Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

AUGUST 11 2018

WHO IS TO BLAME FOR CLIMATE CHANGE:
CAPITALISM
or
HUMAN NATURE
or???

The New York Times, its magazine insert on the August 5 Sunday Edition, had a 31,000 word essay – more like a small book – dealing with CLIMATE CHANGE, the first time a major paper gave such prominence to this global disaster.

Here is its opening statement.
“This narrative by Nathaniel Rich is a work of history, addressing the 10-year period from 1979 to 1989: the decisive decade when humankind first came to a broad understanding of the causes and dangers of climate change.

“It tracks the efforts of a small group of American scientists, activists and politicians to raise the alarm and stave off catastrophe. It will come as a revelation to many readers — an agonizing revelation — to understand how thoroughly they grasped the problem and how close they came to solving it.

“The world has warmed more than one degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. The Paris climate agreement — the nonbinding, unenforceable and already unheeded treaty signed on Earth Day in 2016 — hoped to restrict warming to two degrees. The odds of succeeding, according to a recent study based on current emissions trends, are one in 20. If by some miracle we are able to limit warming to two degrees, we will only have to negotiate the extinction of the world’s tropical reefs, sea-level rise of several meters and the abandonment of the Persian Gulf. The climate scientist James Hansen has called two-degree warming “a prescription for long-term disaster.” Long-term disaster is now the best-case scenario. Three-degree warming is a prescription for short-term disaster: forests in the Arctic and the loss of most coastal cities. Robert Watson, a former director of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, has argued that three-degree warming is the realistic minimum. Four degrees: Europe in permanent drought; vast areas of China, India and Bangladesh claimed by desert; Polynesia swallowed by the sea; the Colorado River thinned to a trickle; the American Southwest largely uninhabitable. The prospect of a five-degree warming has prompted some of the world’s leading climate scientists to warn of the end of human civilization.”

The article ends with these words:
“The author still believes that it might not be too late to preserve some semblance of the world as we know it. Human nature has brought us to this place; perhaps human nature will one day bring us through. Rational argument has failed in a rout. Let irrational optimism have a turn. It is also human nature, after all, to hope.”

Doesn’t look very hopeful, does it? It seems that my apocalyptic views have been too optimistic.

Naomi Klein, famous Canadian writer, award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist and author of such international bestsellers as “This Changes Everything”, disagrees with the New York Times’ conclusion that human nature was at fault. Her thesis is that “Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature”.

Her 3100 word rebuttal ends as follows,
“We aren’t losing earth — but the earth is getting so hot so fast that it is on a trajectory to lose a great many of us. In the nick of time, a new political path to safety is presenting itself. This is no moment to bemoan our lost decades. It’s the moment to get the hell on that path.”

She thinks Socialism will save us!!

Who or what is really to blame?

Today we are seeing an enormous shift in the public perception of climate change: the end of the world has suddenly become popular.

More and more believe that Climate Change will continue unabated as the battle is against the combined forces of government (The USA comes to mind), industrial lobbies, and public apathy. We are like people hooked on drugs, on alcohol and on tobacco all at once: we all are CARBOHOLICS. To wean ourselves off this carbon addiction has become impossible, because everything, every action, every job we have, every bite of food we eat, every convenience we enjoy, every vacation we take, means another bit of carbon in the air, means another nail in the coffin of what we call mother earth.

So what do we do? Cut down? Change?

No we can’t, so we ignore all climate disasters, ignore all giant fires, ignore all huge heatwaves, ignore all drastic droughts. None of these weather events are having an impact on the public’s views on climate.

Take Boreal forests. They store enormous amounts of carbon that today’s mega-fires release, speeding up the heating process. Take Peatlands near the Arctic. They also contain megatons of carbon and mercury that is freed by today’s tundra fires.

Then there’s Siberia with the world’s largest boreal forests, already suffering more tree loss from fire than any other region. This, the planet’s biggest carbon stores threatens to become huge carbon sources instead, supercharging global warming. The deliberate illegal burning of enormous tracts of Amazon rainforest—more than 100,000 fires were detected by satellites in Brazil in September 2017—is another example of global threat, just as the Indonesian peat fires, also illegal and also done for agricultural land clearing. Now we can add boreal forest mega-fires and increasingly flammable tundra to the list of not-quite-natural disasters darkening our planetary future.

This fall we will see the Arctic Ocean free of ice. Who cares: nobody lives there. Still the Arctic Ocean hasn’t been free from ice for millions of years! Yet, there, in the shallow Arctic Seas, there’s where the methane is. Now, today, this very moment, this gas, 100 x more lethal than mere CO2, is about to come into play, rocketing the temperature sky high.

What is the result?

ARCTIC NEWS – have a look – reports that millions of people will die almost instantly when going outside in temperature of 35 Degrees Celsius and humidity of One Hundred Percent. People everywhere in the Middle East and South East Asia face that prospect in the near future.

It is true that much of the damage that might have been avoided is now inevitable. And yet….. Both Naomi Klein and the New York Times author still believe that it might not be too late to preserve some semblance of the world as we know it.

Says the Times piece: “Human nature has brought us to this place; perhaps human nature will one day bring us through. Rational argument has failed in a rout. Let irrational optimism have a turn. It is also human nature, after all, to hope.”

Naomi Klein has at least the common sense to refrain from stupid remedies: “We aren’t losing earth — but the earth is getting so hot so fast that it is on a trajectory to lose a great many of us.”

HOPE IN WHAT?

Here’s some personal stuff.

As a kid every Sunday afternoon I had to go to church for the second 90 minute service and was exposed to the preaching of the Heidelberg Catechism.

That fundamental confession was written some 450 years ago by two fellows in their early twenties. They wrote Question & Answer 8:
Question. But are we so corrupt
that we are totally unable to do any good
and inclined toward all evil?
Answer. Yes, unless we are born again
by the Spirit of God.

I believe that in 1568 it was still possible to live a ‘clean’ life. The CO2 count was stable at 280 ppm, perhaps even lower, because Europe was then in a grip of a little ice-age. The lower the CO2 count, the colder the temperature and the higher it is, the warmer it gets. Very basic science.

Also my grandparents, born in the 1860-70’s, still could and did live clean lives, environmentally speaking. They also lived pious ones. I know. Their example is always before me. Their piety has formed me through my parents, to the third generation, and I believe even into the fourth. Yes, something stuck with me, making me the Calvinist I am, weaned on and spoon-fed with the Heidelberg Catechism.

Yes, especially today I believe that we are so corrupt
that we are totally unable to do any good and inclined toward all evil, even when we are born again by the Spirit of God.

I better explain this.

Climate Change is today’s defining issue because it is a global phenomenon, and will affect everybody and everything on earth.
I realize, I am prone to make sweeping statements, based on gut rather than scientific observation, but then I use different criteria, such as the Bible, totally unheard of in today’s reporting. Also my reactions are coloured, no doubt, by events that occurred in my life, such as the Great Depression – 1930-39 – World War II, and simply my long life in business, always dealing with people.

