FACING DEATH.

Pray non-stop.

Last week I was about to cross the busy road running through the village. I saw no traffic coming from the South, and the traffic light to the North was red, so, I proceeded my way without a worry, when, suddenly a heavy gravel truck rushed past me, missing me by inches, having ignored the red light: I had been a few seconds away from sure death. 

That episode reminded me of Psalm 91: “God will command his angels to guard you”. Yes, I believe in guardian angels. In my book, DAY WITHOUT END, the very first person I meet in the New Creation, is my guardian angel, whom I have named Cornelius for no obvious reason. He welcomes me to my ‘perfect after death LIFE,’ and is, in my story, eager to introduce me to life in eternity.

Quitting TV.

Months ago, I simply abandoned watching TV. I suddenly saw it as sheer superficial, with its constant advertising and sensational stories. 

Television is, in my opinion, leading and has led to our spiritual death by giving us a distorted view on the immense dangers we face as a society. Neil Postman, in his AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH, was right when he wrote a book with that title in 1985. With him, I believe that Television has contributed to the ascent of the godless Trump, has sped up the decline of ecclesiastical Christianity, and totally obscured the rise of Climate Change. 

And then there is Political Death.

On November 5, the day of the American election, ‘DEATH’ is on the ballot. 

Choosing Trump and the Republican ticket, is choosing death over life. It is not that Kamala Harris is perfect, but at least she stands for democratic principles and regard for creation as we experienced the deity in ‘nature’.

How do we live out the ‘last days?’

Now more than ever, to live ‘religiously’, means walking in the footsteps of Jesus. He simply told us in John 10: 10 “to live LIFE and that to the full.” Jesus did not call us to a new religious setup, of whatever color and stripe, but to LIFE in all its manifestations. Christian living does not mean being ‘religious’ in some way, rather it means being a true human being.

Television tears us away from ‘true’ life, and leads us to death.  Christ’s first miracle was to make the best wine ever, at a 7-days (!) wedding celebration. No wonder his opponents – the religious authorities – called him ‘a glutton’ and a ‘winebibber’. The loudest laugh came from Jesus!

Pray without ceasing.

More than ever, we need prayer, and pray for Christ’s return, as we now live in pure godless times.

Here is my prayer to sustain me in the perilous period ahead:

God of heaven and earth, listen to me.

Teach me respect and solidarity with all created matter.

Teach me to remain of sound mind.

Teach me to live in peace with each other, as members of households, as relatives, as community, as nations, as humanity.

Teach me to assume responsibility, to have patience and hope, even in these testing times, always ready to extend and embrace love.

Gracious and merciful God, teach me to choose 

The way of goodness. 

When I stumble, help me to get up.

Teach me assist others, and do so unconditionally for the benefit of the earth that sustains me.

I pray to walk in your Light, and so see Light.

I pray that the breath of your words may surround me and

Teach me to taste the goodness of life,

And embrace peace, shalom.

I pray to always look forward to the New Creation 

That is rushing on, and always live in

The full expectation and confidence of its imminent 

Arrival.

I pray for love, love that extends beyond my immediate communities, so that what I do and say reflects your love.

May I live the resurrection life,

I pray, Merciful Lord, to be a helper and protector on my way.

I see so much suffering in your world.

Please Lord, hasten your coming, so that pain and dislocation, 

Through wars and natural disasters, may cease, and your glorious future 

May arrive.

Amen.

Death is inevitable.

There is a saying: The only certainties in life are death and taxes: of the two, death is the ultimate inevitable, our own death, and also the death of our current way of life, which is totally unsustainable, as the symptoms of death and extinction become more evident by the day.

In the Lord’s prayer we often say, “Forgive us our trespasses”, without realizing, or even wanting to know that almost all of our actions mean ‘trespassing’ in your holy creation, simple matters such as driving our cars, and turning on a light, and heating our large homes cause pollution

Forgive us.

TURMOIL TRIGGERS TURMOIL; FIRES FOSTER FIRES.

Gazing into the future – falteringly, of course.

