Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

July 1 2017

GOING FULL CIRCLE.

To me it looks that the END will be like the BEGINNING. Then, millions of years ago, monstrosities roamed the earth, ferocious, crazily constructed creatures which, had they remained there and multiplied, would have needed several earths to keep them in existence, just like today when, if everybody would live as we all-consuming Westerners do, we too would need perhaps 2-3 similar planets to accommodate our totally destructive lifestyle.

Yes, it certainly looks that we have become like the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, devouring whatever is precious and necessary to extend our stay on earth.

In my book DAY WITHOUT END (Google: Day Without End, Bert Hielema) I imagined that these outsized animals were created by the SATAN. Somewhere in my book I have the Satan ask God to let him try his hand at creating new forms of life on earth, so a gracious God let him but, since they proved to be too destructive, God caused a meteor to hit the earth and put an end to their existence.

Of course my assumption about the Satan then is just that: speculation. What is true, however, is that TODAY the Satan is in charge, and since that is the case, bad things happen all the time. 1 John 5: 19 unambiguously states that, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

Better get used to it: that’s the state of affairs today. The current world is controlled by The Evil One, which means that our present situation will only go from bad to worse. At this point in history WE are earth’s all-devouring creatures, endangering the very source of life. That’s why we also are destined for total destruction, just as prehistoric eras were.

History will repeat itself.

This time too natural forces will do us in. Before we became the current destructive force, in prehistoric times those awesome creatures caused havoc beyond repair. Today we, with our bulldozers and gigantic power shovels and monster dump trucks with wheels taller than the tallest person, we too rip up the earth and move mountains, dam rivers, drill tunnels, all in the name of ECONOMIC GROWTH.

But these immense changes are minor compared to what takes place at earth’s extreme ends, on the highest mountains and at both poles: there trillions of tons of solid ice are melting and seeping into the oceans, and we have no clue what that entails, because suddenly our tiny planet is losing trillions of tons of solid ice, upsetting earth’s precarious balance.

Are they causing Earthquakes?

Just picture our globe, with on each pole immense frozen masses that have been there for millions of years. Then suddenly, in a flash, in a few seconds on the planet’s time-scale, warm water melts all that stuff. What happens? Earthquakes?

I don’t know, but the Scriptures tell me that THE END will come with enormous EARTHQUAKES.

Not only are earthquakes mentioned in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and of course in Revelation, but also repeatedly in the Old Testament, where it says in Joel 2: 10, “Before them the earth shakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.” Ezekiel 38: 19-21 and Amos 9: 5 signal identical world-ending disasters.

The gospels are more explicit. Matthew 24 gives a terrifying description of the approaching last days. But curiously, while mentioning wars, famines, earthquakes, there suddenly appears the prophecy: “the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

I really don’t understand how the Gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed. Does the INTERNET play a role there? It certainly is not the message of the church today, a church that has no clue about the Kingdom being the New Creation, the real UTOPIA.

I could well be that the message will be primarily negative: “Look at all that destruction, those earthquakes and pandemics. Admit that humanity has bungled it all. Everything has failed. The only hope is the “U (good) – TOPIA (place)”. Repent and expect the Lord to return to rectify it all and establish perfection.”

Just as Genesis 1 and 2 tell us how the world began in terms understandable for an agrarian Jewish people, so too, in the New Testament, in Matthew 24 Jesus himself describes the END in great detail, while John in REVELATION does the same.
There it mentions how pandemics produce panic in the planet’s population, and how deadly droughts, hellish heat, drenching rains devastate the crops: all this is happening now. The culmination of these natural disasters and the pinnacle of pain are caused by an earthquake (Revelation 16: 18) “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth.”

I can picture how the seismographs in the capital cities shake wildly and record numbers beyond any ever registered. I can visualize how the houses tumble, the McMansions are ruined, how no human technological expertise is any help. Nothing can withstand this force of nature: no nuclear bomb has this devastating power. Now an endless series of ever more frightening events roll over the world.

The catastrophes mentioned in Revelation 16 extend to the entire cosmos. They affect people everywhere. This last Bible book which shows the END as Genesis showed the BEGINNING reveals how in the disastrous happenings preceding the last things, two types of distress can be detected. These calamities are completely the result of our actions, are a direct consequence of us mistreating creation. We already see how CLIMATE CHANGE is purely our doing, but Earthquakes? Yes, they too are caused by us.

THE REVENGE OF THE PLANET

It is as if the tamed earth, given by God as a gift to humanity, as our own domain, is now rebelling, is now rising up against us, its tormentor. It is as if nature that, for so long, for so many centuries, has faithfully furnished humanity with all its needs, has now become recalcitrant, and full of revenge has thrown itself upon humanity. And these people, this so superior human race, with her nuclear energy, her mighty medical system, her military prowess, and her entertainment establishment all of which made her feel so immense powerful and strong, these same men and women are now in a total humiliating fashion confronted with the fact that in the final analysis they amount to nothing, that they are a mere rag that is thrown out as useless.

All this was brought home to me when I read an article on the YELLOWSTONE SUPER VOLCANO.

Here’s what the article said:

“If you follow my writings on a regular basis, then you already know that I spend a lot of time documenting how the crust of our planet is becoming increasingly unstable. Most of this shaking is taking place far away from the continental United States, and so most Americans are not too concerned about it. But we should be concerned about it, because a major seismic event could change all of our lives in a single instant. For instance, a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano would have the potential of being an E.L.E. (extinction level event).
There have been close to 800 earthquakes in the area. “They consists of one earthquake in the magnitude 4 range, five earthquakes in the magnitude 3 range, 68 earthquakes in the magnitude 2 range, 277 earthquakes in the magnitude 1 range, 508 earthquakes in the magnitude 0 range, and 19 earthquakes with magnitudes of less than zero,” the latest report said.

The biggest earthquake in this swarm occurred Thursday evening, June 15. It was initially measured to be a magnitude 4.5 earthquake, but it was later downgraded to a 4.4. It was the biggest quake in the region since a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck close to Norris Geyser Basin in March 2014. This magnitude 4.4 earthquake was so powerful that people felt it as far away as Bozeman…
The main quake was centered about 5.8 miles underground.
The quake and aftershocks occurred just over 8 miles northeast from West Yellowstone, according to the U.S. Geological Service.
A witness reported that she felt the building she was in move.
Dozens of people reported that they felt it in and around West Yellowstone, Gardiner, Ennis, and Bozeman.
But by itself that one quake would only be of minor concern. What is troubling many of the experts is that this earthquake has been accompanied by hundreds of smaller ones.
There is normally a rise in seismic activity before a volcano erupts, and according to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, a long overdue eruption at Yellowstone could “rip the guts out of the USA”…
Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “super volcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for Fox News.
Kaku said that a “pocket of lava” located under the park has turned out to be twice as big as scientists originally thought. I would like to try to describe for you what a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano would mean for this country.
Hundreds of cubic miles of ash, rock and lava would be blasted into the atmosphere, and this would likely plunge much of the northern hemisphere into several days of complete darkness. Virtually everything within 100 miles of Yellowstone would be immediately killed, but a much more cruel fate would befall those that live in major cities outside of the immediate blast zone such as Salt Lake City and Denver.
Hot volcanic ash, rock and dust would rain down on those cities literally for weeks. In the end, it would be extremely difficult for anyone living in those communities to survive. In fact, it has been estimated that 90 percent of all people living within 600 miles of Yellowstone would be killed.
Experts project that such an eruption would dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away, and approximately two-thirds of the United States would suddenly become uninhabitable. The volcanic ash would severely contaminate most of our water supplies, and growing food in the middle of the country would become next to impossible.
In other words, it would be the end of our country as we know it today.
The rest of the planet, and this would especially be true for the northern hemisphere, would experience what is known as a “nuclear winter”. An extreme period of “global cooling” would take place, and temperatures around the world would fall by up to 20 degrees. Crops would fail all over the planet, and severe famine would sweep the globe.