My real reasoning is that, since we all use carbon-based fuel all the time, we are, no matter how holy we live, tainted by climate-changing substances. Based on that, and that alone, makes me suggest that there is not one person in the Western world who fits the bill of ‘born again’, unless that person constantly asks for forgiveness as doing such a simple thing as turning on the hot water, causes a flicker of pollution. Jesus could not be around today, living in today’s white society, without sinning.

Oh my! Who then can be saved!

One of the main obstacles to living holistically is THE CHURCH.

The trouble is that the church has mainly gone to bed with the Bible at the expense of Creation. At the danger of repeating myself I once again emphasize John 3:16 – God so loved the COSMOS – because the church by and large has succumbed to a dualistic view of life, separating God from his creation – the exact opposite of holistic.

Imagine honoring Johann Sebastian Bach without any reference to his music.

Creation is, and always will be God’s ETERNAL, PRIMARY AND DIRECT WORD, personified in Jesus, while the Scriptures, important as they are, will always be God’s TEMPORARY, SECONDARY AND INDIRECT WORD.

By believing in the Bible only, God’s secondary, impermanent and indirect Word, and regarding this as adequate for being born again by the Spirit, is at best a doubtful proposition. A person can’t be half-pregnant, can’t be conditionally ‘born again’.

To me Romans 1: 20 sums it up: “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.”

“Do you understand what you read?” asked Philip when he met up with the Ethiopian nobleman who had made a special trip to Jerusalem to search for the TRUTH (Acts 8: 34).

Here in Romans 1: 20 we are told that by observing ‘nature’, recognizing its beauty, appreciating its harmony, admiring its coherence, treasuring its interdependence, we must conclude that only divine action was able to create such marvels, leaving us without the slightest excuse.

Note: the text does not mention the presence of the Bible at all, the sole tool the church employs.

O, clever Satan! The church has swallowed the Heaven Heresy hook, line and sinker. Even worse: it sees the earth, God’s Earth, as evil.

So here is my take on things. It is not just Capitalism – that too – it is not just human nature – that too – it is especially convential Christianity that has been the most significant factor in causing this global disaster to happen.

Jesus was killed by the church of his day, urged on by THE EVIL ONE. Today history is repeating itself: we are urged on BY THE EVIL ONE whose total aim is to destroy God’s Creation.

The church, by and large, has preached HEAVEN, has proclaimed escape from the earth, has abandoned God’s planet, at the instigation of THE EVIL ONE, who preferred – as Milton put it in PARADISE LOST – “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

Satan purposely is creating HELL on Earth. Yes the Devil and his cohorts have only one goal: destroy God’s earth, and it has come in the form of Hell and High Water.

“Christians” ought to know better, Christ died to restore the earth. That’s about to happen. That’s why we have to live the beginning of that resurrection life NOW, Today, August 11 and beyond.

And if your church does not preach that sort of life: call the minister to account.

AUGUST 4 2018

“DO YOU THINK SOME OF THE THINGS WE DO CAN NEVER BE FORGIVEN?”

I found that question in Donna Leon’s novel “Earthly Remains”. One of the main characters, whose wife had died of cancer, and whose bees suffer from collapse blame these deaths on the criminal disposal of toxic chemicals in the waters where he lives near Venice, where Leon’s novels always take place.

The question reminds me of the sins against the Holy Spirit, which are indeed unpardonable. I believe that these sins change with the times. It seems to me that today sins against creation, the place where God has put us and mandated us to ‘serve’ it, fall into that category. The recent developments in our weather make this situation more relevant.

Fact is that the world is on fire, and we caused it: HELL on earth!

Why did I choose this topic? Last week I talked to my sister in law in Groningen where they operate a large dairy farm, having at least 200 heads of cattle, using robots for milking.

This year there was a catch, a big catch: Climate Change, until now a remote, even to them a doubted phenomenon, but it abruptly expressed itself as a ferocious force, relentlessly hammering almost all of Europe, where normally moderation, also weather-wise, reigns.

Cows need to eat, need to eat a lot, especially grass and hay. In the soggy Low Lands, with half the country below sea level, ditches are always filled with water, everywhere, with windmills sucking the land dry from the excessive moisture, so they make hay when the sun shines – often a rare occurrence, that is, until this summer.

From my schooldays I remember a poem: “O land van mest en mist, van vuile, koude regen…” translated, “O land of dung and dankness, of frigid, filthy rain”, occurring so often that it was one of the reasons I emigrated.

Not this year: harrowing heat, merciless sunshine are drying out the ditches, kill the flies, making the water-pumping picturesque windmills nothing more than a curiosity.

Cows need food, hay, grain, water. No rain, no nothing. My wife’s sister told me that they were feeding their cattle the hay reserved for the winter. On my question, ‘What about the winter, what do you feed them then?’ she had no answer.

If this drought were local, if it were the exception, feed would be available elsewhere, but suddenly heat in the so-called moderate temperature zones, is everywhere: almost all of Europe is in the grip of a tropical trauma.

Suddenly there is the spectrum of the END.

Suppose this unnatural event becomes standard? Suppose there is a permanent change in the weather? Suppose that we, sophisticated Westerners, wise to the ways of the world, have bet on the wrong horse?

Last week, as we have done for 65 years, at breakfast time, I read aloud a Psalm. Psalm 14 was the next in row, entitled, THE FOOLS. The intro tells me that a fool is not an ignoramus, but a person who has his values all wrong, who behaves as if God would never take action.

Today we experience God’s answer to our SINS AGAINST CREATION, sins that have a built-in punishment. We now live in ‘end-times’, where the normal is the abnormal, where all meaning is lost, where THE LIE has blackened the WHITE HOUSE, where there no longer is a universal truth, no more common decency, where people have lost faith in institutions, so where do we turn?

Oh yes, the news media duly mention the forest fires, and never forget to display some dramatic pictures how a dog is rescued and how a couple miraculously escapes the inferno, but that we now live in a new world, a satanic world of our own making, is never mentioned.

We are stuck in a new paradigm, totally of human origin, an earth ruled by The Evil One, a world diametrically different from the situation mentioned in Genesis 1-2 when, upon completion of creation, the Lord looked back on what he had made and called it very, very good.

Today only 13 percent of the waters that cover 70 percent of our planet is unaffected by the hand of man. Soon that too is history, and, as the earth itself has not a pure spot left, nothing of what God called ‘good’ will remain.

How long will that last?

Climate Change is a system that becomes more dangerous over time as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, and even decades after we stop these substances. We are just starting to see the horrors that climate change has in store for us. From here on bad things will get worse, much, much worse. Indeed, the news about what more to expect, coming out of new research, only darkens our picture of what to expect.

Heat kills, it kills soil, it kills animals, it kills people. Expect the price of food to be severely affected, which means inflation. Better get some growing skills, and make sure that you have an independent water source.

