March 25 2023

Know Thyself.

“It is a sin not to become what we are.”

The oracle in Delph, the most important religious sanctuary in ancient Greece, had above its entrance the slogan, Gnoothi Seauton, Know Thyself.

It reminds me of a quote by a Jewish sage, “It is a sin not to become what we are.” Only when we are who we are, we are alive and blessed. 

Both quotes made me think of my favorite Psalm, 139, which focuses on self-examination: 

Search me, God, and know my heart;

test me and know my anxious thoughts.

See if there is any offensive way in me,

and lead me in the way everlasting.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer also made some comments: “Personal interpretation is one of the most difficult of all problems; but it still accompanies all of our thinking; we must have our own interpretations: we must give meaning if we live and think at all.”

How, then, do I view the world, the cosmos where we live? Is it our habitat for ever? Does it reveal God to us? 

Stephen William Hawking is famous for his views. Wheelchair bound and unable to speak, he lived from 8 January 1942 – 14 March 2018.  An English theoretical physicist, cosmologist, and author and director of research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology at the University of Cambridge, just before he died, he wrote: “the idea that the universe is a machine governed by unconditional laws with a prior existence is incorrect. I now view the universe as a kind of self-organising entity in which all sorts of emergent patterns appear, the most general of which we call the laws of physics.” 

Dr. James Lovelock, another famous scientist, called the earth GAIA, and also saw it as a living entity. Bonhoeffer, decades before either Hawking or Lovelock granted the earth a self-sustaining status, he presented as specific to the Christian faith the perception that God and the world are one. He also saw life having its origin and wellspring in this world in God, proceeding from this world back to God. Makes sense: Bach is exclusively known through his music.

All these observations have given me a novel perspective on life. If, in essence God and creation are synonymous, then my life must be lived totally reflecting that status.

My views have changed. 

Back, some 50 years, 1972, I was ‘born again’, an expression that has religious overtones, smelling of Pentecostal impulses and heaven orientation. Influenced by a Dutch book, given me by an employee, dealing with death and its consequences, I was persuaded that my ultimate destination was not heaven – as weekly sermons proclaimed in the church I faithfully attended – but the very earth in which I lived. 

That made me a new person, having a genuine re-birth. It took me a further few decades to fully grasp, what Psalm 24 so openly states, “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything with it,” of which my obvious conclusion is that God’s earth is HOLY.

Unless we acknowledge this tremendous truth, and do so with ‘fear and trembling’ we cannot be true to ourselves. 

 “It is a sin not to become what we are.”

Most of us have heard about Climate Change. For more than 30 years the INTERNATIONAL PANEL sponsored by the UN, has been warning us that, unless we drastically cut and even eliminate the use of carbon fuels, we are doomed. We continue to ignore these warnings, sealing our demise. 

Contrary to what churches in general proclaim, our future is and always will be lived on this earth. We cannot fully live the life God intends us to live, unless we change our complete outlook on life, and clothe us in a mode of existence that embraces eternity right here on earth. Only then can we be truly human.

“It is a sin not to become what we are,” said a Jewish Rabbi. In John 5: 29 Jesus tells us that at his return: “those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.”

I believe that this implies that those having lived before, and now live on the earth pursuing permanence, will be resurrected as eternal earth-dwellers. About the others, we must leave them to God’s mercy.

We can only become ‘who’ we are, when we acknowledge ‘what’ we are: Genesis 3: 19 reminds us, “earth we are and to earth we shall return.”

We must never forget that Jesus gave his life, not only to pay for our sins, that too, but especially to restore creation, by wresting it from the clutches of The Great Enemy.

March 18 2023

PURE EVIL

Tucker Carlson: pure evil. Netanyahu: pure evil. Putin: pure evil. Trump: pure evil. 

 

Tucker Carlson 

He was the most popular TV host on American cable news. No longer. Now he is at the center of a firestorm threatening to engulf Fox News and especially downgrade Donald Trump’s image. 

Why his sudden demise? 

He privately admitted that echoing Trump’s claim that Biden’s election was gained by fraud, while Trump was the real winner, was not based on facts. He actually confessed that he passionately hated the former president.

Why then did he do it? He fed these lies to a public, mostly conservative Christians, because it would enhance the ratings, draw more advertisers, and boost earnings, affirming once again that “The lust for money is the root of all evil.” A pure evil man, promoting a pure evil plot.

Russia’s President, Putin.

