MANY ARE CALLED…….

Last Sunday, I woke up with a start from my afternoon nap. My sudden thought was: churches are on the wrong track. Wrong? Why that immediate impulse? I then and there decided to pursue this. Inspired, perhaps?

My 800+ words blogs are the fruit of week-long thinking. They don’t flow out of my fingers through good fortune. No, they are the child of my brain working 24/7 all the time: they crowd my thinking and my going, my waking and my sleeping.

I look back many centuries.

For some 1800 years the church has been preoccupied with heaven. Their majestic worship edifices, the famous cathedrals in Europe, have

 their spires perpendicularly pointing up high into the sky: They brazenly turn away from God’s earth, and aim directly at the heavens.

Their ultra-high ceilings are adorned with trumpeting troubadours, beckoning us, earthlings, to enter the heavenly realms, where ‘saints’ in glory stand, drawn from every nation, come from every land.

Is Heaven simply my obsession, my preoccupation, my distorted intuition?

I know: going to heaven at death, is still the overriding belief, assumed as God’s truth. The parting words of my older brother, at our 40^th wedding dinner, were: “See you in heaven”. These beliefs are reflected in many church buildings, no matter which denomination, even Scottish Presbyterian, reinforced by the ancient hymns, silently or emphatically, and often blatantly expressed in sermons. Especially now, as the earth is gasping for breath, we long to escape to heaven. And escape it is!

Even now, the totality of the worship-setting exposes the ‘heaven’ desire. It’s not what we say that counts: it’s what we do. The parking lot surrounding the church buildings, tells the brutal tale.

Where do we go when we die?

God loves the world, says the Bible. How do we ‘live’ that love for the world?

We stay put: “Earth we are and to earth we shall return”, God reminds us in Genesis 3: 19. The Earth! Our place forever. The Earth! The world created by the Word and therefore constituting God’s Primary, His Direct Word. The Bible – a human book – is God’s indirect Word. That’s why we no longer can see God without the world, or the world without God. If we want to gain wisdom, then the simple rule is to see that God and the world are one. A sin against the earth is a sin against God.

 No wonder: “Many are called………. but few are chosen,” Matthew 22: 14 tells us.

This begs the question: How then are we to live?

That should make us think. That has made me think. “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves”, Jesus reminds us. That tells us to look to creation, and always remember that a renewed creation is our future.

God loves the world. God loves us. He showed this by becoming human. Jesus is not simply ‘a’ man. Jesus ‘is’ man, is humanity. The name Jesus contains within itself the entirety of humanity, and the entirety of God. We, therefore, must love God, expressing that love by unconditionally loving the world. That’s why a large paved parking lot next to the church is a contradiction in terms.

Does the end – our carbon-rich life – justify the means? Was Luther right when he said “Sin Bravely”, in Latin – Pecca Fortiter? (Luther was fluent in Latin, then the main scientific language of his day, early 16^th Century.)

What does my writing this week, try to say? It centers around Jesus’ words: “Many are called, and few are chosen.” Chosen to live in the New Creation.

Again, a general observation.

There is more and more talk about the earth being finite. There is more and more evidence that we are facing extreme weather conditions, so unusual, so hot, so dangerous, that 2 Peter 3: 10, is now within the realm of possibilities: “But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare”. Think about that. Arctic News repeatedly mentions the danger of the methane erupting in the shallow Arctic Ocean, the most potent of all Green House Gases,

How are we to live?

The new world to come will last forever. We can only live there ‘forever’ when we NOW love it. We cannot live without love. If God so loved the world, loved it more than anything else, including his son, should we not love it also, following God’s example? Only when we love the world with our heart, soul and mind, with every molecule we possess, then we too will inherit the earth.

Climate Change reflects our ‘sins against Creation’. It will give us ‘hell on earth’. Today we experience the perils, outlined in Matthew 24. Repent. Move into Metanoia, new thinking encompassing New Creation conditions. It is not too late, but remember: “Many are called, but few are chosen.”

