Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

JANUARY 26 2019

THOSE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE……………

Jeremiah 51: 9 tells me that there comes a time when further efforts are useless. I believe that this is the case today. Here’s what this great prophet said,
“‘We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be healed; let us leave her and each go to our own land, for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the heavens.”
In the Bible Babylon always represents the world ruled by Satan.

THOSE WHO ARE ABOUT TO DIE……… is part of the translation of the Latin phrase, “Morituri Te Salutant: “those who are about to die, salute you” shouted by the gladiators who fought to death in the Coliseum in Rome in front of the Emperor.

These sword fighters knew what to expect, and accepted their fate. I believe we are in a similar position. Those who are about to go extinct include us, as well as animals, trees, and flowers. I wonder whether the very last animal or flower to disappear also exclaims, “I who am about to die, salute my maker”.

The only possible remedy is found in the Bible, in 1 Corinthians 13, that famous LOVE chapter. It ends with these words, “Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face….Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love”.
Yes, our only hope is to bank on God’s love and our love for God and his words.

I believe that, in some ways today we have a better picture of what goes on than in Paul’s days. Then mirrors, some 2000 years ago, gave a rather distorted reflection of the actual image. So, perhaps today, thanks to world-wide-communications, we have greater insight in what’s transpiring everywhere in the world, and can explore where all this leads.

Yes, I deeply believe that “all we have left is LOVE”.

Some 35 years ago my brother Drewes, en route to the Netherlands, after having completed a project in Australia, stopped in to visit us, and gave me a book by C. S. Lewis, THE FOUR LOVES. It remained unread until this week when I finally absorbed to some extent what the great C. S. Lewis wrote about AFFECTION, FRIENDSHIP, EROS, and CHARITY. My overriding impression of the book was my own inadequacy of living up to the love God extended to us, and my feeble response to his reaching out to me.

I love my wife, I love life, I love the earth and love God. It is not that I always am ‘in love’, but in a dream last week my love for my wife became evident again. Even after more than 65 years of marriage and another 5 years of courtship and being formally engaged to be married, I still have troubling dreams from the time she broke off the relationship. Praise God for dreams.

C. S. Lewis is very much sold on heaven. There’s where I part ways with him, because it is much easier, or better, less difficult, to love God through his creation and the Scriptures than to love God in the abstract. I take my cue from Paul who wrote to his adopted son Timothy, “God lives in inapproachable light, nobody can see him, and nobody has seen him”. (1 Tim. 6:18).

I find it difficult to love something or somebody unseen. I love J. H. Bavinck and Dietrich Bonhoeffer for the books they wrote which have given me clearer insights in matters eternal, such as The Kingdom of God. I also love God for the books he left with us, including the book of creation.

When I read in Bavinck that “A human being, adam, belongs to adamah, the life-bearing earth, with every sinew of his existence he is tied to the earth, which bears him and feeds him,” then this resounds in me as the true gospel. No heaven talk there!
When I read in Bonhoeffer’s CREATION AND FALL, written in 1932-33 when he was only 27 years old, that “Technology is the power with which the earth seized hold of humankind and masters it. And because we no longer rule, we lose the ground so that the earth no longer remains our earth, and we become estranged from the earth”, then too I thoroughly agree.

Bonhoeffer also years before Bavinck wrote, “God, the brother and sister, and the earth belong together. Once we lose the earth, we lose God as well”.

That tells me that treating the earth as something disposable, willfully polluting it, implies kicking God out of our lives: we simply cannot love God if we don’t love the earth.

My own inadequacy.

I have a friend, a true friend, who knows infinitely more about birds and plants than I do, and shows his affection for injured animals by lovingly caring for them and going out of his way to save them. We are true friends because we both deeply grieve for the way we are speeding to the end. In that way he is to me a shining example of John 3: 16, “God so loved the cosmos… “. We grieve because we love.

That’s what I especially love in our own church, because we have an environmental team that tries to make God’s love for creation evident in a way visible to the municipality, especially since our church building is smack on the main street, on the most direct route between Toronto and Ottawa.

In the yard around the church we have planted bee-and butterfly-friendly plants, have installed a small-take-away-library stand, and this spring intend to construct 6-8 large planters – wheelchair accessible – filled with vegetables for the taking and with tomato plants clinging against the south wall of the church.

As a church we have visited the Amish communities in our area, trying to learn from their creation-friendly way of life. Next week, for the third time, our church people will visit the immense beaver dam and pond on our property, where a good friend has fashioned enough seats fashioned from a dead pine tree to accommodate the people who can manage the 20 minute trek of ‘forest bathing’ on the way to this natural phenomenon. There’s no better scenario for worship than in God’s natural setting.

Why do we do this?

In these last days, these days of EXTINCTION, these days of THINGS DYING, we must prepare ourselves for living and working in the New Creation.

Everything points to an early demise of the earth. Because the ice in the Arctic that acted as an atmospheric stabilizing factor is largely gone and with it the global atmospheric balance, we will experience extreme weather volatility. It is expected that this summer all Arctic ice will disappear, exposing the METHANE, many times more lethal than the CO2 we generate in ever greater quantities.

So, yes, it is high time that we prepare ourselves for a totally new approach to life and to worship.

Everything has to change.

Take the church again as example: basically we haven’t changed its make-up since the year 400. Yet, in Revelation 22, the very last Bible book, referring to THE NEW CREATION, it explicitly states that “And there was no altar there”, indicating to me that formal worship there has disappeared altogether.

Now that we are at the end of the secular timetable, one of the indications is the disappearance of the church, oh, not in buildings, not in formal religion, but in lacking to grasp the true message, all too evident in the total confusion what the Gospel really means for today.

For instance: ask the average churchgoer where the real aim is of God’s love, and the answer, for the orthodox Christian, will be for the sinner. But the Bible clearly states that his most direct love is for THE COSMOS.

That’s why I see John 3: 16 is the most important text for today: meditate on that passage, display it on the fridge door, repeat it aloud to your family members, mention it to you friends that Jesus came to earth for the LOVE of the cosmos, his love for humanity, fauna and flora, all things visible and invisible.

All this brings me back to Jeremiah 51: 9 who really foresaw the present conditions.
“‘We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be healed; let us leave her and each go to our own land, for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the heavens.”

That text is now being fulfilled. Remedying Climate Change has become impossible. Changing the way we live, totally depending on fossil fuels, has become impossible. Bringing the GOOD NEWS to the world has become impossible because we don’t know any more what the GOOD NEWS is. Reforming the church has become impossible because it is too entrenched in its own structure. Altering the way we govern ourselves has become impossible as is all too evident today.

It seems to me that in all things we have gone full circle: from CHAOS before the Garden of Eden, to COSMOS with Paradise, to now, thanks to our constant environmental abuse, a return to CHAOS until the Lord returns and the final COSMOS appears, ready and waiting for its full deployment.

