up in the clouds quick-time with a neat, gold-plated harp, regardless of your affiliations. Peter Sellers and his drunken instrument-bashing Irish muso mates will be disappointed.
I am. And what about all those first Friday Masses I was hauled off to as a kid by nuns looking to shave a few days’ indulgence off my impending term in Purgatory? That’s a lot of good kick-to-kick time I’ll never get back.
Used to think it was Christopher Hitchens and his Four Horsemen mates who extricated me from the religious brainwashing of my childhood. Them and the rapist class of priests, brothers and other clergy who’d be better placed in Hamas than our churches and schools.
But the 666 brigade have played their part, too; happily steeped as they are in ferocious Stone Age fantasies of eternal mental and physical torment for anyone not in their loving and forgiving camp.
And they don’t mind a little contemporising as well, viz:
“Any reasonable person can see that all is not well here on Earth and some people are even wondering if human civilisation may be coming to the very end as we know it,” says their flyer.
“The Bible accurately speaks of the last days of humanity … God’s Word indicates that in the last days there will be a one-world government that will introduce a one-world digital identification system, which we now see the globalists working towards.”
Yep, globalism is the goal of Satan, my shiny letterbox missive explains. And it will be achieved under the looming rule of the Anti-Christ, who will come as a false messiah and a peacemaker. Millions will fall for his deadly deceptions.
The Anti-Christ? Xi, Putin, Trump, Sinwar, Bibi, Musk, Zuckerberg, Altman, Dictator Dan … cynics might suggest the term covers just about anyone in politics or tech the world over. You might add a few religious nuts, too.
One thing I will say, the proselytising artwork has been toned down a little from its earlier haranguing.
The old stuff was all apocalyptic firestorm, rampant army tanks, wrecker balls draped in Aussie flags attacking a mighty dollar sign, full-on propaganda-style fearmongering. Good old religious terrorism at work.
It’s now more like lights coming out of gravesites, zombie queues waiting on food-vending machines that demand a 666 mark, drones hovering overhead, armed soldiers keeping order …
It’s a bit more subtle but still pretty wretched. Somehow, I doubt my Christmas Day birthday will get me over the line with such observations anymore.
Might just to have to revert to the old Roman Saturnalia and Sol Invictus celebrations instead this Yuletide. If I’m not crucified beforehand.
This article appeared in the Geelong Advertiser 13 October 2026