Highest and Best Use

During the last decades of my self-employment I was a Property Appraiser, appraising primarily industrial, commercial and large estates, including the 500,000 thousand acres of the Bruce Peninsula for a First Nation land claim. Part of each appraisal – which sometimes amounted to more than 100 pages – was its HIGHEST AND BEST USE. I remember appraising a store- service station which I gave a negative value because the removal of the oil tanks and the polluted soil would cost more than the value of the improvements.

That is the situation we are approaching in some cases on farm land and the improvements because, if we can’t feed the livestock, then land, building and herds are useless.

So what does that mean?

The real bad news is that the food we daily need, will go up in price and that the immovable, the land and the buildings, will go down in value: the worst of all possible scenarios.

And it will come unnoticed by most.

Public apathy and its cousin Climate Complacency are the silent enemies. Almost every day I bike to the village store – 5.6 km away – where I am the exception, also in bringing my own bag. Very few either seem to care or are willfully ignorant of the future that awaits us. The proverbial frog comes to mind, which blithely boils to death when slowly heated in a pan. That’s what awaits us with the pace of higher temperatures rapidly accelerating.

Yes, the current heatwave is a “timely reminder” that we cannot take food production for granted. Warnings are out about the crippling impact of the dry, hot weather on farms across the world. And it often comes with a double whammy: either not enough water, or too much, which today is the case in China.

Next year will be worse.

Another El Niño is on the way, which promises even higher temperatures, because a warmer Arctic comes with stronger heat waves, forest fires and associated emissions, and the rapid warming of water in rivers that end in the Arctic Ocean, all of which will further warm up the Arctic Ocean.

Then there is METHANE.

Forest fires have already been burning strongly in Siberia over the past few months and methane there recently reached levels as high as 2817 parts per billion (ppb).

Some Arctic lakes are bubbling with methane, are starting to look like witches’ brew. As Global warming heats up, the frozen ground melts, turning the permafrost to mucky mud, releasing the methane gases that have been trapped there ‘forever’, hence the word ‘perma’-frost with some 950 billion tons of carbon about to emerge.

Once this methane enters the stratosphere, altering the air, as yet still having the right combination of atmospheric gases, that is the end, THE END, as methane traps heat so fast that temperatures will shoot up by 10 degrees Celsius within 10 years, according to Dr. Guy McPherson.

God, in his eternal plan for creation, installed that mechanism into creation, just in case humans would opt for unleashing a carbon-poisoning economy rather than choose the organic, natural way of life.

I started out with the question, “Do you think some of the things we do can never be forgiven?”, so what is the answer?

The Created and Everlasting Word, God’s direct or primary revelation, tells us that we are in trouble, deep trouble. The written Word, the Scriptures, God’s temporary, indirect or secondary Word tells us exactly the same thing. The Bible tells us of creation, fall and ultimate deliverance. That deliverance is preceded by pain and tribulation. Take Revelation, Chapter 18: the poetry there, the unvarnished reality of today’s world:
Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great!
She has become a home for demons
And a haunt for every evil spirit,
A haunt for every unclean and
Detestable bird.

For all the nations have drunk
The maddening wine of her
Adulteries…. And the merchants
Of the earth grew rich from her
Excessive luxuries.

Woe! Woe, O great city,
Glittering with gold, precious
Stones and pearls!
In One Hour such great wealth
Has been brought to ruin!

Rejoice over her, O heaven!
Rejoice, saints and apostles and
Prophets!

God has judged her – the great City –
For the way she treated you.

We all know or sense that the existing system cannot last. The signs are everywhere. The Bible also is a book of prophecy. The Old Testament repeatedly warned the Hebrew Nation, God’s Chosen People, to mend their ways, or perish. Now it is our turn.

Now the chosen people are within the 7.6 billion of us, globe-trotters and earth inhabitants.

Curiously these saints will rejoice when The Great City, the current economic system, will collapse. WHY? Because its entire existence, our wealth and prosperity, is totally intertwined with the energy sector. Nothing today works without causing pollution, and consequently without causing more climatic havoc and planetary pain. Each day new stories emerge of people and animals suffering from perils brought about by our way of life.

We have become immune to the suffering of creation. But if we believe the Bible and especially the Book of Revelation, we know that it fully condemns our capitalistic system of which we all are part, and which will come apart. As Revelation 18 points out (verse 11), “The merchants of the earth will weep and mourn over her (the city) because no one will buy their cargoes any more – the cars and luxury houses, the yachts and penthouses.” That means economic depression and enormous deflation.

We really should be in agony because everywhere creation is suffering and with it are those who care for creation, as God wants us to. Romans 8: 22, “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

Coming back to the original question, “Do you think some of the things we do can never be forgiven?” calls for a thorough self- examination, preceded and accompanied by a lot of prayer and soul-searching.

Nietzsche was right. In his Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus spoke Zarathustra), he writes, “To sin against the earth is now the most dreadful thing.” Nietzsche’s call us to “be true to the earth”, and not listen to those preachers who tells us that we are heaven-bound.

We all sin against the earth, repeatedly, all the time. We must see the earth as holy, as is plain from the Lord’s Prayer. There the very first line is, “Hallowed Be Thy Name”, a phrase which we recite without thinking. Psalm 33: 9 says that “He spoke and it came to be,” meaning that God’s name is on everything, and thus ‘hallowed” or ‘HOLY’. When we sin on purpose against the earth, then God will have no mercy.

Example? Having a ATV or Skidoo for ‘recreational’ or better ‘cosmos desecrating’ rides only, causing noise and air pollution, combined with the Rapture belief, seems to me an unpardonable sin against creation.

I started out with the question, “Do you think some of the things we do can never be forgiven?”

The short answer is “Yes”.

JULY 28 2018

KANN AUCH EIN PASTOR SELIG WERDEN?

A personal story.

For 10 years – from 2000 to 2010 – I wrote a weekly column for the regional daily, THE BELLEVILLE INTELLIGENCER.
My column featured my picture, of course, and its title YES….. BUT…I still remember where I was when I decided on this heading. My wife and I were on the way to Minneapolis, intending to take the ferry across Lake Michigan, and just before reaching the hotel on the eastside of the lake, the heading came to me.

I was allotted 750 words, and I adhered to that, naturally. My column was stopped when the paper was sold, when, as a money saving measure, all local columnists were given the boot. In those days I also wrote for the Christian Courier, but when they went right – to please the increasingly Conservative readership – and I went left, our ways parted.
So I started my own blog and, having no editor to curtail me, I expanded my content to some 2,000 words.

So why do I write?

I have a mission in life. I am re-reading Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 RULES FOR LIFE, an antidote to chaos”. This Toronto professor in psychology writes, “If you’re reading this book, there’s a strong probability you’re a privileged person. You can read. You have time to read. You’re perched high in the clouds. It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to stand your ground, you better have good reasons. You better have thought them through.”

All that is so true, “It took untold generations to get me where I am”. Indeed, I am the fruit of the thinking of previous generations. It is now up to me to make their lives, and mine, worthwhile.

