Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

DECEMBER 4 2016

“IT IS ONLY OUT OF THE FUTURE THAT THE PRESENT CAN BE LIVED.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

When I look through our patio door I see that enormous oak tree just a few meters from our house. It must be 250 to 300 years old and, somehow, has survived the fate most other trees there suffered: lost to the axe that cleared the land to the south of us.
In that same stretch of woods – where a bear ducked away not too long ago – there also are some mature sugar maple trees, trees I will tap in a few months for their sap.

But that oak tree is the more fascinating: it’s the king of the forest. It dominates all other trees on our property, entrusted to us for safe keeping. By all accounts it will outlast us, and, as matters accelerate in the atmosphere, of which there are a lot of indications, it will witness the coming of the Lord in all his glory. That tree too looks forward to the ultimate event because before that happens, that majestic specimen also will go through a time of severe suffering. Does it already sense this?

I think so. Trees are more than just inert wood and some green growth: they are living creatures, with feelings and emotions. The sense of dread now pervading the world with the ascent of Trump and accelerating Climate Change, is also shared by trees, especially this oak, because it has a long memory, a memory as far back as the Napoleonic wars when thousands of trees were prematurely cut to be used for the Royal Navy, mostly oak, the most sturdy of woods, the most lasting of materials. It fears WAR more than anything else. And today it’s all- out war against creation and trees in particular. Just as we are emotionally vulnerable in these days of die-offs, of universal tension, of rapid extinctions, of drought and famine, trees too are suffering immensely.

Below are some excerpts from an excellent article in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, discussing Fiona Stafford’s The Long, Long Life of Trees.
“All trees are threatened by a pair of lethal diseases from Asia. Fifty years ago we lost most of our elm trees to a fungus from China, spread by a beetle laying infected eggs under the bark, unjustly called “Dutch” elm disease. Today new enemies—sudden oak death, acute oak decline, beech wilt, sweet chestnut blight, and so on—are decimating our parks and forests.”

I believe that “As trees go, so go we.”

“The trees are life. Already contaminated air has weakened them and so has drought, sickening trees everywhere. In Europe the most immediate problem is Chalara, a fungus that leads to dieback—the death of leaves and branches—in ash trees, believed to have been introduced in the 1990s from Asia on infected crates or pallet wood. In Denmark 80 percent of the European ashes have already died. The plague has now reached Britain and Ireland and is expected to be just as devastating there.

“We, in North America, must cope with an even more pitiless Asian enemy behind Chalara—the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis, a bright green Chinese beetle that has already devastated many forests in North America.
“In her chapter on oaks, Stafford explores the tangled history of Britain’s infatuation with the species. The oak was a symbol of power and strength from classical times. It was the tree of Zeus, king of the gods. It was the oracular tree at Dodona in Greece, meaning that it could predict the future. Augustus Caesar, ever conscious of his image, faced the Roman public wearing a civic crown of oak leaves. The tree’s “manly” virtues made it a choice as a symbol for any country, like Britain, seeking to impress its neighbors. Effortlessly it became the national tree of Britain, although the claim was not uncontested. The oak: “Sturdy, stalwart and stubborn,” Stafford writes, “The oak has always been admired for its staying power…. No other tree is so self-possessed, so evidently at one with the world. Unlike the beech, horse chestnut or sycamore, whose branches reach up towards the sky, the solid, craggy trunk of a mature oak spreads out, as if with open arms, to create a vast hemisphere of thick, clotted leaves.
“A great oak is a world in itself. “This is the King of the Trees,” Stafford writes exultantly, “the head, heart and habitat of an entire civilisation.”

“IT IS ONLY OUT OF THE FUTURE THAT THE PRESENT CAN BE LIVED.”

Just as trees are dying, so are we. The U.S. Forest Service has identified an additional 36 million dead trees across California since its last aerial survey in May 2016. This brings the total number of dead trees since 2010 to over 102 million on 7.7 million acres of California’s drought stricken forests. In 2016 alone, 62 million trees have died, representing more than a 100 percent increase in dead trees across the state from 2015. Millions of additional trees are weakened and expected to die in the coming months and years.

We are rushing to the end.

The election of Trump has caused the race to go into overdrive, is rocketing the earth toward its ultimate demise.
The future looks deadly and we have become incapable to change the future. Still we must strive for change and for this to happen we must imagine what the real future looks like, because it is only out of the future that the present can be lived, which brings me, of course, to the last Bible chapter: Revelation 22, where it says that:

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

Let me start with ‘nations.’ When in Matthew 28: 19 Jesus gives us the Great Commission, the same word ‘nations’ is used. It actually does not refer to individual countries, but to everything connected to people, such as races, sexes, ethnic and faith communities, economic classes, families, and tribes. Thus “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of all humans in the world”, and that healing also applies to the world itself, because humans and earth are one.
The last two chapters of the bible, Revelation 21 and 22, picture a world where, as yet, no humans are present. But there are trees, lots of them.

