Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

May 4 2022

HEAVEN AND HELL.

Every May I am reminded of May 1945, when my city, Groningen, the Netherlands, was freed from German occupation, after a battle that destroyed a major portion of its historic centre. On May 5 1945, a peace-deal was signed, changing ‘5 years of hell’ to ‘heaven’: a despotic and cruel regime replaced with a viable democracy, and a new future.

However, this week’s theme of ‘Heaven and Hell’ deals not with heaven in contemporary terms, or hell experienced in many places, but concerns the eternal state, expressed in biblical concepts. Today’s ‘heaven concept’ is colored by ancient Greek mythologies, forever living in the presence of gods, while hell is seen as their absence. Both are ideas derived from a “meme“.

A ”meme”?

A ‘meme’ is a small unit of information that can easily move from one human mind to another. It is the virtual equivalent of a virus in the sense that it “infects” people and influences their behavior. “Heaven” is a good example. The idea that we, upon death, join God in heaven, is so ingrained in church and society, that it has become a ‘meme’, a fact without any foundation. 

When Jesus had a conversation with that aristocratic theologian, Nicodemus (who later lent his own grave-sepulchre for Christ’ burial), Jesus told him that ‘nobody has ever gone to heaven, except the one who come from there, the Son of Man.” Yet, the notion of ‘joining one’s loved ones in Heaven’, reigns supreme.

That same chapter (John 3) also tells me that, “God loved the cosmos (the world we live in) so much that he allowed his Son to be the sacrificial Lamb to buy it back from the Devil”. 

That’s why our humble earth is and forever will be our home.

I have experienced this ‘meme’ theme in real life. For 10 years I wrote a weekly column for a daily newspaper. My editor liked my writings, but the publisher did not, because I often was critical of religion, and he was a devout Roman Catholic. When I wrote that the greatest win Satan ever scored, occurred when the church adopted ‘heaven’ as the saints’ ultimate destination: that was the last straw, and he terminated my tenure.

The Presbyterian Record once published an article in which I explained my ‘heaven’ views. In a subsequent issue, ‘a letter to the editor’ called me ‘a heretic’. 

Heaven is an easy sell.

Of course, heaven is an easy sell: regarding Creation as HOLY and live accordingly, is difficult and clashes with our ruling religion, Capitalism, now the very source of our climatic ills.

I hardly ever watch TV, but somehow, I did see Larry King interview Billy Graham. In it, Larry asked: “Tell me, Billy, what happens when you die?” Billy: “Jesus will take me by the hand and bring me to God.” 

The famous Billy, still Christianity’s leading light, conveniently forgot 1Timothy 6: 16, “God lives in inapproachable light, whom nobody has seen or can see.”  Yet the belief that we go to heaven when we die, has so penetrated secular and religious thinking, that, I believe, “Climate Change” can be directly traced to this erroneous belief: “Why care for the earth when we leave it anyway?” Had the church insisted on Earth’s Holiness, Global Heating may not have taken place.

And that brings me to HELL.

If Heaven is not our destination, where does that leave HELL?

That is a tricky question. Jesus mentions it, so, yes, there is such a concept as ‘hell’. Where is it? It reminds me of 1 Samuel 28 where King Saul consults a medium, the Witch of Endor, who saw a Spirit coming out of the ground, Samuel, the priest. 

This makes me suppose that, after death, the Spirit lives on, either awaiting full life in the Lord, or facing hell with personal recollections where ‘in the spirit’, our flagrant sins committed against God’s creation and God’s creatures, are recalled. It makes the PURGATORY premise more plausible. This period, asleep as Jesus calls it, also gives us time to reflect. To a Hitler and a Stalin, this entails a constant review of the innocents killed by their actions, for others to become what they are: ready for the New Creation.

In short: heaven is being with Christ on this earth, living and experiencing LIFE TO THE FULL, as Jesus taught us in John 10: 10, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. Going to heaven is a take-off from Greek paganistic thinking, modeled on Socrates and Plato, while hell takes its cue from the Greek ‘Hades’ concept. While Hell could well be a painful reliving of one’s life, in isolation, and varying in severity for each person.

April 27 2022

TIME IS RUNNING OUT.

Ugo Bardi, a chemistry professor in Florence, Italy, UC Berkeley trained, member of the Club of Rome, last week, wrote:

“The Roman Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca lived in difficult times, not unlike ours. Then, as now, a Great Empire was starting to follow a road that would eventually lead to its final collapse. That was clear for those who could see beyond the veil of lies that pervaded everything, then as now. 

