MASKS OFF.
I sincerely believe that we, the human race, are living on the edge of eternity. By this I mean that within the foreseeable future the Lord, Creator, will return and require of us an accounting of what we have done with our lives, and how we have dealt with the world and those who live therein, including ourselves. Here’s what Teilhard de Chardin, that famous RC priest and celebrated paleontologist, despised by some as an idolater and by others idolized as a saint, wrote in his Le Milieu Divin (freely translated as The Holy Earth), almost a century ago: “One day, the Gospel tells us, the tensions gradually accumulating between humanity and God will touch the limits prescribed by the possibilities of the world. And then will come the end.” These limits are now evident everywhere.
Psalm 115: 16 clearly states that “the highest heaven belongs to the Lord (that very upper region beyond where the stars and planets dwell) but the earth he has given to humanity”. When God gave his own earth to us, there were some strings attached, such as “treat it as holy!”, because God’s name is still written on every single item. We will be judged on that criterion as well.
Judgment?
I write this word with a degree of trepidation. Judgment is not a popular topic. When the apostle Paul addressed the elite in Athens, speaking to the select gathering of its city’s foremost brains, he mentioned that word. There, right on that famous meeting ground, the Areopagus, where the most important issues of the day were discussed, Paul, missionary extraordinary, to a crowd totally unfamiliar with the tenets of the Gospel, started his ‘sermon’ by talking about judgement, of all things.
Why did he do such a thing? Why do I mention it here? Well, we all know that we are abusing the earth to the point of collapse. God, in his wisdom has built judgment into creation: treat it as holy, or else. We have been duly warned. Romans 1: 20 tells us that creation reveals the infinity of the creator: honor him by honoring creation, or face judgment.
Where is God today? What is our status vis-à-vis God?
Not a very burning question today. We all know too well that God has become the forgotten entity in society. We, the wise men and women of the West, fully versed in our so-called civilized ways, know next to nothing of Christianity, in spite of conspicuous church spires pointing to heaven on many street corners. We totally have forgotten the very purpose of the gospel: the principal role assigned to us was to ‘serve’ creation, so well expressed by Jesus when he categorically stated that “he had come to serve and not to be served”. (Mark 10:45). And that especially includes creation!
But no: We wanted ‘progress’, wanted ‘development’, wanted ‘to dominate’. Everything we have now is built on OIL. OIL is now the new OILMIGHTY. Progress? Look 500 years back: Then there was progress: America discovered; the shape of the cosmos detected; Roman Catholicism’s domination successfully challenged; the printing press revolution; new fire power for armies; banking and credit invented. And the 17th and 18th Centuries? They were the eras of the great painters and composers. All we have now is speed, faster and faster barreling us toward disaster. No going back: full steam ahead to a future of which we now see the storm clouds looming, soon to become a body-torturing hurricane.
What went wrong?
We have subjected creation to exploitation to the point of the death of nature. It now is becoming plain that we have lived the LIE. The most striking sign of our last days is that our masks – not the Covid ones but those that hide our true being – are being ripped from our faces and expose the true nature of our greed. Not only the masks, also the earplugs that keep us from hearing the cries of creation, and the blindfolds that bar us from observing the true picture. All this will become even more evident when the WORLD meets in Glasgow this fall.
Already small incidents are popping up, such as the 215 children’s bodies in Kamloops, British Columbia, where the RC church, in her attempt to ‘convert’ indigenous children, unceremoniously buried those who did not survive the process. The icy silence of the church does not surprise me. Years ago, I was running a 10 km race, and caught up to a fellow runner who at one time had been the head of the Newfoundland Police force and, in that capacity, had interrogated the archbishop there in connection with the sex crimes of his priests: the clergy’s persistent stonewalling had frustrated him no end.
Questions.
What then should be our course of action in this ultimate hour? With what sort of expectation must we enter this future?
We must, first of all, admit that we, the human race in general, and you and I in particular, have screwed it up, blinded by our blatant debauchery. That admission not only calls for repentance, but also change, because change in small ways, is still possible. We can’t change the big picture, because we have become totally dependent on carbon fuel. But, in small ways, it is a 7/24 affair.
Here are a few tips: become a vegetarian, as meat requires far more energy to bring to the table than a salad. Grow your own, even in small ways. Turn off lights and shun air-conditioning. Walk or bike wherever possible. Pray. Assume a ‘eternity’ mentality. Become what you are. The very thought that our society is ‘normal’ must be abandoned forthwith. We live in the Age of Satan bent to destroy creation, and succeeding thanks to our eager cooperation.
Become what you are.
That’s what the last Bible book, Revelation, tells us. “Become what you are”, not an earth-destroyer but a preserver, a condition for eternity. Off with that mask! Don’t stand there, shaking in your boots in the midst of the last gasp of the history of the world; don’t just stand there with eyes full of fear, sore afraid of what is to come. What lies ahead can only be what already is, what has been there since Calvary, and what is at hand is nothing but light, radiating light: DAY without End. That’s why the book of Revelation, in spite of all its perplexity provoking pictures, is, in its deepest sense, a book of enriching encouragement.
There is only one thing to worry about, and this is that we lose sight of what God in his grace in Jesus Christ has done for us, so that we, in our insecurity, will be tempted to compromise with the world and find security in an attitude of half-baked lukewarmness. That world has no future. Remember: “For this world in its present form is passing away” (1 Cor. 7: 31). And what lies ahead?
The Bible tells us that straight through the matters that are perishable we will see that which is fixed for eternity: the greatness and glory of Him who sits on the throne, and of Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, evident in the New Creation! If that is true – and it is true – then only one item is more important: “Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. 5: 14). Get rid of that mask!