The Garden of Eden had an identical development: everything there had to be in perfect shape before humans could appear. It is my argument that prior to the saints’ arrival in the new creation, the presence of trees will be instrumental for them to enter a virginal, pristine, unpolluted planet.

I believe that the earth must first go through a recuperating process with trees as the primary agents of healing, because, basically, there is nothing wrong with God’s world that time – and the absence of sinful humans – cannot heal. It’s not the fault of creation that it is dying. Time, of course, is immaterial for the Lord for whom a day is as a thousand years.

Forest fires.

We know about forest fires: they are a natural phenomenon, needed to rejuvenate forests, because a fire will kill the old and sick and bring to life the buried seeds. Peter was right about the all-consuming fire (2 Peter 3). For the new creation to come, our worn-out world needs a total conflagration to reveal the new to come, and trees play an enormous role in this process.

For that purpose a closer examination of what trees do is necessary.

We all know that trees are the lungs of the world. For humans to have one hundred percent pure air and ‘live forever’ a totally clean environment is required: hence the need for the new world to be fully filled with forests of trees.
But trees are more than oxygen providers. The tree’s underground system is as important as its foliage: the roots and its capillaries are just as essential for the welfare of the earth as the more visible branches, because a tree stands in its own decomposition. Much of the tree sheds its own weight many times over to earth and air, eventually becoming grass, fungus, and promoting the life of insects, birds and mammals. It is the cooperation of these many ‘by-products’ that make a tree so rich – they exist because of the tree, belong with it and function as part of it. Birds nest, squirrels burrow and eat fungus, and insects prune and assist in decomposing the surplus leaves and activate essential soil bacteria. Animals are messengers to the tree and trees act as a garden for animals. This is an excellent example of life depending on life. A tree is a total being that involves minerals, plants, animals, debris and life. All of these elements make up the ‘tree cooperative’. All this has to be in place before the saints are coming home.

That’s why: “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the human population and for the earth itself.”

The leaves absorb the CO2 that has now made our weather so unpredictable and even deadly. The new earth, covered with healthy trees will completely heal the earth and clean the air, making it the perfect place for the ‘redeemed of the Lord, who will enter singing’ (Isaiah 35: 10) on the way to embrace their new abode.

So what about these leaves? Leaves have twice the specific heat capacity as soil, meaning plants can be about 9 degrees Celsius warmer than their surrounding environment. Consequently trees moderate extreme temperatures and humidity so it is tolerable enough to accommodate life. The leaves catch the rain, some of which the tree absorbs, and the remainder returns to the air through evaporation. Any rain that falls through the canopy has, on its way down, collected plant cells and nutrients and is much richer than regular rainwater. This through-fall is then directed to shallow roots, and serves all the needs of growth in that forest. Therefore trees use, collect, enrich and properly direct water so it can best be used in the forest system without human intervention.

Trees are not just here to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen for us to breathe. Their purpose reaches much farther. Trees fight drought, prevent soil erosion, stabilize earth, shade us from sun, are key in the conservation of water, provide us with heat, control the effects of wind, provide shelter for animals and encourage biodiversity and nutrients for soil. God created trees because the trees are life: No trees, no life; sick trees, sick lives.

Yes, the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Trees are not only for the earth: the seas too benefit as do the inland streams. Revelation 22: 2 again: “at each side of the river stood the Tree of Life.” Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrives, so does the rest of the food chain. Fishermen have planted trees along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.
Before the humans return to paradise, trees have to clean it for them. Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of soaking up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phyto-remediation. Tree leaves also filter air pollution: indeed the leaves of the tree are cosmic healers!

So it makes perfect sense that the Bible starts with the Tree of Life, ends with the Tree of Life and has at its centre the Tree of Golgotha where our eternal life was assured. These three ‘trees’ are symbols of all trees explaining that simple sentence in the last chapter of the Bible which says:

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

How then shall we live?

That is the question that is new for every age. For us, in these last days, it all has to do with trees, which feature prominently in our future.
It’s only out of that future that the present can be lived. Treat trees with the utmost love because our life depends in it, including eternal life.

NOVEMBER 27 2016

WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THIS WORLD?

A Time for Everything

1 There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
2 A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
5 A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
6 A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.
9. I could add:
A time for the world to begin; A time for the world to end.
A time to pray, but there never is a time for not praying.