In the end, billions could die.

So yes, this is a threat that we should take very seriously.”

THE BIBLE AND EARTHQUAKES

That’s the sort of disaster REVELATION is talking about. You should read the entire chapter 16. Let me quote verses 18-19: “No earthquake has ever occurred since humanity had been on earth, so tremendous was the quake….. and the cities of the nation collapsed.”

GOING FULL CIRCLE.

In essence world history is a circle. The beginning is in the end, and the end is in the beginning. The Bible starts with the Garden of Eden and beautiful perfection. Then there is the human experimental interlude, now about to expire, as the trial and error has resulted in mostly human failure. Fortunately Revelation 14: 13 tells us that, “Our good deeds will follow us.” Not all human ventures are lost. We have learned by trial and error and are able to apply our experience in the NEW CREATION, the KINGDOM TO COME, that same kingdom over which the first human pair presided in EDEN.

That is the future, a future where the new human race, with Jesus as the Primus Inter Pares, the First among Equals, will guide us in the perfect way, because God’s laws will be written on our hearts. We are going FULL CIRCLE.

June 24 2017

TRUMP: A GODSEND

Former President Obama, in his speech at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce on June 6, used the phrase: INFLECTION POINT, which Google defines as “A time of significant change in a situation: a turning point.” Having pledged not to criticize his successor for a while caused Obama’s speech to be quite run of the mill, even though the new president has set out to destroy any and every piece of legislation that originated from the Obama regime, of which Health Care and Environmental regulations are the most prominent.

I listened to Obama’s entire 40 minute address, and, apart from the word INFLECTION POINT, I heard not one sentence that was new. I can’t understand why people pay big bucks to hear past presidents such as Bill Clinton or, in this case, Barack Obama, spout platitudes.

A new era ahead.

Just as the church can no longer reform itself – see last week’s blog – so too the entire world economy is in the same position. After all: “everything is connected to everything else”, is one of the laws of ECOLOGY. Matters move in tandem. The financial system is on track to tip over the brink, because all elements have become too ossified, too far out from reality to be able to be reformed.

Here are some simple questions: “Do you really believe that CLIMATE CHANGE can be stopped? Do your really believe that if Hillary had become president, we would have seen a different political scene? Do you really believe that CAPITALISM will disappear? Do you really believe that the $250 Trillion World Debt will ever be paid? Do you really believe that CANCER can be beaten?”

NO to all these questions because we live in a culture where politics, the economy, US healthcare, the entire issue of climate, is beyond repair.

Oh yes, matters look basically normal: the sun still rises, the days still have 24 hours, people still go to work, children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren are still added to the world, people still fall ill, suffer and die: in other words, life goes on in its normal rhythm, yet when we study matters closer, we see that standard solutions no longer work: we have gone too far to be able to remedy the situation.

I am old enough to have experienced the pre-industrial age. I don’t mean that I am 200 years old, but I have intimately known my grandparents, who were born in the 1860’s, now more than 150 years ago, in the rural Western part of the Province of Groningen, adjacent to Friesland. There rural life had been basically unaltered since 1700, at least at the remote location where my maternal grandparents lived: no electricity, the horse and buggy stage: only the bicycle was contemporary.

In 1923 my parents married and moved to the city, some 35 km away, the first ones to do so of the entire extended family.
I was their fourth child (in five years), and after me another five were born. Grandparents, being what they are, were quite eager to host me when another baby saw the light. (I was named after him). So I received, as a youngster, a good taste of what it was to live without electricity and running water, rising with the sun, and going to bed early. A tranquil life, centering on the animals, with the barn attached to the living quarters, on church and community based entertainment: choirs, brass bands, youth meetings, church gatherings, etc.

Then the INFLECTION POINT, the TURNING POINT, was the arrival of the automobile. Between 1950 and 1990 the car transformed the country to become an extension of the city and effectively killed small, mixed farming with a dozen cows, some pigs, and a flock of chickens. It also made the small baker and grocer superfluous, with the rise of box stores.

The last 25 years – from the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the arrival of the Computer to today – I regard as a period of gestation, where the real changes were born, found their footing and brought on immense modifications. Just as the automobile altered the entire way of life that existed before 1950– not for the better as we now discover – so the computer, in its manifold manifestations, is upsetting everything and I mean everything, from the way we eat, sleep, drive, work, communicate, think, court, worship, everything.

And just as the unintended consequences of global automobile use are now showing up in drastic Climate Change, so too the universal application of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, will fundamentally affect human behavior, also not for the better. Just as the automobile deprived us of natural mobility, walking, running, perhaps biking and horse riding, and was and is a factor in heart and respiratory diseases, not to mention physical injuries and deaths, so the remorseless advance of Artificial Intelligence may further deprive us of creative thinking, in essence rob us of our very humanity.

We now are faced with the unrelenting march of “progress” that has been the consequence of the computer. I put ‘progress’ in quotation marks because its consequences are still not entirely known.

Of course I am a computer user. I let my subscription to the Globe and Mail lapse – I had to pick it up at the store 5.5 km away – and now see it on line, as I do with the New York Times, the Guardian and other news sources: no paper waste, more efficient. But it also eliminated a lot of jobs in the newspaper industry. So there has been a definite INFLECTION point, a real change in the way NEWS is being delivered. Eventually it will affect all modes of life.

DEBT

The way we rely on money has also changed immensely. In the good old days people bought stuff when they had saved up the money.
Today the rapid rise in living standards and prosperity of the past 50 years has been largely based on rising debt levels, ignoring the costs of environmental damage and misallocation of scarce resources. Debt today stands at a ‘never-to-be-repaid’ 325 percent of global gross domestic product of about 75 Trillion Dollars, amounting to some 250 Trillion Dollars.

Debt has allowed society to accelerate consumption, as borrowings are used to purchase something today against the promise of future repayment. Unfunded entitlements to social services, health care and pensions increase those liabilities. The bill for these commitments will soon become unsustainable, as demographic – growing old and frail – changes make it more difficult to meet.
Debt is not confined to money: the greater debt is the degradation of the environment which will result in phenomenal future costs. It will entail either rehabilitation expenses – restoration of what once was – or irreversible changes that affect living standards or quality of life. We have not at all costed the profligate use of non-renewable natural resources which deny these commodities to future generations or increase their cost.
Expect a tremendous INFLECTION COST there once this starts to bite, a cost so high that it is impossible to remedy: we have gone too far.
Even though many now see DEFLATION as a threat – and it is – the odds are that INFLATION will kick in once food, energy, water becomes in short supply, as growing population, increasing living standards, pollution, erosion, floods, droughts, materialize.