The future fascinates me. I know how it will end: Global heating only has one ending: fire. Only fire has the built-in feature of complete cleansing, a ‘from the roots up, radical, comprehensive, all-consuming cure’. 

Why?

Because a realistic look at the environmental situation today, reveals that nothing has been left unaltered: nothing pristine, pure, has been preserved: from water to air, from soil to souls, everything and everybody has become de-purified, as turmoil triggers turmoil.

Fire reminds me of the last Old Testament book, Malachi. There, in 3: 2 it says: “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.”

I like that imagery of ‘refiner’s fire and complete cleansing,’ taking out all impurities, restoring the earth and her inhabitants, to their original pristine state. With Noah’s Flood, only the then humanity there was taken away: creation itself remained untouched. Now it is different: everything, everybody needs restoration.

Ignoring the situation is no solution.

Of course, we can ignore ‘the signs of the times’, but the happenings are unmistaken. Turmoil is everywhere, in ‘nature’, in business, in politics, in churches, in gender: no wonder that gold, pure gold, is soaring, seen as the last unpolluted resource. 

Nothing is sure anymore. 

‘Turmoil’, the word itself, reminds me of terminal: many of the same letters. The word ‘terminal’ has a distinct meaning, as in ‘bus terminal’, the final destination, or as in a sickness that is terminal, meaning death. Turmoil also reminds me whirling waters with their sucking sounds, their dragging down whatever is in their swirling grip to their doom.

Where are the hopeful signs?

Cop 16 on Biodiversity is meeting right now in Columbia, while the 2024 UN Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC COP 29) will convene from 11 to 22 November 2024 in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Frankly, these meetings only add to the problems, as very little of the pledges is implemented. All around the world the tide of war is rising. Russia is bent on conquering Ukraine. Iran is fighting a proxy war with Israel. China is preparing to invade Taiwan. North Korea regularly threatens the South with annihilation. 

The new dangers

Perhaps citizens of the other democracies imagine the fight can be contained to these theatres. No such possibility. Whether they know it or not, the war is already being taken to them, in stealth or hybrid form: sabotage, intimidation, infiltration and disinformation, all using the West’s signature strength, its openness and freedom, against it.

Russia has been waging an increasingly intense war of sabotage across Europe. Iran has helped to fund the violent anti-Israel street protests that have convulsed much of the West. Chinese hackers are inventing new and more destructive forms of cyber warfare. The new war is fought unseen, using the magic of stealth. 

In the meantime, natural disasters multiply: we have either too much heat or not enough, too much water, or not enough. Artificial Intelligence – AI – and Bitcoin, as well as bottled water from springs sustain a virtual world that will be wiped out if we don’t leave enough water for crops, livestock, wildlife, and, yes, people. 

Reality, the naked truth, is disappearing. 

There is a sense that we have accepted that virtual landscapes have the same validity as real ones, and yet this is so utterly untrue as to feel perverse, wrong, unsettling. It threatens to mean that we strip-mine the world of its meaning to the point of having to exist as online entities (a deranged idea) because nothing else is left. Scientists say human activity has pushed the world into the danger zone in seven out of eight indicators of planetary safety. Under a business-as-usual scenario, biodiversity loss will accelerate, with more species surviving only in zoos. More than 70 percent of large wild animals have disappeared: we have taken away their habitat.

At the very moment when all human ingenuity is needed to repair the damage done to God’s creation, we waste our ever-shrinking wealth to wage universal war, not merely against each other, but especially against the natural elements: air, water, soil. 

And where is ‘faith’?

Amos 8: 12 says it all: People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the LORD, but they will not find it. It is exactly our disregard for the Created Word, so well defined in John 3:16-17, God’s love for the cosmos, that lies at the heart of our predicament.

The danger of a huge temperature rise is very large in the Arctic, where vast amounts of methane are held in sediments at the seafloor and in permafrost on land, and where there is very little hydroxyl in the air to break down the methane. 

Turmoil triggers turmoil. Fires foster fires.

MY BODY IS HOLY

I believe in the resurrection of the body, and Life Everlasting.