“Pray without ceasing” the Bible tells us, and Jesus was a good example.

Picture Jesus, praying perhaps on his knees, praying perhaps lying down, praying perhaps standing up, with his hands raised to heaven, the seat of his father, completely absorbed in this activity.
John 17 sets the scene.

So what is Jesus saying here in his prayer to his Father?

I find it fascinating that we can follow Jesus in his farewell address, when he is getting ready to depart from this world and speaks words of encouragement to those who now have to fend for themselves.

It’s all there, in verse 11, where Jesus tells us that he is leaving his followers. He prays that they now are on their own, totally depending on God’s help for the protection against The Evil One who now calls the shots! Jesus also tells his followers that they no longer belong to this world dominated by God’s great adversary, that they – we – are pilgrims here: preparing to live in our real home: the new earth to come!

Yes, we are on our own: God help us.

Have we really understood this?
Jesus plainly says that the world which Jesus is leaving, is no longer God’s world, but is under the control of the evil one, which, of course, is also clear from John 3: 16, where we are told that his death was the price Jesus paid for buying back the earth from “The Evil One.”
That The Evil One is now in charge is again confirmed in 1 John 5: 19: “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

Oh, that text: John 3: 16! It’s so central to the entire Scriptures! “God so loved the world”. The least we can do is try to love it too!

This is something the church still has not fully grasped. Last week I saw an article in the (British) Guardian, asking us to mourn the lost species, animals and plants that have become extinct. We, the human race, have claimed close to half of all that lives and moves and have a being, leaving little room for others, forgetting that God, in addition to loving us, also loves every plant, every animal that ever existed. I am sure God mourns that the Pigeon Dove is lost forever and the Dodo and millions of other creatures, all part of the Grand Harmony that God created ‘in the beginning’.

Proponents of the Heaven Heresy have used Jesus’ prayer in John 17 as proof that “we are not of this world, but will inherit heaven above”, not realizing that Jesus, by sacrificing his life, cancelled out Satan’s claim on the world and restored it to God’s ownership, with Christ taking full possession when he returns.

Yes: “God so loved the world” – John 3: 16 – forms the heart of the gospel. Does God really want us to abandon that world, bought with the blood of Christ, by us going to heaven? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Paul writes – and he should know – “God lives in inapproachable light who nobody has seen or can see,” (1 Tim. 6: 16), or John 3: 13, where it says black on white: “Nobody has gone to heaven except he – Jesus – who came from there.”

But no, the heaven myth persists: the greatest LIE Satan has sold to the church.

So when I ask: “Who is in charge of this world”, the unequivocal answer today is THE EVIL ONE. That’s why those who belong to Christ with heart, mind and soul, do not belong to that world, but look forward to the world to come.

Now more than ever EVIL is rearing its hideous head. And one of the symptoms is Donald Trump, a man who successfully tapped into the anger of white voters and appealed to the lowest inclinations of people in a manner that would have probably impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself.

Trump: the man of lawlessness.

2 Thess. 2 describes this man Trump. The heading of that chapter is “The Man of Lawlessness”. Take verse 4 of that chapter: “He will exalt himself over everything that is called God.”

That to me suggests that Trump has elevated himself above Creation, above the law. Now that much of the US church has aligned itself with this man, all restraint is gone and evil has free play.

Events are moving fast and furious in this world.

Here is what also happened on November 8.

On the same day that the American people – actually only 17 percent of the total population – elected Trump as president, November 8, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge Antarctic glaciers. Already, Arctic sea ice over the past five years is 28 percent below the average of the previous 29 years, not only raising sea levels, but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of global warming.

With the Republican Party controlling the Executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court, it has become the most dangerous organization in world history, because it denies the existence of Climate Change.

There is no historical precedent for such a stand.

The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible. This is exactly what The Evil One would want, because his sole aim is to destroy God’s precious earth, for which He gave his son as a sacrifice.

Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trump’s top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, a fracking friend, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obama’s temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline.

Evil is now emerging stronger than ever. “He will exalt himself over everything that is called God.” It’s Trump against creation!
Guess who will win. Prepare yourself for catastrophic events.
One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades.

There are definite similarities to Brexit, and also to the rise of the ultranationalist far-right parties in Europe — whose leaders were quick to congratulate Trump on his victory, perceiving him as one of their own: [Nigel] Farage, [Marine] Le Pen, [Viktor] Orban, [Geert] Wilders and others like them. And these developments are quite frightening. A look at the polls in Austria and Germany — Austria and Germany! — cannot fail to evoke unpleasant memories for those familiar with the 1930s, even more so for those who watched directly, as I did as a child. I can still recall listening to Hitler’s speeches, not understanding the words, though the tone and audience reaction were chilling enough.

