Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

PARADISE RESTORED

A curious conversation.

When Jesus was dying on the cross, he was not the only one hanging there. On his right and his left were other culprits. Jesus knew them, as he knows all people, all created beings.

 The story is told in Luke 23. The one victim confessed that he was dying for a valid reason, but that Jesus was a victim of mal-justice. The man knew that. He had followed Jesus’ life-journey. Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”  End of story. Speculation galore.

Jesus was different. He started his short mission of a mere three years as an itinerant speaker/healer by making wine at a wedding. In that he foreshadowed the place of the constant wedding feast, Paradise Restored, which became the main focus in all his parables, and the destination of his people: His Kingdom, earth renewed.

Just as Jesus began his life’s task with making and drinking wine, he ended it with it too. At the LAST SUPPER Matthew 26: 29 tells us that Jesus said: “I tell you I will not drink of this fruit of the wine from now on (emptying his cup) until that day when I drink it anew with you in the Father’s Kingdom”.

The Father’s Kingdom?

That gives a pointer to our coming destination, a physical feature: Wine.
In the NEW Creation we ALL will drink wine of a quality akin to what Jesus made at the wedding in Cana, his first miracle. He also lived gloriously. His opponents called him a glutton and a winebibber. The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.’ But wisdom is proved right by her deeds.”  (Matthew 11: 19)

Still the questions linger.

Jesus, in the prayer he left with us known as THE LORD’S PRAYER, starts with the two matters he regards the most important: (1) HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME and (2) YOUR KINGDOM COME. Both point to CREATION, the old and the new. The Heidelberg Catechism, still a mainstay of the Reformed faith, teaches us that ‘Hallowed be God’s name’, signifies the sacredness of God’s name: “Don’t swear!” in other words. However, that is NOT its meaning. In her book, Sacred Nature, Karen Armstrong lists 50 names by which believers relate to God’s name, and states that God is beyond a name. God’s signature, His Name, actually, is found on every item created. Thus, the “Hallowed be your name” phrase, really requires us to keep Creation holy. We need to maintain the earth in a pure state, as God’s name, his very own signature, is evident in every creature great and small. Read that sentence again, and then ask ourselves whether our life reflects that ‘holiness’. Perhaps a prayer for forgiveness is in order.

“Your Kingdom Come”, the second line in that prayer, asks us to fervently pray each day for Jesus’ return when he brings with him the NEW CREATION. The New York Times, this past week, published a book report: “Fearing future catastrophe is nothing new – ancient Greek and Roman philosophers all visualized the apocalypse.” Why? Because THE END today is often in the news. People sense it.

REFORMATION DAY 2026

I love Luther, the monk who was so turned on by the Bible, that he challenged the religious monopoly of his day by going public with his objections 509 years ago on October 31 1517. The breaking away from the then all-powerful church unleashed a tremendous amount of creativity, evident in such great spirits as Shakespeare and the Flemish and Dutch painters, and cultivated new approaches to music and science, philosophy and literature.

That spirit of free thinking, of new thinking, of daring thinking, seems to have stopped today. Today when so much is changing and almost everything is up for grabs, many are too distracted, too confused, too afraid, too ignorant, to entertain new ideas. Especially in the church.

We are paralyzed. We know that Climate Change looms. To believe in Climate Change means to say farewell to the AMERICAN DREAM, which meant a nice bungalow in the suburbs, a double or triple garage and an infinite supply of fossil fuel, that miraculous substance that once Made America Great. It’s all part of the Age-Old struggle to erect a human empire on the basis of a human-dominated empire.

The Real Miracle.

The real miracle is that through all these attempts, God re-establishes his eternal, unequaled Kingdom. That is the ultimate meaning of history. To believe in the Restored Paradise also means that we must say farewell to The American Dream because it means a totally different approach to life. Paradise is the unspoiled world where the total harmony of all creatures entwines everything in total cohesion. Paradise is the kingdom as seen by God on the morning of Creation, when he saw all that God had made and behold, it was very good.

And there we will be, together with Jesus. In the restored Paradise we ALL will drink wine of a quality akin to what Jesus made at the wedding in Cana, his first miracle.

John 3: 16 comes to mind. Again. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Paradise restored. Forever. Everywhere.

I HAD A DREAM.

A few days ago, in the early morning, in the process of waking up from a fitful sleep, I had a short dream, a dream unlike any other.