                                                               The Apostles’ Creed

I am an expert in the field of aging, having just turned 96, and, fortunately, being in good health. My sight is good, my movements slower, my steps careful, and my hearing bad. The best hearing aids still keep me out of a general conversation, but enables me to have good person-to-person contact. 

My day-to-day routine suits me: in bed before 9.30 pm, up at 7.30 am, and usually sleep quite soundly. 

My wife, who died 4 years ago, trained me well for independence. Living alone, far from my 5 children (the nearest is Toronto, some 225km away), I am very fortunate that almost each week one of them visits, especially the oldest of my three daughters, who comes every other week from Tuesday nights to Thursday afternoon and arranges the necessary appointments for medical and other purposes. My other two daughters live in the USA.

I quit smoking, and started running.

My long life is, I believe, due to my routine. I quit smoking in 1961 when I saw one of my clients die of lung cancer, and vouched not to die in that manner, so I banned cigarettes and started running, which I replaced with walking a few years ago, and still do faithfully almost each day: 4,000+ steps, for 40 minutes. I believe that my body is God’s personal gift to me, which makes it holy, and requires my utmost consideration. That’s why I eat well, vegetarian, and, thanks to my church affiliation, I have 3 social contacts each week. Loneliness kills: books too are good friends.

Statistics.

Over the past century, life expectancy at birth in Canada has risen substantially to 79.8 years for males, and 83.9 years for females, but now, I read that the increase in the overall age in the Western world has stalled, and is even decreasing in the USA where men, on the average live 74.8 years, and females 80.2. 

In the world of statistics, Hong Kong ranks first with an average age of close to 90, while Canada is #20 on the list. I imagine that this is partly due to the deplorable state of health of our first-nation population, and the stress immigration takes on the many people: Last year Canada admitted ONE million newcomers.

Our village has a large clinic: 3 doctors and lots of support staff, nurses and nurse practitioners. It’s all free, fully tax supported, due in part to a 13% HST – Harmonized Sales Tax. 

We are aging, and so in our planet. 

We are not the only ones growing old: so is the planet: It too is up for renewal. This week I read that 2023 was the hottest year ever recorded: an international team of researchers has discovered that the amount of carbon absorbed by land has temporarily collapsed and that forests, plants and soil absorbed almost no carbon. That makes the outlook worrisome.

There are warning signs at sea, too. Greenland’s glaciers and Arctic ice sheets are melting faster than expected, which is disrupting the Gulf Stream Ocean current and slows the rate at which oceans absorb carbon. For the algae-eating zooplankton, melting sea ice is exposing them to more sunlight – a shift that could keep them in the depths for longer, disrupting the vertical migration that stores carbon on the ocean floor.

Yes, we live in a finite world. 

Every day we read of species under threat of extinction. Every day we notice more dangers, more hurricanes, more destructive unnatural disasters. Soon Florida, the winter destination of many, may become uninhabitable, as well as parts of Africa, where drought is forcing people to relocate.

And then there is the economy. All parts of the economy operate in cycles. In fact, individual people, individual businesses, and individual governments all have finite lifespans. We now seem to be coming to the end of an economic cycle. We don’t know precisely how this will end. We do know, based on history, that the downward part of the cycle will likely take years to resolve.

Yes, the earth is holy.

Karen Armstrong, in her book, SACRED NATURE, outlines how through human history, religions have regarded the earth divine. Bonhoeffer saw creation as an extension of the Creator, just as Bach and his music are one.  Psalm 24 says it so beautifully: “The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. Everything that belongs to God is holy: you, I, the trees, the soil, the seas, the air, the animals: we all reflect God’s greatness. That’s why I believe in the resurrection of the body, and Life Everlasting, and that in a perfect world.

PURE SPECULATION?

This week’s ‘blog’ is mostly about numbers, so, here is one: #1,187! That means that, since the year 2,000, I have written 1,186 articles, almost one (1) each week. The first 505 were also published in the regional daily newspaper, the Belleville-based ‘Intelligencer’, sometimes called ‘the Stupidifier’.