And what is that makes my life redeemable? Have I thought through what my mission is so late in life? What is it that I try to convey, something that is so difficult that it had to gestate for centuries? I already know my vision creates animosity, even enmity. More than one person whose friendship I valued have become shall I say, unfriendly?

Yes, I have a mission in life. That mission started even before my mother was born, when her father, born 150 years ago, in 1870, experienced financial trouble.

Martje, my mother, born in 1900, was the oldest of 5 children, 3 girls, two boys. Raised on a farm, she adored her father, a lean wiry man, highly regarded in his community, a perpetual elder in his church, who had to abort his education when the family fortune vanished. His great-grandfather had been a regional leader, a member of the Provincial Parliament: a plaque honoring his achievements has for 200 years been embedded above the door of the church where my ancestors have been members for centuries, judging by the gravestones on the cemetery surrounding the church in Doezum.

So my Opa opted for farming, as did all his children, except my mother, who settled in the City of Groningen.

As then was the custom, children were named after grandparents, thus my oldest brother became Wieger, after my father’s father. My two older sisters were named after my father’s mother, Jantje, and the next one also a Jantje, my mother’s mother, which they changed to Jansje.

My turn came next, child number 4 in 5 years – and my mother was sure it would be a boy, to be named after her father. She told me that she wished that I would become what her father had failed to achieve: a minister of the gospel. So on October 14 1928 I, Egbert Drewes, was born, all of 5 kg, 11 pounds, giving me a healthy start in life.

In grade school I was a devoted student, blessed with good teachers, getting all A’s, even on handwriting, now so bad that I often can’t read what I have written.
Well, I am not a quitter. As a kid I must have displayed an early independence, a bit of stubborn streak, perhaps not a bully, but certainly not a boy to be bullied.

I remember a fight I had.
I went to the Christian School, while the Public school was a block away and those kids passed each day 4 times through our street. One particular brute pestered my neighbor’s boy who was not too bright and easily picked upon. I simply could not stand seeing this somewhat handicapped boy so abused, so I clobbered the much bigger bully, landing my fist on his nose which started to bleed. That was it: my first and last fist fight.
I always had and maintained a strong feeling for justice. Daring as many kids are, I was an initiative-taker, reckless perhaps to the point of danger. I remember climbing to the roof of our three-storey school to retrieve a football, clinging to the drain pipe.
Thinking about it now gives me the shivers. I guess children do what they know they can do, although accidents do happen. My right index finger still has a scar when I jumped off a bicycle shed where it got hooked into the barbed wire that lined its roof. I was in the hurry because I was pursued by a policeman. In those days cops patrolled on their bikes and especially used the back alleys. I was then perhaps 10 years old.

My careless life changed on July 27 1941 when I was in my 13th year. Why do I remember that date so clearly? Well, it was my mother’s birthday, and birthdays always were celebrated with festive gatherings, where friends were invited, the best of the chinaware displayed, the finest of pastry offered, fancy chocolates, called for a reason ‘bonbons’, made the rounds, the choice of cigars smoked, and the toasts were made featuring an assortment of alcoholic beverages, mostly gin for the men, advocate for the ladies, a strong liqueur, made with eggs and brandy: no expense was spared, which meant that in war-time the Netherlands a lot of barter had taken place prior to the birthday event: my father had a large quota of sugar for his bakery-supply business: a pound of sugar equalled a bottle of Bols Jenever –gin – and so on.

On that particular date one of the friends invited was the family doctor.

So what was the talk among the gathering of a dozen friends? The topic was about the war, of course, where Germany had just invaded Russia. After a lull in the conversation – I can perfectly picture the scene – the doctor friend remarked that a few weeks ago he had enrolled his oldest son, Tom, a week younger than I, to attend the local university prep school, a semi-private institution. He wanted him to become a doctor.

That set my father thinking and my mother speculating. What if?
The next day Papa phoned the school. I did the entrance exam, and pronto, a few weeks later around September 1 1941 I was enrolled at the Willem Lodewijk Gymnasium, a 6 years course.

I have the memorial book published at the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1959. It lists all those enrolled since its inception. In my year, 1941, 26 students entered grade 1, 24 male, two female. Of these 26, 10 finished the school without repeating a grade. Of the 16 remaining six of them dropped out over the years: failing a grade twice resulted in an automatic suspension. It took me eight years to finish the school. My friend Tom, the son of our doctor, kept pace with me: we finished at the same time.

Once graduated in 1949, I had PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It took me 10 years before I read a serious book again, and many more years later before I stopped dreaming that I had failed to pass the final examination, which involved translating episodes in 6 languages, Latin and Greek among them, and solving problems in 7 mathematical and science subjects.

My diploma stated that I could without further notice enter the faculty of medicine, law or theology. The latter was the reason why I had been sent there in the first place, but the army had the first call, so I was conscripted, and trained to fight these poor people in Indonesia, who wanted independence. In 18 months I made it to sergeant, and then was demobbed. Left the army on April 1 1951 and was in Canada 3 months later.

There my real life started. Within a year I was independent: first as a life insurance agent, then adding general insurance. Within 2 years was married to my fiancée, whom I have known since 1932. In 1963 we built an 1800 square feet house with a built-in office; in 1965 – then having 5 children – I also became a real estate broker.

In the following years I was deeply influenced by two books – yes I had again become a voracious reader –
(1) by a Dutch minister, Sterven…. And dan? ( After Death….what) which changed my thinking from being heaven-bound to forever belonging to God’s precious earth. That was a real awakening, and a true conversion.
(2) THE LIMITS TO GROWTH, a rather technical book with all sorts of graphs and tables and computer projections, basically saying that in the future we will hit limits in mineral use and in agriculture. It brought home to me that we live on a FINITE PLANET even though we treat it as inexhaustible.

Later two people deeply impacted me: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Johan Herman Bavinck, especially the latter whose “De Mensch en zijn Wereld”, I translated, appearing in English as BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION, published by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids: a real good read!!.

Bavinck opened my eyes to the KINGDOM VISION, a concept almost totally missing in contemporary Christianity, and it is exactly here where I see my mission in life.

I guess I am a late bloomer. Had I become a minister I really don’t know how I would have developed. I have a book by Helmut Thielicke, “The Trouble with the Church: A Call for Renewal”. In it he wonders, KANN AUCH EIN PASTOR SELIG WERDEN? (Can also a Pastor be saved?). James 3:1 comes to mind, “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly”.

I am afraid that this would have applied to me: familiarity could have resulted in contempt.

Fortunately the Lord has given me a long life, a healthy constitution, an active brain and, after 40 years in business, and an equal time living among the trees, close to creation, He judged that this sort of training was better than pursuing theology.

All this reminiscing was fueled by a church service last Sunday.

The reader read Acts 1. In it Jesus appears for the last time and for 40 days he again spoke about “The Kingdom of God.” The preacher did not mention this: preachers hardly ever refer to the Kingdom, probably have no inkling what it means.