Here’s how it played out: “In my dreamy vision, I wanted I to go door-to-door and tell people about God. But, after knocking at one door, I quit. No use.”

I am not sure whether it was part of my dream, but my immediate thought, with the dream still uppermost in my mind, was that using the Bible as a physical aid, in my effort to ‘evangelize’, was totally ineffective. Holding a Globe would have been a much better tool. It could have been part of my dream, because it is fully in accord with John 3: 16: “God so loved the World.” (God did not say, “I love the Scriptures).

Dreams in the Bible.

In the Older Testament dreams play a large role: Joseph, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Daniel, they all had mysterious dreams, but in the Newer Testament, they are called visions. With the apostle Peter, the conservative Peter, God used a dream/vision to persuade Peter to enter the home of a Roman/pagan centurion and bring the gospel there. Of course, much of Revelation, the last Bible book, is the retelling of a vision.

Perhaps my dream falls into the ‘vision’ category.

I do not think that God talks to us directly anymore, as He did to young Samuel, who conveyed a dire message of Eli, the high priest. For us God speaks in a different Way: Today, Anno 2026, to interpret ‘The Future’, is done by reading ‘the signs of the Times’. Jesus, in Matthew 24: 32-34, tells us exactly that: be on the lookout: keep up-to-date on world events, and don’t believe the politicians and their rosy views.

Read widely. Be sceptical. Always keep The End in mind. Yes: Read the newspapers, glean between the lines, and maintain a biblical outlook on current events. Trump is a direct example of our corrupt and distorted political views. He is senile and a criminal, and his actions will hasten the Day. He is just another indication that the Telos is near, much closer than both the world and the church realize.

A Trinity of Perils, an ABC combination.

A combination of AI and the Bomb and Climate Change, will do the trick: a Trinity of perils. Yes, a Trinity of Perils: ABC is a good capture of today’s events. As I have written before, decades ago: The biblical world started in the Middle East, the birth place of Civilization, its cradle, and it may well end there. The news now is centered on that geographic location. The Bible has been written for that area, where Jesus lived his short life, where Paul labored to bring the Good News.

So, why AI?

The AI risks we are now facing are truly staggering. I would put them in two very broad categories. The first is existential risk: quite literally the possibility that AI could kill billions, either because it enables terrible people to do terrible things – such as design and deploy biological weapons – or because AI itself determines it is more efficient to dispense with humans.

The second danger of AI is an existential challenge: left unchecked, the development of AI will deprive billions of us of meaningful agency over our lives, with utterly profound consequences for economies, national security and human happiness. As Bill Gates wrote, the AI era will herald “one of the most turbulent times in human history”, noting that it will either be the greatest equaliser ever invented or the worst source of injustice. 

The BOMB

Trump’s bottom-line justification for the illegal US-Israel war on Iran, is his wilfully mendacious claim that Tehran was weeks away from obtaining the bomb. Yet his reckless threat, issued at the UN, to annihilate Iran,” implies a possible US nuclear attack”. Trump’s hypocrisy is stunning. The US is upgrading its nuclear arsenal of 3,700 warheads and may resume nuclear tests. It unreservedly supports Israel’s hidden nuclear weapons programme. And Trump is pursuing lucrative deals – “The lust for money is the root of evil”- with Saudi Arabia, another bitter foe of Iran, to provide civilian nuclear technology that he knows could be repurposed to make weapons. That has prompted regional countries such as Turkey and Egypt to consider going nuclear.

And then there is CC= Climate Change.

Humanity has fearfully and sometimes joyfully anticipated the end of the world ever since it began. Matthew 24 – spoken by Jesus – and the Bible’s Book of Revelation, both mention “end times”, a period of tribulation, war, famine, plague, floods and environmental catastrophe that may seem a less absurd prospect today than perhaps it once did. Matthew’s gospel predicts most people will ignore or ridicule warnings of imminent Armageddon. Peter, another of Jesus’s disciples, agreed: “In the last days, scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires.” Trump and Putin?

The ABC of history is upon us. That is not ‘pessimism’. That is very Biblical.

I had a dream. My real dream is the New Creation. “Your Kingdom Come”, is an all-important request in The Lord’s Prayer.

Be ready for its reality.

A FEW THOUGHTS ON THE CHURCH AND ITS MESSAGE.

“Many whom God has, the Church does not have, and many whom the Church has, God does not have.”                               Augustine.