If anybody personifies Satan, it is this man. He willingly sacrifices hundreds of thousands of Russians, to conquer Ukraine because it was part of the Russian Empire in ages past. In the process he also is killing thousands of Ukrainians, destroying their habitat, depriving millions of the grains that feed the world, and enhancing inflation everywhere. Pure evil, yet the Russian Orthodox Church backs him fully.

Netanyahu.

Israel’s Prime Minister gained his powerful position by courting the most conservative Jewish political parties, who claim all of Palestine as Israel’s legitimate possession, robbing Palestinians of their legitimacy. Why? If Netanyahu loses his premiership, he would face jail, because he currently is on trial on multiple corruption charges. Pure Evil, backed by Old Testament Religion. A man, rotten to the core.

Trump.

“Stop the steal”. A clever slogan, but a pure lie, referring to the supposedly fraudulent Biden election. Trump and lies are synonymous, feeding a fertile feast of falsehoods into a gullible mass, which, the late Dr. Harold Bloom called, ‘the know-nothing Christians’, clutching their Bibles, whose contents are a total mystery to them, using the Scriptures as if it were a talisman paving the road to heaven.

These evil men can only function because an evil society allows them.

Enter Pastor Cahn, a Messianic Jew.

Thank you, Dr. Naomi Wolf, who brought the following to my attention.

In The Return of the Gods, Cahn’s improbable, and yet somehow hauntingly plausible thesis is that ancient dark and metaphysically organized forces, “the idol Gods” of antiquity, have “returned” to our presumably advanced, secular post-Christian civilization. 

Pastor Cahn’s theme is that, because we have turned away from our covenant with YHWH — particularly we in the West, and especially since the 1960s — therefore, the ancient “idol Gods”, or rather, ancient pagan energies, that had been vanquished by monotheism and exiled to the margins of civilization and human activity — have seen an “open door”, and thus a ready home to re-occupy, in us. 

Pastor Cahn makes use of a parable in the New Testament to make this case. He cites Matthew 12: 43-45, in which Jesus tells a story about evil spirits that leave and then return and take seven more wicked ones with them. Verse 45 concludes, “And the final condition is worse than the first. That’s how it will be with this wicked generation”, pointing to today.

Pastor Cahn then writes how the old adversaries in the Hebrew Bible — YHWH’s blatant enemies: Baal, Moloch, and Astarta are re-emerging.

Who are they?

Those are “the idol Gods” that lured, hounded, bedeviled, and seduced Yahweh’s people — again and again. 

Those are “the idol Gods” about whom the monotheistic God/Creator of all, continually and specifically warns us today, and the Children of Israel in the Older Testament. 

Those are “the idol Gods”, the pure evil deities, to whom the Children of Israel constantly stray, disappointing and enraging our Creator. 

Those are “the idol Gods,” with their child sacrifice and their graven images, against whom our father Abraham rebelled and taught his descendants to rebel. 

Those are “the idol Gods” whose acceptance of child sacrifice – a real thing, a barbaric, culture-wide practice that continued for centuries in the tribes and civilizations surrounding the Children of Israel — was supplanted by animal sacrifice; this was an evolution in human civilization that is represented by the story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son Isaac, when the child on the altar is replaced miraculously by a ram provided, at the last moment, by the Lord God.

The ‘Pure Evil’ is us.

Today everything we do, leads to greater evil: turning on a light, starting a car engine, these simple, seemingly innocent actions, have brought us the Satan-inspired evil of Climate Change of which we now face the calamitous consequences. We breathe evil, so not surprisingly, we also breed evil, pure evil, now, everywhere.

Christ’s return, will end this Satan’s rule. Pray for Christ’s coming.

March 11 2023

WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?

We know about the Church today: fragile, divided, aging, pious perhaps. We also have Jesus’ words that the Church will endure until the end. And then there is Augustine proclaiming, “Many whom God has, the Church does not have; and many whom the Church has, God does not have.” 

What does all this entail?

When Jesus made his remarks about the Church, he did not have today’s structured organization in mind. His manifesto emphasized ‘doing’, rather than ‘listening’, in perfect line with Jesus’ mission, ‘how to live as human beings in God’s Holy Creation’. 

Jesus appealed to the whole person, more in line with secular humanity, those engaged in green policies. It was Dr. Barry Commoner, a biologist who formulated the ‘Four Laws of Ecology’: 

(1) Everything is connected to everything else; 

(2) Nature knows best; 

(3) Nothing comes free; 

(4) Nothing disappears. 

We now face the consequences of disregarding these rules. Here Augustine returns: I believe that ‘religiously’ abiding by these ecological rules, points to being on God’s list of those chosen to live in the new creation, even though they never attend church.