The RIGHT is now in charge, just as it was in Nazi Germany. Be afraid, be very much afraid. With the Republicans in the White House, but also controlling both houses and the future shape of the Supreme Court, what will the US look like for at least the next four years?

The Supreme Court will be in the hands of reactionaries for many years, with predictable consequences. If Trump follows through on his Paul Ryan-style fiscal programs, there will be huge benefits for the very rich — estimated by the Tax Policy Center as a tax cut of over 14 percent for the top 0.1 percent and a substantial cut more generally at the upper end of the income scale, but with virtually no tax relief for others, who will also face major new burdens.

A time to love and a time to hate,
A time for war and a time for peace.

What this passage of Ecclesiastes is suggesting is that there are ups and downs, times of prosperity and time of great need.
That fits in with the times we live in: We’ve had the fat years, plucked the low-hanging fruits, took the easy to grab treasures, and now, now it is time to forget about love and prepare for hate, forget about peace and prepare for war. By ‘hate’ I don’t mean that we start hating people. No, never, as the old Christian adage goes: we hate sin but love the sinner. And the war? It’s full-out against creation.

This ‘time’ thing reminds me of a book I have: THE FOURTH TURNING. It points to a phenomenon where history runs into cycles of 80 -100 years, divided into four equal periods. Each time the Grey Champion appeared marked the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” the climax of the Fourth Turning of the saeculum.
Is that Grey Champion Donald Trump?

Today, in 2016, it was 80 years ago, 1936, that was the depth of the Depression. Another 80 years before that, 1856, was the time of the terrible US Civic War: both Fourth Turning events.
Here’s what the FOURTH TURNING said (page 330): “The next Fourth Turning (and that is now!) could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing.” (That’s what ‘omnicidal’ means.)

The two writers of the book, William Strauss and Neil Howe, published the book in 1997, thus 20 years ago, not having knowledge of, say, the state of the Arctic today, where even in November, this month!!, when there is almost total darkness there, the region is 20 degrees C above normal. That signals death. The part ‘cidal’ in omnicidal means ‘death’ as in ‘suicidal’, something which we, as a human race, are stupidly engaged in, knowing full-well that in the Far North are buried billions of tons of methane, waiting for stupid people like us, to unlock and unleash them on us, making us the last generation of humanity.

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.
A time to live, a time to die;
A time to act wisely; a time to act stupidly;
A time of birth and a time of death.
A time for the world to begin; a time for the world to end.

Who is in charge of this world?

Today, more than ever, it is the evil one who is in charge, whose sole aim is to destroy God’s creation.
Fortunately the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, has paid the ransom and God, the Father, has guaranteed that a new earth under a new heaven is the result.

NOVEMBER 20 2016
FOR WHAT IS TRUE FOREVER, IS PRECISELY UNTRUE TODAY
Dietrich Bonhoeffer

That saying is vexing: it made me scratch my head; what does it really mean? Why did Bonhoeffer write this some 70 years ago in Hitler dominated Germany?
Let me guess. Bonhoeffer experienced a totally new situation in his life-time when a cultured and civilized society overnight was ruled by a cruel force, when evil became the rule of law, when stating opinions became tantamount to a death penalty.
Is that what is in store for the USA? I am afraid. Honestly, I am suffering from PTSD – Post TRUMPatic Stress Disorder. Hitler’s sudden rise in power was a true Black Swan. The same is true for the Trump victory.
These last few weeks I felt depressed because of what the next US president has in store for creation and the Mexican and Muslim people within his own country. I repeat, I am especially afflicted by what our earth will suffer because of the rise of Trump and his acolytes. Yes, I am often close to tears.
Trump’s ascendency is truly a BLACK SWAN event. I have a book by that name which I was re-reading even before November 8. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author, subtitled the book THE IMPACT OF THE HIGHLY IMPROBABLE. A Black Swan event is an occurrence that is thought to be impossible, but when it does it has immense consequences: it breaks the pattern: what was true forever is suddenly found wanting. Bonhoeffer said it a bit differently: FOR WHAT IS TRUE FOREVER, IS PRECISELY UNTRUE TODAY.
I can still picture how, in the debates with Hillary, Trump said: “Only I can fix it. Believe me!” which reminds me of Matthew 24:4, where Jesus said: “Watch out that no one deceives you”. Trump is the great deceiver, who cannot be trusted.

