OUR WORLD TODAY
June 2011
WEDDING BELLS
Apocalyptic anxiety is running high these days witness such movies such as 2012, the Road, and now the Collapsed. According to Lorenzo Di Tommaso, a Concordia University professor in Montreal two reasons stand out: people believe there is something dreadfully wrong with the world of human existence today, and they also think that there is a hope for a better future, a new beginning.
Harold Egbert Camping – of CRC birth- is such a collapsitarian. I am one too, but to predict that it would happen on a certain date is foolish because “Nobody knows the date and the hour.” Rapture itself is pure fiction, even though most churchgoers hear nothing else in church, fooling even the most educated. Here’s an example: a while ago close friend of ours, a doctorate in education, a school principal and educator of the year in our board read Matthew 24 aloud in church, the passage of The Day and Hour (of Christ’s return) Unknown .
At the coffee hour, I asked her who would be ‘left behind’ and who ‘taken away.’ She replied “The saints were taken away, of course.” Yet she just had read that ‘the flood came and took them all – sinners- away.’ (24: 39). She then admitted that she had always been brainwashed in believing the opposite. A literary agent once told me that my book on the New Earth was not market-friendly because most church goers see heaven as their destiny.
This belief influences OUR WORLD TODAY. If we think that, upon death, we go to heaven then we see the earth as temporary, and consider ourselves as mere renters. No wonder the environmental movement is run by non-Christians, such as David Suzuki and Greenpeace.
John 3:13 clearly states that “No one has ever gone into heaven, except the One who came from heaven, the Son of Man.” That is directly in line with Psalm 115:16 which simply states that “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth He has given to man.” Our World Today is Our world forever. I go even further: the Redeemed of the Lord will marry the land: Judgement Day means Wedding Day. The bride is not the church, as Rome reasons: we, with Jesus as the Head, will marry the earth as the bride. That’s what Isaiah 62:4 indicates. It says that “the land will be called Beulah – married – for the Lord will take delight in you and the land will be married. As a young man marries a maiden, so your children will marry you- the land.” Revelation 21:2 says strikingly that the New Jerusalem will come down as a bride.
That’s in line with Bonhoeffer. In his Creation and Fall he writes that “God, brother and sister, and the earth belong together.” Bonhoeffer, in his Dein Reich Komme (Thy Kingdom Come) also writes: “Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from the earth to other worlds beyond; rather, he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children.” Bonhoeffer, who in April 1945 was killed by Hitler, did not mince words when he continued “We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism I mean pious Christian secularism. Not the godlessness of atheism or cultural bolshevism, but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth…..This pious secularism makes it possible to preach and to say nice things….(but) it is the function of the church to witness to the resurrection of Christ from the dead, to the end of the law of death of this world that stands under a curse, and to the power of God in the New Creation.”
So where do we go when we die? Daniel concludes his chapter, “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of day you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” Psalm 71:20 tells us that “From the depth of the earth you will again bring me up.” Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 says it beautifully, “For the trumpet shall sound and the dead will be raised imperishable,” to be re-united with our spirit, safeguarded in heaven.
The 20th century was the age of wars between nations. If the first decade is this century is any indication, then we are witnessing the war of nature against humanity. Revelation 18 warns, “For all nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries,” and advises us “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins.” It is up to each one of us to discover how to do that.
Bert Hielema expanded his vegetable garden to 2000 sq.ft., built his small barn and now has a sore back.
He can be reached at bert@hielema.ca.