Why do I write? 

Two reasons: I think have something to say, and I know how to say it in a way that reflects Biblical truths. I also believe that the church in general, is hampered by its structure, which makes it difficult, if not impossible, to proclaim ‘the gospel of the kingdom’. 

That said, something that struck me this week: the number ‘’THREE”. Why Three? Well, I have a peculiar habit. When I see a 4 or less digit number, I, in my mind – without a calculator – try to reduce it to its basic or ‘prime number’ status. Take this year, 2024, an even number, thus divisible by 2 or multiple, so, 1012, 506, 253 which is divisible by 23, giving it 11 as the prime number. And 2025? Easy: 81 x 25, with 81 being 3 x 3 x 3 x 3. (3-9-27-81). That indicates that next year, 2025, has THREE as its prime number.

So, what is so peculiar about ‘the number THREE’?

In Scripture the number ‘three’ represents that which is solid, real, substantial, and something in its completeness.  This number indicates something of importance or significance in God’s plan of salvation by identifying an important event in Salvation History.  This number operates as a “sign-post” in Scripture study for the reader to “pay attention” to the significance of the next event.  

That’s how one commentator explains The Number Three. So, does the next year really figure in God’s plan for Salvation? It scares the wits out of me to even hint that it may be the year of Christ’s return! 

I have read that there are 4 perfect numbers in the Bible:  3 (divine perfection); 7 (spiritual perfection); 10 (ordinal perfection); and 12 (governmental perfection). The question that haunts me is: will 2025, with its divine base number, become ‘perfect’?

But first some substantiation, why THREE is prominent in both the Old and the Newer Testament.

The earth was separated from the waters on the 3^rd day and life began [Genesis 1:9-13].

There were three Patriarchs of the children of Israel: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob/Israel.

After the Great Flood humanity descended from the three sons of Noah: Shem, Ham, and Japheth [Genesis 10:1-32].

Three “men” announced to Abraham that his barren wife would bear a son [Genesis 18:14].

Baby Moses was hidden by his mother for three months [Exodus 2:1]. The adult Moses asked Pharaoh that he let Moses take his people on a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifice to their God [Exodus 3:18].

There were three divisions of the Tabernacle and later the Temple in Jerusalem: the Outer Court, the Holy Place, and the Holy of Holies. 

Jonah spent three days in the belly of the great fish [Jonah 2:1]; Jonah took three days to journey across the city of Nineveh [Jonah 3:3].

In the New Testament:

Jesus’ ministry lasted three years, covering three Passovers [John 2:13; 6:4; 11:55-12:1].

Mary stayed with Elizabeth about three months [Luke 1:56].

Jesus was missing for three days when He was 12 years old [Luke 2:46].

Jesus took Peter, James, and John up on the Mt. of Transfiguration [Matthew 17:1-8; Mark 9:2;Luke 9:28-36].

Jesus arose from the dead on the third day. [Matthew 16:21, 

Saul was blinded for three days [Acts 9:9].

The theological virtues are faith, hope and charity {1 Corinthians 13:13].

The heavenly Jerusalem has three gates on each of its four sides [Revelation 21:13].

Christians saw three as symbolic of the Trinity, the nature of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit [Matthew 28:19].

In Addition:

There are three divisions of time: past, present, and future.

There are three persons represented in grammar: She/he/it.

Thought, word, and deed complete the sum of human capacity. 

Back to today. 

On September 16 I posted a NEW blog:

WILL WE BE ALIVE IN 2025, WHO WILL SURVIVE, 2025? 

In it I quote ARCTIC NEWS:

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

Will we be alive in 2025, who will survive, 2025?

 

 

This past week the British Guardian had this headline:

Earth’s ‘vital signs’ show humanity’s future in balance, say climate experts

Record emissions, temperatures and population mean more scientists are looking into possibility of societal collapse, report says.

PURE SPECULATION? Yes. Why? Because 2 Peter 3: 10 tells us:

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.

 

And Yet…………

 

 

 

COMING TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU.

But first: A bit about me.

