Saturday November 18 2023
GOD’S KINGDOM = WWW = Whole Wide World.
Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold, 13 but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved. 14 And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.
Jesus’ words, from Matthew 24, are becoming reality: take the first line: while the world’s population has quadrupled in my lifetime, churches in my white- race world, are closing or are near empty. I live in small-town Eastern Ontario, where exurban development has buoyed the population, but the church which I joined in 1980, has declined from some 70 people to a few dozen seniors. Wickedness has probably not increased, but most certainly ‘love has grown cold’.
How about the rest of the text?
To me the next prediction is the greater mystery: “The gospel of the Kingdom will be preached!” Will the churches suddenly see the light and start preaching the Kingdom message, in accord with Jesus’ plea: “Seek first the Kingdom”?
With churches in the Western world in deep decline, and, in the Rest of the World dominated by kingdom-shy, Heaven-promoting Pentecostalism, while the Roman Catholic Church often equates the church with the Kingdom, no, no, the church will definitely not suddenly start preaching The Kingdom message. Yet, Jesus tells me and you and everybody else, that the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached everywhere, yes, everywhere.
Well…..
What does “The Gospel of the Kingdom” entail? What, actually, IS the Gospel of the Kingdom? It’s not the church.
My parent’s church, the Christian Reformed Church in the Netherlands, had a Latin slogan, Ecclesia Reformata, Semper Reformanda, meaning, The Reformed Church, Always Reforming. However, The Reformed Church, became Nunquam Reformanda, Never Reforming, stuck in the Pagan Greek “Heaven” heresy, still dominating the totality of Christendom.
I translated a book by Dr. J.H. Bavinck, and the publisher, Eerdmans in Grand Rapids, Mich. gave it the title, Between the Beginning and the End, a radical Kingdom Vision, so, yes, I have a notion what God’s Kingdom entails. Bavinck writes that “personal salvation and the salvation of ‘nature’ go hand in hand”. No wonder a Christian College refused to review it!
And then there is the Belgic Confession:
We know God by two means: first, by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe;1 which is before our eyes as a most elegant book, wherein all creatures, great and small, are as so many characters leading us to contemplate the invisible things of God, namely, His eternal power and divinity, as the apostle Paul saith (Rom. 1:20). All which things are sufficient to convince men, and leave them without excuse.
Yes, Creation IS God’s Primary Word! No excuse! Remember, “Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree”.
How then will “The Gospel of the Kingdom be preached in the whole world”?
Global Warming, Climate Change: that’s how the Gospel of the Kingdom is being preached! It is shouting this very minute; it is now broadcast everywhere: not a square centimeter of soil is excepted; not a cubic millimeter of air escapes its curse; not a drop of water is left pure, not a breath of air remains unspoiled.
God’s kingdom comprises all plants, all animals, all human beings, all air molecules, all water entities, all ground particles, all that has a name and has been placed in catalogues and scientific papers and journals: even those who have not yet been discovered and recognized: all these comprise the Kingdom and now we are discovering that this Gospel, this Holy Earth, is on the way out, and, as Elizabeth Kolbert has outlined in her book, The Sixth Extinction, is dying! and then the end will come.
Sin and Grace, Wickedness and Kingdom go together. That’s why the gospel of extinction, is now being preached throughout the world, proclaiming loud and clear that tampering with God’s Creation leads to death, while treasuring and observing and honoring her way leads to life: life eternal. Romans 1: 20 tells us that failure to recognize Creation as divine, and failure to love creation (see John 3: 16) results in death. In the Old Testament, God almost always chastised the people of Israel through climate disasters.
The world today and the 10 plagues in Egypt.
We now experience – in Climate Change – what Egypt underwent in the 10 plagues which were all environmental, ending in death. But it resulted in freedom. The same is happening today: Climate change will bring death to the present society, and give birth to the New.
Today, November 18, pledge, pray, live new creation, God’s Eternal Kingdom: WWW = The Whole Wide World.