Seneca could never really face the ultimate consequences of what he was seeing, but sometimes he peered into the future, and he saw a better world that was to come. In his “De Ira” (about rage), Seneca wrote “Dandum semper est tempus: veritatem dies aperit.” (There is always time, and the days disclose the truth). 

Seneca was also a contemporary of Jesus Christ. It is likely that neither knew of each other, but they shared one thing: the need for truth. Christ went beyond Seneca when he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” Seneca was still a man of the past: Christ was the future. 

There will be a moment when the mass of lies that surround us will collapse and fade away. On the day of resurrection, the day of Easter in Christianity, truth is revealed, and we might discover that it was always in front of us.” 

Writing is deleting.

In my weekly writing, I always make a lot of changes, both in the heading and in my script. I once read that “writing is scratching”. In our new days ‘writing is deleting’, something that cannot be done when translating from Dutch to English, of which I have done a lot.

 I translated three books by Johan Herman Bavinck, a professor of Missions at the Free University in Amsterdam.

Here is a passage from his book on REVELATION, the Bible’s last book in which our very own situation is described. The book ends with ‘The arrival of the New heavens and the New Earth.”  Here is a passage that points to today’s INFLATION.

Immediately after the second horse, right after the breaking of the third seal, the rider of the black horse arrives. About his intention we too need not dwell in ignorance. Its rider carries in his hands a scale, and while he proceeds, there is a voice that says: “A quart of wheat for a day’s wages and three quarts of barley for a day’s wages.” Both that scale and these words signify poverty, hunger and inflation. Money loses its value and the costs of the normal daily needs go higher and higher. A quart of wheat was about what one person needed to stay alive, which meant that a laborer by working could only earn enough to keep himself from starving, but not his family. 

Yes, I do believe that TIME IS RUNNING OUT: we live in apocalyptic times.

Apocalyptic times.

There’s no doubt that a prolonged war in Ukraine will sap Russia’s manpower and matériel, while sanctions will throw the nation into an economic depression and undermine its ability to produce more precision-guided munitions and conventional arms. As this war and its consequences slowly weaken Russian conventional strength, Russia likely will increasingly rely on its nuclear deterrent to signal the West and project strength to its internal and external audiences.” Putin’s aggression is “reviving fears” of a more “militaristic Russia.”

Today there is a great deal of apocalyptic writing. The word ‘apocalyptic’ means ‘revelation’. The overriding theme of the biblical book Revelation, is that ‘everything becomes what it is.’ There are three current phenomena that reinforce this symptom: “Climate Change”, “The war that ends life on earth”. People understand that we could lose everything, that climate could change everything, that nuclear war could end everything, that a “Pandemic” also could end everything. And yet, it seems impossible to act.

Gail Tverberg, an astute actuary, in her latest blog on Our Finite Earth, ends with: “It becomes clear that many of us will not live as long or well as we previously expected, regardless of savings or supposed government programs. There is no real way to fix this issue (of running out of fuel), except perhaps to make religion and the possibility of life after death more of a focus.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been a beacon of light in my life. He taught me to see life from the perspective of eternity. He called himself an Anthropos Teleios, (Matthew 5:48), a human being always keeping the ultimate END in mind. I, with my whole heart, believe in a New Earth under a New Heaven. That prospect is always on my mind and evident in my actions. Joyfully, every morning, I wake up and thank the Lord that I am a day closer to the Parousia, the Day of the Lord. Yes, TIME IS RUNNING OUT.

APRIL 20 2022

THE PUTIN PUZZLE.

We see his face everywhere: no smile, conventionally dressed: just an ordinary bloke, clean shaven, no beard, no mustache: Joe Doe in person, and small at that. Meet him on the street, and you wouldn’t give him a second glance. 

Yet in his hands lies the fate of the world. He, and he alone, started the war in Ukraine. Why? A small man with big ambitions? The restorer of the Great Russian Empire? If that his goal, he’s off to a bad start, with possibly ominous consequences. 

A strange man, this Putin. He is often portrayed sitting at one end of a huge 10+ meter narrow table, isolated and alone: brooding, solitary, afraid of intimacy, afraid of being afraid, always right, always correct, always decisive. 

Will history repeat itself?

I am reading Barbara Tuchman’s classic, The Guns of August, describing in minute detail how World War I unfolded and how especially the English agonized before committing themselves to war, then expected to last a few months. Now many historians assume that this conflict was only concluded 31 years later, in May 1945 with Hitler’s suicide in Berlin.

I am reading this book with fast-rising feelings of foreboding: is it possible that we are facing another world war? The war to end all wars? Will it coincide with our war against Creation?