The WEATHER turning point.

Over the past 130 years, global surface temperatures have risen about 20 times faster than when the Earth was in the process of slowly emerging from the last ice age. Over the past 40 years, the rate of global warming has been 3 times faster yet.

During the past 7,000 years, when human civilization was able to develop and thrive, Earth’s temperatures and climate were quite stable, with the temperature change varying not more than about 0.5°C. We, energy hogs, have now caused that much and more warming in just the past 25 years.

Margaret MacMillan in her book THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE devoted one chapter to DREAMING OF PEACE. Yes, there were, prior to 1914 millions of people joining the various peace movements, because there was a general feeling that war could erupt, as everywhere in the Western world nations were preparing for war. It made me think of the environmental movements today, such as Greenpeace and the David Suzuki Foundation and the many, many books that warn us of coming Climate disasters. Yet, in 1914 war came, not to be concluded until 1945. So also WEATHER DISASTER will come, now already evident from the preliminary skirmishes we are encountering. Actually Sam Carana in his ARCTIC NEWS reports that on May 28, a few weeks ago, sea temperature was 1.8°C or 3.2°F warmer than 1981-2011, that means that the 2.0°C will be reached within a few years since oceans cover 70 percent of the globe.
Dr. Carana specializes in temperature readings, especially in the Arctic where the weather is changing 3 times as fast as anywhere else, and also where the buried METHANE, 30 times more lethal than CO2, our automobile exhaust, is in the process of escaping from the permafrost tundra there. THERE LIES THE ULTIMATE INFLECTION POINT, because once methane emerges it will result in a sudden TEN DEGREE CELSIUS spike in world temperatures.

A POSSIBLE CONVERGENCE OF EVENTS?

It has long been my conviction that we will experience a convergence of all possible disasters. I believe that the Middle East could well serves as the CATALYST, the area where civilization began and, I believe, will end, completing the circle of history.

This week I am reading Margaret MacMillan’s PARIS 1919, SIX MONTHS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD.
It is fascinating to read how this learned woman, in her PARIS 1919, describes how France and Great Britain haggled over the same countries now so much in the news: Syria, Mesopotamia (Iran-Iraq), Palestine, Lebanon, all regions formerly under the rule of the Turks in the Ottoman Empire that fell apart after 1918.

Then too OIL was at the heart of the conflict. Reading about Mosul and Aleppo and Baghdad and Basra in 1919– now constantly in the news as well – shows that the decisions made then, still affect us today.
Margaret MacMillan writes, “In 1919 there were no Iraqi people; history, religion, geography pulled the people apart, not together. Basra looked south, toward India and the Gulf; Baghdad had strong links with Persia (Iran), and Mosul had close ties with Turkey and Syria. Putting together the three Ottoman provinces and expect to create a nation called IRAQ was, in European terms, like hoping to have Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs make one country.”

The history of the dictatorship-plagued region has shown that there is no such thing as a short and decisive war. The Yemeni and Syrian and Afghanistan conflicts show this. Total instability in the heart of the world’s most energy-rich region will send global economies into shock, create more opportunities for terrorists, will bring further foreign interventions, spark new waves of refugees, and make the entire world less safe, less stable, and less prosperous. George W. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney, would have done well to have studied the Middle East History before embarking on war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a war now in its 16th year with no end in sight.

The fuse for today’s Middle East TURNING POINT was lit at the 1919 PARIS conference. The fuse is still inching its way toward its fatal destination. At the same time CLIMATE CHANGE is accelerating this process. The EROEI factor – Energy Returned on Energy Invested – plays a role as well, as real cheap oil is only available in the Middle East, while Oil-Sand Oil and Fragging Oil take a lot of energy –and thus pollution – to obtain energy.

The global TOTAL INFLECTION – TURNING POINT will occur when unbearable heat, Category 6 hurricanes and typhoons, gigantic earthquakes, a pandemic, nuclear war, collapsing economies, all coalesce to cause the entire world to succumb to chaos.

The election of TRUMP is a true indication of the impossibility to solve the world’s problems. He is the great DIVIDER, the great DISTURBER. His ascendancy will simply speed up the process of total disintegration. He embodies destructive evolution.

He’s the real GODSEND to bring about the COMING OF THE KINGDOM, God’s new creation.

June 17 2017

WILL THE ORGANIZED CHURCH EVER REFORM ITSELF AGAIN?

Two thousand years ago the Christian Community took a daring step: they changed the day of worship from Saturday to Sunday, from the Sabbath – today still celebrated by the Jewish faith – to the first day of the week.
Genesis 1 relates how God created light on the first day, while Jesus called himself “the Light of the world” (John 8: 12.) To combine God creating LIGHT on the first day, and to celebrate God’s son as the LIGHT on the first day of the week, was totally fitting. Is it still?

I will attempt to challenge this custom, believing that we live in different times, which calls for a different approach to worship. Also the church needs a jolt akin to what early Christianity did in its infant days.

Some ancient history.

When the Roman Empire collapsed around 450 A.D. the church was in its ascendency and organized itself along Roman Imperial lines, with the Pope taking the place of the Emperor, the cardinals the equivalent of generals, the bishops heading the regional regiments, all the way down to priests becoming the local company commanders, imitating the Centurions.

Around the year 1500, having had a religious monopoly for about a thousand years, the church saw her doctrinal standards decline while experiencing an increase in the construction of ever more glorious religious structures, requiring ever more money. So it exploited dubious sources to finance these ventures, such as the sale of indulgences.

Enter Martin Luther.

Martin Luther himself a church official protested the sale of these indulgences which were sold with the promise that they would exempt the sinner from the consequences of sin, as in those days the fear of PURGATORY played a major role in the church.

On October 31 1517 Luther affixed 95 theses on the church door in Wittenberg outlining his well-reasoned objections to the all-powerful church, ultimately resulting in a totally different denomination, aptly called THE LUTHERAN CHURCH.

Since then we have seen a proliferation of Protestant churches, one of which was guided by Jean Calvin in Geneva, Switzerland, and another by John Knox in Scotland.

I believe that today the entire denominational future is slowly fading away, because all of Western Christianity is suffering from hardening of its arteries. Already most of those disenchanted with religion have left the church and couldn’t care less what’s happening on the ecclesiastical scene, but there are still a few who want to engender REFORMATION from within. Count me among these intrepid individuals.

A brief look back to the recent past.

Frankly I have no clear idea why, some 60 years ago, Europe and Canada almost completely turned off on RELIGION. I suspect that growing indifference affected many of the regular church-going crowd, so they, the former faithful, on cue, stopped to darken the doors of the places where they were baptized as infants and had their marriage sealed by the clergy.

Take the Canadian Province of Quebec.

