THE CHURCH IN FLUX
Chapter 5
When will Christ return? Finally an approximate date.
So far I have painted a very bleak picture for the future. I haven’t gone into any gruesome details, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to visualize that an 80 percent reduction in the world’s population in one generation will not be a peaceful process. But the Lord is gracious. In Matthew 24 verse 22 He makes a promise. Here’s what he says: “If those days have not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”
And that is what this chapter is all about. And, yes, it involves Primary Productivity, rapidly speeding up because of economic development in China and India, and continued growth in the rest of the world, in spite of a recession. The vast rainforests in Cambodia, Mongolia and Indonesia are being stripped to feed the building booms there, while in Brazil and Argentina they are cut down to supply China with soy beans.
Primary Productivity now stands between 40 and 45, meaning that almost half of the world’s basic energy vested in plants, trees, animals, has been consumed for the benefit of the human race, but in such a way that once it is used, it cannot be restored. Depleted oceans, soil degradation, disappeared species, cannot be re-created by human technology. Matthew 24 very fittingly speaks about ‘the abomination that causes desolation’, and notes ‘let the reader understand’, meaning that the significance of this event can only be grasped when it actually occurs. We now can begin to detect what this abomination referred to here means: it concerns Global Warming, a world-wide event that will cause tremendous upheaval everywhere.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) foresees “global mean temperature changes greater than 4°C above 1990-2000 levels”. At this point there’s nothing we can do to prevent the loss of ecosystems, the melting of glaciers and the disintegration of major ice sheets. The most recent report also mentions that global food production is very likely to decrease when temperatures rise more than 3°C. And it doesn’t stop there. The IPCC also finds that, above three degrees of warming, the world’s vegetation will become “a net source of carbon”. This is just one of the climate feedbacks triggered by a high level of warming. Four degrees might take us rapidly to five or six: the end – for humans – of just about everything. These are official U.N. reports, which we should take seriously, but we don’t.
Revelation, that last bible book, also offers an explanation of this process. There in Chapter 11:2 it says that “they will trample on the Holy City – God’s beloved cosmos, the world we live in – for 42 months.” “They” are we, the citizens of the Western world, the so-called Christian part of the Globe. Revelation 13:5 repeats that claim: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise authority for 42 months.”
Just a few words now about this last text, because in the next chapter I will expand on the role of the Beast. Satan, God’s great Adversary, is the Beast whose aim has been from the beginning – starting in Eden – to destroy God’s beloved cosmos. (John 3:16). He’s been hitting God where it hurts, and we have been his willing allies, sorry to say.
There is significance in the number of 42 months, which is 3.5 years, exactly half of that perfect number ‘7’.
Allow me a brief detour by means of a riddle, illustrating the nature of exponential growth. A lily pond contains a single leaf. Each day the number of leaves doubles – two leaves the second day, four the third, eight the four, and so on. “If the pond is full on the thirtieth day,” the question goes, “at what point is it half full?” Answer: “On the twenty-ninth day.”
Back to two things: that 3.5 year period and Primary Productivity.
It is my contention that we are quite close to the end of that 3.5 year mark, judging by the Primary Productivity tally, which now is somewhere between 40 and 45 percent. The 50 percent threshold will coincide with the end of the 3.5 years and the point in time where the Lord returns. This Day is rapidly approaching, due to the scramble for more oil to keep our economic system lubricated, and especially the increasing pace of Global Warming which will greatly speed up environmental destruction. We now are very close to being half- way to total chaos, just as 3.5 years is halfway to 7, the number of fullness.
Based on the foregoing – I arrived at this after a period of intense prayer for an answer – I believe that the Lord will not return on Day 30, but on Day 29, when, seemingly, the glass is still half full, and the world is still full of hope, while politicians will play down that danger. Of course nobody has the full range of accurate data to being able to perfectly calculate the exact point when this ‘half-way’ mark is reached: only God knows, who only can read the true state of his beloved cosmos.
At that moment the trumpet will sound and all will be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of the eye. The words of the apostle Peter come to mind: “Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day – but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.” (The Message: 2 Peter 3.)
What constitutes a Holy Life? Each of us must answer that question. That it has something to do with “LIFE”, our daily doings, our activities in God’s creation, is beyond question. This makes me think of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect.” The Greek word there is ‘teleioos,’ which is best translated as ‘holistic,’ derived from ‘telos’, which suggests that we, in all we do, must keep the End – Telos- in mind, our final destination, the New Earth. Living “A Holy Life” means having a ‘holistic’ existence, indicating that we must live as much as possible so, that when the Lord returns and heralds in the New Creation, we will make this transition smoothly, without thinking twice what to do, instantly ready to adjust, because we then simply continue to live perfectly holistic, something we now try to do falteringly: recycling, reducing, reusing, living ecologically responsible, leaving few carbon foot prints.
And here I come back to ‘The Church In Flux.’ I have shown, perhaps not beyond the shadow of doubt, but with a degree of accuracy I believe, that the Day of the Lord is nigh, that we live in New Times, that the old no longer holds, that we are in the End Stretch.
What does all this mean for the church, that central question, which needs answering? Before I begin to deal with that directly, something else has to be explored: “Who is in charge of this world?”