For a long time, I have postulated that we, the human race, are fighting God through killing creation, taking in stride the floods, the heat, the hurricanes, the forest fires. I also think that battling God’s earth is mentally preparing us for worse conditions to come, as the hot war in Ukraine may soon engulf the entire world, just as the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39 was a prelude to World War II.

I am afraid, sore afraid, that Putin is the personification of evil: doesn’t laugh, doesn’t scold, shows no emotion, shows no feelings.

The opposite of Jesus.

We read how Jesus wept. We read how Jesus loved. We read how Jesus is portrayed by his opponents as a glutton and winebibber, because he enjoyed the fruits of the earth; he also openly defied temple rules and religious ordinances. Jesus taught us to live, and that to the full.

And Putin?  

He reminds me of a little poem:

“Whenever God erects a house of prayer           

The Devil builds a chapel there;                                 

And ‘twill be found upon examination                

The latter has the largest congregation.”

                                             Daniel Defoe in The True-born Englishman.

Here’s a line I never expected to write: much of what is seen as Christian has become the opposite: The Russian Orthodox Church fully endorses Putin; The American Southern Baptist and many Roman Catholics fully agree with Donald Trump; The Brazilian largest Protestant segment, Pentecostalism, is fully behind Bolsonaro, the destroyer of the Amazon.

Poor man. Putin is on his own and consumed by the past, trained and shaped as an agent of the Soviet Secret Police, he acts not on facts but on fiction, not on proof but on fabrication and suspicion.

What’s wrong?

What is there in contemporary Christianity that thwarts humanity’s attempts to find itself? Just as Psalm 2 portrays God laughing in heaven at the feeble attempts of earthly rulers to rule, so Satan wherever he is, is delighted at the twisted situation the church finds itself in, as the greater mass of church goers has elevated Christianity to a ‘religion’, as if formality, church attendance, and vicarious confessions can redeem us.  

Putting Putin’s position in perspective is placing Capitalism also on the weigh scale. Capitalism may have a more benign appearance, but its true face is becoming more evident each day through so-called natural disasters.

I wonder, is American Capitalism, in which we all are enmeshed, any better than Putin’s pledge to pursue the ancient Greater Russian Dream? Aren’t both the American and the Russian aims the same: Creative Destruction of the Planet? 

True, Putin embodies the Devil at its worst, but Capitalism embodies the Devil at its most insidious: under the cloak of a blessing, both systems abuse organized Religion for their own ends.

The Putin Puzzle solved.

Where Jesus wants us to be fully human, Putin is the total antithesis. I am inclined to think that the Putin – Trump – Bolsonaro triumvirate – fully endorsed by much of the ecclesiastical establishment – represent the Trinitarian Anti-Christ.

Just as religion in Jesus’ days, killed him, today the embodiment of these three politicians, in league with their denominations, is killing creation, is, in essence, killing the Creator by being true lackeys of The Evil One, whom Jesus called, The Prince of the World. 1 John 5: 19 confirms this, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the Evil One.”

April 13 2022

BLIND AND DEAF

Jesus repeatedly emphasized to his disciples that his ministry would be of a short duration. But the disciples were so fixed on Jesus establishing an earthly kingdom that they were blind and deaf to his words: instead, they believed in a totally different scenario: a war of liberation, using Jesus’ miracles to overcome the two problems all armies have, (1) providing food, (Jesus would solve that by making bread and fish almost out of nothing), and (2) restoring death and healing wounds: both conditions would make their army invincible. That’s why they were immune to Jesus’ message of his death and resurrection.

His disciples were warned alright: On three different occasions – in Mark 10, in Matthew 20 and in Luke 17 – Jesus told them that soon his ministry would end, because the Temple establishment saw him as a threat to their carefully constructed system of laws and regulations involving worship and Sabbath regulations, all of which Jesus openly defied. Even his very last miracle, when dying on the cross, pointed to abolishing “religion’, when the heavy curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies, was ripped from top to bottom, signalling the END of worship by rote, which is still going strong today. 

In spite of all his miracles and divine powers, Jesus found few true converts, not even among his disciples, who thirsted for ‘worldly power’. His immediate support group had grandiose ideas about the future, openly debating who would get what portfolio, such as Secretary of the Treasury – Judas being a prime candidate there – while the most belligerent, Peter, would be in charge of the Defence department. 

Nothing has changed.

Today it is no different: we too we are blind and deaf to Jesus’ words, blind and deaf to the crying of creation, blind and deaf to the alarm bells God’s Earth is ringing loud and clear. We too are in the grip of ‘worldly’ power, which has caused air pollution to spread everywhere so that there is not one single spot on the earth left with pure and unaffected air, and not a single spot where plastic has not penetrated, including the very lungs of you and me. These two events alone foreshadow a future where Matthew 24 has become the most up-to-date chapter in the Bible:

For then there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now—and never to be equaled again. (verse 21).