I lived in Nazi-occupied The Netherlands from 1940-45 as a teenager. Not the Dutch churches – they were thriving during the occupation – but the German Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches swallowed the Nazi propaganda, just as the American ecclesiastical scene has eagerly absorbed the gospel as preached by the Trump clan.
I disliked Trump even before he entered the political scene and his elevation to the presidency. Now I have stopped looking at TV, not wanting to see his phony features on the screen. Sounds silly, doesn’t it. The Bible says that we must love all people, but that does not mean that we have to like them.

For what is true forever is precisely not true today.

This saying by Bonhoeffer, and all of what he said as a theologian, is based on the Bible. Isaiah 43: 18, 19 says: “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See I am doing a new thing!”

Jesus’ Second coming, when nobody, I repeat nobody expects him, is the ultimate Black Swan. Yes, believe the Bible: he comes when we least expect him. That’s why I keep on hammering at this theme, however unpopular it is.
The new is the real end of the old. It is not the extension of the old: it is completely new, totally different: the old has stopped: basta, finished: the new starts. The end is like the beginning, which also was radically new. Today, now that the End is in sight, we have to start thinking – and acting – how to live the New. We have to imagine – that is what the Bible tells us – what it is really like when Jesus has returned.
That return is the NEW that is in Christ. What does that mean? Christ died to start the new. We have to imagine the end of the old, the end of marriage, the end of the bible, the end of the church, the end of the OIL AGE, the end of carbon-saturated agriculture, the end of the automobile society, all instances of intense pollution: all this is forever banned in the really forever New Creation.

Unlikely as it seems, the church should speak within the old world of the new world. It is the church’s task to prepare its parishioners for the NEW WORLD, where Christ is All and in All. It has no other task today. But we cannot completely delegate this to the church, which, by all indications is not prepared to do so anyway. It may be willing, it may want to, but, by and large has never really thought this through. So now, as a VOX CLAMANTIS IN DESERTO, a voice crying in the wilderness (because perhaps very few will really heed the call) it nevertheless must be true to its mission: to prepare its members for ‘the resurrection of the body and life everlasting’, a confession composed some 1700 years ago and now more true than ever.

This has implication for our life today, which is preparation for the new world to come.

So what do I regard as true forever and is precisely untrue today?

Let me continue with the church, still a dominant feature in my life. I sincerely believe that “extra ecclesiam nulla salus”, that there is “no salvation outside the church”. Of course, I do not believe that being a member of a church guarantees eternal life. I often think we are saved in spite of the church. Jesus still went to the temple even though he knew that institutional religion in his days would kill him. The apostles, even after Jesus had died, still did their religious duties there. Paul, that amazing man, was a fanatic church adherent, until his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus. Paradoxically he was arrested when he was persuaded to go to the temple.

Why do I still go to church?
I still go to church because God’s people are there. I have to associate with them for the simple reason that only there is “the communion of saints”, which, as a rule, is not found outside the church. Also “Tradition, tradition” is a big part of it, but so is the singing, the prayers, the routine coffee hour. I would feel very uncomfortable not going to church on a Sunday morning.
In earlier days when creation was not so ostensibly under attack, some 50-70 years ago, the church brought the message of comfort and joy, and, in days of hardship and need, as during the war time, it helped the destitute within their ranks, and brought a message of hope.

The realization of the new earth to come has changed my attitude to the church, which at best is silent on that score, afraid to upset the heaven-crowd. Fortunately the idea of a New Earth under a New Heaven is slowly gaining acceptance. Its emphatic and enthusiastic embracing would, I believe, revitalize the church. For what is true forever –the heaven idea- is precisely not true today.
I believe that the church stands and falls with John 3: 16: God so loved the COSMOS. The church has to wean itself off the heaven heresy and start embracing God’s first love: the earth as God’s Primary WORD.

Then there is the Economy.

Let me go to the theme that Trump and all politicians are trumpeting: economic –infinite – growth. His term will stand and fall on that score. His handicap is that we live in a finite earth, becoming more finite every day with each new crop year, with each water source depleted, with each river become polluted, with each air molecule filled with more unwanted CO2. The basic theme, that growth can go on forever, is precisely not true today, that’s why the world economy will soon collapse, and that’s why the world is becoming increasingly ungovernable.

Look around.

Great Britain lives in an “after Brexit” period; the USA enters a Trump reign where Ecclesiastes 10:16 gives the right description: “Woe to you, O land, when your king is a child!”; Greece and Italy have constant debt crises; Europe is top-heavy with bureaucracy and high social costs; China still increases its dangerous debt level; India is choking on foul air and filled with its polluted cities and waterways; Africa suffers from drought and a looming famine.

We are on a collision course with reality.