Can today’s church still bring the New Creation Message in word and deed?

A NEW WORLD ORDER IS COMNG.

That is the title of an article in the New York Times, this past week. The editorial was written by one of the most famous historians of our age: Margaret MacMillan, a former warden of St. Antony’s College, Oxford. And a Canadian scholar.

The headline had a stark conclusion: We Aren’t Ready.

Her article in the New York Times, points to a change in the here and now. Some excerpts. Here are her words, in part.

“When a storm is coming, there will always be signs. The wind might suddenly drop. The tide goes out farther than usual. Streamers of clouds sail across the sky.

“It’s possible to misread or even ignore these signs — to insist that the drops of rain are just a passing shower — until it’s too late. That’s when the real trouble arrives.

“What is true of weather is also true of human affairs. Regimes look strong until they don’t. Revolutions at home and upheavals in the international order — the two so often go together — are easy to see in retrospect, but are not always anticipated. Yet if we look closer, we’ll often find the signs were there.

“Today, new temperature records have been set and reset this summer, the earth has baked in droughts, and wildfires have raged. Debt across advanced economies is approaching historic highs. Cuts in medical and food aid, most significantly by the United States, have caused unnecessary deaths and helped the spread of diseases, one of which, sooner or later, could become another pandemic. Artificial intelligence continues its rapid, unregulated rise, threatening jobs, security and, in darker projections, human existence.”

She continues:

“Revisionist powers flout rules and norms with impunity. Electorates are angry and volatile. Slow, deliberate, necessarily discreet diplomacy, which builds trust and understanding, has given way to a performative, brash style more suited for TikTok-addled attention spans or the playground.”

Here she points to Trump, of course.

“A world war is not inevitable, but the threat of a catastrophic conflict between big and well-armed powers is closer than it has been for decades.

“But a new reality has arrived with startling speed. The world order that held together for most of our lives started to erode when those within it got too comfortable and complacent, and when there was too much acceptance — even approval — of bad behavior.

“We have arrived in a new age of disorder. We must prepare ourselves, which begins with being honest about the seriousness of the moment we’re in, and accepting that our fragile system is faltering. And that any future of cooperation will have to look different.”

So far Margaret MacMillan.

My comments: I was immediately reminded of a saying by the Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, who said: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

This confirms MacMillan’s words in much starker terms.

I don’t have to repeat what we daily read and observe. It’s all old news. We are like the well-known frog sitting in gradually ever hotter water, and blithely roasting to death. That example – not true in real life – indicates our lack to observe the approaching necessary ‘paradigm’ shift, the change needed to, possibly, avoid the total oblivion of all that lives and moves and has a being.

Cassandra.

Another illustration fits in perfectly. I saw a few weeks ago the 3 hours long film ODYSSEY. The movie reminded me of another character from Greek mythology:

Cassandra. She is a different famous fixture from the Greek ancient heritage. Today she rules contemporary reality.

Here’s the setting.

 The God Apollo fell in love with Cassandra, the daughter of Priamos, king of Troy. In order to seduce her, Apollo gave her the gift of prophecy. However, when she still declined his advances, he cursed her with the restriction that nobody would believe her predictions. So, when she foresaw Troy’s fall and Agamemnon’s death, they all ignored her words.

Apply her to today’s circumstances and I repeat: The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.”

We ignore at our peril, another Cassandra case.

What does today tell us about tomorrow?

Jesus has the answer. Matthew 24 reveals that his disciples too were anxious about the future. They were suffering under Roman occupation, and wondered when it would end. I know exactly the feeling, having, as a teenager, lived 5 years under the Hitler – Nazi regime. Then too the longing was for liberation; it came, however, with fires and death.

Now the entire world suffers from ‘unnatural’ natural disasters, with a Super El Nino on the way, and wars and rumors of war multiplying.

Matthew 24 says it all. Read it aloud, and tell your family. The Bible warns us repeatedly that the end of our comfortable lives will come suddenly, but not without warnings.