The immediate future looks Ukraine-like for the entire world. When, once we are in the New Creation, and able to look back to our time, we will see a planet basically uninhabitable because of extreme heat and desolation, with polar ice gone, with methane released from permafrost, causing mass extinction and the final fire of which 2 Peter 3 speaks.

Take the Covid Pandemic. 

We now are at the stage where we are sick of regulations and restrictions, and so made a new rule: ‘learning to live with’, just as we are sick of Climate Change where too, we ignore it and are ‘learning to live’ with it until the bitter end.

And then there are Russia and China, the two most secular states in the world. They are not bound to reductions in Green House Gases. Without their cooperation, any UN agreement is useless. Russia wants to sell its oil and natural gas, the more or better. China wants to see its 1.3 billion people attain middleclass status. Considering these conditions, will The West – us – really cut back its oil use?

Expect Climate Change to turn into Global Heat: this year! The war in Ukraine has changed the entire picture: gone are all good climate resolutions, gone are windfarms and solar projects. Now priority is given to war production, tanks, bazookas, drones, yes, tactical nuclear devices, while there will be cutbacks on ‘climate-saving’ incentive, all because Climate Change is a future event, while the Russian – and Chinese – threat is immediate. 

Just as Temple worship in Jesus’ day saw him as a threat, so the church today fails to see that redemption of creation and personal redemption go hand in hand: we, in general, and the church in particular, is blind and deaf to God’s Created Word.

It took the disciples a totally new conversion to grasp what the entire Bible, especially Isaiah 65 and actually all of Scriptures, proclaims: we wait for New Heavens, totally cleaned of all space junk and radio and TV waves and satellites and polluted air; we wait for a renewed earth.

It all started in the Garden of Eden. It will end in the New Earth where “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations”, as Revelation 22 so poetically tells us. 

April 6 2022                                

ANGELS.

Are not all angels ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? Hebrews 1: 14.

Now, April 2022, we, more than ever, need ministering angels!  Fortunately, they are out there, believe me.

My book, DAY WITHOUT END, starts with the physical appearance of my Guardian Angel who has looked after me my entire life. When I wake up in the New Creation, here’s how I describe the scene:

“Eat it.”

That mysterious command jolts me awake and at once I notice an apple in my hand and an approaching fellow who knows that I am clutching one even before I realized it.

I look at the apple. I glance at the slowly moving creature. Where is the connection? Did he put it in my hand when I was asleep and then sneaked away?

There’s that voice again: “Eat it.” The sound vibrates through the total silence, repeating the words as ripples on a quiet pond: “Eat it, eat it.”

He comes closer and my eyes now find their focus. To me he looks familiar, but I cannot place him. He looks like a long lost relative, like a brother I’ve never known. He is about my height and build, slim and trim. He has strong, flowing hair, slightly disorderly as if the wind has blown through it. His eyes are a deep blue, much bluer than mine. Amazing eyes this man has, penetrating, all-seeing it seems, understanding, full of sparkle. A slight smile hovers over his face, soft, inviting, encouraging.

You may not be aware of it, but angels closely follow the whereabouts of God’s people: They are simply delighted when a person becomes a follower of the Way, and are dejected when the opposite is true.

Yes, I do have a guardian angel: I call him Cornelius, and assign him initially a prominent place in my book. (Google: Bert Hielema: World without End) But angels too, look forward to the Lord’s coming, and today are preparing themselves for the basic change that will take place for them as well, as heaven becomes obsolete and God for all practical purposes, disappears, as the devil and his legions are conquered and banned forever.

 So, will angels really disappear? 

Angels are there now to serve those who will inherit salvation, but, once this is accomplished, what is there for them to do?  What will happen to them? And what will happen to God? 

In my book, my guardian angel meets me in the New Creation in a welcoming role, and introduces me to several people from all over the world for whom he also has been a guardian. But now that the New World has come, is the task for angels over? Is there still a place for them? Oh yes, I also introduce a female angel, a choir leader, so, are there really two types of angels?

Yet, in my book, eventually, all angels disappear. And, curiously, God also no longer plays a role, but his Creation remains forever! And Jesus? He is  always there, and will always dwell with us on earth.

When I questioned my guardian angel, he told me of his different moods, rejoicing when people turned to the true faith but also mourning as he saw God’s creation being hammered and torn apart, and thoroughly destroyed.