I believe that the church has gone through a similar cycle: from simple gatherings and communion with the Lord at people’s homes, to meeting in public places, then assembling in specially built edifices, expanding to elaborate cathedrals, resembling heaven, with painted ceilings depicting angels, and other celestial beings, and now falling apart, as the faithful have become unfaithful, as sermons, in times of vastly superior methods of communications, have become outmoded and stale, and people attain a level of maturity, perhaps not theologically, but in their own minds.

So, in order to make faith proclamation more direct, a new approach is needed. There too, the death of formality may bring new life: back to the former, simple structure.
Rather than being addressed from the pulpit, informality is needed, perhaps in a church setting, perhaps in small gatherings at home where neighbors are invited, with the hosts in charge. Gatherings (ecclesia means ‘gathering’) confined to Bible readings, prayers, some cautious songs, intermingled with relating personal experiences of the week, having a ‘communal’ meal together, remembering the death of Christ.
It will need practice, of course. Perhaps relating how a certain book or news item or article caught one’s attention. And it may never happen, because we … and you know the reasons.

When Jesus died, the curtain in the Jerusalem Temple that separated the Holy from the Holy of Holies ripped from Top to Bottom, something really radical. This signalled the end of Temple worship, and the beginning of a totally different type of worship, not centered on a building, not centered on formality, not centered on rules and regulations, but totally transformed by LOVE.

And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them (1 John 4: 16), writes John, who often is called the disciple of love.
We live in different times.
Yes Jeremiah 51: 9 speaks to me: We now live in conditions that can no longer be changed: the momentum, the infrastructure, the vested interests are simply too powerful.

We tried our best to heal society, but it is beyond repair. We have the church, but it is stuck in the rut. We have Suzuki, but he now has gone mainstream. We have Greenpeace, the Green Party, recycling, but the plastic keeps on multiplying. We have carbon taxes, and Climate Pacts, but the CO2 increases just the same.

Yes, we would have healed Babylon, but she can no longer be healed.

So we simply resign to let the world go to pot?

Revelation 22: 11 comes again to mind: let those who do the right thing, persist; let those who don’t give a hoot, let them do so, for her judgment reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the heavens.”

“Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. Now these three remain: faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love”.

JANUARY 19 2019

RAPTURE EQUALS RAPE EQUALS DEATH.

The Latin verb RAPIO (I seize), RAPUI (I have seized), RAPTUM (been seized), also means “to snatch and tear away.” It clearly shows that RAPE and RAPTURE have a common root.
We know what RAPE entails. Do we really know what RAPTURE portrays?
Why has American Christianity become so enthralled by RAPTURE?

First a detour.

Just before Ascension the disciples asked Jesus one last question: “When will you establish the kingdom of Israel”, meaning the restoration of the Davidic Empire? (Acts 1: 6).
After a three-year direct exposure to the Son of God, his mission was still totally misunderstood by his disciples.
No wonder theological confusion is still rampant. If Jesus failed to convince his support group of 12 down-to-earth fishermen of his true mission, how, in the world, relying on a fallible church with fallible preachers, can the GOOD NEWS reach us?
Well, by and large, it cannot.

It seems to me that then as now, the entire mission God sent his son to accomplish is misunderstood. It is NOT to save sinners, that too, but his primary mission was to restore the cosmos to its intended glory (John 3: 16).
Sad to say, the opposite is happening: the Good News –eu-angelos – which leads to LIFE has become the Bad News – kak-angelos – which leads to DEATH, thanks to RAPTURE.

Take the Fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple in the year 70 A.D. It seems that Jesus alludes to this event when he advises his followers in Matthew 24 (that famous chapter dealing with the LAST DAYS but also supposedly referring to the year 70) to flee the city and refrain from participating in the armed revolt against the Roman regime. The incorrect interpretation of the Jewish faith led to the total eradication of the temple, the city of Jerusalem and the entire region of Palestine.

The Crusades were another venture that, even today, some 800-900 years later (1096-1291) still has ominous overtones in the Muslim world, seeing Western intervention in that region as attempts to Christianize the Middle East, and still now preventing the Western gospel to penetrate.

It is my thesis that in these last days the erroneous interpretation of the Church’s mission will result in the destruction of the world as we know it, thanks to the RAPTURE fallacy.

Can the church still change its mission?

This brings me to the burning question? Has the church really any idea why it is in the world, what its task is today? Has the church really changed at all since the year 400 A.D. when it became the official religion in the dying days of the Roman Empire?

It is my contention that we live in the LAST DAYS, literally. The Bible contends that the Last Days started with the resurrection, now some 2,000 years ago. And that is true, but what we now are experiencing is the real last days of humanity. Compared to a clock, we live in the last minute of time, very close to midnight or, better, very close to dawn, the Daybreak of the New Creation.

What is the church’s message today?

There’s a very interesting episode in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Dostoevsky’s last book. It’s called “The Grand Inquisitor”. It’s a story that Ivan, the atheist Karamazov brother, has composed and recounts to his younger brother Alyosha, the aspiring priest.

In it Jesus returns to the earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Ivan says: “It is fifteen centuries since signs from heaven were seen. And now the deity appears once more among the people.”

Everyone recognizes him, because a blind man sees and a dead child rises. But the old cardinal, in charge of the Inquisition, takes Jesus to prison and tells him that: “You have no right to add anything to what you have said…. Why have you come to hinder us?”
Ivan explains that this is a fundamental feature of the Church that God cannot ‘meddle’ now because “all has been given by you to the Pope. The Church is the authority now.”

The Grand Inquisitor then tells Jesus that he erred when he resisted the devil’s three temptations in the wilderness, where the devil offered him miracle, mystery and might, which the Church has accepted. Jesus, however, wanted them to have freedom of choice. But, says the clergyman, freedom is too difficult and frightful for the masses and so the Church has taken the three awesome gifts for them. The Inquisitor concludes: “We are not working with you, but with the devil– that is our mystery.”
Jesus, still not speaking, kisses him on the lips. “That was all his answer.” The Grand Inquisitor opens the cell door and says, “Go, and come no more, never, never.” And the divine visitor leaves.”
End of story.

“Freedom is too difficult for the masses” says the cardinal, but that is an important part of Jesus’ teaching: “The Truth shall set you free” (John 8: 32).

The church of days past and the church of today rather not give the people a free hand, because it leads to confusion and personal preference. But that is good: God hates uniformity, just look at creation. Without freedom there is no struggle. Once we are deprived of freedom, the will of our captors rules us.

Back to the Old Testament

Today there is in the USA a desire to establish some sort of Old Testament society, abolishing democracy, installing a KING, and being governed by the literal rules of the TEN COMMANDMENTS, (stoning female adulterers, for instance), getting rid of Jesus altogether and doing away with the LOVE commandment.

Enter Bonhoeffer (again).