Margaret MacMillan is right: A NEW WORLD ORDER IS COMNG: the birth pains are there. Believe what the Scriptures tell us: I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away.                          (Revelation 21)

TESTING, TESTING, TESTING.

Insanity.

We’re living in an utterly insane world. No doubt about it. Two happenings stand out: Climate Change, the direct result of our infatuation with poisonous oil, fueled by our desire to speed up history, and AI, Artificial Intelligence, the brazen attempt to replace God by means of human ingenuity, inspired and infused and initiated by the Arch enemy, God’s eternal opponent, who was kicked out of heaven, and landed, feet first, on earth. All too evident in the events unfolding now.

TESTING: Is the church still a counterweight?

The church has basically become powerless, mainly because of its preaching of leaving the earth and going to heaven, promoting this heresy either actively or by implication. Of course, just as in World War II, 1939-45, in the Netherlands where I was born and lived till 1951, there were pockets of resistance to the German occupation, so too, today, there are reforming attempts by an Earth/Church movement, a sort of fifth column contingent consisting of a roaming remnant of religious refugees.

TESTING: Can they still affect change?

The climate crisis means that we have to change everything – the way we live, the way we produce, the way we trade, the way we travel, the way we eat, the way we think, the way we pray, the way we bring THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE. Of course, these needed changes ain’t gonne te happen: too drastic. So, God is going to affect the change Himself.

Should I mention debt?

In addition of the climate debt, which is too immense to be repaid or restored, there also is monetary debt, expressed in dollars or euros. The boastful US president who wants America to be first, has a first in the per capita national debt of $115,000 for each of the 350 million American, in addition to their personal debt, such as mortgage, car payments, credit card money owed. It all is based on steady, well-paying jobs, now endangered by AI taking over routine work.

TESTING GOD.

There is fierce competition out there who or what will rule the world. The final battle is about to happen. Not only we are being tested: God too is on probation.

Of course, this has always been the age-old contest, starting in Paradise, openly staged in the Bible, as recorded in 1 Kings 18, describing a contest between God and Baal.

As Robert Wright puts it in his bookThe God Test: “Never before has the near-term future … held such a wide array of not-implausible paths for humankind that would be so wildly transformative.” But will this be heaven or hell? Heaven, says Elon Musk, who predicts “an age of amazing abundance” – although he also sees a 10-20% chance of killer robots murdering us all. Hell is more likely according to Geoffrey Hinton, one of the intellectual founding fathers of AI. “My intuition is, we’re toast,” he told an interviewer in 2023. And talking to Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Infinity Machine, a book about the quest for superintelligence, Hinton estimates p(doom) – the probability of human extinction – at 50%, “because I haven’t got a clue how to estimate the real number”. “As soon as evolution [of AI] kicks in, we’re fucked,” he adds cheerfully. But whether it’s God or Godzilla, artificial superintelligence is just around the corner.

That battle, that age-old battle, is now reaching a climax.

TESTING TECHNOLGY.

There was a prophet, a French Christian, Jacques Ellul, who wrote The Technological Society, more than 70 years ago. I bought the English version in 1965.

In his 1954 book the French author and philosopher Jacques Ellul discusses an idea he refers to as “technique,” which he defines as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity”; in other words, the idea of technology divorced from any specific machine, advancement, innovation, or field of science or industry.

After putting forth his definition, Ellul offered a startling hypothesis: Technology has already outpaced humanity, and it is only a matter of time before humans lose control over it. Having control over a particular type of technology, such as computers or automobiles, is meaningless, Ellul believes, because technology as a whole has a life and mind of its own. Furthermore, he fears any solution we might develop to counter the controlling effects of technology has already been countered by technology itself, even if we do not know the details of said solution. That is how far ahead we’ve allowed technology to progress. This hypothesis is especially startling when one considers that it has been more than 70 years since Ellul formulated it.

Jacques Ellul. A true prophet.

Testing times.

God is testing us. Life is always a battle: Now the lines are drawn: succumb to the machine, or live the Kingdom life in preparation for the New World to come.