Our old order has run stuck. Renewal is no longer possible because we have gone too far on the road to nowhere. There simply is no turning back: our momentum is too great. We are like a supertanker heading toward an unmovable, unavoidable obstacle. All efforts to change course are doomed to fail, because we are stuck with the carbon-based system we have come to depend on, and now has proven fatal for the earth. Reports may say that GHG – Green House Gases – have leveled off, but that is not true: forest fires everywhere have a double edge: they deprive us of trees which absorb CO2 and they cause a lot of gases in the process of burning.
And then there is the Arctic: the North Pole warmer than Washington! In November! A Topsy-Turvy World! Even there! What was true forever – ice at the North Pole in November – is precisely Untrue Today! Even in Nature!

All this, by the grace of God, is happening, now, this instant, this very moment when we also are gaining insight to combat Climate Change, but it is too late to fully rely on renewables.

We should start with admitting that we have erred. That is the first step. I repeat; there’s where the churches should come in. After all they are supposed to deal with the HOLY, including the earth, and Jesus’ words: “Behold I make everything new.”
The problem with Jesus’ words is that he right away bounces these words back to us, suggesting: “with my help and guided by my Spirit, YOU make everything new!” How else can we fit in the kingdom that is imminent, when we don’t have a clue what new means?

So we had a surprise two weeks ago: Trump triumphed against all odds: a true BLACK SWAN event. That should wake us up! Suddenly here is a man, supposedly in the highest position a person can attain in the world, president of the richest nation on earth who denies that the earth is finite, who says that the earth can absorb any and all poisons we spout into her air and water and soil, and no harm will come to us.
That should start us thinking. If Trump can happen so suddenly then too the Second Coming should not surprise us. Like the true Devil he is, Trump will start shaping the world in his image. Brace yourself for a lot of new things, the complete opposite of what Christ has in mind for us.

Trump is right in one regard: the old is dying.

The political systems no longer work. The welfare state is waning, a state where the young are deprived while the old people enjoy luxurious boat cruises and universal health care. I don’t know what Trump and his buddies – if he has any – have in mind, but I am sure it will not benefit the people who voted for him.
Narcissist that he is, he probably already has thought about hiring artists to sculpture his image next to the other presidents on the face of Mount Rushmore in South Dakota’s Black Hills National Forest, the site of gigantic carved faces of U.S. Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt. To come: the greatest of them all: President Donald J. Trump.

Brace yourselves for drastic changes in social welfare, now all financed by debt, scores of Trillions of debt.
From all indications: we are in for interesting times. Praise the Lord if you live in Canada, where, for now, matters are peaceful.

We, as people of the earth, are there to serve. Being at the top of the pyramid of natural life, our primary task is to serve everything below us, starting with creation. We are not there to enhance our image, to better ourselves at the expense of other people and natural matters.
Christ, as always, is our example: he did not come to be served, but to serve. Matthew 20: 28.

NOVEMBER 13 2016

TRUMP: GOD’S TRUMP CARD

I did not start a new blog until I knew the outcome of the election. Tuesday night I went to bed at 10 as usual, seeing the avalanche coming. At 5 in the morning, after a fitful sleep, the headline on CBCNN told the story, and I slept again for a couple of hours.
Already in the evening my thoughts went to a possible tack to take, so I started re-reading a book I had translated by J. H. Bavinck – BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END – A Radical Kingdom Vision.

Last week I wrote that we all are little Trumps. I also said that “we – stupid we – sold the Earth to The Evil One”, and wondered whether we will do it again when the USA elects TRUMP, which now is the case: IT SEEMS THAT THE DEVIL HAS BEEN THE REAL VICTOR HERE.

But wait, perhaps God planned this all along!

People in general, and Trump in particular, have no idea what actually matters in life. So a sober view of what life really is all about is in order. In this I am guided by Bavinck’s book, quoted earlier.
J. H. Bavinck wrote:

