IT WILL HAPPEN. SOON?
Her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.
Revelation 18: 5
This week I reflect on, what the Bible calls: The Fall of Babylon. Why Babylon, that city/state long ago reduced to rubble? Desert sands have covered its ruins with carpets of oblivion, yet Israel’s collective memory still shudders with anxiety at the mention of this name, the city where the bloom of the nation was banished 500 years ago before Christ.
The Bible and future history.
I suggest you dig out your Bible, and start reading Revelation 18, with the present circumstances in mind. Take verse 5 – quoted above – and look out of your window, and recall Climate Change: yes, our sins are piled up to heaven.
There are other, equally relevant pointers in that chapter, such as verse 3: “All the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries”. Our economies and their leaders, have done exactly what Jesus refused to do: Bow before the Anti-Christ, and so seal our sure demise. World history is, surely, suicide, is a leap into the abyss. That is what humanity does, without prompting: God has no hand in this.
How apt.
The unfolding of our economies has caused untold number of species to disappear, and resulted in the ascent of a mad man such as Donald Trump, elected on the MAGA slogan, now fast becoming MACA – Make America Collapse/Corrupt Again. I foresee a Depression scenario, such as happened in 1930, about a century ago, when most Americans still had access to rural – self-sufficient relatives, now all gone, making ‘collapse’ fatal.
When things go bad, leaders will make it worse.
I read some disturbing news about the next war, which certainly will come. I can well imagine that the USA, with Satan in charge, and its technical advantage disappearing, may strike a preventing stroke against China, this ancient country, which now too, has the capability to destroy the US.
Trump is doing exactly the opposite of what today is required, leading the world into Armageddon, that dreaded situation that spells the end of the world as we know it. The current news is quite disturbing, and, I think that responsible US senators will discuss, in utter secrecy, ways and means to rid the USA of its mentally disturbed president, a man beyond irrational, and a certified lunatic.
Back to the Bible.
I am a Bible reader, a book that tells me, in grand outlines, how God created, how we fought him time and again, destroying his handiwork, and how God’s Son gave his life to renew the Cosmos, ensuring eternal life for his faithful.
The Latin saying, Si vis pacem, para bellum – if you want peace, prepare for war – is not true anymore: preparing for war, leads to war, and this time, unlike all wars before, nothing and nobody will be spared. In the new face of war, swarms of robotic aircraft work in unison to find and kill targets without any human oversight. Advanced cyberweapons can immobilize armed forces and shut down electrical grids across the country. A.I.-designed bio- weapons can be engineered to kill only those with certain genetic characteristics. All-out war – All-out destruction.
Economic growth an impossibility.
Our economic system is based on continuous growth: a total impossibility in a finite world. AI and the power sources they require are also based on this assumption. AI’s appetite for energy, in whatever source, its ever-growing requirements for water to cool their heat generating operations, is another factor in failure.
Can we still live ‘holy lives’ today?
Yet, the Bible urges us to live holy lives. Of course, Paul meant sexual purity, but I include overall purity, a lifestyle that does no harm to God’s beloved creation.
How, today, do I live a holy life? It is my considerate opinion that very few, if any, are able to do so, as our entire existence depends on polluting. Since that is the case, the time for Parousia is near.
Her sins are piled up to heaven, and God has remembered her crimes.
Sins against creation are suicidal, are self- punishing. Peter, the apostle, saw our future in stark terms. 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 everything done in it will be laid bare.
That’s what our greed for speed leads to. People know the score: Make haste, slowly; hatez-vous lentement; haast u langzaam; festina lente: the given is well-known. We look forward to eternity, where perfection is the rule.
Now that eternity dawns, not only for me, aging human, but for all humanity, the challenge today is to learn to live the life of eternity: that’s our human task. Somehow Christianity has re-learn this approach.
As always: Maranatha, Lord, hasten the Day.