Pray without ceasing, especially for the roaming remnant of religious refugees, me included, both within the church and elsewhere. Always thinking and hoping.

CHRISTIANITY IS NOT A RELIGION.

Here is what my gut feelings tell me. “I believe that we have come to the last stage of human history, the final episode before Christ’s Return, signified by God’s abandonment. I call it the ‘God eclipse’”. Combine this with, what I see as the failure of the church to ‘preach and practise THE CREATION WORD’, and, I detect a perfect point for the Parousia to appear.

We don’t know the day or the hour.

Of course, I am aware that this event cannot be pinpointed by the day and hour, as my second cousin, Harold Egbert Camping, tried to do: He should have known better, as a one-time elder in the Christian Reformed Church.

I believe that through my mother’s lineage, the Hielema/de Haan clan has inherited a strain of evangelical zeal. I see it in myself, in 2 of my brothers, one a popular preacher, another set on promoting ‘ethics’ in the international construction industry, whose son, too, has a missionary mind. So has my eldest.

But first some more background. 

Humans, as already has happened with the Tower of Babel, today, through their advanced ‘technology’ have become more and more God-like, and more and more abusive of God’s creation. Drake Thomas, who works on safety at Anthropic, an AI Company, went to X, and tweeted: “Not only is A.I. “not guaranteed” to make a dramatically better future, the odds of failure are terrifyingly high: I think there’s something like a 40 percent chance we get an outcome around as bad as human extinction or worse”.

That is only one example of the dangerous enterprises today’s people are engaged in. Trump is another example, and, of course, the most striking segment is Climate Change, now on track to cause a major disruption in the world’s food supply, this year being a mere opening salvo of what is to come.

More background.

Several writers have commented on the God/Creation issue. Sabine Dramm, in her commentary on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s thoughts, summarizes his teaching with this striking sentence: “What Bonhoeffer presents as specific to the Christian faith is the perception of God and the world as one.”

Dr. Friedman ends his book, “The Hidden Face of God”, with a similar thought: “There is some likelihood that the universe is the hidden face of God”. (The emphasis on ‘is’ is in the original). If this is true, and I think this is, ‘a sin against creation is a sin against God.

The foregoing is completely in line with John 3: 16: Creation is Holy, as Karen Armstrong shows in her book: Sacred Nature. I assert that Creation is more holy than the Bible, as Creation is God’s direct Word, while the Bible is God’s indirect Word.

That really means thatthe church is on the wrong track. It should ‘practise and preach’ the Holy Creation, should advocate fashioning a life style that reflects this belief, no longer following a set of dogmatic doctrines, no longer seeing ‘faith’ as part of life, but making faith all of life. Christianity is not a religion: It is LIFE.

Just as the Old Testament Church – based on the Mosaic laws – got increasingly mired in  legalistic and ritualistic rigmarole, the New Testament church got stuck on the Bible, the written word, basically resulting in the same situation as its predecessor. Both stages ignored God’s Created Word.

A good friend sent me a short book by Robin Wall Kimmerer, an indigenous writer and teaching professor of Environmental Biology at the State University in Syracuse, NY. “The Serviceberry” portrays a vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world”. Basically, Christianity is not a church organism, with dogmas and confessions: Christianity is a way of life, an intimate correlation between faith and creation.

The Amsterdam Free University Professor J.H. Bavinck, in his book, “Between the Beginning and the End”, writes: “It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”

It’s impossible for me to picture the New Creation, the world to come: Africa will be there; Canada will be there; Europe will be there, but gone is the Eiffel Tower and the Louvres, but the Seine River will still flow into the sea. Trees will be there, mature ones and saplings. Vast forests, and plenty of animals, and birds, immense in number.

Paint your own picture.

No, Christianity is not a religion: It is a Uniter. Christianity unites God, the World and Humanity. Religion is a Divider, splinters the World into hundreds of different, often competing, factions.

Christ came to bring LIFE, and that to the FULL. (John 10: 10)

Christianity is not religion. Christianity is LIFE!

