Trois têtes de chien

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JOKE-OGRAPHY:

The Great Commission This Bible story is from the very end of Matthew's Gospel. Jesus has risen from the dead and has asked His disciples to meet him on a mountain in their homeland of Galilee. There, He gives them what's known as the Great Commission: the mission to go out into the world, teach God's commandments, make disciples of all nations, and baptize all people in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

I Am With You Always Jesus ends the Great Commission by promising to be with the disciples always. This may seem a little ironic, because we're told in the Book of Acts that Jesus ascends to heaven shortly after making this promise. Of course, while Jesus leaves them in a certain sense, He also sends His Holy Spirit to guide them to all truth (as He promised in John 16:7-13), remains with them in the Eucharist, and dwells in the hearts of all the faithful on earth.

Until the End of the Age "And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age." In this verse (Matthew 28:19-20), Jesus is saying He'll remain with His disciples until this era has come to a close. In this cartoon, I pull from a different translation of this verse. Some older English translations, like the King James Version, say, "...until the end of the WORLD." The word "world" actually comes from Old English and used to mean something like "age of man," but nowadays we use "world" to mean the physical earth. So, in modern English, the verse is simply translated to "age," because that conveys Jesus's focus on the end of a certain era rather than implying the destruction of the planet. That being said, the end of the age is assumed by many to come at the end of humankind, and isn't that kind of the end of the world anyway? For this cartoon, I wrote "THIS world," which I think still implies the passing of a certain state of things while also allowing clarity for the joke, which reads better if "world" is used.

The Joke In this cartoon, Jesus delivers His line about being with the disciples "until the end of this world." Peter assumes "until" means that Jesus will leave them at the end of the world, and asks who will take His place and remain with the disciples AFTER the end of the world. Jesus clarifies to Peter that everyone will be dead, by which He means the faithful will have passed on to the next world, where they'll be fully united to Jesus in heaven forever. Peter, however, takes it to mean that everyone will be gone from this world except for him, so he thinks he'll be all alone in the empty, ended world with no friends and no Jesus. Jesus clarifies that Peter will ALSO be dead (i.e. passed on) just like everyone else. This is a source of comfort to Peter, and of hilarity to all good-natured viewers, like you.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: Look at you, alone at the end of these words. Could it be that you recognize that this was a "Tomics Resurrection," where I go out, take an old comic of mine, and baptize it in my updated style? The original is from 2017 (9 years ago!), but behold, now it will be with us always, even to the end of the age (of my current style, when I'll have to redraw it again)!