I guess I am a preacher at heart. My parents wanted me to become one ever since I was born. So, in 1941 – an unpolished 13 years old – they sent me to the ‘gymnasium’, the private 6 grades prep school for ministers and doctors, not at all ready to study academics, but near the end I caught on, almost too late.

My fiancée (we were engaged August 31 1950) told me that if I were to choose theology, she would break the engagement. I have no idea why she felt that way. Her father was a celebrated preacher, who died in 1937, at the age of 49, leaving her mother with 12 children, the last one yet to be born. Perhaps her father’s profession, his almost God-like status as minister was a factor.

Actually, in my very early youth I did have the ambition to become missionary in the Netherlands East Indies – now Indonesia – where our denomination operated a mission field on the island of Celebes. Every few years, on Mission Day, one of the two ‘zendelingen = missionaries’ there, would sail home – 6 weeks – and show off a colored convert, a rarity before 1940. 

I now wonder whether my internet writing expresses the secret desire to be a missionary to the world. On a typical day – October 2 – my blog attracted 11 visitors: 1 from Ukraine, 2 from Berlin, Germany, 2 from Lebanon, 3 from Ontario, 1 from Baltimore, 2 from an unknown destination. I also send it to some 20 regulars.

When I survey the ‘religious’ scene, I see mostly sterility, near total absence of the New Creation concept, and the Kingdom to come. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and J.H. Bavinck are the lone exceptions.  

Cognitive Dissonance.

Despite the fact that we face an existential threat from climate change—with droughts, floods, violent storms and wildfires becoming more frequent and more violent — we’re still waiting for someone to rouse the world to real action. True, the UN leader, Antonio Guterres, has issued ever stronger warnings, but the UN lacks executive power. Soon, end November, a new COP meeting will take place: will it truly expound the consequences of our riotous living?

And we? We live the lie.

What happens elsewhere, will happen here: there are no safe places left, and for young people there’s no future anymore. The air they breathe is suspect, the soil sterile, the water contaminated. The politicians have demonstrated time and again they cannot be trusted. 

It was different in my youth: I lived through five years of cruel German occupation. What kept us alive was the ‘hope’ of liberation which came in May 1945. There’s no such hope now.

Today there is no such hope.

The numbers are in. I have 13 grandchildren and 9 great grandchildren, all healthy and, yes, wealthy. Yet, a child born now will experience 24 times the number of extreme climate events as one born in the 1960s. They are the wretched, damned for the sins of others, me included. The burden of that legacy is being expressed physically and mentally right now in every time zone and culture: and IT’S COMING TO A LOCATION NEAR YOU. Look at the devastation in the US South: not much different from Gaza and the West bank in the Middle East.

The root of the trouble we face is the holding of two conflicting beliefs.

The root of the trouble we face is the holding of two conflicting beliefs. To wit: We know climate change is an imminent threat, but we also continue to rely on oil—the burning of which is the primary cause of climate change. It’s called: Cognitive dissonance.

Here’s the thing, though: Burning fossil fuel is not the most economical way to generate power — not when you actually account for the costs associated with the effects of climate change, a bill that’s going to come due sooner rather than later. (Climate-related disasters have already cost the U.S. alone trillions since 1980, and they’re only getting worse.) Oil producers, however, aren’t forced to bear those costs — future generations will be. In the meantime, the oil giants will be allowed to continue selling oil even as the world quite literally burns down around them. Even now, scores of wildfires are raging across the world, only to get worse next year.

Cognitive Dissonance also affects the TRUMP tragedy. We know he is a crook, but we also see him as a smart operator; the same applies to super-processed food. We know it is a health risk, but our motto is: ‘enjoy the hour: tomorrow we die’. And then there is the ‘heaven heresy’: it is more comfortable and cozier to believe in this illusory destination than longing for a new earth, and trying to live it now.

Cognitive Dissonance: It rules our life and prevents us from living.

THE CHURCH AND THE NATURAL WORLD.