All my life I have been a member of a ‘Church’. The church designation itself is derived from old English, with equivalents in other European languages such as ‘kirk’ in Scottish, ‘kerk’ in Netherlands, ‘Kirche’ in German. They all are derived from the Greek word ‘kuriakon’, meaning the dwelling place of the Lord (kurios).

But, the Greek word ‘kuriakon’ does not appear in the New Testament. Therefore, to refer the concept of church to buildings that are God’s dwelling place, is not biblical. A church building, its spire promisingly pointing to heaven, is just that: brick and mortar. That’s also the reason why in Revelation 21: 22, the seer of Patmos, said: “I see no temple there (in the New Creation)”. No Church, not even a Bible there.

What is biblical is found in Psalm 24: “The Lord’s is the earth and its fulness, the world, and those who dwell in it.”

So, please don’t get too worked up about ‘the church’. It is a human invention, contrary to ‘the earth and its fulness’. That is God’s dearly beloved creation, specifically mentioned in John 3: 16 as God’s object of unconditional devotion. If God’s love for creation is so immense, to the point where He sacrificed his only child to wrest it back from the clutches of the Devil (think about that for a day or two) should we, following God’s example, not sacrifice a few of our luxuries and conveniences, and so showing our love for Creation? Shouldn’t the ‘church’ be an example in this?

What constitutes the Word?

The same applies to ‘The Word of God.” The church custom, after reading the Bible, to say, “This is the Word of God”, implying that only the Scriptures are God’s Word, is incorrect. Psalm 33: 9 clearly states: “God spoke, and it came to be”. What came to be? God’s Word fulfilled in Creation. There also is Christ: God’s Word become Flesh. To make the Bible God’s only Word, is idolatry. The Belgic Confession is quite clear here. To designate the Bible as God’s only revelation, leads to Religion, and Religion kills. Religion leads to human – thus faulty – interpretations.

Jesus hated religion for the simple reason that it killed him. John 10: 10, in a few words, outlines Jesus’s view of life. The text quotes Jesus’ simple statement: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.” I wonder whether Jesus had Trump in mind when he said “The thief comes only to steal”.  There are reliable sources suggesting that the Trump family’s wealth, in the current two years of the Trump dynasty, has increased by $10 billions. His presidency has been typified by exploiting creation and abolishing all environmental regulations, and enriching themselves purely through killing God’s gifts to humanity, committing the fatal sin: the sin against the Holy Spirit, for which there is no forgiveness.

Paul Krugman reports: “The level of corruption that Trump has engaged in and enabled in others, is completely unprecedented – self-dealing that, as Trump would say, is like nothing anybody has ever seen before”.

THE AMERICAN RELIGION.

The American Religion is the title of a book by America’s most qualified literary critic, Dr. Harold Bloom. Its subtitle is: ‘The emergence of the Post-Christian Nation’.

I bought it some 30 years ago. Its core message is that “We think we are a Christian nation, but we are not” Now Gnosticism rules. Gnosticism hates matter = Creation, and favors ‘Spirit’, destined for heaven. The American self stands outside of creation. Dr. Bloom bluntly stated: “The American Religion has ceased to be Christian”.  Trump was politically so successful, because he was – and still is – the exponent of the American Religion, a pure reflection of the nation’s ruling faith.

Both the VP JD Vance and the head of the US military, Hegseth, are recent ‘converts’ to the American Religion, the VP being Roman Catholic, Hegseth being Protestant, espousing Christian Nationalism,

This week, Hegseth took his personal crusade to a whole new level, announcing a new Pentagon Office of Religious Affairs, which reports directly to him. The military he said, was putting on “the full armor of God”. The Pentagon insists that it will not “compel religious participation”, but given Hegseth’s broader efforts to imbue Christianity into the armed forces, it’s hard not to be alarmed.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which has sued the Pentagon over its worship services, is certainly worried. “All of [Hegseth’s] actions combined with this latest announcement make clear that Hegseth is advancing a Christian Nationalist agenda in the military,” a teaching based on the Old Testamentary regulations, such as the stoning of women caught in extra-marital sexual situations.

Love Creation as God does, as the indigenous people do.

All my life I have been a member of a ‘Church’, an institution that will vanish in the New Creation, soon to come. Because “God so loved the Cosmos”, we, too should follow God’s example: That is true Christianity.

TRAGIC TRUMP.