Yes, the suffering of creation had caused a lot of anguish in heaven, as the legions of angels, as numerous as those who are saved, share in the cries of creation, so well described in Romans 8: 22, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pain of childbirth.”

Now, with the entire world fixated on the plight of Ukraine, and TV cameras divulging the cruelties of war, it seems that the pains, of childbirth, the contractions become more pronounced and more frequent, looming more ominous than ever, exacerbated by the substitution of black coal to replace somewhat less dirty Russian natural gas, while the Canadian Tar-Sands Oil generation booms and the CO2 count and Methane emissions shoot up. 

Truly, we have entered the ‘age of evil’ where the great danger of nuclear war, cannot be far behind: the MAD age, Mutually Assured Death. 

I devote this blog to the ‘angels’ who roam all around us, invisible servants of The Most-High and of us lowly humans. They know war, having chased Satan and his legions out of heaven. Now, in their defeat, today, as yet, these devils rule the earth, the place where you and I dwell. 

The sum total of today’s happening means that redemption is at hand: Christ’s return is near. Pray without ceasing.

March 30 2022.

THE CHURCH REVISITED.

Augustine – who was not a saint – once said,

“Many whom God has, the church does not have; and many whom the 

church has, God does not have.”

I was reminded of this truth while writing my daily (500 words) impromptu comments on a text from the lectionary – now in my 30^th year – when I was struck by a passage from Romans 2: 14-15,

“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” 

The above passage suggests both indigenous and personal – by nature! – thinking and action, seeing everything created as ‘holy’ and divinely ordained, which brings me to Luther’ s views on the word ‘church’, found in  McGill professor, Douglas John Hall’s book, WHAT CHRISTIANITY IS NOT. 

There I read how Luther clearly did not like the word ‘church’: “Kirche”. Said he, “If (instead of the word Church) the following words had been used in the Creed: “I believe that there is a holy Christian People”, it would have been easy to avoid all the misery that has come in with this blind, obscure word ‘church’; for the word ‘Christian Holy People’ would have brought with it, clearly and powerfully, both understanding and judgement on the question, “What is and what is not a church?” But because we use this blind word ‘church’ in the creed, the common man thinks of a stone house which we call a church.”

“The word ‘church’ itself is derived from the Greek ‘kuriakon’, meaning the dwelling place of the Lord (kurios), but ‘kuriakon’ does not appear in the New Testament. It should go without saying that the habit of using the word church to refer to buildings and ecclesiastical properties is not biblical. Christians during the early period did not have their own buildings; they met in the homes of members or in public places.”

So far, the quote from a foot note in Dr. Hall’s excellent book. 

He writes that the church is incomplete in itself and quotes Bonhoeffer: “The church is her true self only when she exists for humanity.” Dr. Hall continues, “Such a mission – to exist for humanity – demands on the part of the church, a new and radical orientation towards the world (cosmos); for, as the most familiar of scriptural texts, John 3: 16, asserts, it is the world that God ‘so loved’ in Jesus Christ. 

I am glad to say that my ‘church’ has an environmental team that does what both Hall and Bonhoeffer recommend: we are using the grounds around the church to grow produce for the local foodbank and have plans to convert the remainder into community meeting places, as the property is beautifully situated in the very centre of the village, across from the supermarket and beer store on the main thoroughfare midway between Toronto and Ottawa.

 I should add that ‘kuriakon’ meaning,’ the dwelling place of the Lord’, from which ‘Kirche’ in German, ‘kirk’ in Scotland and ‘kerk’ in Dutch have been derived, refers not to ‘church’, but to creation as Psalm 24 clearly indicates: “The Earth is the Lord’s and all it contains.” 

All this makes me wonder: have we been wrong about the place of the church in Christianity? Many parishioners are more wedded to the ‘sanctuary’ or denomination than to Christ’s message. Revelation 21: 22 clearly indicates that in the New Creation there is no temple, no physical church, no special place of worship: the entire creation is God’s Holy Place: there’s where ‘worship’ should take place.

I believe strongly that we now face the “Wrath of God”. It is becoming more evident by the day that God-Creation is exacting revenge for our indiscriminate injuries inflicted upon its holiness. 

“How then shall we live?”

That is the perennial question facing God’s Holy People, the ‘church’, if you like. We must prepare for a new, totally new world, in which ‘righteousness dwells’, a state where holiness percolates everything. Our every thought, our every action, our entire life, must be dominated by the perfection of the New Creation, and, even when it is impossible to live that way, our thoughts, prayers, intentions, mode of existence, must be pre-occupied with that lofty, even impossible, goal, always remembering that our life today is a proving ground for eternity.

This goes far beyond the church: it concerns ALL of life.