When we look at the very last pages of the Bible we cannot fail to notice how similar these chapters are to the first sections of the book of Genesis. Again we read about the Tree of Life; again we see the descrip¬tion of the river of the water of life; again are we confronted with the terrifying aspects of the divine judge¬ment. The end time again picks up the threads which have deter¬mined human life throughout the ages; in the end-time all things return to their beginning. Just as the book of Genesis paints us paradise, the place where human life started, so the book of the Revelation of John brings us back to that same place. End time and Urzeit, the primeval era, are indeed intimately related. In short, the end time reveals again the realities of the Urzeit, the billions of years when the stars were formed and matters slowly evolved.
And between these two, between Urzeit and the End time, we, the human race, are positioned. This is where history finds its place. History is therefore not an event without boundaries; it is not something that arises out of the haze of an unknown past which someday will end up in an undetermined future. No, history is delineated territory; from its very inception it is anchored in its basic form. History is the spark that jumps from the Urzeit to the End time, from the first Paradise to the final one where God himself will be both light and temple. History can do nothing else than again and again stir up the awe¬some forces that were born in the Urzeit. History can only realize what was revealed in the primeval era: the terrible, fatal, ruinous renunciation of God, and in contrast to that the magnificent reality of God’s grace. The entire mighty drama of life involving all nations and races—all the wars and calamities, all the hate and misery, all failures and pains—all this is nothing but the direct consequence of “the tragedies of tragedy” that took place in the Urzeit when Adam and Eve sold the Garden of Eden to The Evil One: Paradise Lost and history began.

And when all these centuries with their troubles and tears are history, then the thread will be picked up again at the coming of the divine judgement that the world will face.
To stand in history means to stand in the flash between those two, between the beginning and the end. To be human means to have a place between these two, between Urzeit and End time, between the two trees in the beginning and the judgement in the end.

That is how the Bible in living colors depicts the life of us men and women, each with their own life to live, each directly related to eternity and each simultaneously caught up in history.

So far the Bavinck quote.

The next day.

On Wednesday morning the thought went through my mind that we all get the government we deserve. In Canada we have been fortunate having had a mild version of Trump in the form of Stephen Harper which prepared the way for Justin Trudeau, who, after a year in power, still enjoys the most favorable ratings.
In the USA, after 4 years of Trump and Republican rule, in which they can implement their ideas of lower taxes, making the rich richer, doing away with benefits for the very people who put them in office, and, generally, undo whatever Obama has strived for, such as Climate Change and health care for everybody, deep, deep disillusion will be the direct result.
Is that the type of government our neighbors deserve? Trump will cause chaotic years, because we are not only running but rushing toward the End.

We all contribute in making creation run its course. Trump plays a very important part there. Of course, he hasn’t got a clue what the apostle Peter once wrote. 2 Peter 3: 10-12 also applies to Donald J. Trump: (10) “The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar, the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare. (11) Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives (12) as you look forward to the Day of the Lord, and SPEED ITS COMING.

We speed its coming through daily praying “MARANATHA, Lord come quickly”, my mantra during my three-times-weekly run. Trump’s role in speeding the coming of the Kingdom is different.

Matthew 24: 22 relates Trump’s contribution to coming of the Kingdom: “If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive”. Trump suspending all environmental regulations, inciting China and India to do the same, will speed up the coming of THE DAY OF THE LORD. That is the Lord’s TRUMP card, the real Good News.
Trump, totally unwittingly, is God’s instrument in bringing about the New Creation by killing the old one, just as Pilate and Judas and the Pharisees did it by putting the Son of God on the cross, enabling the coming of the New Earth.

History repeats itself, but in a different form.

There is a definite parallel between the church in Jesus’ day which killed him, and the (American) church today which is determined to kill God’s creation by endorsing Trump, a self-confessed woman molester and unapologetic capitalist, who pursued wealth by hook and crook having no inkling that the Bible states that “The lust for money is the root of all evil.”

So what must we, as creation-loving Christians, do in an era where evil is now officially in power?
We must remember that these Christ followers live for only one goal: The New Creation. Bonhoeffer starts his book CREATION AND FALL with these remarkable words: “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”

The goal of the church is so well defined in the Lord’s Prayer, where we are urged by Jesus’ very words to see creation as holy and to work for the Coming of the Kingdom.

Let me again quote J.H. Bavinck, this time in his description of the Kingdom. He writes:

The concept of the Kingdom contains a number of elements that are of the highest significance for our inquiry.
In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.
This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dis¬so¬nant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality. This applies both to each individual specimen but equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation. The celestial bodies follow their orderly tra¬jectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice. And so the stars in their courses sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water-saturated earth, their proud summits piercing the clouds; yet even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power. On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation resides only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.
So far Bavinck.

Let me emphasize this last line: “Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.”
Yes, you can’t have the one –Creation- without the other –the Scriptures.

When the church is solely preoccupied with the Scriptures, God’s secondary, indirect Word, it loses the earth, God’s primary, direct Word. It then also fails to see what the Bible teaches. That’s how the church has prepared the way for a man who is proud of his sins, who is not ashamed to commit the greatest of sin: the sin against Creation, against God’s very work of art for which he sacrificed his son to rectify this abnormality.

Yes “Abnormality.”

