August 5 2020
Always plan for the
worst case scenario
Forty-five years ago – 1975 – our family moved to the municipality of Tweed, about midway Toronto-Ottawa, both some 200 km away, too far to walk. That was a time when many others too left the city and sought refuge far away from ‘the energy crisis’ and $150 oil price barrel. I sold my insurance business and surrendered my Real Estate brokerage in St. Catharines, Ontario, and bought 50 acres of mostly woods and rocks. There I built an energy efficient house into a hill sloping south, passive solar, with 2 storeys facing South, having large windows there, and one storey in the North, with only a small window. I also fashioned insulated shutters, used only in extreme cold conditions. Oh, yes, heated with wood, of course. Planted a large vegetable garden, still producing great crops.
Yes, I certainly planned ahead, later bought solar panels for personal use and also installed a frost-free handpump on a well that can pump 150 liters per minute!
Over the years many drifted back to the City, as making a living in rural Eastern Ontario proved too daunting. I stuck it out, living on some savings, doing some teaching, taking the university courses required for my appraising accreditation, writing master theses on a single-family dwelling, a 12-unit apartment building and an industrial property, 100 pages each, thus qualifying for commercial real estate fee appraiser.
I was fortunate that the area where I lived, the center and north of the county of Hastings adjoining Haliburton to the north-west, had no accredited appraiser, so I had a huge territory all to myself. Over the years I hired three residential appraisers, each specializing in their area. I did well.
Always plan for the
worst case scenario
I sincerely believe that the last Bible book, Revelation, gives us an outline of what is imminent, tells us what is on the verge of being ‘revealed’, especially in the later chapters. The book’s basic message is that ‘the true nature of human enterprise will be laid bare’. Granted, the book has some mysterious passages, too obscure to explain, such as the number game, 666, and that Thousand Year period, but there are certain happenings that apply to today and tomorrow. The Good News here is not good, except for the very ending: The New Creation emerges out of the chaos caused by you and me.
The Last Things.
In Revelation 15: 5 till 16: 21 the last things are set into motion. The picture John provides us with is a sad succession of disasters, reminding us of what happened in Egypt during the ancient Pharaoh regime, but much more intense and dangerous.
Today we experience Revelation in motion, with weather calamities having cosmic implications, as even the sun and the earth take part. The outcome is our present Pandemic, producing panic in the planet’s population, while deadly droughts, hellish heat, ferocious floods and legions of locusts are devastating crops world-wide.
And more to come. The Bible, in numerous places, tells us that the culmination of the natural disasters and the pinnacle of pain is caused by an earthquake (16: 18) “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth.” The seismographs everywhere shake wildly and record numbers are recorded, beyond any ever registered: the houses tumble, the office towers collapse, the highway bridges crumble. No human technological expertise is any help. Nothing can withstand this force of nature: no nuclear bomb has this devastating power.
Now an endless series of ever more frightening events roll over the world.
Revelation reveals two types of distress: there are calamities that originate from above, that find their source in nature and there are those that are the result of human action. Revelation only elaborates on the first type. It is as if the tamed earth, given by God as a gift to humanity as its own domain, is now rebelling, is now rising up against her tormentor. It is as if nature that, for so long, for so many centuries, has faithfully furnished humanity with all its needs, has now become an enemy and full of fury has thrown itself upon humanity.
Yes, we live in the Last Days.
I am convinced that humanity’s days are numbered. We are literally living in the Last Days. Of course, the entire New Testament has been written with that in mind. Right after Pentecost the small Christian congregation lived in that expectation, sold what they had, shared in-common, daily expecting Christ’s return.
That urgency has disappeared over the millennia. It seems to me that the Lord is awaiting the outcome of human ingenuity, having no doubt that sooner or later we would succeed in eliminating our own race. And that’s what is happening now.
I also think that God, in his mercy will lend a helping hand, perhaps causing a Coronal Mass Ejection: a disastrous CME, a geomagnetic storm, when millions of tons of charged particles thrown off by the sun slam into Earth’s magnetosphere, and cause all sorts of chaos.
It happened on September 2 1859, just before the US Civil War, when electricity was nearly non-existing. The few transformers around then melted. Today these induced currents would cause world-wide chaos: all electrical grids would topple and all satellites would disappear. Just imagine the global gutting of all electrical systems. We already have a pandemic; huge earthquakes are overdue, and a severe CME would paralyze all life on earth instantly. The chance of a CME is as great as being hit by a Pandemic!
Already the weather has become a factor: Arctic sea ice could disappear completely before October 1. What that means is that the huge deposits of Methane there could suddenly be released and cause a sudden 4 Degree Celsius spike in the world’s temperature, already at a historic high.
PLAN AHEAD!
Always plan for the
worst case scenario
There’s only one scenario possible today: the worst case. Plan for it. Is preparation still possible? It is like dying. We always live with death because, as the saying goes, it is inevitable. We simply have to keep death in mind, our own death and death of Our Way of Life, which, we all know, has truly become The Way of Death.
So, what must we do?
There is no way to escape the outcome. That must be our primary admission: we have come at the end of the road. Climate calamities will only accelerate, economic advancement today goes contrary to all common sense, and yet this is what politicians advocate.
After consciously admitting that we are at the end of what we used to call civilization, we then must – and I emphasize the word ‘must’ – live in such a manner as if eternal life is already here.
The most telling text of the entire book of Revelation, is found in its very last chapter: Revelation 22: 11, “Let those who do wrong, let them do wrong even more, let those who do vile, let them continue to do more so; let those who do right continue to do right; and let those who are holy continue to be holy.”
That is the naked truth. The mask has to go, the secret must be unveiled, everything must in the end become what it always has been already.
Humanity is being be hit exactly there where it imagines itself to be the strongest, in its technical knowhow and in its mastery over nature. Nature is falling upon the human race as a provoked lion, and will breach all the constrains humanity has laid upon it, exploding into extraordinary catastrophes, earthquakes, floods, failed harvests, pandemics, threatening to cause the dissolution of human society.
If all else fails, make war. Donald Trump loves his nukes while, driven by radical ideology Pompeo and Pence see themselves as God’s chosen to bring on Rapture and Armageddon! Their followers sooner destroy themselves than admit defeat; they will only become more spiteful in their hatred, more determined in their powerlessness, more relentless in their rage.
Indeed, “Let those who do wrong, let them do wrong even more, let those who do vile, let them continue to do more so; let those who do right continue to do right; and let those who are holy continue to be holy.”
Always plan for the worst case scenario, but after DARK DAYS a NEW DAY dawns.