GOLIATH’S CURSE, and THE END OF EVERYTHING.
Earlier this year I bought the book named after a famous Biblical figure. The author: Luke Kemp, a senior researcher at one of the world foremost universities: Cambridge. Most of us have heard of Goliath, the formidable Philistine fighter, killed by David, the shepherd-youngster, only armed with a sling.
Well, Goliath is back in the news.
In close to 600 pages, a work of 10 years of careful analysis, this learned man, researching the story of collapse in human history, concludes, and I quote: “The darker angels of our nature are flying us towards evolutionary suicide”.
I believe that Luke Kemp here hits, perhaps accidently, on one of the uttermost truths of the Scriptures: The devil’s aim has always been to destroy THE WORD, which was ‘in the beginning’. Well, he is succeeding, thanks to us, his willing allies.
Luke Kemp’s warning is not a solitary voice. On “The End of Everything”, a book by M. John Harrison, the winner of that most prestigious Booker Prize, the author comments, “No, I don’t feel any hope at all. We are just walking in a dream into a desperate situation. Somehow somebody has got to remind us that every action has consequences and that we’re ignoring them.”
He refers, of course, to us, ignorant by choice.
Read the Bible, lately?
Perhaps by coincidence, (Although I don’t believe in coincidence) the prescribed Bible reading from the Lectionary for November 11 was from Matthew 24. It totally confirmed the conclusions by both Luke Kemp and Harrison. No, it was no coincidence. Jesus’ warnings are real.
Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these (disastrous) things have happeneHeaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Perhaps, reading Matthew 24 once in a while, is an eye-opener. I sincerely believe that this chapter applies to us in 2026/7.
A further coincidence?
COP31 started on November 9. In Turkey. In the same area where Paul, the great Missionary, successfully brought the Gospel. Now the Gospel of Earth Preservation is preached there.
As I have done before, I have made a COP song: COP 31. There is a tune to it. Here it is:
COP 31:
What have we done?
The world is quickly warming.
Should show concern,
As forests burn.
Instead, we start re-arming!
COP 31:
What have we done?
The world sees heat increases
The poor are hit
The drought no fit
Will bring us new diseases.
COP 31
What have we done.
Is there for us a future?
The dies are cast
The heat will last,
And will engulf all nature.
COP 31
What have we done?
A strong El Nino coming,
Will hit the poor
You can be sure
The world’s end will be looming.
COP 31
Can’t be undone?
But Jesus’ words are surer.
The earth renewed
All ill eschewed
The future will be purer.
Some personal history.
I wrote this song last weekend. As a primary school student in the Christian School in Groningen, the Netherlands – a long-time university city (It is the second-oldest university in the Netherlands, after Leiden University, founded in 1614) – each Monday morning, I had to recite a memorized rhymed Psalm song or gospel hymn.
Today, almost 90 years later, these rhymed verses still play through my mind, every morning. Perhaps, these Psalms. grafted into my consciousness, have given me the ability to create new verses quite quickly, often using the melodies of these songs as their starting points.
A New Age.
“We have entered a new age of climate extremes,” said António Guterres, the UN secretary general. “A supersized El Niño is colliding with a planet already superheated by manmade climate change. Climate records keep falling. The human costs keep rising. And those least responsible are suffering first and worst.”
GOLIATH’S CURSE, and THE END OF EVERYTHING.
What pains me especially is the lack of prophecy in the church. In the Niagara area where I now live, there are thousands of ‘Reformed’ Dutch families, divided over some TEN different denominations, quibbling about such irrelevant matters of women and sex, while ‘prophecy’ and matters of creational preservation seems to be taboo, and rarely mentioned.
In the first Century church, Christ’s return was the overriding topic, so much that Peter had to caution them, evident in 2 Peter 3.
Beloved, do not let this one thing escape your notice: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and its works will be laid bare.
Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness as you anticipate and hasten the coming of the day of God, when the heavens will be destroyed by fire and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with God’s promise, we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.
I sense that this First Century urgency is lacking today, even as the signs are becoming more pronounced by the day.