In my weekly blogs, now in their 26th year, I have never relied on ‘artificial’ input. My writings are derived from my daily reading of three sources: The Toronto-Canada- Globe and Mail, the New York -USA- Times, and the British The Guardian. I then embroider my writing, enlightened by decades of book intelligence, and honed by my ‘Christian’ tentacles, which is my overall basis.  

Oh, yes, I sometimes blatantly copy stuff, not always with proper acknowledgement, for which I offer my sincere apologies, while not vouching to never do it again, fully aware that it makes me look smarter than I really am. All that reading, however, does tickle my brain and feeds my intellect. I also confess, I do consult Google. One never knows how it/she/he/whatever, would react as it assumes human/satanic/semi-godly features, such as vengeance, jealousy, suspicion – and take revenge on me, humble blogger, who types with two, often misguided fingers, using the ‘delete’ button three times more often than any other key.

Tragic Trump.

My heading is all about Donald J. Trump (DJT). I consulted my brain, and found two verbs that included his initials and describe his traits: DisJoinTed and DeJecT. That the president is disjointed in his words and that his actions often make no sense, is obvious. To me he actually became a tragic figure: Deject, Downcast and Dispirited. Yes, deeply deficient. Three times married: unhappiness galore, angry partners, tragic outcomes. Gone Bankrupt repeatedly: deception, debts, falsehoods, more tragic consequences. And now in early November he faces ferocious failure: How will he, spoiled, vengefully insecure, react?

Also, he claims of possessing super intellect, and that, by his own admission, without ever reading anything!  Does watching TV do this? Isn’t TV

often called ‘the boob-tube’?

Anyway, AI stands for Artificial Intelligence, but it reads and steals ferociously, but D.J.T. has – again by his own admission – only Innate Intelligence: is born with all he knows: really tragic.

And me? The little I know, I have acquired through books and articles, and, especially, by relying on ‘the fear of the Lord’, the onset of wisdom.

I am highly disturbed.

Not being aware that the foregoing blabber might have more than a grain of truth, to my utter dismay, just after I wrote this, I read a highly disturbing article in the New York Times of September 29, describing a dinner meeting gathering of AI leaders and religious personages from some 20 different streams. There one participant, a rabbi, noticed that Mr. Olah – the host, and Toronto-born to boot – and his colleagues were suggesting something far more significant. These Anthropic leaders were talking about Claude – AI’s offspring – as if it were not mere software, but these AI Creators were relating to their brainchild as it were a conscious being. They really thought that their machine had human features: Mr. Olah and his team believed that Claude had what philosophers call “moral status” on par with a person — that it was a being with similar inherent rights to dignity or respect: that’s why they called together the world’s religious leaders to endow their ‘software’ created brainchild with an amalgam of religious input.

Not an easy task.

I could just as well ask: Which denomination proclaims the true religion. In Canada, there are at least 10 active, distinct Christian denominations that explicitly include the word “Reformed” in their description. All claim – not openly but implicitly – to represent the true Reformation.

Is there a secular Redeemer around?

The Guardian asked its readers to suggest a person capable of getting us out of the mess we have created. The paper wrote: “It is clear that the world as it is – considering the climate crisis, the rise of nationalism, geopolitical tumult, the possibility of AI killing us all by the end of the decade – could do with some more ethically astute and capable leadership”.

There were many suggestions, among them Mark Carney and Jesus Christ. Mark Carney, the current Canadian Prime Minister, is now famous for standing up to Donald Trump. Jesus Christ needs no introduction.

Let me cite one the responses.

One reader wrote: “The climate crisis, technology challenges and the power concentrated within a group of several billionaires are unprecedented in human history. The leader we need is probably a woman, already an activist, someone who does not care to be a politician, but does care about making the planet livable and safe, for current and next generations. And she or he can get things done. We don’t need someone who is “just” wise and has the right worldview, we need someone who acts, despite all the bureaucracies and dependencies we have created in the world. The right people are already there. Only we have not noticed yet, glued to the old template and old perspectives.”

Just as through one man, Donald Trump, the entire world is in disarray, suffers from tragedy, so, through One man -Jesus Christ – the entire world has been rectified and redeemed: that’s the comedy of the Gospel.

Pray for Parousia.

EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.

Three dangers wrapped in one.

Dr. J. H. Bavinck, in his book on Revelation, the last Bible book, claims that its dominating theme is: everything becomes what it is.  