In my youth, there used to be an answer to the question of ‘how to live as a Christian’. The pat reply then was: “We live to honor God”. That was then acceptable, but now it needs fleshing out. Jesus, in John 10: 10, touches on this, when He says that “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.”

Apply this to today’s situation, it seems to me that WE are the thief, WE kill and destroy, WE do harm, no matter how careful we are, no matter how good our intentions are. 

Of course, I try to avoid stealing, killing and destroying, but I have been – like all of us Westerners – sucked into a mode of living that consists of stealing, killing and destroying. 

Just one example of our cruel extravagance. Worldwide, 80 billion animals are slaughtered every year for meat. Raising all those animals has already claimed most of the world’s farmland. It has led to zoonotic diseases and vast deforestation. It has polluted air and water and spewed planet-heating gasses into the atmosphere.  

That’s why I sincerely believe that today, now, Anno 2024, it is our Christian duty to be vegetarian:  it’s healthier, and, yes, it prepares us for LIFE to come: fully vegetarian!

I don’t think we fully fathom the destruction we have wrought and still do, to God’s creation, his work of art, that fully reflect His being. There really is need for daily praying, “Forgive us our trespasses”. 

Jesus lived a life in complete symbiosis with God’s handiwork and, as John 3: 16-17 tells us, was willing to give his life, his divine life, in order to restore God’s precious possession, the cosmos which he gave to us for safe-keeping. 

I know, being a vegetarian, is not what the church teaches, but even the church can change, because we’re always learning, and always growing, and always adapting: change simply indicates humility, curiosity, openness, imagination. Show me someone who believes and says the exact same things about the world 20 or 10 or even 5 years ago and I’ll show you someone who hasn’t been properly living.

All this ties in with how the church’s original divine design became distorted.

The first ‘house of worship’, the tabernacle, was full of ‘nature’ symbols, replicated in the Solomon temple. The tabernacle and the temple were seen as the world in a nutshell, a microcosmos, with the deity living at the centre. 

There are several places in Scripture that illuminates this. The temple’s Holy of Holies, as well as the Holy Place, were decorated with palm trees and flowers. In 1Kings 6:29 we are specifically told that all the walls of God’s house were adorned with wooden sculptures of cherubim, palm trees and open flowers. 

In other words, the inner Holy Place was completely portrayed as a garden of golden flowers. One commentator explains this section as follows: “Perhaps the palm trees represent the trees in paradise, guarded by the cherubim (Genesis 3: 24). What is striking is that all the wall adornments are replicas of flowers, representing the Garden of Eden. It makes sense to view the temple as a facsimile of Paradise to which free access can only be obtained by way of atonement, while honoring the highest regard for God’s holiness, ensured by the presence of the cherubs.”

Think about that.

The first church designed by divine instructions, resembled Paradise. Why? Because God did not want creation to be relegated to history, but he wanted us to be daily reminded that Paradise never disappeared, then still hidden behind heavy curtains. But, when Christ died, that heavy curtain tore from top to bottom, signifying that Christ’s death restored Paradise. Think about that!

I repeat: Christ’s death restored PARADISE, our eternal destination, and, believe it or not, that’s why our very own places of worship should portray this as well.

Roman Catholic Churches.

Roman Catholic Churches, from what I have seen, portray heaven. The high ceilings often feature angels, while the windows show saints of various eras. The heaven heresy has affected Protestantism as well, as the Iconoclast in the mid 16^th Century, where all images were seen as sinful and destroyed, has influenced the Reformational churches until this day. 

Actually, deep down, Plato and Socrates have influenced the church more than Jesus and the Bible.

Our life should reflect the LIFE to come.

Life is preparatory for LIFE to come, not in heaven – an ancient Greek pagan teaching – but on a renewed earth. Churches today, following God’s instructions in the designs of His house, should reflect this New Earth. 

Somehow, thanks to Dr. John Poland, professor of Biology at Queen’s University, Kingston, our church is utilizing the grounds surrounding the building, to grow vegetables and flowers. Next should come the complete renovation of the interior, now devoid of beauty and divine radiance. 

Life is about living, living so that God’s creation is enhanced. The church should lead the way in this.