There the Catholic heritage is everywhere, in street names, in monuments and in church buildings galore, but Catholic practice has plummeted. The province’s main metropolis, Montreal, is as non-religious a place as any in secular Europe. Marriage (even in the civil sort, let alone church weddings) has become an unusual choice among Quebecois youngsters. A church spokesman estimates Mass attendance in Montreal at 2-4% of the population. In the province as a whole, just 11% say they are regular worshippers. But 75% of the province’s people still identify as Catholic.

The same is true for Canada’s mainline churches. In my small village the Anglican Church closed years ago. The United Church with a building dating from the 1920’s and sporting a grand church organ, had some 200 people attending in the 1950’s, but today no more than 30 show up, the old faithful, with emphasis on ‘old’. The same with my church, Presbyterian, which seats more than 250 people – built in 1890 – and now has sometimes no more than 25 attending, spread out over the entire sanctuary.

Frankly I love our small church, with its devoted and talented people, and its enthusiastic choir consisting of 3 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 basses and me, the lone tenor, and a director, of course and an audio person, both women.
A few weeks ago our choir was invited to be part of a larger one to perform at the opening of the General Assembly in Kingston, Ontario. The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Canada is equivalent to the General Synod for churches such as the Christian Reformed Church of North America, where my roots are.

Participating in this choral affair, gave me the opportunity to listen to the sermon of the departing moderator, always a prominent person in the denomination. He had chosen as his sermon topic “The People’s Book” and the Bible readings dealt with this topic. The Old Testament section related to Josiah, the then King in Jerusalem, who had rediscovered the LOST Torah, the five books of Moses, and had an inspired urge to reacquaint his nation with the rules and commandments the Lord wanted his people to observe.
The New Testament reading was “But these have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing you may have life in His name.”

As suggested before, with the Protestant Church celebrating 500 years of rising, shining and declining influence and the Western Roman Catholic Church in the same position, it is my contention that both wings of Christianity need a thorough overhaul, as radical as when the first Christians left the Old Testament Hebrew Church.

Why?

When, in the choir loft, having an elevated view on the audience of some 400 people in St Andrew’s Kingston, on that 4th Day of June in the year of the Lord 2017, from 7-9 P.M., I saw all these dignified pastors in their elegant robes and rounded collars, and it went through my mind that 500 years after Luther’s valiant attempt to reform the church, REFORMATION had basically run stuck.

My thoughts went to Karl Barth, the great German-Swiss theologian, who said that preachers must prepare their sermons with the Bible in the one hand and the newspaper in the other. In today’s terminology that means, of course, news from whatever source.

On the General Assembly’s agenda was the ticklish topic of same-sex marriage. The preacher voiced his carefully phrased misgivings, and that came as no surprise to me because in the main the Bible is seen as the sole source of all wisdom. When that is the case, dogmatism and conservatism rule. In the Roman Catholic Church tradition too plays a large role, reason why there is a POPE and why women have no real role in worship, and the male hierarchy dominates.

So where is my beef? Here it is!

THE BIBLE IS NOT GOD’S ONLY WORD!!!

Basically the Christian Church has run stuck because it sees the Bible as THE ONLY WORD OF GOD and heaven as its goal. That is to be lamented, because we cannot really understand Creation in its wider sense without knowing the Bible, and we cannot really understand the Bible without a thorough knowledge of Creation.

Frankly, we cannot love God if we don’t love creation and see studying creation as an integral part of attaining wisdom. That’s why Romans 1: 20 is in the Bible.

THE BELGIC CONFESSION cites that text.

Here’s what this important confession says about us knowing God: “We know God FIRST by the creation, preservation, and government of the universe, since that universe is before our eyes like a beautiful book…. As the Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20: “(the creation of) all these things are enough to convict men and to leave them without excuse.”
Hence my radical statement: CREATION IS GOD’S PRIMARY OR DIRECT WORD!!

What does CREATION tell us?

Observing CREATION – my biologist friend George tells me – teaches us that homosexuality is also found in the animal world, so it is no surprise that humans too are afflicted with this, as some people are genetically conditioned that way.

That is what the GOD’S CREATION WORD teaches us. Nietzsche was right when he wrote that “I entreat you, brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.”

In the Old Testament God is often identified as THE CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH. Psalm 8 starts with the exclamation, “How great is your name, O Lord our God, through all the earth.”
God’s name and God’s Word are one and the same, because any facet of God portrays his totality. Thus we can also read this as, “How great is your Word, O Lord our God, through all the earth.”

The preacher in Kingston mentioned Psalm 119:105, “Your word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path”, but failed to point out how this text combines the written word – the Scriptures, God’s Secondary or Indirect Word – with the Created Word, and so makes the two complete.

A NEW REFORMATION NEEDED.

My discovery trip to Kingston, my elevated view on the elect or as one Presbyterian minister labeled them to me some time ago as “The Frozen Chosen”, granted me the opportunity to gauge the real feeling in the church, and it filled me with compassion, because believing that the Bible is God’s only Word, leads to distortion of the truth. Seeing Creation as God’s Primary Word solves a lot of controversies because the Bible is not a book for science (it teaches us of Creation, Fall and Redemption), where Creation tells us that e.g. EVOLUTION is a fundamental aspect of Creation.

When Christianity was in its infancy it took a daring step. It looked at the Sabbath – the Seventh Day in which God rested to contemplate what he had wrought– and replaced it with the Sunday, signifying a radical break with the Jewish religion.

That was TRUE REFORMATION, and necessary. Now this has run its course. The church’s clergy-dominated Modus Operandi has failed. 500 years after Luther for the Protestants and 2000 years for the Roman Catholic Church we need a new, unified, model where also the Jewish faith finds a place.

Relying on Genesis One we read that God started creation on the First Day and ended it on the Sixth Day with the creation of Humanity. God rested on the Sabbath Day, the SEVENTH DAY. Resting means contemplating and enjoying creation.

We have to recapture that sort of REST. I believe that the church needs to make a Radical change, resting, honoring, celebrating the completion of Creation on the Seventh Day, openly recognizing that Creation is complete and openly recognizing that our personal salvation and the salvation of the earth are intricately and intimately connected: you can’t have one without the other!!

We must break the Sunday preaching monologue and the church-building fixation, because it echoes Descartes’ COGITO ERGO SUM, meaning “I think (listen to preaching) therefore I am”, threatening Christianity to become a dualistic, splitting grace from nature, experience and running the danger of making it more an intellectual exercise rather than a full-orbed experience.

WILL THE ORGANIZED CHURCH EVER REFORM ITSELF AGAIN?

NO. All branches of the church – Catholic, Jewish and Protestant – have become captives of their edifices, offices, customs, doctrines and traditions. They are beyond reforming.

So what maybe the answer?

Our local church has made a modest beginning, originating from its ENVIRONMENTAL COMMITTEE, a body every congregation should have.

In the past year it has organized two Sunday services with a direct Creation Emphasis and three short services on Saturday mornings in nearby “natural” settings, not supplanting the Sunday service, but supplementing it, away from the church building. After all we cannot store new wine in old bottles, emphasizing that God’s Word is two-fold: Creation and Scriptures.