 

 

WE ARE ON OUR OWN.

I SHALL HIDE MY FACE FROM THEM. I SHALL SEE WHAT THEIR END WILL BE.

                                                               Deuteronomy 31: 17

In this week’s blog I venture into – for me – new thinking. It is my gut feeling that new ideas must be offered, new thinking in which God, although ultimately in charge, has transferred his authority over his beloved creation to us, fallible humans. Yes: we are on our own!

My exploration will touch on three fields.

(!) Church teaching

(2) AI

(3) Climate Change.

Let me start with current Church teaching, which often proclaims Rapture, an embroidery of “The Heaven Heresy”, embraced by the greater majority of church attendees, reason why many of the traditional church hymns hail heaven.

Just one example among hundreds.

Among these songs is this super-pious, quite popular “By the Sea of Crystal, Saints in glory stand….. robed in white apparel”, with the final line: “They now reign in heaven with the Lamb of God.” The lyrics are inspired by Revelation 4: 6-8.

What great unbiblical nonsense.

John 3: 16 roars its thorn-crowned head: “God so loved THE WORLD! Jesus died to restore CREATION!

I once heard the late Dr. Lewis Smedes, of Fuller Seminary, comment: “How monotonous, how uniform, how boring: who wants to go in heaven!”. In eternity with 10,000 different butterflies, with 10,000 varieties of tiny insects, every ‘saint’ too will be unique, will dress as their personality portrays, and, with eternity ahead, will, at leisure, explore God’s world.

But, with God out of the picture for now, we are left with God’s legacy: His creation: treasure it, explore it, advance it, love it: become more cosmos oriented, less Bible-centered: Implement Psalm 119: 105. It’s now the way to Salvation. It’s God’s Word for our times.

Another example.

The Old is New again. The Old Testament church organization is coming back: both the US Vice President, and the US secretary of War, promote ‘Back to the Old Testament religious rules, where women are seen as inferior and subservient’. Of course, they jettison Jesus in the process. Too controversial.

Here is a more truth-full line: the conclusion of The Apostles’ Creed:

I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.

This creed, adopted by all Protestant and Roman Catholic denominations, put to rest the Heaven Heresy forever, as well as the Rapture Riddle, totally refuted in that dominant Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus points out that the sinners all drowned, and Noah’s clan was saved, contrary to Hal Lindsey’s Lie in his deeply erroneous book, “The Late Great Planet Earth”.

That 1970 book, first published by Zondervan, sold over 28 million copies and was translated into 54 languages. Rapture took over Jesus, vividly illustrated in the “Left Behind” films and books.

The Late Great Planet Earth illustrates God’s last words to Moses, recorded in Deuteronomy 31: 17, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be”.

The End?

I argue that today these words are fulfilled: In essence God has disappeared, and we are visibly experiencing the End, now a daily phenomenon. Just check the news.

Take a look at AI.

There’s a new book out, written by Robert Wright, dealing

 with the evolutionary significance and geopolitics of artificial intelligence. It is called “The God Test”.

In a New York Times’ interview he concluded that “If there’s no international coordination, if we don’t have significantly more international coordination than we have now, very bad things will happen.”

It is striking that Robert Wright entitled his book The God Test. AI – like the Tower of Babel – is a direct challenge to replace God as the world’s ruler.

Climate.

Jesus warned us to be constantly on the lookout for ‘signs of the Last Days’. Said he: Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.     Matthew 24: 33.

In that same chapter Jesus mentions a long list of perils, many of which we are experiencing now, including fire. Just as AI, Climate Change has the potential to end the world. All our doing. God has no hand in this. We are on our own: God help us.

I SHALL HIDE MY FACE FROM THEM. I SHALL SEE WHAT THEIR END WILL BE.

Be ready. I will give Peter the last word.

But the day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare. 2 Peter 3: 10.

“If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”                                          Matthew 24: 2

SOME IMPROMPTU IMPRESSIONS.

But first: a solemn statement: I will never use AI in my writing.