Bonhoeffer read it correctly when he, upon leaving the USA in 1939, and returning to Germany under Hitler, said,
“God has granted American Christianity no Reformation. He has given it strong revivalist preachers, churchmen and theologians, but no Reformation of the church of Jesus Christ by the Word of God. Anything of the churches of the Reformation which has come to America either stands in conscious seclusion and detachment from the general life of the church or has fallen victim to Protestantism without Reformation. …

American theology and the American church as a whole have never been able to understand the meaning of ‘criticism’ by the Word of God and all that signifies. Right to the last they do not understand that God’s ‘criticism’ touches even religion, the Christianity of the churches and the sanctification of Christians, and that God has founded his church beyond religion and beyond ethics. A symptom of this is the general adherence to natural theology. In American theology, Christianity is still essentially religion and ethics. But because of this, the person and work of Jesus Christ must, for theology, sink into the background and in the long run remain misunderstood, because it is not recognized as the sole ground of radical judgment and radical forgiveness. The decisive task for today is the dialogue between Protestantism without Reformation and the churches of the Reformation.”

No Reformation means the continuation of an ecclesiastical system based on the Old Testament, with a High Priest (Pope, mega church preachers), while keeping the laity immature.

No Reformation means the continuation of the NATURE/GRACE dualism, where nature is seen as evil and grace the gift of heaven.

Bonhoeffer also coined PIOUS GODLESSNESS, the mainstay of the American Religion, so thoroughly condemned by Dr. Harold Bloom, in his classic THE AMERICAN RELIGION.

In that book he states that American Christianity has ceased to be Christian, totally drenched in GNOSTICISM, basically stating that the earth is the product of the Demi-Urge, a personification of the Devil, and thus to be abused with abandon. In other words, American Religion believes “The earth is Evil”.

Its most influential high priest still is Hal Lindsey and his THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, with its false RAPTURE proclamation, a thesis that is still the most widely held belief in American life and a pure product of the Devil who now rules much of the church.

BEWARE OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS.

Take the new regime in Brazil. The new president there, as if to signal his intent to permit greater destruction of the world’s biggest rain forest, has appointed a Foreign Minister who believes Climate Change is an anti-Christian plot by “cultural Marxists” seeking to criminalize red meat, oil and heterosexual sex.
He also has appointed an anti-abortion evangelist to head a new ministry overseeing Indigenous groups, women and human rights.
President Trump promptly congratulated the new president, a man totally in line with the beliefs of his base, the Evangelical Church, the greatest danger to God’s creation.

ENTER POMPEO

In setting out the Trump administration’s Middle East policy, one of the first things Mike Pompeo, the USA Secretary of State, made clear, while visiting the Middle East, was that he had come to the region as “as an evangelical Christian”.

In his speech at the American University in Cairo, Pompeo said that in his state department office: “I keep a Bible open on my desk to remind me of God and his word, and the truth.”

In a visit to Egypt, he came across as much as a preacher as a diplomat. He talked about “America’s innate goodness” and marveled at a newly built cathedral as “a stunning testament to the Lord’s hand”.

Both Vice President Mike Pence and Pompeo cite evangelical theology as a powerful motivating force.
“We will continue to fight these battles,” Pompeo said at the Summit church in Wichita. “It is a never-ending struggle … “until the rapture”. Be part of it. Be in the fight.”

UNTIL THE RAPTURE!! UNTIL THE RAPTURE!!

For Pompeo’s audience, the rapture invokes an apocalyptical Christian vision of the future, a final battle between good and evil, and the second coming of Jesus Christ, when the faithful will ascend to heaven and the rest will go to hell.

For many US evangelical Christians, one of the key preconditions for such a moment is the gathering of the world’s Jews in a greater Israel between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. It is a belief, known as pre-millennial dispensationalism or Christian Zionism – and it has very real potential consequences for US foreign policy.

It directly colors views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and indirectly, attitudes towards Iran, broader Middle East geopolitics and the primacy of protecting Christian minorities. “Pompeo knows best how his faith interacts with his political beliefs and the duties he undertakes as secretary of state,” said Stan van den Berg, senior pastor of Pompeo’s church in Wichita. “Suffice to say, he is a faithful man, he has integrity, he has a compassionate heart, a humble disposition and a mind for wisdom.”

Here’s the real danger.

Here is where total destruction comes in: These “Evangelicals” want to help God in bringing on Armageddon, destroying The Evil Earth through nuclear bombs, as Christian Zionism has become the “majority theology” among white US Evangelicals, who believe that events in Israel are prophesied in the Bible.

The comparison is made explicitly in The Trump Prophecy, a religious film screened in 1,200 cinemas around the USA in October, depicting a retired firefighter who claims to have heard God’s voice, saying: “I’ve chosen this man, Donald Trump, for such a time as this.”

Yes, American Christianity sees the earth as evil, and destroying the earth as its mission. With a Pompeo in charge, and a Bolton, and a Trump, belief in RAPTURE means belief in RAPING the earth, and, to top it all, these people believe this to be the CHRISTIAN thing to do, while Rapture really means cursing God and embracing the Devil.

Remember, “Silence in the face of this evil is itself evil – God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”.

RAPTURE has caused the RAPE of creation. RAPTURE destroys the earth which God, upon its completion, called GOOD seven times. This makes Creation holy because God made it.
RAPTURE is the ultimate sin for which there is no pardon. That’s why RAPTURE IS THE RELIGION OF DEATH and OF THE DEVIL.

Jesus came to bring LIFE, life on the renewed earth for which he gave his life (John 3: 16).

January 12 2019

SILENCE IN THE FACE OF EVIL IS ITSELF EVIL

Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
…By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.
– William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I, 1606

“Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short”. (Revelation 12: 12).

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil – God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Yes, I’ll admit, judging by the above quotes, this is not going to be a cheerful piece. Sorry. One of the advantages of writing a blog is that I have to be my own editor: there’s nobody out there who will smooth my tale, take off the sharp edges and give my story an uplifting twist in the end, the usual way of editing.

What I am about to do is prepare me and you for what is to come. My tender tentacles tell me that 2019 and beyond spells trouble. The signs are all over: I see Lawless Trump as a sure sign that he is a true lackey of the Evil One; by his acts and words he daily welcomes Evil with open arms.

Trump now rules a society spiraling out of control. Trump is so popular because his lawlessness mirrors the lack of norms his constituents have: they have lost all ideas of right and wrong: they consume violent porn, subscribe to hateful ideologies, overdose on opioids, megachurches and Trump rallies, spend their last dollars on lotteries and casinos, while neglecting homes and spouses. Their health is poor, also because the cost of insurance and institutional care is prohibitive, beyond the reach of most.

Right now the last battle – between Good and evil – is being fought in every sector of the universe. Those who had expected that Christ’s great triumph here on earth when he rose from the grave on Easter would result in increasing peace and prosperity, is cruelly cured of this illusion.

“But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! Filled with fury, because he knows that the time is short.” (Verse 12).

That’s what the angels sing. This means that the demonic armies have thrown themselves onto the world with such unbridled ferocity and awesome fury that it can only have the most terrible results.