I suggest: this is happening now, anno 2026.

A closer look at our lives, reveals that we have enslaved creation to serve our extravagance. If it is true that everything becomes what is, then the masquerade is over, the ugliness of our true selves is being revealed, and the laws of ecology kick in as the climate and financial bills are due.

The three dangers wrapped in one.

Yes, it is true. And the pace is picking up speed, the slow motion of change so typical until a century ago, is so yesterday. Everywhere we look, everywhere we go, everywhere we venture, in every endeavor, everything is under attack.

There now are three dangers wrapped in one: The Arms Race, AI and Climate Change, all the result of human pride (hubris).

It is true, the uniqueness of our time is that we are approaching Revelation. We are facing the true meaning of Apocalypse, which is its Greek word. Now the masks are being torn away, and the naked nature of events is being revealed.

Remember Satan?

You may remember how Satan was kicked out of heaven, landing feet first on earth.

That same Satan is now the immense moving force behind the world’s happenings. He holds humanity in the clutches of the fateful illusion that God/Creation is irrelevant, is something stale, situated in the past, a self-satisfied sugar uncle. Satan sold humanity on the notion that men and women everywhere are now fully in charge. That same Satan, that seemingly invincible enemy, the creator of the grand world illusion, this contemptible conjurer and mass murderer, has, in fact, been defeated a long time ago. He has been thrown out of heaven as one totally crushed, he is moribund flung down into defeat.

And yet he continues to sound like a victor, and continues to daily gain immense victories. He acts totally different from what he in reality is: this is a creature, exiled from heaven, the banned one, who carries his death sentence written on his forehead.

And Satan embodies 666. And 666 is the embodiment of AI.

The Book of Revelation: Revelation 13: 18 introduces that mysterious number. The verse states, “Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number for a person. Its number is six hundred sixty-six [666]”.

Computer language is all about numbers, an endless variety of 0 and 1. The perfect number is ‘777’, evident in our 7 days week, and in 7 x 7 +1 indicating the Year of Jubilee. It is impossible for AI to attain perfection, even though it comes close, very close. 666 remains fallible for the simple reason that it is a human number. AI fails, because the Bible categorically states: Surely, I was brought forth in iniquity; I was sinful when my mother conceived me. Psalm 51: 5.

We see AI’s sinfulness daily.

 Yet…..while all human effort fails, our good deeds – and there are good deeds – will follow us into eternity.  See Revelation 14: 13.

Look around.

Under a global cloud of wars and bitter divisions, world leaders met at the United Nations this week facing new fears that runaway artificial intelligence could threaten humanity even as climate shocks and escalating prices are already making life much tougher for hundreds of millions of people.

The annual high-level gathering at the UN General Assembly will also be consumed with major wars in Iran, Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, Congo and Myanmar and a persisting question: Can the leaders do anything to end them?

And we don’t know what we don’t know. Last week, Open AI announced that it found six more “concerning” incidents. But we have no guarantee that the events we have learned about represent all or even most of the A.I. behavior we should worry about. The reason we don’t know is because we are losing control.

Is AI becoming more human? I believe the question could well be reversed: Are humans becoming more like the machine?

Neil Postman, long ago, wrote: Amusing ourselves to death.

In his book, Postman contends that print media cultivated active reading and critical thinking, while television encourages passivity and instant gratification. He invites readers to ponder how different media forms profoundly influence our perception of the world—and whether society has sacrificed depth for amusement.

Now he is vindicated: Reading has become a lost art, and with it the human advantage.

It is as if the human race, given a verdict of terminal illness, for which there is no cure, have adopted the Gladiator slogan “Ave Cesar, morituri te salutant, those about to die, greet you. That’s the time we live in.

There is that universal cognition, that general insight that Rupert Sheldrake calls ‘morphic resonance’. It instills in humanity the subconscious notion, not expressed, not verbalized that warns them, in their bones, that the humanist dream of endless technological and economic progress turns into a nightmare, for the life of nature and the life of the human mind are not separate from each other. Just as God is alive and eternal, so too creation is alive and eternal and we too share in that collective memory.

There now are three dangers wrapped in one: The Arms Race, AI and Climate Change, all the result of human pride (hubris). Now, everything is becoming what it is.

ANOTHER JEREMIAD? WE NEED A ‘DAY OF ATONEMENT’.