In the out-door services we can fully embrace those of all faiths – and perhaps none – including the Jewish one, the original COVENANT people.

The church always must remind its people that our eternal future is not heaven – the church’s major heresy – but a RENEWED EARTH.

JUNE 10 2017

WILL A MELTING ARCTIC CAUSE A PANDEMIC?

Margaret MacMillan, in her book THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE, suggests that the Influenza in 1918-19, which killed some 40 million people, was caused by churning up the micro-laden soil in Northern France and Belgium. That churning up was the result of the exploding of tens of millions of shells fired by thousands of heavy guns in the four years of trench-warfare in 1914-18.

War always has consequences beyond the immediate battlefield. The World-wide Influenza was either directly or indirectly one of them. The terrible pandemic especially affected young adults. I have known several orphans in Tweed, whose parents died while they were in their infancy and were adopted by relatives.

World War I reminds me of bringing Meals on Wheels to Albert McTaggart, who in 1990 was 90 years old. He told me how he had volunteered at the age of 16 to fight in World War I, lying about his age. In 1917 he was wounded, and, using his rifle as a crutch, wandered away from the frontline in search of a First Aid station but stumbled and fell into a water-filled crater, unable to go on. An English officer spotted him, and brought him safely to a field hospital.
In the hospital train to England, up 4 high, he heard from a fellow across from him that his entire platoon had been killed just after his departure. He told me that, before he crawled away from his post, he prayed aloud for his comrades in arms, none of whom survived.

All this pales compared to today’s battle grounds, this time not confined to Northern France and Southern Belgium, but truly UNIVERSAL.

Today’s war is waged every hour, every minute, and every second all over the world. The battle fields are not limited to the traffic arteries in the major cities of the world, Beijing, Tokyo, New Delhi, L.A. New York, Toronto, where untold millions of automobiles – mostly with one person steering 2,500 lbs of steel and plastic – do their polluting work.

No, the most dangerous battlegrounds are far, far away from human habitations, in inhospitable places circling the North Pole, stretching far inland, where no longer the reindeer and the buffalo roam, but where the frozen tundra, covering millions of square miles, is in the process of melting.

The unnatural warming there – a full SIX PLUS CELSIUS above normal – is causing the same conditions as on the battle fields now 100 years ago in Europe when the millions of shells churned up the soil so thoroughly that dangerous microbes were released.

There is the real danger now that the Arctic soil, finding itself completely transformed after many millennia of a frozen state will now release the megatons of methane and trillions times trillion of microbes that normally are solidly encased. I fear that these immense areas in Siberia and Canada, in Alaska and Greenland, will cause the world to be exposed to the two-fold dangers of unbelievable rises in temperature and hordes of unknown bacteria for which the human race has no antidotes.

The world has seen disasters before.

The book RATS, LICE, AND HISTORY by Hans Zinsser, leaves no doubt that pandemics are part of the human make-up. Zinsser writes: “The sixth century was a period of calamity rarely equaled in history…..A succession of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions – Vesuvius in 513 was one – and famines preceded and accompanied the series of pestilences which wrought terror and destruction throughout all of Europe, the Near East, and Asia for over sixty years. Of the natural convulsions, the most destructive was an earthquake, followed by conflagration, which destroyed Antioch in 526, killed between 200,000 and 300,000 inhabitants, and frightened away most of the remainder…… A succession of floods and famines added to the general misery. ….All this was accompanied by the great plague of Justinian. After the plague had ceased, there was so much depravity and general licentiousness that it seemed as though the disease had left only the most wicked.”

Some 700 year later, Otto Friedrich, in THE END OF THE WORLD, devotes a long chapter to THE BLACK DEATH 1347-50. In a European population of less than 100 million, 30 million, at least 1 in 3, died. These were confusing times, both religiously and nature-wise. Again there were droughts, famines, swarms of locusts, deluges of frogs, lizards and scorpions, forcing rats and other rodents in search of food. Heavy rains in 1314 severely limited the grain harvests, so that the general physical well-being was greatly impaired, not unlike today. The rain persisted into the next year as well, causing the price of food to skyrocket.

Barbara W. Tuchman in her A DISTANT MIRROR, subtitled “The Calamitous 14th Century”, makes special mention of THE BLACK DEATH. She also points out that the epidemic occurred after the world population had experienced a series of poor harvests, enfeebling the humans there to such an extent that the disease found ready victims.
Today is not different, yes we live longer, but no, we are not very healthy.

Global Health

According to the influential medical magazine The Lancet, 90 percent of the world population already suffers from some sort of disease, telling us that the general overall health is poor. Also there is not a person in the world free of chemical contaminants, due to the universal presence of airborne particles originating from automobile exhausts, electricity generating stations, pesticides and fertilizers. This comes from the tens of thousands of compounds from our oil-based industrialization which is changing the very essence of humanity. Obesity too has become a world-wide curse, another symptom of poor health and the wrong food sources.

We now are again some 700 years. Our civilization totally dependent on fossil fuels, has done more harm than simply filling the air with CO2 and threatening our very physical existence. It also has given us a false sense of spiritual security, as if we no longer need God. It reminds me of Psalm 2, depicting the very situation we have today:
Why this tumult among nations, Among peoples this useless murmurings?
They arise, the kings of the earth (Trump?)
Princes plot against the Lord and his anointed.
He who sits in the heavens laughs;
The Lord is laughing them to scorn.
Then he will speak in his anger,
His rage will strike them with terror.

We would expect that, in times of immense distress people would turn to organized religion for solace and encouragement, but Barbara Tuchman in her “A DISTANT MIRROR” disputes that. She writes, “The plague accelerated discontent with the Church at the very moment when people felt a greater need of spiritual reassurance. There had to be some meaning in the terrorizing experience God had inflicted. If the purpose had been to shake man from his sinful ways, it had failed. Human conduct was found to be “wickeder than before,” more avaricious and grasping, more litigious, more bellicose, and this was nowhere more apparent than in the Church itself…..When those who have the title of shepherd play the part of wolves,” said Lothar of Saxony, “heresy grows in the garden of the Church.” While the majority of people doubtlessly plodded on as before, dissatisfaction with the Church gave impetus to heresy and dissent, to all those seeking God through the mystical sects, to all the movements for reform which were ultimately to break apart the empire of Catholic unity.”
So far A DISTANT MIRROR.