We see it not only in Trump, but also in Brazil, in Turkey, in China, in Hungary, in refugees, in the Yellow Shirts in France: everywhere, especially in the Middle East. Also the transatlantic concord underpinning the West since the Fifties is dying. NATO, the G7, the G20, the WTO and the EU are all in varying degrees of crisis. The mayhem of May’s doing and the stupid shutdown in the USA are just the tip. Combine this with turmoil in the climate, and it points to universal breakdown.

From now on world events will be grimmer, more frightening, and accelerating with breathtaking speed, continuously assuming more ghastly proportions, dragging millions along in a maddening “danse macabre”, undermining all old established morals, speeding relentlessly to chaos and social upheaval.

This world, indeed, has become possessed. All factors that somehow acted as brakes to stall this development have been pushed aside; now that this process is in motion it speeds up disastrously, and nothing can stop it: only the word “exponential” expresses it correctly.

So why does God allow this to happen?

God has a reason why the demonic powers are allowed to pursue their relentless opposition; there is a reason why God has allowed a certain period in which life on earth goes on as if Satan and not God and his angels are calling the shots.

The reason is simple: matters are not yet what they are: everything still looks different than it is in reality. But a haze of untruthfulness hovers like a curse over the world and in that fog of uncertainty history marches on.
There’s where Trump fits in: through him the true face of humanity and the true nature of the church are becoming evident.
We have to become what we are: “the righteous more righteous, the evil more evil”, that’s the point of the last Bible book, REVELATION. Admit it: there’s a lot of rot out there: that’s what the economy is, that’s what humanity is, that’s what politics is. And, sorry to say, a religion that welcomes a Trump and a Pence, is totally degenerate. A religion that sees the earth as disposable, is cursing God. Name me a brand of religion that treats the earth as holy, as a gift of God.

Looking back.

There are parts in the world where for a long time hardly any change took place, where the old religions were kept in honor, and the old ancestral morals remained intact. Large parts of Asia, Africa and South America lived for centuries without undergoing any change at all.

However since the 1500’s the entire world has seen a very deep transformation, with Europe at the forefront of this wild ride. Then the center of gravity switched from the Mediterranean Sea powers to the Western countries, in particular Germany, England and The Netherlands, partly through the discoveries of new continents and the establishment of colonial empires.

That period saw deeply penetrating social changes, urbanization, and bloody revolutions. It also witnessed the birth of a global mechanical, physical science- dominated world with all its consequences.

All too evident also were the erosion of old moral principles. All too well-known were the World Wars, affecting and upsetting all that lives. Never before in the history of the world has so much in such a short time been demolished and radically changed, as in the last five centuries.

Today these immense changes are no longer confined to Europe and the USA, but now involve all people everywhere, imperiling the existence of all these countries and regions and increasingly cause unrest and confusion.

In this grand scheme of changes the many discoveries especially in the area of natural physics have played a significant role. We all know about the invention of the machine, steam, the motor, electricity, atomic energy, television, the Internet, just to name a few. Medical science gained new insight in the nature of diseases and the methods of healing. We saw new ways in agriculture, a great increase in world population, new methods of transportation, especially aviation, and communication such as the rise of the computer and electronic information.

We also witnessed the development of new weapons and greater possibilities for destruction. I believe that now, in the End Times, the dangers of a nuclear war are greatly increasing. Every day we read about new developments. As ever the probing human brain is searching for the secrets of the universe in the quest for new discoveries.

All this means an immense increase in human power. It almost seems as if God for centuries has blindfolded humanity to prevent them from seeing all the planetary powers and possibilities and then suddenly he ripped away the blindfold in our days so that the one perspective after the other opens up.

This wild, unrestrained progress of human thought and discovery came with both a good dose of triumph but also with visions of frightening nightmares. Now nerves are constantly at an edge, the pace of life is ever more hectic, undefined feelings of anxiety dominate the millions.
We are confronted with situations, internally, spiritually, and morally which make it impossible to cope, which make us feel helpless, and which give us the unnerving notion that we are racing toward indescribable confusion and degeneration.

There is no doubt that what took place in the previous five centuries has all the hallmarks of a wild and turbulent era, overwhelming all opposition, undermining all established certainties. As a furiously cascading stream it forces a destructive path to nobody knows where. Is that what is meant when it is said that ever since the Easter morning the world resembles more and more a possessed world?

Today the words of Revelation 12: 12 are being fulfilled:
“Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short”.

John on Patmos knew nothing about Climate Change, which is bringing ‘woe’ to the earth and seas. Today evil forces are unloosened which as a tsunami are overwhelming the world. We now are in the eye of a cyclone: everything around us is cracking up, crashing, on edge and at the breaking point. “For this world in its present form is passing away”. (1 Corinthians 7: 31).

And that is GOOD NEWS.

Above this disjointed and utterly terrified world we see the sparkling sign of the Easter morning. All our dismay and bewilderment cannot erase the overriding fact that the demonic forces in reality have suffered defeat and that’s why their fury is merely a symptom of their defeat.

The forces of evil realize that they have ‘little time’, that their influence on earth is approaching its inevitable finish. That “woe on earth and sea” may be accompanied with feelings of untold anguish, yet they fully rest on the unbelievable sounds of jubilation coming from on high: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ.” “He has come!”

Above the screaming of ever more powerful hurricanes and typhoons emerges the over-riding call to joy beyond measure. It resounds like a loud trumpet blast penetrating to the utmost parts of the universe. It also echoes in our hearts, filled with anxiety and fear.

Where do we stand ourselves?

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil – God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

It is time to have a look at ourselves in an effort to find the meaning of all this for our personal lives. Bonhoeffer wrote this while living under Hitler. He spoke up and it costs him his life. Not to speak up would have cost him eternal life. A fellow prisoner later reported that when the German Gestapo came to fetch Bonhoeffer to be executed, Bonhoeffer’s parting words were: “Now my real life begins.”

We today face a similar choice.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil – God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”

God’s world is on the edge of extinction, and that involves us, of course, as well. “Humanity is facing the final, western corporate capitalist, fossil fuel initiated, catastrophic Arctic methane hydrate destabilization and Permian style methane blowout – firestorm that will culminate in 1 to 8 years (2020 to 2027),” reported ARCTIC NEWS a few days ago.

Not to speak up against Climate Change is saying that God’s creation is disposable that God is imperfect. Not to act against this looming disaster is demonstrating that Jesus died in vain.
To remain silent in the face of evil is itself evil.

Life always entails a choice.

See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, as well as death and disaster. For I am commanding you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, statutes, and ordinances, so that you may live and increase, and the LORD your God may bless you in the land you are entering to possess. (Deuteronomy 30).

That choice, more than 3,000 years ago, now applies to the entire world.
Life and prosperity awaits us in the New Creation, if…IF…we speak up in the face of evil. If…IF we live the LIFE God wants us to live in the New Creation.

