EARTH VERSUS HEAVEN.
The world is struggling to keep the earth in check, and the UN is the major fighter there. Each year a stark reminder is posted by means of COP. COP – all Capitals – will in November, for the 26th time, try to stem Climate Change. COP stands for the Conference Of the Parties; the parties being the world’s sovereign nations; the place of meeting this time is Glasgow Scotland, where the local brogue is totally un-understandable. When I lived in St. Catharines, On., I once talked with a welder who had just arrived from Glasgow. He could understand me, but I could not make any sense of his Glasgow brogue.
Let’s hope that the language spoken at this COP 26 will go to the heart of the matter. The words, first of all, should be one of expressing sorrow and pleading for forgiveness for our sins against creation, both in the past and today. Why these religious remonstrations? I believe that all COP meetings are, in essence, religious events, for the simple reason that they directly deal with the COSMOS, God’s Holy Creation Word. That’s why both the coming COP 26 and this past week’s President Biden’s valiant attempt to lower Green House Gases, world-wide, are ‘religious’ at the core.
The start of Climate Change.
I have to go back a long time, to the Garden of Eden, to pinpoint where Climate Change started. In Paradise God gave a lecture in Ecology, pointing out the importance of TREES. “Look at them”, he said, “these trees are beautiful to behold, and good for food.” (Genesis 2: 9) Notice the priority: beauty before utility. A bit later a similar scene took place there, this time a lesson by the great seducer, (Genesis 3: 6). He reversed the order: “Good for food” he said, “and pleasing to the eye.” Money before beauty, the first step toward Capitalism. There’s where Global Warming started: Satan, ‘the Prince of this world’ (John 12: 31), persuaded humanity to defy God, to defy creation. Since then, everything has changed, reason why all efforts to reverse Climate Change also will fail. It will fail because Earth’s future demise is already here, but only our subconscious has registered it.
Who is to blame?
It is no exaggeration that, next November, when COP 26 is in session, the fate of the world will be decided, that’s why, then and there and everywhere churches, if they want to be true to their mandate, must hold a three-week period of Atonement, asking forgiveness for having preached the “Heaven Heresy”, which, basically, gave Satan the opportunity to defile the earth. Had the churches truly seen the earth as God’s, and thus HOLY, the Climate Change would not have become an issue: the churches’ failure has caused Climate Change!
In Mark 16: 15, Jesus explicitly tells us to: “Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Please note the choice of words: World – Cosmos – and All Creation. It does not say ‘all people’, but ‘cosmos’, and ‘preach to all creation’: animals, trees, soil, air. Climate change has occurred because the church has almost exclusively concerned itself with saving human souls, and promising escape from this wicked world. Its ‘sins of omission’ have caused global destruction.
Life, also the Christian Life, is all-encompassing, that’s why COP 26 too, is ‘religious to the core’. Romans 8 tells us how ‘the whole creation is groaning as in child birth’, affirming that the planet’s sacrilege has been going on for millennia: at one time the earth had no deserts, no Sahara, no Siberia: a truly green globe.
This year’s COP.
A typical COP conference, hosting some 30,000 delegates flying in from all over the world, is held each year in a different location. I was in The Hague, the Netherlands, when the COP 6 was there in November 2000. At the time I was writing a weekly column for the regional daily newspaper and got a press pass, allowing me to attend this conference, at no expenses spared, as long as I paid them myself. Fortunately, we had free lodging and meals at my brother there. My press pass gave me gratis transportation on the local transit system, the only freebee I was allowed. Oh yes, I had a tote bag with tons of paper stuff. Trees anybody?
Jesus promises that nature will truly become natural again. Maybe this is why humans now, in their subconsciousness, seek out nature in times of crisis, because it’s more than a place to exercise and socialize. There’s something about how our brains interact with nature that yields psychological benefits. Our guts know that natural landscapes activate a part of the brain that reduces stress; it knows that nature helps restore attention: even just seeing nature through a window has shown to boost well-being. People who see trees, flowers and grass recover from surgery faster (and take fewer narcotic painkillers), than those with views of brick or concrete.
The entire Bible promises a pure future.
I have been reading parts of the book of Daniel. It has an eye-opening ending, “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of the days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” We will inherit the New Creation! That’s our future! John 3: 13 confirms that: “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven–the Son of Man.”
So, where does ‘heaven’ come in?
When Paul (Acts 17: 31) was in Athens, on that famous place called The Areopagus, where the intellectual elite gathered day after day, he mounted the rostrum and said, “For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
This fearless preacher, the apostle Paul, knew exactly the reigning philosophy of the then intellectual capital of the world. Paul knew how Socrates had died and how Plato had recorded his last words, knew that when Socrates died, he welcomed death. In the Trials of Socrates, Plato depicts Socrates’ last moments before his death, quoting Socrates: “I’ll no longer stay put, but will take my leave of you and depart for certain happy conditions of the blessed”. Socrates is certain that he’s on the way to heaven, and even says a prayer to the gods after drinking the poison: “‘One is, I suppose, permitted to utter a prayer to the gods – and one should do so – that one’s journey from this world to the next will prove fortunate”. Socrates died to celebrate death, and embraced heaven, a heresy the church has adopted.
Paul knew that when he mentioned judgement and resurrection, he would offend these learned men, and, sure enough, they walked away thoroughly annoyed: they believed Socrates and Plato, while Paul brought the gospel of resurrection and Judgement.
Friedrich Nietzsche, that great prophet, saw through the church’s fallacy. Here’s what he wrote in his Also spoke Zarathustra:
I conjure you, my brethren, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and believe not those who speak unto you of super-earthly hopes! Poisoners are they, whether they know it or not. (Capitalization is his). Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves, of whom the earth is weary: so away with them! Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy; but God died, and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the dread-fullest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth!
Nietzsche condemned the church-preachers in no uncertain terms by their promoting the Heaven-heresy. The church will not change. That’s why are we bound to fail in preventing ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE. We fail because we are comfortable in our arrogance; we fail because the church is a faulty institution; we fail because human nature will not change. ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE REQUIRES ABRUPT HUMAN CHANGE, a true METANOIA, A TOTAL NEW LIFE.
A good start would be to hold 3 full weeks of genuine ATONEMENT during COP 26 in November.
Wishful thinking?