J.H. Bavinck confirms this. In his commentary on REVELATION he writes about the last days, the current era, and I translate:
“The culmination of the natural disasters and the pinnacle of pain are caused by an earthquake (Revelation 16: 18) “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth.” The seismographs in the capitals shake wildly and record numbers beyond any ever registered. And the houses tumble, the palaces are ruined. No human technological expertise is any help. Nothing can withstand this force of nature: no nuclear bomb has this devastating power. Now an endless series of ever more frightening events roll over the world.
The catastrophes mentioned here extend to the entire cosmos. They affect people everywhere. Earlier we have seen how in the disastrous happenings preceding the last things, two types of distress can be detected. There are calamities that originate from above, that find their source in nature and there are those that are the result of human action. Here only the first type is mentioned. It is as if the tamed earth, given by God as a gift to humanity as his own domain, is now rebelling, is now rising up against her tormentor. It is as if nature that, for so long, for so many centuries, has faithfully furnished humanity with all its needs, has now become recalcitrant, and full of revenge has thrown itself upon humanity. And this humanity, this so superior human race, with her atomic energy, her mighty medical system, her military prowess, and her entertainment establishment all of which made her feel so immense mighty and strong, these same men and women are now in a total humiliating fashion confronted with the fact that in the final analysis they amount to nothing, that they are a mere rag that is thrown out as useless.”
He continues, “But not now. There’s not a trace of confusion to be noticed. Of course people are unsure. Of course there also is a good amount of despair. But conversion? No, they cursed God the God of the heavens! Strange, these modern men and women, who had become convinced that the concept ‘god’ did not exist anymore, all these people started to curse. They always had told themselves that they no longer believed in God, that this fairytale was something they had ridiculed all their lives. They had left the church in droves already long ago and had assured their neighbors that God was dead and that they, in line with the spirit of the age, had nothing to do with him anymore. On the census they had written “no church affiliation”, so how was it now possible that suddenly God was back, risen from the dead? How come that these educated people, so up-to-date with everything, with the latest gadgets, who never did need God, now suddenly seem to remember that he exists after all? Was there in the deepest crevices of their mind a secret notion that the meaning of life is that we always are in a conversation with him who made our lives and even guides us? Have they understood this more profoundly than they would admit to themselves and to others? In any case, at this so critical juncture, now that the flames of defeat leap up high and start to scorch their fragile body frames, now irrepressibly the certainty arises that God is there after all. And these nervous, these out of balance persons clench their small fists threatening the Lord of the heavens. They wished they could aim a guided missile and so shoot God from his throne. They would crucify him again if they could, would cast him into the deepest black hole, dead, forever defeated. But all they can do is belch out their powerless rage against him who now so mightily intervenes in this minor league game of human creation and construction.
So far a small section of Bavinck’s Dutch book on REVELATION.

WILL A MELTING ARCTIC CAUSE A PANDEMIC?

Few people in the West have ever heard of the Yamal Peninsula in western Siberia, and fewer still have heard of an anthrax outbreak there, now about a year ago, among its nomadic reindeer herders. But the Russian government launched a major effort to evacuate the whole group while shipping in medical experts plus its Chemical, Radioactive and Biological Protection Corps to sterilize the region. As of Aug. 2 2016, over 2,500 reindeer had died and 20 herders had confirmed anthrax.

We don’t know the future. We do know that, as a generation, we sucked out and dug up carbon fuels buried for millions of years. They have given us luxurious conveniences even Solomon in all his glory could not have imagined.

We now are like the Prodigal Son who wasted his inheritance, and, totally destitute, returned to his Father. (We find the entire story in Luke 15: 11-32.)

He wasted his future. We wasted our future.
Our Father too will welcome us back when we repent.

June 3 2017

OUR NEAR FUTURE.

Of course I am sticking my neck out. Well, it’s pretty short so I can’t venture too far. I am told that if you want to fathom the future, look to the past, so this week I am (re)reading Barbara Tuchman’s THE GUNS OF AUGUST, the so well written prelude to World War I and its first month of fighting in 1914. I have also started for the first time Margaret MacMillan’s THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE, dealing with the same subject from an earlier perspective.
Tuchman tells me that, on the day the war started, von Moltke, the then German top general, wrote: “this struggle will decide the course of history for the next hundred years.” He was so right. She also affirms that, while politicians dither the generals act, perhaps not always wisely: that’s dangerous for today with so many generals in the Trump cabinet.

I believe that the year 1914 ended that 19th Century of 100 years of peace and heralded the start of that fateful 20th Century, the age I lived through for all but 14 years, born in 1928.

The Age of my life

My life started tranquilly enough, as our family – 9 kids – was quite well off in the depression years. I enjoyed the usual middle class prerogatives: youth choir, music lessons, swimming instruction, regular family vacations.
With supposedly better than average intelligence, I was, after primary education, sent to an exclusive – fee charging – university training school, which, upon completion, would allow me automatically to enter the faculty of law, medicine or theology. My parents hoped that I would choose the cloth. It was not to be.

The Age of my life has been war: World War II in occupied Holland 1940-45, trained for war from 1949-51 as a conscript, the Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, the entire Middle East.
Today all of us earth inhabitants are willing participants in the Universal War on Creation which is approaching its final stages, leading to the destruction of all we hold dear.

It is my contention that the 20th Century stopped in 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, making it a mere 75 years, followed by an interlude that ended with the onset of Brexit and the TRUMP TRAGEDY.
We now have entered the FINAL period of World History. I know that is quite a statement.

Here’s how I see it.

The TRUMP TRAGEDY has the potential to cause a second American Civil War. Trump will never resign because he cannot admit failure, but he may be forced out once the Democrats gain the upper hand in Congress in 2018. His followers, armed and dangerous and having nothing to lose, will rebel. Result: the end of the USA as a vital nation.

Trump’s divisive stance will greatly reduce America’s status. Of course, nothing happens in isolation. The TRUMP TRAGEDY is a symptom of a decaying world, unleashing the worst in humanity, and as such it will simply accelerate the world’s unwinding process because wars, both environmental and civil, are extremely destructive.

The impossible is still impossible.

There are already plenty of insoluble problems today. Due to the graying of the nations, more and more old people are becoming more and more dependent on healthcare. This places governments and institutions for the impossible problem of funding pensions – both state and private – for longer living elders, and also financing the ever expanding need for healthcare, while the tax base is decreasing and growth is stalling.

Slow or no economic growth is due to mechanization, evident in robotics. This will cause many, perhaps most jobs to disappear. Robots don’t pay taxes, yet unemployed people need income also, so there is another conflict that is impossible to solve. A guaranteed income will simply cause huge deficits.

Technology comes with a disastrous price tag.

The entire ‘computer’ age may prove to be a disastrous development. That millions of jobs have already vanished is a big problem. The greater problem is that people have lost touch with the earth, have calcified their brains due to mind-killing TV watching. There also is diminished community sense and a loss of ‘god’ awareness. All this spells trouble, big trouble, as forced idleness breeds violence. Add to this the real danger that ‘hacking’ may paralyze society as we totally depends on computer power to function, and the stage is set for a complete shut-down of all activities.

With an exhausted environment our dangers multiply.

I have extensively written on this before. Let me repeat that we cannot expect infinite growth in a FINITE world. Expect Climate Change to bite with a vengeance, causing destructive hurricanes, ever more devastating earthquakes, speeding up economic collapse.

The future and us.