“Silence in the face of evil is itself evil – God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act”

January 5 2019

BROTHER, ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?

“Brother, are you born again?” I have been asked that question a number of times. Not in the Dutch religious community where I had been active for many decades, but doing appraisals in North Hastings County, around the municipality of Bancroft, where there are large charismatic churches. All I had to say was, “yes”, and I was accepted as being born again: no further questions asked.

When Jesus, in John 3, suggested to Nicodemus, an important member of the Jewish hierarchy, that he needed a re-birth, it was a concept totally alien to this religious leader.

Nicodemus took it literally, “simply not possible” he said, so Jesus explained to this leading clergyman that it requires a ‘metanoia’ a radical new approach to living, a different mindset. In his case – and he was rich – it may have meant to sell everything he had, including that burial cave where Jesus’ body later was stored after being crucified.
In the end when Jesus was dead, Nicodemus finally came out.

Back to that secret meeting that led to two of Jesus’ most important pronouncements. Here Jesus connected ‘being born again’ to his real mission. Nicodemus, that prominent leader, a member of the Jewish elite, was the first to hear the two most important rules for eternal life:
(1) We must be born again. “Being born again” literally means that we abandon the way we have lived before, and make a totally new start: leave behind the old, and make a radical break, a total metanoia, doing away with all the assumptions we have taken for granted, realign ourselves for what is to come: the Kingdom.

(2) God loved the world – the cosmos – so much that he gave his one and only Son as ransom to buy it back from the Devil. Those who follow in Jesus’ footsteps – loving creation with acts of kindness and devotion – shall not perish but will enjoy eternal life in a renewed creation.

Jesus told Nicodemus, and via him, us, that his mission was not to save sinners, that too, but that he primarily had come to wrest the cosmos, the earth and everything we take for granted, from the power of The Evil One, and to restore all this to its original, pristine, perfect condition.

In other words, Jesus came to accomplish total renewal of everything, soil, oceans, air, humans, our minds, bodies, psyches, animals, relationships: the list is endless.

Which then begs the question, “The Kingdom: what is it?”

Jesus, in the Sermon of the Mount, tells us to make our priority in life to “seek the Kingdom”. It is also the first petition in The Lord’s Prayer: Thy Kingdom Come.

There’s been a lot of confusion here.

The Roman Catholic Church maintains that its institution is The Kingdom. The Reformed Christian movement often sees Church, Family, and Christian Education as aspects of The Kingdom, but seldom do they see God’s Creation as The Kingdom, and yet, that’s what it is.

When Adam and Eve dwelt in The Garden of Eden, then, indeed, they lived in God’s Kingdom, the completed creation which God called ‘good’ seven times.

Based on that, God’s Kingdom has certain character traits, and here I rely on Dr. J. H. Bavinck, and on his books I have translated.

As I already mentioned, God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants.

This implies that originally all parts of the world were attuned to each other. Nowhere was there a false note, nowhere a dis¬so¬nant that disturbed the unity, as everything fitted harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality.

This applied both to each individual specimen but today still equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation. The celestial bodies follow their orderly tra¬jectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice. And so the stars in their courses sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water-saturated earth, their proud summits piercing the clouds; yet even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power.

On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation resides only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other, as Psalm 19 tells us, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.”

Things have changed.

We still live in that same earth where Adam and Eve dwelt in total perfection. I am not sure how long that lasted: perhaps One Thousand Years, who knows. What we do know is that this ideal situation did not remain: perhaps they were bored: sinning is more exciting – for a while.

But sin means letting God go, and making ourselves gods. It also means leaving the Kingdom, abandoning Paradise, because there’s where God dwells, even now.

All that happened a long time ago, but it took many millennia to extinguish the heritage of the Garden of Eden.

It is our dubious honor, being among the last generations, to totally rebut the will of God’s and cause the entire world order to plunge into chaos.

Who knows: this might happen this year. Here’s a thought.

Any year ending on a “9” may have ominous content.
This past century in 1919 there was the Russian Revolution and that disastrous Versailles conference, which gave rise to Hitler and the Middle East problem still with us.
1929 was the start of the Great Depression.
In 1939 World War II began.
1989 saw the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 2009, just one decade ago, we experienced the Collapse of the Banking system, with the governments pumping in trillions of dollars.
Way back in 1789 the French Revolution occurred.

This year, 2019, we may well see THE ICE disappear from the Arctic, which more and more people see as The End of the World. Just look up NEAR TERM HUMAN EXTINCTION and an impressive list of concerned academics are of that opinion.
Here’s a quote from Guy McPherson:
“I, myself, doubt that many people reading these words have three years to live. Habitat for humans on Earth will disappear shortly after the Arctic ice is gone, which is likely to occur in the summer of 2019”.

Dr. Guy McPherson

Let’s not kid ourselves: we have ruptured the Kingdom; we have brought total chaos into the world order.

Today Satan rules.

We are now faced with a development in creation that we can no longer control, but of which we daily exper¬i¬ence the terrifying consequences. (1 John 5: 19)
We now see God’s work of art embroiled in the power of demons. Satanic forces have thrown themselves onto nature, onto us humans, onto the entire radiant creation.

The world in which we live is dominated by demons. Every hour we experience the terrible influ¬ence of this satanic situ¬a¬tion.

But, believe it or not: it’s all part of God’s great plan.

God never abandoned his Kingdom concept. On the con¬trary: he opted for an even greater and more conspicu¬ous version. Even though you may never have given it a thought, the Kingdom concept has become the most pronounced motif of the history of the world: everything today centers on the emergence, the new birth of the Kingdom.

This kingdom that God is busy realizing has a very particular char-ac¬ter. If we wish to some degree to fathom its superb beauty, we must point out some of its features.

The Kingdom of God is depicted in the Bible as a reality of the end-time: today all signs point to this: it will only be in the end-time that all the strands of world history come together again: today we truly live in the world: any event, however insignificant, is known within hours everywhere thanks to satellites, drones and email.

The Kingdom has always been.

Of course the Kingdom was there already in pre-historic times, the Urzeit, and straight through the rubble and ruins of history it will again be manifested before our very eyes as an overwhelm¬ingly grandiose reality: we are rushing to the End, and that means that The Kingdom is near.

Jesus made it his chief mission. In the Old Testament book of Isaiah the glorious future of the Kingdom forms the central theme which dominates all other aspects.

Its main premise is that on the Great Day of the Lord, in the end–time, the Lord God will reveal his kingly power and on that Day he will permanently expel all decaying and destructive forces that have penetrated his creation.

On that Day the indescribable glory of the new reality of the eternal Kingdom will appear in living colour, a reality in which all things will again have their rightful place.

Nowhere is this future better outlined than in Paul’s profound descrip¬tion in Ephesians 1:9–10, when “the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”
These times are about to come, perhaps as early as 2019.

Here is a mind-shattering statement.