Jesus wanted once more emphasize the Kingdom concept. For three years he had talked Kingdom, often using parables, but his disciples had failed to grasp what Jesus really had in mind, so, during these very last weeks, Jesus again broached The Kingdom of God. And their reaction? The disciples were still obsessed by nationalistic desires: “When will you restore the Kingdom of Israel?” Oh, my!!

If Jesus couldn’t do it, who am I?

I’ve been hammering that Kingdom concept, and people simply don’t want to understand it. I repeat again: The entire mission of Jesus, his very purpose for coming to the earth, was to restore the cosmos to its original state.
That’s why when he returns he will bring back the NEW HEAVENS, cleared of all that space junk and CO2 and methane, and the NEW EARTH, similarly cleansed all of polluted items, so that THE NEW HUMANITY can have a fresh start, wiser, God’s law written on their hearts, fully mature.

If we are God’s children then we already are a NEW CREATION. 2 Corinthians 5: 17, “Therefore those who are in Christ, they are a new creation.” And live a New Creation LIFE!

July 21 2018

THE ONCE AND FUTURE CHURCH

Panta rhei, oude menei.

That’s a queer start. If it is Greek to you, then you are right. Perhaps you recognize the word ‘panta’, the first part of it, ‘pan’ is found back in ‘pan’-theism, in ‘Pan’- America, indicating the whole ball of wax. The Greek Panta means ‘all things’, ‘everything’. The word ‘rhei’ we find back in such rivers as the Rio Grande, the Rhine and the Rhone, indicating streams. So the first two words really mean that “Everything flows”. For the second part I better give you the lowdown right away: it says, “Nothing remains (the same).” So the entire ancient Greek proverb means, “Everything is always in motion, nothing remains the same.”

Change applies to all people and all institutions. The physical world is changing so fast that, books are outdated as soon as they are published.

Take the Arctic. Last week I read in The Arctic News that on:
July 6 sea surface temperature near Svalbard (near the North Pole): were in
2014: -0.8°C or 30.6°F
2015: 6.2°C or 43.2°F
2016: 8.3°C or 47.0°F
2017: 14.4°C or 57.9°F
2018: 16.6°C or 61.9°F

(Created by Sam Carana for Arctic-news.blogspot.com with nullschool.net images.)

Everything is in a state of flux, nothing is static, especially in the Far North. When the ‘eternal’ ice cover at the Arctic – it could well be ice-free in September – has disappeared, it exposes the trillions of tons of methane, 50 – 100 times more dangerous for Climate Change than the CO2 emitting from cars, chimneys, forest fires, airplanes, cows. Global Warming will go in overdrive. This is a sure sign that THE end is near, and the prophecy of 2 Peter 3: 13 is about to be fulfilled, “because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.”

Everything changes, except organized religion. No wonder it is hemorrhaging members left and right. The church has lost its moorings, has failed in its mission, has not observed the signs of the times, and has stuck to its outdated symbols, offices, doctrines, and confessions. OK. That’s easy, so what’s next?

The church has failed to heed Bonhoeffer’s words, “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”

Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount tells us “Be Perfect as I am Perfect” (Matthew 5: 48). The word Jesus uses here is in Greek ‘teleios’, which we find back in ‘tele’phone, ‘tele’gram, ‘tele’pathy, which comes from the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning ‘end’ or ‘far’.

What Jesus had in mind – and Bonhoeffer understood that – is that our lives must have a goal, and that this goal is ‘the end.’ And the END is the New Creation.

J. H. Bavinck, in his “Between the Beginning and the End: a radical Kingdom Vision” writes, “The goal of our lives can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are unified under the one and only will of him who lives and rules forever.”

Bavinck also makes the radical statement that “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity UNIVERSAL”. Jesus did not come just to save sinners, like you and me: he came to restore creation as it was before the FALL into sin.

This cardinal truth is slowly penetrating into wider circles. Dr. David Bosch, a South African theologian and missiologist, writes in his “Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture”, “What we do not need, then, is to introduce more religion. The issue is not to talk about God in a culture that has become irreligious, but how to express, ethically, the coming of God’s reign, how to help people respond to the real questions of their context, how to break with the paradigm according by which religion has to do only with the private sphere…”
(I found this quote in BEYOND THE MODERN AGE, by Goudzwaard and Bartholomew).

All three, Bosch, Bonhoeffer and Bavinck point out that the Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ ministry.

I repeat Bosch’s statement, “how to express, ethically, the coming of God’s reign, how to help people respond to the real questions of their context, how to break with the paradigm according by which religion has to do only with the private sphere.”

Panta Rhei, Oude Menei.

The church remains in the deadly groove of the private sphere, of personal salvation. We just love to sing, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

Wrong, at least partly so.
The Bible tells us –John 3: 16 – “God so loved the world that he offered his Only Son as a ransom to buy back the cosmos from The Evil One, that whosoever believes this will have the privilege to dwell eternally in God’s precious work of ART.”

That is the heart of the Gospel.

“Brother are you born again”, as my Pentecostal friend asked me, is a meaningless question and a cheap one at that because it does not bind us in any one way to God’s beloved cosmos. My “speaking in tongues” friend tells me that “Upon death I go to heaven, reminding me of the old hymn, “I am a stranger here, within a foreign land, my home is far away upon the golden strand”, oh so pious and oh so pagan.

Nothing remains the same.

Gospel preaching needs a new direction, away from individualism to an all-embracing life style, analogous to early Christianity when there was no such thing as an easy conversion.

In Paul’s time switching from a pagan position to a radical Christian stance involved fracturing family ties, being shunned by one’s community, ejected from one’s social and societal status.

To go forward today entails that we have to go BACK, all the way to early Christianity, to the church that once was viable. Acts 2 tells us about Peter. Addressing the Pentecost crowd gathering in Jerusalem, he says, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation,” and some 3000 heeded the call. This chapter of Acts, depicting the early church, also gives us insight in what they thought: they really expected the imminent return of Christ, and so the rich members sold their holdings, and distributed their wealth among the others, so that all had enough. The early church, because of this radical commitment, grew.

In THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY, Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington calculates that Christianity grew at the rate of 40 percent per decade, from 1,000 in the year 40, to 1400 in the year 50 to 7,530 at year 100 to 40,500 fifty years later, to 6,200, 832 at year 300.

And who are they? Who joined this radical religion?

Based on the development of Mormonism, a recent movement with great missionary zeal, Dr. Stark concluded that the majority of converts to American cult movements were overwhelmingly from relatively irreligious backgrounds. He concludes that the Christians were not a mass of degraded outsiders but from early days had members, friends, and relatives in high places, often within the imperial family……. In other words, Christianity was not a proletarian movement, but recruited members in the middle and upper class.

What do we see today?

We see a church that loses members at a rate of 40 percent compound per decade since 1900, the exact opposite of the early rise. Why? Because the church has retained a ‘business plan’ that has proven to be increasingly fallible: outdated confessions, static church services, sermons based on the message that Jesus came to save me, me, me, a sinner, and much more.