“A jeremiad is a long, mournful complaint, speech, or piece of writing that warns of a society’s moral decline and prophesies disaster if it does not change.”

I like that definition. It fits my feelings. Trump is a perfect example of society’s moral decline, evident in his boasts that he is a “STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT”, a textbook illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect, in which incompetent people are highly confident in their own judgment because they’re too incompetent to realize that they’re incompetent.

But First: Yom Kippur: Day of Atonement.

It was a yearly event to cleanse the Tabernacle, make atonement for the sins of the high priest and the community, and restore fellowship with God. Leviticus 19.

It is time that the world is told that literally our sins cry to heaven, in the form of the adverse weather events now upon us. If atonement was necessary 3,000 years ago, by divine edict, today it is untold times more called for, also because we have lost our Kingdom vision.

You may remember that my mind is fixated on the Coming Kingdom to whose arrival all Christians look forward. In the Lord’s Prayer, often glibly recited, we fail to appreciate Jesus’ true meaning. Psalm 33: 9 simply says: “God spoke and it came to be”. Whatever ‘came to be’, is holy, because it is God’s divine Word. “Hallowed – an old-fashioned word for ‘holy’ – is everything created by God’s word in his name. It has nothing to do with God’s name, as God is beyond name. It has everything to do with his creation.

Jesus first priority in his prayer, is for us to recognize the holiness of creation. His second quest is to pursue the coming of the Kingdom, the perfected New Creation.

My ‘blessed’ youth.

Both my grandfathers were born in 1870. They also both were elders in the local Reformed Church. I had the privilege to observe them in action. They, to me, illustrated the Kingdom.

How and why?

I witnessed how my paternal grandfather, a small rural grocer, in his horse-drawn two-wheeled wagon, consisting of a large wooden box filled with life’s simple needs – sugar, coffee, tea, soap, etc. – called on my maternal grandmother, a small farmer’s spouse, who paid for her purchases in farm-fresh eggs from free-roaming poultry: a simple barter process. That, to me, a young boy then, made a lasting impression.

Forward to 2026, and back to jeremiad.

Mr. Benz invented the automobile engine a century ago.

There are estimates of fatalities caused by this invention. Google tells me that between 60 to 80 million people have died since the birth of our so beloved vehicle, and hundreds of millions injured or maimed.

Should I also mention Climate Change, also a direct result of powering the pistons? A recent report by an official Canadian thinktank, cautions that “Canada can no longer avoid a hotter climate, and must prepare now for decades of more extreme and damaging weather, and whatever the world does about emissions going forward, the report finds that Canada will be nearly 3 C warmer, on average, over the next two decades, compared to pre-industrial times. Scary stuff. That qualifies for a Jeremiad label. As well as the looming El Niño which is going to be brutal. That El Nino is “Unprecedented”, but the extraordinary is starting to sound ordinary, the unprecedented merely routine.

We need a DAY OF ATONEMENT.

In 1939, in grade 5 of the JC Wirtz School, just around the corner from where I lived, the teacher told us, eager youngsters, that exactly 100 years ago, the first train, pulled by a steam engine, had traveled from Amsterdam to Haarlem, and, get this, he smirked, some people had called this “The Devil’s Doing.” We now realize that, yes, the devil is in the deadly details.

This brings me to THE TOWER OF BABEL.

The people’s desire to build a tower “that reaches to the heavens” reflects their ambition to achieve greatness and autonomy apart from God. This act of defiance against God’s command to “fill the earth” – see Genesis 9 – demonstrates humanity’s inclination towards self-reliance and pride, so God intervened. Read Genesis 11, which records God’s reaction: “And the LORD said, ‘If they have begun to do this as one people speaking the same language, then nothing they devise will be beyond them. Come, let Us go down and confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.'”

So, what will God do today, now that we again all speak the same language, and AI is challenging God?

Here is my opinion.

AI speaks in ‘code’. The Lord will throw a pipe wrench into their precious computer speech, confusing the world’s super brains, unable to complete their ultimate goal.

AI won’t destroy the world: it simply will become another vain and failed effort to dominate creation. The immense need for finite energy in the form of fossil fuels, to power their insatiable need for electricity, will hasten the Day of Climate Reckoning.

My conclusion?

We, Christians, in these last days, must confess our forced complicity in embracing ‘the spirit of the age.’ Universal acknowledgement in the form of a period of atonement is needed, while waiting and praying for Parousia.