It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one over¬arching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal¬vation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the King¬dom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.

I repeat: There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal-vation is of necessity universal. Our goal in life is to become part of God’s Kingdom. Rapture is the most unbiblical concept.

WOW. That upsets the entire ecclesiastical applecart.

BROTHER, ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?

When Jesus had that dialogue with that member of the Jewish elite, when the discussion between an important theologian and the Son of God, took place away from the public eye, then Jesus summarized his teaching in stating that love for the cosmos was the nucleus of his message. The COSMOS contains all created matter.

Jesus later gave another directive: Love God – and thus his creation – above all, which automatically includes the human race as well, loving it as much as we love ourselves.

Loving ourselves automatically includes love for all things, because ‘everything is connected to everything else’.

This is my first venture into 2019, and it already shapes up like a disastrous year, even though it has hardly begun.

Are the churches up to this new phase?

No. No. They are becoming a hindrance, rather than pointing the way ahead. Not all, of course, but, in general they are an anachronism: the buildings energy hogs, the songs often praising heaven, the sermon approach an incentive to sever nature from grace, their parking lots an ode to GMC, Ford, Korea and Japan.

BROTHER, ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?

That’s not a question easily answered. If I am right in my analysis, then Jesus’ saying, “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few chosen”, (Matthew 22: 16), makes sense.
Perhaps the last who shall be first are those who try to conscientiously and continuously minimize their carbon footprint.

If I am right in my analysis, then Jesus` saying, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18: 8) makes sense.
Let it suffice to say that “Being born again” is not a simple matter.

Fortunately we know from Acts 15: 11, “We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.”

P. S.
I love statistics.
Last year 26,390 people visited my website; I wrote more than 100,000 words in my columns – a good sized book of 300 pages. I also ran, biked, and walked 3,360 km, an average of more than 9 km each day, and drove a total of 5,700 km. I started running in 1959 when I quit smoking. Since then I have run every week.

DECEMBER 29 2018

THE FINAL REFORMATION.

I seriously wanted to write an up-beat piece. So I sat down and tried to conjure something positive. Hey, I thought, perhaps what I wrote last year at the end of 2017 might help me.
So I looked up my December 30 2017 blog. Here’s what I wrote exactly a year ago,
“Last week I was listening to Handel’s Messiah and the aria, “he was despised, rejected by men, a man of sorrow and acquainted with grief.”
No wonder. How would you feel when your Creation, your very finest work of art, is destroyed? How would you feel when the church, your very own people, is the leading agent there? Jesus himself tells us that we, his children, have to suffer with Jesus: no crown without a cross. Instead….

Of course we cannot expect the world to know better but for the church to reject its Saviour by destroying her creation adds insult to injury and most surely calls for LAMENT, LAMENT, LAMENT.

Look at the Protestant church: utterly depressing. Just imagine: Franklin Graham is now a Trump prophet. “Never in my lifetime have we had a President of the US willing to take such a strong outspoken stand for the Christian faith like Donald Trump,” tweeted Franklin Graham, the son of the evangelist Billy Graham.
The Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress sees a divine hand at work: “God intervened in our election and put Donald Trump in the Oval Office.”
That was part of last year’s final message.

Oh, dear I thought, if that’s how I felt a year ago, how about the end of 2018 when things look even worse?
So I gave up and let my fingers do the talking.
Here’s what my subconscious mind dictated to me via the motions of my hands.

One year later everything has worsened. While I am writing this, I happen to listen to Bach’s St. Matthew PASSION, just hearing Peter, his disciple, saying “Ich kenne den Menschen nicht”, (I don’t know the man) meaning Jesus, whom he then denied three times, and then “the cock crew.” (krähte der Hahn), and Peter wept bitterly.

That’s how I feel while I write this, looking back to the year of the Lord 2018. Indeed tears well up in my eyes.

Still, for us, this past year has been tremendous in many ways. We celebrated our 65th wedding anniversary, as well as our 90th birthdays. Even though since then my wife has had a mastectomy and failing immediate memory, and losing some of her body balance, she’s always cheerful, one more reason to praise the Lord who has blessed us greatly, including a new great grandson, whom I held in my arms only a few hours after he was born.

Although our extended family has done great, I must confess that I am saddened because I have alienated a dear friend, and doubly saddened that my attempts to heal the breach have been rebuffed, in spite of persistent prayers. I invite your prayers as well: it still hurts and has put a blot on the year.

I am sure that my sadness is also caused by the state of the natural world, where a dangerous tipping point may be reached at any time. That this is not openly discussed and has failed to be a matter of deep concern in the church is something I fail to fathom: we here are talking about God’s creation, his Primary Word.

Pope Francis recently said, “God always forgives, we humans often do that, but Nature never forgives.” Does that mean that sinning against creation is the sin against the Holy Spirit? (“Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven; they are guilty of an eternal sin.” Mark 3: 29).

Chaos versus Cosmos.

I have always maintained that ‘everything is connected to everything else’. Chaos ecologically and chaos politically and chaos economically and chaos theologically, all are part and parcel of the same evil: estrangement from the Creator. Once we lose God or disconnect God from the Christ and his creation, everything turns topsy-turfy.

The United States has seldom seen a peacetime period of chaos remotely like the past two weeks. The Middle East is where life began, if we believe the events recorded in the Bible. It seems to me that it might end there as well.

Today US politics thrive on chaos. No wonder the stock market is down and gold is up. God created cosmos: everything orderly, each item, each molecule, each atom perfectly in place, to ensure that the world can endure into eternity. But as long as humanity has been on the scene, the perpetual struggle has been between cosmos and chaos, between good and evil, between God and his adversary, Satan, the Devil, the Evil One, whatever his title.

Today, not God, not cosmos, but Satan, chaos, is in charge, the personality who Jesus correctly called, The Prince of this World. (John 12: 31; John 14:30; John 16: 11).

The state of the world, in all aspects, resembles an out of control spiral, looks as if it is being sucked into a downdraft of disorder. Not only is the U.S. capital a portrait of chaos, but so is London, and the BREXIT debacle, and so is the world economy, based on the impossibility of infinite growth, and so is our very own life-style, founded on the premise that the earth has limitless resources.

So from the North Pole, where in this coming year the ice may well be gone, all the way down to the South Pole, where the enormous ice-fields also are on the move, and everything in between, chaos reigns.

There are cycles in history

Bad times create strong men.
Strong men create good times.
Good times create weak men.
Weak men create bad times.

There are numerous cycles in existence. For instance, history teaches us that every 500-600 years a new start is made in religion. Major religions seem to be born every five- six hundred years. Moses and the emergence of the Yahweh worship took place some 1200 years before Christ. About 600 years later the world saw the birth of three separate religious streams: Zoroaster in Persia, Confucius in China and Buddha in South East Asia, while the Solomon Temple in Jerusalem also was inaugurated in that period. The Christian Religion took off with the death of Christ, while Islam saw its rise with Mohammed who lived from 570-632.
The Crusades – 1096-1291- could be seen as a major change, as the church became militant. This was followed by the 100 YEAR WAR between France and England -1337-1453-, and especially the 14th Century Black Plague pandemic which killed at least one-third of the European population.