We – I – live in apocalyptic times, times that will suddenly convert to the glorious future, accelerated by the erratic actions of one man: Donald Trump. Today, partly thanks to him, the entire world is upside down, is in disarray, is no longer steadfast and predictable, has lost its focus, and teeters on collapse, as promises are perishing, treaties are teared up, earlier contracts are canceled, and stability surrendered.

But remember: All this is part of God’s plan to speed up Parousia.

Even the weather weighs in.

Is it also the unpredictable weather that will speed up the change? Are the global fires the last straw?

The word ‘apocalypse’ really means ‘revelation’; it indicates that the veneer, that flimsy film of civility, that binding bonding of common goals and mutual aims is torn away, and disarray dawns, with personal gain as the aim.

Economic growth.

‘Economic’ growth, has pushed away Climate concerns: producing more tar-sand oil, deeply polluting, suddenly in fashion. Canada is embracing an all-out pursuit of regional and national priorities, never mind tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow has disappeared. Tomorrow brings sorrow. Tomorrows will not follow today anymore. Seize the Day, because tomorrow brings judgement.

Tomorrow? Ignore tomorrow. God is dead. Long live today. Apocalypse? A fable. Close off your minds. Blindfold reason. Make war instead. Peace is for sissies. Peace is so yesterday. War in heaven drowns out peace on earth. Judgement? Unconstitutional. Parousia? Christ coming again? Heaven beckons. The future? The future has vanished. We have used up the future. We now live the future.   The only future we talk about are different dystopian scenarios involving climate, demography, artificial intelligence. The future is now. God help us.

The real Future…..

“The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.” Acts 2: 30.

This text is a quote by the volatile, the impetuous Peter, the deeply believing, butterfly Peter, the perfect personality for a gifted disciple, popular, political, personal. Think Bill Clinton. Think Obama. Think Justin Trudeau. Think many gospel preachers.

We can’t do anything without God; God won’t do anything without us.

Today, anno 2026-7, is the appointed age to broadcast the gospel through the available media, especially the World-Wide-Web.

Time is speeding up.

Events are going much faster than before: there is an accelerated process going on, unprecedented in human history in its 10,000 years of recorded events. There then was the Ice Ag, and when it receded, more or less liveable conditions replaced the age of extreme cold.

Now we are going the other way: too hot, too dry. The Age of Alteration, the Age of Transition, the Age of Extinction, the Age of Fire, the Age of Purification, the Age of Newness, the Age of Perfection, the Age of Divine Rule, the Age of Ages, the Age of all whom the Lord has called.

It took humanity 10,000 years to live divinely, to live ‘normally’, to live ‘inspired’, to abide by God’s commands, to see and live and breathe and be inspired to abide by the LOVE rule for eternity.

“Many are called, and few are chosen”, is the just verdict of the Creator, now being implemented, at the demise of the age of aberration, at the end of the educational stage of the offspring of Adam and Eve, the stage necessary to prepare the children of God for life in eternity, the life of Integer Vitae, the life Christ lived, a life to the full, as prescribed in John 10: 10, in that Book, the Book of Life.

We are playing Russian Roulette with all the chambers loaded.

Add AI.

Russian Roulette: Sam Bankman-Fried of AI fame, was asked in a podcast: “If you could flip a coin, and it was 51 percent odds you would double the total amount of human welfare and a 49 percent chance everyone dies, would you flip the coin?” He said ‘yes’’.

I think this is a hyperbolic example, but I also think it’s not actually that far off from what a lot of the people building superintelligence believe, too. That they are basically willing to flip the coin.

The odds for Climate Change are no odds anymore. It is becoming inevitable. The Poles are melting. An extreme El Nino is building up. The rice and cereal crops are wilting. Millions will be starving.

The Lord is a gracious Ruler. “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”                                                                                                              Matthew 24: 22.

We now, Anno 2026-7, enter that period of ‘grace’, thanks to the elect.

YES: SOME IMPROMPTU IMPRESSIONS.