On July 16 the New York Times gave a front page place to an article by Roy Scranton, a professor at Notre Dame University. Its telling title in bold print was RAISING A CHILD IN A DOOMED WORLD. He is the author of “We’re Doomed. Now what?

Today all signs point to the END, the end of nature, the end of stable weather, the end of arable land, the end of potable water, the end of large wild animals, the end of faith, of economic stability, and the list goes on.

If we are honest with ourselves, when we strip away the veils of sentimentality about the fate of our offspring, now clouding our vision, when we look at this world with a realistic mind, and also remember what REVELATION tells us about our planet, now dominated by evil, we can only conclude that our world has a definite expiry date: we must admit that, indeed, our way of life is doomed. Bonhoeffer’s words come mind again, “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”

This message offers the church a golden opportunity to tell those people, now in despair about the FATE OF THE EARTH, that the only HOPE is the New Creation.
This vision allows people to dream of never-ending bliss, total harmony, eternity to research, unlimited time to build the perfect tools, to invent the newest of the new, to really be what we were meant to be, without camouflage, without hidden motives, without making us appear better than we are.

The TRUMP troopers and the Rapture crowd will not agree. The heaven adherents will not welcome this message. The “Jesus Loves Me and creation be damned” believers will not take this to heart. The Dogmatic element, seeing Baptism and Theology as the overriding message, will be left in the dark. They will not alter their life, will not become creation-lovers, will not curtail energy use, have no desire to alienate their peers and relatives, as the early converts in Peter’s and Paul’s days had to do.

The Belgic Confession comes to mind and the question “How do we know God?
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.
Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly
by his holy and divine Word,
as much as we need in this life,
for God’s glory
and for our salvation.

This means that CREATION is God’s Primary or Direct Word and thus HOLY, while the Scriptures, which we often refer to as God’s Holy Word, is the Secondary or Indirect Word. The Church has basically no regard for God’s Primary Word, while worshiping his Secondary Word, which has led to the church now having some 40,000 different denominations, each claiming to understand the Scriptures in a different way.
It is about time that we honor Creation as divinely originated and thus HOLY.

That’s why Dr. David Bosch has stated: “What we do not need, then, is to introduce more religion. The issue is not to talk about God in a culture that has become irreligious, but how to express, ethically, the coming of God’s reign”.
“Ethically”, the question of “How then shall we live” is what counts.

More than half of the church we attend went to visit an Amish settlement nearby to find out how a community can live without electricity, without cars, without TV and cellphones and live a self-sustaining life: and thrive.

Can we proceed or rather can we, as church community come back from our polluting, carbon-dependent life, and go to a creation-friendly, a divinely-ordained life?

When we do that then we can also invite others to join, not based on religion or dogma but founded on a life that follows Jesus’ example, a life where He, we and the earth form a unity.
Among the discerning people there’s a lot of despair. For them only a miracle can save creation.
That miracle happened on Calvary where Jesus said, “It is finished”: the New Creation is about to come.

July 14 2018

BE GLAD

There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.
Ecclesiastes 8:15.
Be glad as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
1 Peter 4: 13.

A while ago I went to a lecture on “You are what you eat.” I have been preaching that line from time to time and went there to hear my thesis confirmed. I drove in my bio-diesel powered car for some 45 km one way, praying that the inevitable pollution caused by this trip would nevertheless pay off in some golden insights by which I and perhaps my odd reader might benefit.

Well, I learned that the title had been deceptive, that we are not only what we eat, but equally are what our genes have made us, which we cannot change.

Looking around in the room, I discovered one reason why women live longer than men: their presence exceeded men by a ratio of 5 to 1, which made me conclude that women are more curious, more willing to learn, which is a brain exercise, which, in turn, prolongs life. Perhaps that’s why I- as the ‘odd’ man there – am still around pestering people with my semi-sermons.

I chose the biblical title, “be glad”, because the ‘preacher’, supposedly King Solomon, knew a thing about life’s enjoyment, and, although he was reputed to have had 1,000 wives and concubines, he preferred a good meal and a good beverage over female companionship. You may not remember this, but Jesus was accused by his adversaries of being a glutton and a winebibber, something I, stern Calvinist, took a while to make part of my life. Being depression bred, and war-time conditioned, food has always been something to treasure and never to waste. Perhaps that’s why I today weigh no more than 140 pounds or, for the metric devotees, 63 kg.

The sub title of the lecture was: “Diet, Obesity, Dementia and Our Future Health.” I did learn that, although minds do suffer when aging, verbal knowledge increases while growing older, which explains my still wide-ranging vocabulary. For the rest, most of what I heard was old hat: exercise. My goodness, so far this year, I have run, walked, consisting of pushing my electric – solar powered – lawn mower, weeded, or biked more than 1800 km, or about 9 km each and every day. You could say that I am a fitness fanatic, and you would not be far off.

Eating is only part of the puzzle of health. We not only are what we eat, we also are what we drink. We happen to consists of 70 percent water, and I heard recently that most of us North Americans are water deficient, but, rather than take in more aqua, we fill that void with ever more food, ballooning in the process. Want to lose weight? Drink a lot of water. And sleep 8 hours.

So, what to eat?

For the rest: eat the whole plant, and lots of it: carrots, cooked red beets, beans, salads, fruit, nuts. That, more or less, is the short answer to the complicated question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. A little meat won’t kill you, but a lot will. If you can, do without, as we do: my wife and I have been vegetarian for some 40 years.

Another stab at the future.

If you treasure health you better take charge yourself. Our medical system will only get worse as the population ages, and governments run out of money. The good times of high tax revenues are over. Prevention is the best medicine, which is obtained by eating whole fresh foods and not processed products, which are food-like substances, creations of food science festooned with health claims. The food processors invent fancy edibles each year by the thousands, good for their financial health, but little else.

So here is another rule: if you’re concerned about your body, avoid items that make health claims: they are a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat. Stick to the stuff your grand mother ate: locally grown, pesticide free, organic, if possible, meals prepared from scratch, such as oatmeal porridge to start the day, easily done in a $20.00 slow cooker, left overnight.

Diets?

Forget about them, and forget about juice as well: eat the whole fruit. Drink water, even tap water. Walk, run, bike, sleep a lot, have fun. A bad meal in good company is better than a good meal all by your lonely self.

But, staying healthy and eating properly is becoming more difficult.

Perhaps you have noticed that we live in crazy times, enormously abnormal. Get used to it. When you start getting temperatures above 28 Celsius or 86 Fahrenheit certain crops, such as corn, soybeans, wheat, start to suffer from heat stress. They don’t grow as well. If the crops end up failing, the inevitable result is food inflation.

It looks that this summer is the start of perpetual food shortages. Now is the time to change eating habits, from prepared foods – mostly unhealthy – to meals made from scratch. Become vegetarian, because animals excrete a lot of C02 and methane which is many times more dangerous. Prepare for the worst. Remember, matters will never get better again: we are locked into a perpetual downward slope. Accelerating heat events, extreme weather patterns will increasingly jeopardize crops everywhere.
Plan for a pandemic.