Romans 1: 20 comes to mind and the Belgic Confession asking: “How do we know God?” It says:

“First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book

in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:

God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.

All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.”

Of course, the Bible plays an important role, as well.

Yes, there is a hidden church.

The hidden church became visible when a depressed Elijah saw very little evidence of ‘godliness’. In 1 Kings 19:18 God says: Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” 

Today the hidden church is among those who see God’s Creation as Holy.

The church today.

The Western church is thoroughly Middle Class, which is both good and bad. Good, in that it is well positioned to share its wealth; bad, because her very comfort makes it complacent, and, perhaps smug, mostly self-centered. 

As the needs in society increase, and as governments, on all levels cannot cope with the increasing demands for assistance, churches will have to re-orient from being self-centered to living for others, letting go of the paid help – the clergy, expensive and mostly ineffective – providing for the truly needy in society, offering meals, coffee hours, companionship and emotional support. 

In our aging society loneliness abounds, as deadly as alcoholism and tobacco use. Jesus did not call us to a new religion, but to LIFE, and that to the full. That the church today gathers for a pious moment on Sunday, reminds me of my parents and grandparents. They had a room, the best room, that had nothing to do with life. Only on special occasions was this room opened. That’s how religion has become: sugar-coated faith for Sunday services. Writes Bonhoeffer, “The religion of Jesus Christ is not the desert that comes after the meal but it is rather the bread itself, nothing else.”

Away with religion.

The fact is that Christ has become an affair of the church alone, nothing to do with LIFE. Christ has been banned completely from daily activities, and confined to the temple and the church. We have to abandon that sort of religion, and must integrate Christ in all our doings, steeped in his creation: there is where our future lies!

WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?

The first Christians, wanting to eradicate all traces of the Roman idols, demolished their temples, because they believed that God lived not in a building, but in their hearts. Then they constructed churches and cathedrals, rooting them forever in Sunday religion!  Did pagan influences infiltrate early Christianity through seeing edifices as sacred, as ‘God’s House’? Look at the Notre Dame de Paris: to restore it, after the fire, immediately attracted a Billion Dollar in donations, while hunger relief always lacks funds. 

The last Bible book, Revelation, tells us that everything becomes what it is. Revelation 21: 22 notes that ‘there is no temple in the city!”. That indicates the end of the church, and the end of religion, now happening!

In a religion-less world people can become aware of themselves, and realize Christ’s reality – “I have come to bring LIFE and that to the full” (John 10:10). That, writes Bonhoeffer, can have a greater impact on a world come of age than a world wearing the disguise of religion.

March 11 2023

WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?

We know about the Church today: fragile, divided, aging, pious perhaps. We also have Jesus’ words that the Church will endure until the end. And then there is Augustine proclaiming, “Many whom God has, the Church does not have; and many whom the Church has, God does not have.” 

What does all this entail?

When Jesus made his remarks about the Church, he did not have today’s structured organization in mind. His manifesto emphasized ‘doing’, rather than ‘listening’, in perfect line with Jesus’ mission, ‘how to live as human beings in God’s Holy Creation’. 

Jesus appealed to the whole person, more in line with secular humanity, those engaged in green policies. It was Dr. Barry Commoner, a biologist who formulated the ‘Four Laws of Ecology’: 

(1) Everything is connected to everything else; 

(2) Nature knows best; 

(3) Nothing comes free; 

(4) Nothing disappears. 

We now face the consequences of disregarding these rules. Here Augustine returns: I believe that ‘religiously’ abiding by these ecological rules, points to being on God’s list of those chosen to live in the new creation, even though they never attend church.

Romans 1: 20 comes to mind and the Belgic Confession asking: “How do we know God?” It says:

“First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book

in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:

God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.

All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.”

Of course, the Bible plays an important role, as well.

Yes, there is a hidden church.

The hidden church became visible when a depressed Elijah saw very little evidence of ‘godliness’. In 1 Kings 19:18 God says: Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel–all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and whose mouths have not kissed him.” 

Today the hidden church is among those who see God’s Creation as Holy.

The church today.

The Western church is thoroughly Middle Class, which is both good and bad. Good, in that it is well positioned to share its wealth; bad, because her very comfort makes it complacent, and, perhaps smug, mostly self-centered. 

As the needs in society increase, and as governments, on all levels cannot cope with the increasing demands for assistance, churches will have to re-orient from being self-centered to living for others, letting go of the paid help – the clergy, expensive and mostly ineffective – providing for the truly needy in society, offering meals, coffee hours, companionship and emotional support. 