All this prepared the world for the next religious event, the Protestant Reformation, led by Martin Luther on October 31 1517.

Now, with the speeding up of history thanks to our carboholic addiction, 500 years later we are due for what I call the FINAL REFORMATION.

The Protestant Reformation, taking its cue from Roman Catholicism developed a two-realm approach: The Sacred, in the form of the church, and the Secular, accommodating the world, the division in essence based on ancient and pagan Greek philosophy.

No surprise, the ‘secular, the world’ dominated, and chaos triumphed over cosmos.

Now with everything everywhere in disarray economical, ecological, political, theological, sociological, matters are speeding to the end.

THE FINAL REFORMATION

Everyone has a religion. It is, in fact, impossible not to have a religion if you are a human being. It’s in our genes, and has expressed itself in every culture, in every age, including our own secularized – so-called religion-less- society.

Dr. Evan Runner coined the phrase, LIFE IS RELIGION, and, indeed, that is the case. We all have beliefs: they’re part of being human. The symbols are all around us, in churches, in sport arenas, in gold-tinted office towers.

So what is religion? It’s not some intellectual, even though that’s part of it. Descartes emphasized the mind in his well-known maxim, Cogito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Religion is not a theory. Religion is not a set of dogmas, not a something that we memorize and then follow.

Religion is a ‘way’, is a path, which leads to a certain destination. That path is our life, we are born, we grow up, we live, and we die. In that life we are conscious that we die, and then what? Is that the end? There’s where religion points the way.

So what is Religion? By religion, I mean something quite specific: a practice not a theory; a way of life that gives meaning. For the Christian that means finding its source in TRUTH, and truth can only be found in God, the Creator, and thus in Jesus, who calls himself, the Way, the Truth, and the Life, as expressed in John 14: 6, where Jesus says, “I am the WAY and the TRUTH and the LIFE. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

The Church in medieval Europe certainly had plenty of blotches on its record, one of them preaching the sharp contrast between HEAVEN and HELL. Nevertheless the church brought order where there would have been only chaos. Frightening depictions of Hell that made medieval life look cozy by comparison and kept the nobles from abusing the peasants.

AND TODAY?

Today the shining example of lawlessness is in the White House, to some extent held in check by legal restrictions.

Today the shining example of a humane person is Pope Francis, but the biggest obstacle to renewal in all denominations is its clergy. In the RC church the endless spate of sex-abuse allegations, a true indicator of clerical dysfunction, and in other denominations the refusal to see women as equals and, of course, the preaching of the heaven heresy.

LISTEN TO THE CRIES OF CREATION

The Final Reformation starts with listening to the cries of creation. There is no salvation apart from creation: we are saved as part of creation, not as a member of a church.
The TRUTH is that God created, that we left the path of life that assures us eternity. JESUS walked that path and did it perfectly to the bitter end, paying the ultimate price to make LIFE possible.

When we walk that path, when we with every action, with every step we take, with every breath we inhale, consciously navigate that PATH in creation, then we are on the way that leads to eternity: the Final Reformation.

Romans 1: 20 tells me that creation itself is proof of God’s all-encompassing wisdom: people stand condemned by denying this. The corollary, the direct consequence of this is that acknowledging that creation is God’s work of art, and honoring it as holy, thus following Jesus’ example, that redeems a person.

“Holy Living” gives our life meaning. Not the church, not whether we are Presbyterian or Baptist, Roman Catholic or Jew: all these labels today mean little or nothing.

What truly counts is our humble walk in life, amidst the people created in God’s image, amidst the trees, which give is oxygen, amidst the flowers, which give beauty and nourishment to the insects, valuing the wildlife, loving the soil from which we are formed.

Jesus, in his manifesto, the Sermon on the Mount, (Matthew 5: 5), said, echoing Psalm 37: 11, “But the meek will inherit the land and enjoy peace and prosperity”.

The “meek” are not some patsy sort of folk, some doormats, no, they are, as J. B. Philips translates it, “those who claim nothing for themselves”, who see themselves as servants of creation, and not lords over creation.

They are the ultimate winners, again quoting Jesus, “The first shall be last and the last, the meek, shall be first.”

So where do I base this on?

John 3: 16. If God so loved the cosmos that he offered his most precious son to buy it back, then we too must love the world and all that dwells therein.

THE FINAL REFORMATION does not come from the church; does not have rules and dogmas: it is LIFE and that lived to the full. “Those who claim nothing for themselves”, who see themselves as servants of creation, and not lords over creation, they will inherit the Kingdom, the New Creation.

Unbelievable: that’s what my subconscious mind dictated to me via the motions of my hands.

DECEMBER 22 2018

IS THERE A HELL? NO.
WILL THERE BE HELL? YES.

All requiems start with DIES IRAE (pronounced dee-es ee-ray) the entire text in church Latin. I have five or six CDs of different Requiems, my two favorites being the one by Berlioz with that magnificent Sanctus toward the end, and Brahms’ German Requiem.

They all follow the Roman Catholic liturgy, and all major composers wrote one. Even Bach, a confirmed Lutheran, composed a mass.
A Requiem is a Mass for the dead, and they don’t shy away from the Gospel truth: they all have the same wording, starting with “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine”, Lord, grant them eternal rest.

All Requiems begin and end with lines the churches today are loath the mention: the Day of Judgement.
Dies Irae, dies illa,
Solvet saeclum in Favilla,
meaning,
“Day of Wrath, that dreadful Day:
it will resolve the earth in ashes.”

To retain the Latin rhyme, I would translate this as,
”Day of Wrath, that Dreadful Day,
the earth ablaze, immense dismay.

Perhaps the church kept these explosive lines in Latin on purpose, obscuring the true state of the world now becoming raw reality in Global Heating.
Toward the end there’s a repeat:
“Lacrymosa dies illa
qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus”

which tells us that

“Mournful that dreadful day
when from the dust shall rise
guilty man to be judged.”

Handel, in his masterpiece, The Messiah, is also quite explicit in his wording. There, in a beautiful aria, also near the beginning of this universally admired oratorio, he quotes Malachi, the very last Old Testament Bible book:
But who may abide the day of his coming
And who shall stand when he – the Lord – appeareth?
For he is like a refiner’s fire.

The He is Jesus.

Today we are on the cusp of Jesus’ return. Jesus? Who is he?
The Bible, the record of happenings from the very beginning to the end, tells us that (see Colossians 1: 15-17):
“Jesus is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

Here we have the true story of creation. As I see it: Jesus is the first human being, true God and perfect human. Whatever good exists is his doing.

We now own the earth.

The Bible story continues and we read that, as Psalm 115: 16 confirms, “The Highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he gave to humanity.”