In today’s climate we must be prepared for any eventuality. A pandemic is overdue, and, once it hits, it will very quickly paralyze the transportation system, because travel will have to be restricted to prevent the disease from spreading. This means that all supermarkets near you will run out of stock in less than a week, and even faster if shoppers panic. A pandemic really is not a question of if: it’s a question of when. Chances are it will be avian flu (bird flu) but it might be something else, which will spread very rapidly just like flu does normally because it’s a highly contagious organism.

Based on that, and also because of severe weather threats, it makes eminent sense to stockpile enough food for at least 10 weeks. Ten weeks allows people to stay at home and avoid contact with infected people until a vaccine becomes available, or until the disease has run its natural course.

What to store?

The lifeboat includes affordable long-life staples such as rice, biscuits, milk powder, canned tuna and soups, chocolate, lentils, dry cereals and other durable staples. It makes sense to have staples that are easy to store, have a long shelf life and not dependent on refrigeration.

Ideally it should be stuff that can be eaten without cooking in case gas and electricity fail. It’s up to you to decide what this should be: fill your pantry with a good variety. Also, with food inflation rampant, it is a hedge against rising prices.

I started out with, “There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.”

There also is a different tack on ‘being glad’.

So far my spiel seems completely contrary, because the future I have outlined is so totally opposite to anything we usually classify as being glad.

Well, and here I come again with the Bible, where the apostle Peter has a different take on reasons to be glad. He writes, “Be glad as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4: 13).

So, what’s up? Where am I heading? Peter reminds us that suffering precedes deliverance. Jesus tells us that we will not share in his glory unless we also share in his suffering, and, you can be assured, suffering lies ahead. The only comfort I can offer is what the saying tells us, ”Forewarned is forearmed.”

Signs are becoming more pronounced that we have passed the peak of oil production, and it’s all downhill from now on. It could also be argued that we have passed the peaks for water, fertilizer and land, and that we will all soon be made painfully aware that we have passed it for food, as wealthy nations experience shortages and rising prices, and poorer ones starve.

I can pretty well assure you global chaos, a tidal wave of people fleeing their own countries for wherever they can find food. It looks that the European Union is falling apart on the very issue of immigration, and the USA and Canada too are facing that matter.

Of course, arguments that overpopulation will lead to famine or worse are nothing new; in the early 19th century the Rev. Thomas Malthus contended that the human march toward progress would be derailed by a cycle of overpopulation leading to shortages and misery. Thanks to ubiquitous TV coverage the majority of global citizens is beginning to demand the same kind of existence we Westerners have enjoyed, but we also know there simply isn’t enough of the Euro-American way of life to go around.

Climate Change is at the root of the problem, at a time when we also face overexploitation of the sea and natural resources, overuse of chemical fertilizer, reliance on fossil fuels, protectionism, subsidies, biofuels, waste and other factors.

There are two elephants in the kitchen: population growth and overconsumption. A projected 33 percent growth in population in the next 20 years, combined with increased consumption of meat as the global middle class grows larger, means that food production must grow by at least 50 percent in that same period.

And it can’t, so can we still be glad?

We are faced with two drastically opposed visions. There is Solomon in all his glory, the then richest king in the world, evident from being able to afford 1000 wives, all having their own clan, household, slaves, connections, a virtual city in itself. He preached the gospel of prosperity, a predecessor to Joel Osteen, the current promotor of the glory of wealth. For Solomon and Osteen this text is the gospel truth, “There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.”

And then there is Peter, the disciple who betrayed Jesus three times, not unlike all of us, who also do this repeatedly. He preaches a different gospel, more in tune with today, “But rejoice, inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4: 13).”

What a contrast! Solomon proclaimed never ending wealth, all the treasures of this world: Eat, Drink, Have Fun, for tomorrow we die and then it’s over.

Peter, betrayer Peter; Peter, impetuous Peter; Peter, passionate Peter preached the opposite. He foresaw Climate Change; he foresaw global disorder; he foresaw planetary panic, and wrote, (2 Peter 3: 11-13), “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

So who do you believe today?

It reminds me of the choice God gave to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai as recorded in Deuteronomy 30: 15,
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

Today loving the Lord primarily means LOVING HIS CREATION – and all creatures, including humans -with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our intellect and actions.

Yes, suffering is in store: there’s no escape anymore, but we can rejoice because a new earth awaits us. There again applies the Old Testament condition:
There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.

JULY 7 2018

THE STATE OF THE WORLD MIDWAY 2018.

Don’t call me a pessimist.

Yes, we live in a messy world, where every government is busy to hide the sorry situation, which will only succeed until reality, the crazy present, catches up to the ugly truth, the ugly truth being that matters out there are much more dire than the papers, the TV interviews, the sermons, make out to be.

There’s a biblical truth that neither society nor the church dares to acknowledge: God is no longer in charge of his creation. There are three instances in the Bible that clearly indicate that.
(1) Matthew 3: 8-9. There the devil tempts Jesus and offers him the entire world: “all this I will give you if you bow down and worship me.” This is clear proof that the devil calls the shots on the earth.
(2) Then, just before Jesus is arrested and put to death, he prays for protection of his so vulnerable flock, so easily deceived, as is all too evident today. All this is recorded in John 17, especially verse 15, “My prayer is not that you take them out of this world but that you protect them from the evil one.” Yes, the evil one is in charge and we need all the protection possible. Of course, just like DE NACHTWACHT, that famous Rembrandt picture, will always be tied to that great Dutch painter, but is no longer his, but the property of the Amsterdam Museum, so the world will also always belong to the creator, but now is in the temporary possession of the evil one. To buy it back Jesus died – see John 3: 16, the most relevant text for today’s circumstances.
(3) 1 John 5: 19 unequivocally states that “the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” That needs no further elaboration, because this situation is becoming more evident by the day. We may enthusiastically sing, “He’s got the whole world in his hand,” and that is ultimately true, but today, in this final human era, this is no longer the case.
People who say that THE HOLOCAUST was an act of God, and so have lost their faith, have it all wrong: it was an act of the pure evil one. When Jesus (Luke 8:28) ‘rebukes’ the wind, then he implies that the storm is caused by ‘the evil one’. 1 John 5: 19, “The Whole World is in the power of the Evil One”, is just another indication that Global Warming is Satan’s doing.
We must never forget that it is Satan`s foremost goal to destroy as much of the planet as possible before the Lord returns to renew it. The Evil One is a true fanatic, full-well knowing that he cannot possibly win but still he redoubles his efforts, and, sorry to say, in this venture we are his willing helpers.

I always find it puzzling that sincere Christians, fully exposed to biblical teaching, are nevertheless reluctant to admit that for the New Earth to come, the old earth has to go, and since God promised with the Flood, not to repeat this act, it is plain that this time around we, the human race, will be the culprit.