The future belongs to those who prepare for it. That today is more valid than ever. Martin Seligman, a well-known professor of psychiatry, writes that,
“We are misnamed. We call ourselves Homo sapiens, the “wise man,” but that’s more of a boast than a description. What makes us wise? What sets us apart from other animals? Various answers have been proposed — language, tools, cooperation, culture, tasting bad to predators — but none is unique to humans.
What best distinguishes our species is an ability that scientists are just beginning to appreciate: we contemplate the future. Our singular foresight created civilization and sustains society. It usually lifts our spirits, but it’s also the source of most depression and anxiety, whether we’re evaluating our own lives or worrying about the nation. Other animals have springtime rituals for educating the young, but only we subject them to “commencement” speeches grandly informing them that today is the first day of the rest of their lives.”
He continues, “A more apt name for our species would be Homo Prospectus, because we thrive by considering our prospects. The power of prospection is what makes us wise. Looking into the future, consciously and unconsciously, is a central function of our large brain, as psychologists and neuroscientists have shown”

Our true future.

Dr. Needleman is right that we must live for the future. Yes, we should be Homo Prospectus, looking forward to the future.
I don’t know how Needleman sees that future. I know how I see it. Today the only future that is really viable has as basis, “The fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom”. This simply means that for us humans the only way to live is “loving creation”.
That love must dominate our lives; only that selfless act has validity and is the total opposite of the TRUMP DOCTRINE. I believe that John 3: 16: “God so loved the world”, is the most important text in the entire Bible. The Greek word used is COSMOS, encompassing all of creation, including humans.

There simply is no future for a depleted earth. There also is no future for a world increasingly dominated by the machine, but that is what I see.
What do I see? People having an arm glued to the ear holding a device; people with their fingers constantly typing a message; people at home looking at TV for hours; people in cars driving everywhere, including the nearby corner store; people sitting on a lawn-mower cutting 20 square yards of green; people travelling on ‘walking trails’ on their noisy and polluting ATVs.
We have become an extension of the machine. We have become HOMO MECHANICUS: Man the Machine.

Of course, I exaggerate. There are many, many exceptions, but they are too few to make a difference.

Still: admit it. It’s over.

The entire model our society is based on has become a fallacy! That’s why there’s Trump. That’s why there is Brexit. That’s why there are terror attacks. That’s why suicide is the leading cause of death among employable men. Trump bases his fictitious budget on THREE percent growth. Sorry, there is no growth. His projection will only make one item great and greater: DEBT. There hasn’t been any real growth for years. The only growth there has been is in healthcare costs and in those who are over the age of 65 year. And in DEBT.
There is debt, untold trillions of it. Debt can only be paid when there is growth, because debt, even in the current low interest situation, needs growth to repay it with the accrued interest. That’s no longer possible. During the past decade or so we have lived on borrowed money, and in an exhausted world the money supply too will end.
We are at the end of the line. It had to come, and it is here. Sorry to be so blunt.

Based on the above there is only one explanation: we are smack in the middle of the most important global development ever. Never before, not when Rome ceased to exist as a viable empire in about 460, some 1500 years ago, declining as a city from millions to a mere 20,000; not when the Black Plague reduced the European population by some 30 percent in the 14th Century; not since the 20th Century, when wars cost the lives of Hundreds of Millions of people; now in the 21st Century we see the potential of the entire world population being in danger of life and limb.

The most puzzling aspect is that nobody talks about it.

We have built an entire economy on the phantom of economic growth. Our entire financial system, the lives of all the people in the Western World, those of pension age, those suffering from disabilities, those in institutions, in the educational and the medical fields, comprising the major part of the population: they all depend on economic growth.

The political turmoil, in France, in Great Britain, in the USA, is an example of what is to come. Traditional political parties, which have ruled their countries for decades, are today at or near record low support levels.

I guess the very reason why this ultimate danger is not mentioned is that there is no antidote. There’s nothing we can do about it. It all is a matter of ‘forces’ moving beyond our control, forces that have their own momentum, forces that are bigger and more far-reaching than our intentions, however noble and well-meaning they are.

Basically I am convinced that this is what is coming. It’s solely a matter of straightforward reasoning. But nobody seems to really know or understand it which is odd, because it’s not that difficult to grasp. This all happens because growth is over. And if growth is over, so are expansion and centralization in whatever shape or form they come in.

Some Biblical advice.

Curiously the Bible has some advice here, because it is quite explicit in outlining how the end will come. For one thing: it will come suddenly, without warning. The last Bible book, Revelation, is named “Revelation”, because all things will revert to its true nature: the true character of humanity will be ‘laid bare’, her accomplishments, her failures and successes. It also warns us that we must expect immense disasters, of which the outlines are clearly visible today.

The book also offers some advice: Revelation 18: 5 suggests that we disassociate ourselves from the kind of society that has caused this disastrous situation. There it says, “Come out of her, my people, so that you will not share in her sins, so that you will not receive any of her plagues; for her sins are piled up to heaven and God has remembered her crimes.”

Abandoning a sinking economy has, I think, a double significance: if we are able, we must distance ourselves from the mentality that has brought this disaster to happen, but only very few can do what our family has done now more than 40 years ago: leave the city and build some sort of an ARK where, perhaps, the worst of the worst may be avoided. In any case we must learn, wherever we are, to live within rhythm of creation, because that is our future.

I have outlined THE NEAR FUTURE as I see it, sticking my neck out. Of course, I don’t know the Lord’s timetable, but he did warn us to look for the signs around us: these signs do tell me that THE TIME is near.

May 27 2017

I’VE SAID IT BEFORE AND I WILL SAY IT AGAIN.

We are heading for disaster. Of course you know this already. Chances are you will not admit this to yourself or to others. By disaster I mean the end of carbon-driven abundance, an abnormality we have taken for granted.
Why do I say that the end of ‘normality’ is near?
Look around. Have a critical peek at your own daily routine. Is there anything you do that will somewhat slow global deterioration? I am trying it, fully well knowing that it really is impossible to make even a minute difference. True, I bike; true. I grow much of our food; true, we prepare meals from scratch, heat with recycled wood; have solar panels to save on electricity. But whatever we do, there are billions of others who want to engage the energy kick, can’t wait to get a car, have electricity. So in the end, my tiny effort comes to nothing, and really, I still live a more wasteful life than billions of others, because I no longer am able to live ‘responsibly’, fully in tune with God’s creation.
I too am like the idol so well described in Psalm 115:
But their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
5They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
6They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
7They have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk,
nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
8Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them.

THOSE WHO MAKE THEM WILL BE LIKE THEM.

I too have eyes but refuse to see.
I too have ears but refuse to hear.
I too have a nose but refuse to smell.
I too have ceased to be truly human and have become unfit for the kingdom to come where only full human beings are allowed, people who have eyes that acknowledge and perceive the earth’s degradation around us. I too have ceased to be truly human because I no longer hear the cries of creation, the wailing of the whales, the buzzing of the bees, the eerie silence around the refugees. I too have ceased to be truly human because, as Jesus observed, as recorded in Matthew 11: 17, ‘We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’

We all are part of creation, but the church favors the HEAVEN HERESY over CREATION CARE by an immense margin. That’s the reason why we no longer know how to mourn, no longer know how to rejoice. Something vital has been lost because the commandment to love God – and thus his creative powers – is no longer believed.

Our future is decided in the ARCTIC.

