Judgment Day?

This has been bugging me for quite a while.

Why would Jesus and the New Testament authors warn their 1st century audiences about impending judgment (the day has come, it is the last hour, these last days, etc.) and then... nothing happens?  Am I missing something?

Here we sit almost 2000 year later, and... still nothing.

St. Paul says that Jesus was "born of a woman, born under law to redeem those under law" when "the fullness of time had come".  God sent his Son at just the right time.  Wouldn't the right time to send Jesus to warn of impending judgment be the time of the people who would actually experience this day of judgment? If Judgment Day is to come in our lifetime (or later), doesn't it make sense that God would send his Son in OUR lifetime (or later)??  Shouldn't God send his Son to the people on whom the final judgment would fall in order to warn them?  How long does "the fullness of time" last?

And here we sit.  Still waiting.

I know, I know-- "no one knows the day or the hour" and "with the Lord a thousand years are as a day" yada yada.  But certainly God wouldn't warn certain people at a certain time in history only to do... nothing! It makes no sense to me.

"Well, we do have the written Word of God to warn us," you might say.  But it employs images and metaphors that are not used today and are, quite frankly, foreign to us and audience specific.

"We have to translate and interpret it," you might further say.  But with an event as big as the destruction of our universe and billions upon billions of people being thrown into hell (if that's what it really is) why is it left to us to translate and interpret?  Why is it left to anyone to translate and interpret? Shouldn't the message be painfully clear without the mental gymnastics??  I'll bet it was to the original audiences!! Show me where it says, "Translate and interpret this book into English so that people in the United States in the 21st century can understand it."

It seems foolish to send a bunch of people on the other side of the planet 2000 years ago to their graves all riled up about the return of the Son of Man only to disappoint them.

As our churches continue to empty out and we are sitting around wondering why, we might want to pause and give people some credit.  Perhaps they already know what theologians (such as myself) are just starting to realize-- that there is a LARGE disconnect between the world of the Bible and the world of today. People are weary of people like me constantly trying to navigate and bridge that disconnect, looking silly in the process.  People are nice and won't say anything.  They just won't show up anymore.

Honestly, I'm also getting weary of people like me.

Separation of Church and State

It can be argued that the Separation of Church and State cannot be found in the US Constitution.  At the same time, the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment is used by some as evidence that the founders wanted a line drawn in the sand between Church and State.

I'm not concerned whether this separation is in the Constitution or not, I still think it's a good idea and should be maintained for a couple reasons:

1) It keeps the State from dictating what a religion teaches and practices.
2) It prevents the State from becoming a Theocracy.

There are Christian Dominionist movements afoot to either establish fundamentalist Christianity as the state religion or to "prove" that this is a Christian nation.  If the latter can be done the former is inevitable.  If this truly is a Christian nation, then what is to stop legislation that reflects fundamentalist Christian teaching and belief?  And wouldn't that violate the 1st Amendment by establishing a theocracy?  An example will suffice.

There is a loud and powerful push to bring prayer back to public schools.  It's thought that children are not allowed to pray before a test or lunch or anytime.  Actually it's a civil rights violation to stop a child from praying if the child isn't distracting or interfering with teaching.  A child can pray or read a Bible anytime during the school day, but they are not forced to pray.  Would establishing school prayer force prayer upon children?  Would there be an opt-out for students who are atheist?  And from which religious tradition would the prayers come?  Christianity?  Judaism?  Islam?  Hinduism?  The majority religion of the school district? Would this then become an establishment of a religion by the State via public education?

Thoughts?