So….. what is the state of the world 2018 at this point, halfway the year? How far are we in our suicidal planetary demise?

Much worse off than even a year ago.

More up-to-date analysis based on NASA data shows that the earth has long crossed the 1.5°C increase set by the Paris Climate Agreement, which Obama joined, but from which Trump withdrew.

There is strong evidence that the world may also be crossing the higher 2°C guardrail later this year, with temperatures threatening to keep rising dramatically beyond that point.

Since we all are fully allied with THE EVIL ONE, nothing will be done to fight this phenomenal climate warming anomaly. Too strong a statement? Tell me, have you cut down your automobile use, still drive in an air-conditioned automobile to listen in climate-controlled comfort to a preacher, who promises heaven forever? Do you still fly everywhere in the world? Will you vote again for a president who has been married three times, who is the LIAR in chief, who insults friends, breaks promises, prefers the company of dictators and thugs, and so far has rescinded all laws to stall Climate Change, because “the Christians” don’t believe that creation ultimately belongs to God?

The state of the world midway 2018 is worrisome with worse to come.

Take TREES.

Every DAY, 365 days per year, an area the size of New York City is lost to cutting them down and other human interference.
Every 100 DAYS an area the size of Scotland is wiped of the tree map. Within one year an area the size of Italy is deprived of the trees which give life to us, humans.
Global tree cover losses have doubled since 2003, while deforestation in crucial tropical rainforest has doubled since 2008. A falling trend in Brazil has been reversed amid political instability and forest destruction has soared in Colombia.
In other key nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s vast forests suffered record losses.
Forest losses are a huge contributor to the carbon emissions driving global warming, about the same as total emissions from the US, which is the world’s second biggest polluter. Deforestation destroys wildlife habitat and is the key reason that wildlife ln the last 40 years has diminished by 40 percent, starting the Sixth Mass Extinction.

“The main reason tropical forests are disappearing is not a mystery – vast areas continue to be cleared for soy, beef, palm oil, timber, and other globally traded commodities,” said Frances Seymour at the World Resources Institute, which produces Global Forest Watch with its partners. “Much of this clearing is illegal and linked to corruption.”

Forest Fires.

When fires burn on Colorado and California, it is on TV. When far larger fires burn in Siberia and Northern Canada no TV crew is at hand to tell us about it.
Destruction by humans causes virtually all deforestation in the tropics, a vast haven of both carbon and wildlife. Fires are dominant at higher latitudes, causing roughly two-thirds of losses in Russia and Canada, and may be becoming more common due to climate change.

SYSTEM FAILURE

This week I again picked up a book I bought in 2006 by Thomas Homer-Dixon, now a professor in Waterloo, THE UPSIDE OF DOWN.
The book outlines the problems we face and clarifies their scope and deep causes. He traces the FALL of ROME in detail and clarifies how this was inevitable. A city with a million and more inhabitants needed ever more food and logistic support, and in the end the then world was not big enough to sustain its population as everything had to come from ever further distances.

My question: when – not if – will our complex society collapse.
It is all too evident that the USA is engaged in a frenzy of self-destruction. In an age of increasing complexity and interlocking crises, the Trump administration has embarked on a mass deskilling and simplification of the state. It is defunding departments, disbanding the teams and dismissing the experts they rely on, shutting down research programs, maligning the civil servants who remain in post, and destroying the public protections that defend us from disaster.

Life expectancy is at best stagnating, as three times as many deaths are caused by pollution as by AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
Pollution now threatens the very survival of societies, while at the same time the Trump government systematically destroys the effectiveness of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, guts the Clean Power Plan, nullifies standards for motor vehicles, and the list goes on.

What this really amounts to is that The Evil One, The Devil, also known as the Satan, has found a willing ally and an enthusiastic supporter in POTUS, the President of the United States who now has become his most important collaborator in destroying Creation and so, willy-nilly speeds up the coming of the New Heaven and Earth.

Here’s where we are.

Now, Mid 2018, in the USA we witness the pursuit of simplistic solutions to complex problems, as environmental protection is being dismantled by right-wing governments, resulting in accelerating destruction of natural habitat worldwide. In spite of the United Nations efforts to stem Climate Change the annihilation of wild life, the disappearance of insects and birds, the depletion of aquifers, the degradation of soil, continues at an astonishing rate. Don’t for a minute expect that these interlocking crises will not affect you.

The current 7.6 billion people on the Earth are alive in a very special moment of human history. It had never happened before and it will never happen again.
That so many people are alive today is because there exists a sophisticated and incredibly complex system engaged in keeping them alive. That apparatus is the stupendous transportation system that carries food from all over the world, powered by fossil energy and controlled by the financial and political system we call “globalization.” As long as fossil energy and globalization exist, people will be fed and population may continue growing.

But not for long.

The whole system is under heavy strain because of depletion and pollution. Natural resources are more and more costly to produce while fighting pollution – and now increasingly global warming – is becoming increasingly costly. Every day we witness more fires, larger storms, higher heat, and bigger floods. So far earthquakes have been absent, but for how long?

A major financial collapse will totally disrupt the transportation chain which ships food from all over the planet. Without this system, the food will rot where it is produced and the people at the other end of the chain will starve. It will be GOOD BYE to the whole system, including the human population. That may happen as soon as later this year, so be prepared.

ENTER THE BOOK OF REVELATION.

Here is what it says about TODAY.

The book is dominated by one theme: the things in this world are really not what they are in the final analysis. Everything in our world is fake, carries a mask, is disguised; everything is different than it is. Yes, John predicted the FAKE NEWS syndrome.

John points out is that at long last matters will become what they are, that their masks will be torn off. In the last chapter of Revelation (22:11), he really sounds the alarm bell: “Let those who do wrong keep on doing wrong, and those who do right continue to do so, and let those who are holy continue to be holy”. That really means that matters are fixed: Climate Change will remain, wars will continue, evil will accelerate. Out of all the chaos and collapse at long last the truth will emerge. All camouflage will vanish and everything will finally show the true character that corresponds with its ultimate essence. That is the melody that vibrates through the entire book of The Revelation of John and makes it so engaging and vibrant.

That’s what we see today.
Yes, we live in a messy world, where every government is busy to hide the sorry situation, which will only succeed until reality, the crazy present, catches up to the ugly truth, the ugly truth being that matters out there are much more dire than the papers, the TV interviews, the sermons, make out to be.

Matters are not what they seem. The prosperity, the riches, the fancy BMWs, the palatial homes, the pensions we enjoy, the healthcare we receive, the air-conditioning we need more than ever, all of this has been borrowed from the future, a future in which all this glitter will be exposed as phony, nothing but make-believe and sham.
Once this becomes clear, once this truth hits, society will collapse, as sure as Rome did 1600 years ago and, as Homer-Dixon writes, “That unraveling would make Rome’s decline pale by comparison.”

A children’s song comes to mind, “The Bible tells us so.”