We have become immune to the message of ARCTIC NEWS which warns us of mass extinction of species, including humans, within one DECADE, before 2027!! It records that, globally, it is 1.65°C warmer today, compared to 1890-1910. Anomalies in the Arctic are even higher. It’s around 6°C warmer at latitudes north of 70°N. This applies in particular to feedbacks associated with loss of snow and ice cover in the Arctic and to methane releases from clathrates contained in sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean.

The Arctic is melting. The vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, containing almost a million packets of seeds, each a variety of an important food crop, thought to be safe forever, has been flooded by the ‘permafrost’ melt. When it was opened in 2008, the deep permafrost through which the vault was sunk was expected to provide “failsafe” protection against “the challenge of natural or man-made disasters”.

This proves that nothing is PERMANENT anymore. We can take nothing for granted. Everything is at odds with everything else.

Fact is that we face a totally different future. Fact is that we cannot continue in the way we do. The data (data is the plural of datum) are obvious and the logic is clear. We cannot continue as we have been. The situation is simply unsustainable.

“Make America great again” simply means going back to the good old days of the past, the ideal 1950-60’s when fuel was abundant and dirt cheap, when jobs were plenty, when men received a decent, living wage and women knew their place.

The trouble is that we can’t go back because ‘the times they are a’changing’, or rather, they have changed, irrevocably.

Species are disappearing, oceans are acidifying, glaciers are melting and sliding away, with those in Greenland and Antarctica contributing to sea level rise, a phenomenon that is not somewhere out in the future, but right here, right now.

Sell your waterfront property.

The past weeks have shown that waterfront means danger. If you own water front property worth a bundle that’s at risk, sell now and avoid the rush. Get out of Florida and New York City and Amsterdam. Soon the insurers and underwriters might pull your insurance coverage. How much is an uninsurable property on the coast of a rising sea or along a river or lake, worth? As a former real estate appraiser my answer is obvious: not much, if any.

A (very) little bit of study reveals that exponential growth on a finite planet is a bad idea, which means that perpetual exponential growth is an even worse idea. Unfortunately, and quite obviously, perpetual exponential growth lies at the very heart of every so-called ‘modern’ economic model. It’s what we seek as a culture, and is lauded and rewarded in every possible way.
However, exponential growth has taken us in a surprisingly short time from a relatively empty world to a world with plenty of people and their plastic playthings, full of their furniture and empty of what has been there before. The signs of stress can be seen in shrinking forests, falling water tables, eroding soils, disappearing wetlands, rivers either running dry or inundating residential area, and the lists go on, all too familiar to the discerning minds.

The basic problem is oil consumption. The Paris-based International Energy Agency argues that demand will grow, albeit slowly, past 2040. And the two biggest U.S. oil companies, Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. , say peak demand isn’t in sight. In spite of the unbelievable bad consequences of oil use, we are hooked. There’s no way that we will curtail Carbon consumption. We are CARBOHOLICS. Electric cars? Not for many decades.
Our greedy desire for ever more, spells our doom, both for us as the human race and for the planet as a whole. These last 150 years of rampant human feasting on fossil fuels and wallowing in wanton waste is bringing us to the verge of collapse.

Our diet causes die-out.

Look at what we consume: just one example: breakfast cereal travels from land to mouth via many energy-rich processes, and ends up on our palate depleted of oil-rich or fatty substances, which ensures years of ‘durability’ but fails to be ‘real nutrition’. Result: sugar-rich non-food at a cost of 40+ energy calories for one unhealthy food calorie.

Our diet depends on cheap fossil fuel energy and corporate profits, causing cancers to mushroom. On our current course, 8 or 9 billion people will soon be trying to produce more food from degraded soils even as the production of fossil fuels from far away sources, from deeper and deeper wells, requires more and more energy to bring it to market.

Our ability and inclination to enrich the present at the expense of the future and of other species, is as real and as sinful as our tendency to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of the poor as the present TRUMP regime is setting out to implement. To hand back to God the gift of creation (Psalm 115: 16 comes to mind: “The highest heavens belong to the Lord, but the earth he has given to mankind”) in a degraded state capable of supporting less life, less abundantly, and for a shorter future, is surely a sin. If it is a sin to kill and to steal, then certainly it is a sin to destroy carrying capacity, the capacity of the earth to support life now and in the future. To sacrifice future life to protect present luxury and extravagance goes directly against the work of Jesus who came to save the cosmos. We must face the failures of the GROWTH idolatry, the god of our present age.

Our Giant Canoe

Here’s what I read last week: “Think of our situation as if humanity were all together in a giant canoe and nearly everybody is paddling as hard as they can. After all, we’re trying to get somewhere: to improve ourselves, to grow our economy and increase our prosperity. There are goals to be met!
“Along the way we’ve convinced ourselves that this canoe is the best one ever built and it cannot fail us. It is the very pinnacle of achievement. It looks great, and there are creature comforts and pleasant distractions galore. Food has never been more abundant or easier to obtain, new gadgets keep showing up, and (in theory, at least) you can determine for yourself where you want to sit in the canoe.
The people in the front love being there, as they feel powerful and in control. Ironically, though, it’s the few people in the stern who are actually secretly and rather effortlessly steering, but nobody in the rest of the canoe seems to notice or care.
There’s only one thing wrong with this canoe. It’s headed for a gigantic waterfall, and if it tips over the lip, very few will survive. It will be like going over Niagara Falls without a barrel.
A few in the canoe have woken up and noticed this. But their protests are limited to either pulling their paddles out of the water and refusing to propel the canoe any faster, or even trying to futilely paddle backwards against the rest of humanity’s combined efforts.
Neither approach is a solution, mind you. But at least for these ‘awake’ souls, it feels better than paddling mindlessly towards the roaring falls. As it stand today, humanity’s canoe is destined to speed right over the edge. “

Today the greatest tragedy is the absence of a sense of the tragedy, our inhuman lack of creational compassion.

So I am called a pessimist, a doomsayer. I call myself a realist, a person who looks at the present condition and calls a spade a spade. I am too old “to beat around the bush”, as the saying goes.
As far as the church is concerned, its task is over. Just as the ‘world’ cannot change anymore, too set in the groove that inevitably leads to total collapse, the church as an institute has had its day. It too can no longer change course. As Jeremiah laments (51: 9), “We would have healed Babylon, but she cannot be healed; let us leave her and each go to his own land, for her judgement reaches to the skies, it rises as high as the clouds.”

I think that this means that missions is over, because church reform has become impossible 500 years after Luther’s attempt to do so.

“Let people retreat to their own community” and prepare for the return of the Lord, and start learning to live The Gospel of the Earth, in light of the Scriptures. We cannot understand the Holy Writ if we neglect the Holy Earth. We cannot understand the Holy Earth if we neglect the Holy Writ: the two go together.

In these last days, of which the signs are all too clear for the discerning spirits, it is high time that we leave the gods of the age, money, infinite growth, pleasure, whatever, and concentrate, as much as possible, on imagining The Kingdom, the New Creation, to come. Now it is time to implement the plea Jesus left with us: Seek first the Kingdom of God, the welfare of His Creation, and trust that everything else will fall into place.
That is our only hope. Trust and obey. There’s no other Way.