In our aging society loneliness abounds, as deadly as alcoholism and tobacco use. Jesus did not call us to a new religion, but to LIFE, and that to the full. That the church today gathers for a pious moment on Sunday, reminds me of my parents and grandparents. They had a room, the best room, that had nothing to do with life. Only on special occasions was this room opened. That’s how religion has become: sugar-coated faith for Sunday services. Writes Bonhoeffer, “The religion of Jesus Christ is not the desert that comes after the meal but it is rather the bread itself, nothing else.”

Away with religion.

The fact is that Christ has become an affair of the church alone, nothing to do with LIFE. Christ has been banned completely from daily activities, and confined to the temple and the church. We have abandoned that sort of religion, and must integrate Christ in all our doings, steeped in his creation: there is where our future lies!

WILL THERE BE A CHURCH TOMORROW?

The first Christians, wanting to eradicate all traces of the Roman idols, demolished their temples, because they believed that God lived not in a building, but in their hearts. Then they constructed churches and cathedrals, rooting them forever in Sunday religion!  Did pagan influences infiltrate early Christianity through seeing edifices as sacred, as ‘God’s House’? Look at the Notre Dame de Paris: to restore it, after the fire, immediately attracted a Billion Dollar in donations, while hunger relief always lacks funds. 

The last Bible book, Revelation, tells us that everything becomes what it is. Revelation 21: 22 notes that ‘there is no temple in the city!”. That indicates the end of the church, and the end of religion, now happening!

In a religion-less world people can become aware of themselves, and realize Christ’s reality – “I have come to bring LIFE and that to the full” (John 10:10). That, writes Bonhoeffer, can have a greater impact on a world come of age than a world wearing the disguise of religion.

March 4 2023 

WHY ARE WE HERE? 

Good question: why are we here on earth?

Let me, from the outset, make plain, that, when we die – and we all will – there is no heaven to go to. John 3: 13 is quite clear: “No one has ever gone to heaven, except the one who came from there”. Selling the heaven-heresy to Christianity has been Satan’s greatest achievement, has led to the earth’s exploitation, and lies at the basis of our Global Heating predicament.

From the very beginning, the Bible tells us – Genesis 3: 19 – Earth we are and to earth we shall return. So, ban all heaven thoughts: there’s no escape. God created the earth as his kingdom, as ‘the smile of God’s good pleasure’. When creation was ready for habitation, God called it good seven times. What God calls ‘good’ is good indeed: that’s why it is exactly there where we are heading for eternity.

So, what happened with creation, a long, long time ago? An educated guess.

I am of the opinion that, some 10,000 years ago, when there were few humanoids, people who more or less looked like us, God selected a man and woman from the primitive tribes then existing, and infused them with his Spirit. God also gave them a special place, an oasis, between two sparkling rivers, a region full of fruit trees and beautiful flowers and marvelous animals: ‘paradise’ in the full sense. He also told them to be one with all these creatures, regard them as equals in all ways, all being God’s handiwork in whatever form, all functioning as partners in serving God’s totality.

Influenced by two theologians.

I owe Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian, and Teilhard de Chardin, a Roman Catholic priest and esteemed paleontologist, for greater insight in these matters. Bonhoeffer suggested that God and creation are complementary, just as Bach and his music are synonymous. Teilhard was forbidden by his superiors in the church to publish his findings on evolution, yet was an outstanding Christian and celebrated scientist.

We are on earth for a purpose.

We are here to discover who we are and why God placed us here. The selected human pair, recognized in the Older Testament as Adam and Eve, were charged with developing creation to its full potential in an organic and symbiotic way. In it they failed, perhaps not quite cured from the old ways of treating God’s work of art. Typical is how their view on trees “beautiful to behold and good for food” (Genesis 2: 9) changed when its utility was seen as primary “good for food” rather than its beauty aspect. (Genesis 3: 6).

Something happened.

That seemingly innocent reversal, switching from beauty to utility, meant that the harmonious, majestic unity of creation as it emerged from God’s hand, became the frantic, demon-dominated planet in which we now, 2023, dwell as cursed humanity. This simple switch goes far beyond the fact that we have torn up creation’s cohesion. It really meant that God surrendered his own creation to Satan and his followers whose only purpose is to abuse it and destroy it. 

“I will hide my face from them,” he said, “and see what their end will be; for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful. (Deuteronomy 32:20). That’s us.