We all know all too well what we did with the earth. Today it is increasingly becoming clear that we have mismanaged that gift to the extent that we running out of options, the only way is death.

One of the miracles of creation is that it has a built-in destruction mechanism which is now being triggered.

At one time, near the beginning of history, when humanity had become so wicked that God decided to have a new start and asked Noah to build a life-preserving ARK, God pledged that this sort of thing would not be repeated knowing full well that in the End humans themselves would do the job.

We are now at that point of history.

Here’s how in a 16,000 word essay, Professor Dr. Jem Bendell of the University of Cumbria, in the UK, entitled, Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy, summarized it.
Conclusion.
“Since records began in 1850, seventeen of the eighteen hottest years have occurred since 2000. Important steps on climate mitigation and adaptation have been taken over the past decade. However, these steps could now be regarded as equivalent to walking up a landslide. If the landslide had not already begun, then quicker and bigger steps would get us to the top of where we want to be.
Sadly, the latest climate data, emissions data and data on the spread of carbon-intensive lifestyles, show that the landslide has already begun. As the point of no return can’t be fully known until after the event, ambitious work on reducing carbon emissions and extracting more from the air (naturally and synthetically) is more critical than ever.
That must involve a new front of action on methane. Disruptive impacts from climate change are now inevitable. Geoengineering is likely to be ineffective or counter-productive. Therefore, the mainstream climate policy community now recognizes the need to work much more on adaptation to the effects of climate change.
That must now rapidly permeate the broader field of people engaged in sustainable development as practitioners, researchers and educators. In assessing how our approaches could evolve, we need to appreciate what kind of adaptation is possible.
Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress.
Such disruptions include increased levels of malnutrition, starvation, disease, civil conflict and war – and will not avoid affluent nations.
This situation makes redundant the reformist approach to sustainable development and related fields of corporate sustainability that has underpinned the approach of many professionals
Instead, a new approach which explores how to reduce harm and not make matters worse is important to develop. In support of that challenging, and ultimately personal process, understanding a deep adaptation agenda may be useful.”
(Bendell et al, 2017).

I emphasize:
“Recent research suggests that human societies will experience disruptions to their basic functioning within less than ten years due to climate stress.
Such disruptions include increased levels of malnutrition, starvation, disease, civil conflict and war – and will not avoid affluent nations.”

In the very short term, Dr. Bendell writes that we will experience drastic disruptions to our way of life. The Bible calls this The Day of Wrath: Dies Irae.

And that brings me to Gehenna.

For some reason Bible translators have substituted “Gehenna” with “Hell”. Thus if you look up Matthew 10: 28, you won’t find Gehenna –the word in the Greek – but HELL.

The same is true when Jesus had a temper tantrum and shouted to the Pharisees, the church leaders of his day (as recorded in Matthew 23: 33), “You snakes, you offspring of vipers, how will you escape the judgment of Gehenna?

So is Gehenna Hell? No, Jesus did not mention hell, he mentioned Gehenna.
Translators are humans. They are influenced by current doctrine which focuses on heaven. So they reasoned, if there is a heaven where believers go to – the overwhelming belief of church-goers – there is hell where unbelievers go to.
Makes sense, but is not true. Jesus did not mention hell, He said: Gehenna. And in that he pointed to a concept, quite familiar to the people of Israel.

Gehenna is the Greek and Latin version of the Hebrew word for the valley of Hinnom, the name of the ravine south of Jerusalem, which during the days of monarchy, was the scene of an idolatrous cult involving the passing of children through fire.

In the first century B.C. this name came to be used in a metaphorical sense to describe the place of fiery torment believed to be reserved for the wicked after the Last Judgment – Hell, in other words.

I believe that our god, Capitalism, (which according to Schumpeter involves ‘Creative Destruction’) is the one worshiped today, and Capitalism also requires us to sacrifice our children.

I better explain.

Thanks to our addiction to carbon fuels, only used because of their combustible potential, we are causing a drastic temperature rise, so high that in a few short years – and that means within a time span of 5-10 years – the world will burn to a crisp: exactly as the idol MOLOCH required, a pagan deity to whom human sacrifice was made.

Jesus, in his dispute with the Pharisees, by mentioning Gehenna, told them point blank that they were promoting the gospel of human sacrifice, that they were preachers of a pagan cult. No wonder he called them vipers, serpents, and offspring of poisonous snakes. I think Jesus here had the serpent in mind who talked to Eve in Paradise, a reference not lost on these church leaders.

The forgotten Covenant.

God made a covenant (Genesis 9) between God and humanity, a pure promise to be an equal partner with us and all created matter, including all animals and all that lives and moves and has a being – such as insects – implying that they too deserve total consideration as allies of humanity because they form an integral part of human durability: everything is connected to everything else.

God has abided by that solemn treaty. We did not. We now face the fateful consequences of breaking this covenant.

And here is where HELL comes in. God is angry at us. We have not abided by the terms of the treaty, the contract, the covenant, we made.

Handel, in his Messiah, quotes Isaiah 53: 6, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone to his own way.”

Gehenna again.

Today we all are on our way to Gehenna. This means that we all have to go through hell, because we all have sinned against creation, we, the last generation, more than any previous one.

Why we and not previous generations?

I have a picture of my paternal grandfather, a country grocer, who, seated on his two-wheeled horse-drawn wagon, made the rounds of his clientele, including my maternal grandparents, often bartering eggs for coffee, tea, sugar, the only items they usually needed: the rest of edibles they themselves supplied.

That was sustainable living, a way of life long gone, a way of life we should emulate, but no longer can: we have gone too far on our road to Gehenna.

Oh, I find the parallel so striking. Those who burned their children in that dreadful place near Jerusalem are exactly the same people we are today: we now sacrifice our children and grandchildren to a future that inevitably leads to HELL, all-consuming fire.
That’s the ultimate result of Global Heating.

Since the year 2000 of the 18 summers, 17 have been the warmest ever, and, by all indications, next year will be the hottest ever, as El Nino is combined with an ever mounting CO2 rate.

Decision Time.

I see the coming years as decisive. I have long felt that we will see a confluence of events: huge earth-shaking events, comprising the economy, the weather, pandemic and war, likely including tremendous earthquakes, as we are distorting earth’s fragile balance.
All this assures that the DIES IRAE, the Day of Wrath, is imminent.

There’s no escape.

We all will have to go through this time of trial: we all are guilty as hell. We all have failed to detect the dangers we are in, and we all have to pay the price. That’s why there will be a HELL to pay.

But the Lord is gracious: for the sake of the elect he will shorten the days of trial. Still, we too have to go through the purifying fire, because our bodies are full of toxins: we are not allowed to enter the New Creation unless we too are clean, made clean by fire.
So, yes, there’s Hell to come, a place of our own making.

Pray that the Day of Trial may come soon. As the apostle Peter
wrote (2 Peter 3):

The Day of the Lord
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.

All is well that ends well.