Get used to it: in this world God no longer calls the shots. The result is that 

God’s kingdom is at tatters. The kingdom is, after all, made up of all plants, all animals, all people, all angels: all things. When, in the later Ten Commandments God asked us to ‘hallow his name’, the Israelites knew that it had nothing to do with a designation of God’ name: God is a ‘no name’ entity, cannot be described. My name, Egbert Drewes, points to an old guy, now sporting a newfangled goatee, but God is beyond name and appearance. When we keep his name holy, it means seeing creation as sanctified, with the purpose of not only keeping it from harm, but improving upon it. 

Yet.

Nevertheless, we still have to rectify what has gone wrong. Our task is to “Seek first the Kingdom and his righteousness”, as Christ urged us to do in Matthew 6: 33. That requirement is still first and foremost our task, even though the entire economic enterprise which has granted us temporary luxury and extravagance at the expense of God’s Holy Creation, is now backfiring on us with leaps and bounds. There is no stopping, because ‘it is terrible to fall into the hands of the living God (Hebrew 10:31). Here ‘creation’ is analogous to God!

Why are we here?

Good question. We are here to prepare ourselves for THE KINGDOM TO COME, the new creation where God is all and in all.

February 25 2023

AWAITING ‘THE DAY’.

Frankly, I am completely captured by the prospect of eternity, that’s why I call myself an “Anthropos Teleios”, a human being always having the TELOS in mind, the very END of our civilization. Once there, in the New Creation, we will apply the lessons learned from studying 10,000 years of human development, avoiding errors while pursuing the good outcomes we have achieved, as per Revelation 14:13. Today, 2023, we are in our final trial phase: the millennia-long experimental episode is about to end.

I know: many are uncomfortable with what is unfolding in the world, but   most believe that we will muddle through somehow. Forget it: we won’t. The world is descending into a “climate doom loop”, a thinktank reported last week.

Cassandra times.

In Greek drama, Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, was given the gift of prophesy by Apollo, but when she spurned his advances, he ordained that her prophecies would not be believed. Today we live in Cassandra times, where the many warnings are simply ignored.

Global Heating is the key to our demise: “we have driven the Earth to a crisis state from which it may never, on a human scale, return to the lush and comfortable world we love and in which we grew up,” wrote the late Dr James Lovelock in his book The Revenge of Gaia, Earth’s climate in crisis and the fate of humanity. Curiously, Lovelock, who was not a Christian, started his book with a quote from Jesus: “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:24). The Ukraine War alone offsets all carbon sinks, all electric transport, windmills, and solar panels.

In essence, Lovelock was saying what Peter writes in 2 Peter 3, describing The Day of the Lord, “Since the elements will be destroyed by fire, (Think Global Heating) you ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of the Lord and speed its coming.” In that sense James Lovelock was a true prophet.

But, being a Prophet is unpopular.

Prophets are unpopular because they question the status quo; prophets are unpopular because people hate change; prophets are unpopular because people are comfortable; prophets are unpopular because politicians hate to be bringers of bad news; prophets are unpopular even in the church as is plain from reading the Old Testament. And not much has changed in the after Christ institutions.  

I perceive prophets to be visionaries, not because they can see into the future, but because they can see the truth, can understand the deeper meaning of life and have a holistic view on events.

Thus, prophets are not extraordinary gifted persons who know the unknown. No, prophets are first and foremost believers who openly and unabashedly dare to look at what is happening ‘out there’ and fully embrace responsibility for the immense challenges evident in our quickly changing society.  

Prophets are foremost believers who by seeing Scripture as a lamp for their feet and a light for their path in God’s wonderful creation, know that Christ, as the Son of Man, as the Ben-Adam, the Son of the Soil, will return to make all things new. That’s why a prophet, in spite of all the sin and evil in this world, looks to the future with full confidence.

Matthew 24: some excerpts.

Jesus saw what was coming. He knew because he died to restore creation.  His words were truly prophetic. Look at these applicable passages: 

 6. You will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars. 

 7. and in various places there will be famines and earthquakes;

 10. At that time many will fall away and will betray one another and hate one another.  

12. Because lawlessness is increased, most people’s love will grow cold. 

15. Therefore, when you see the ABOMINATION OF DESOLATION which was spoken of trough Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place, let the reader understand.  

21. For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will. 

22. Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short. 

My comments.

Jesus’ words directly apply to today. The phrase, ‘Let the reader understand’, means that this can only be grasped when they occur, now, 2023: our world-wide pollution, climate change, IS the Abomination of Desolation. Just as in Noah’s days, when ‘the sinners were taken away’ (no Rapture!), these warnings too, will be ignored, and even ridiculed. 

Please note: 

THE DAY will come like a thief in the night. (1 Thessalonians 5:2), while Revelation 18 points to a time of economic prosperity, just like ours.