God made the earth perfect: that is the normal state of affairs. Sin is the abnormality. And, as the last Bible book unambiguously states in its last chapter, Revelation 22: 11: “Let those who do wrong continue to do wrong; let those who are vile continue to do vile; let those who do right continue to do right; let those who are holy continue to be holy.”
The above text suggests that “Everything will become what it is; the true face of humanity will be revealed”. That’s what is happening in the Trump election. The Most Christian Nation on earth, the USA, with a church building on every corner, has no inkling of the real meaning of Christ’s birth, life, death and resurrection, of THY WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN.

The entire prayer the Lord Jesus taught us is an ‘ode to the Kingdom’. It has only one purpose: to tell us about what is in store for us in eternity, in life after death.
Where that kingdom perspective is absent, Proverbs 29: 18 paints an accurate picture: “Where there is no vision, the people perish, but blessed are they who keep the law.”

By and large the church has lost the vision of the kingdom, the glorious new creation that awaits those whose lives are consumed by this desire. The lack of that vision has led to the election of Trump and his party of misguided and repulsive Republicans, who pride themselves to represent THE CITY ON THE HILL, the shining light for the world to follow, now becoming THE CITADEL OF HELL for minorities, preparing the world for THE ANTICHRIST.
It will lead not only to a growing tendency for persecute minorities – both ethnic and sexual – but also cause an unprecedented increase in natural disasters world-wide, speeding up the coming of the Kingdom.

Here comes my Calvinistic background to the fore again, because we all, like sheep, have gone astray, forcing me to confess: “Oh, God, what have we done!”
Now, more than ever, we must ask for forgiveness, because we too are eager participants in the destruction of creation, the apple of God’s eye.
Psalm 115 comes to mind: “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands………Their makers will become like them” unable to see, unable to think, unable to act.

Yes, the election of Trump and his spineless partners spells the beginning of the end of humanity.
But: “Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth”.

NOVEMBER 6 2016

READY FOR JUDGMENT DAY?

Last week I picked up one of the last books written by the well-known Canadian born economist John K. Galbraith. I scanned the contents, but only read the last paragraph. The book A JOURNEY THROUGH ECONOMIC TIMES, ended with these words: “Our future will depend on the outcome of the quiet or perhaps not so quiet war between the comfortable and the underclass.”
This was written before 1994, and now, 22 years later this prophecy is being fulfilled.
In a few days we will know the outcome of the US election, a struggle between the comfortable and the underclass. As a comfortable person my preference is Hillary but I am afraid that this election will not solve anything: on the contrary it will only emphasize the immense difference between these two classes of people.
Last Monday I returned from a wedding in Minnesota, but we mostly stayed in Wisconsin at our daughter’s cottage. It was disconcerting to see so many TRUMP signs there. I spotted no HILLARY ones.
I sat at two dinners – the Rehearsal dinner as grandparents of the groom and the wedding meal – and both times talked with Americans about the election, including a Washington insider, a good friend of our daughter’s. He told me that Washington is getting bored with the election, sure that Hillary would win, which now, after the latest email disaster, is in doubt.
I have a theory why the F. B. I. released the 30,000 missing e-mails. The Federal Bureau of Investigation wants Trump to win to prevent a general uprising of the underclass when Trump loses. Both the military and the police are Trump adherents, so when a revolt against Hillary does come, the authorities may call in vain on those who have to enforce the law.
Our two daughters in the States are Democrats, of course, being comfortable, while one grandson is now married into a loyal Lutheran – and strong Republican – family: very nice people and good businessmen as well. But they vote Trump. Their attitude reminds me of Bonhoeffer who disagreed with Luther on his so-called TWO REALM thesis, separating faith from political convictions. During the Hitler regime – 1933-1945 – the German Lutheran Church overwhelmingly supported Hitler. Bonhoeffer fought that tooth and nail and it cost him his life: he dared to be different.

Back to John Kenneth Galbraith, who also wrote:
THE CONVENTIONAL VIEW SERVES TO PROTECT US FROM THE PAINFUL JOB OF THINKING.

I like that quote. Politicians want to get re-elected. One of their favorite promises is to say that they will engender Economic Growth. Trump promises 25 million jobs, and people believe him, a man who is a true disciple of Satan, the father of lies. A bit of thinking – yes, a painful job – would make it clear that we simply cannot have Infinite Growth in a Finite World. The world is tired and exhausted, and literally running on fumes, and polluted ones at that.

Conventional thinking by people and politicians never include creation, God’s earth on which we have the privilege to dwell and which God has given us to look after. That looking after has degenerated into exploiting the earth. The church at large sees God as holy but regards creation as disposable, fanatically adhering to the so-called Nature-Grace divide, separating nature from God. Imagine, splitting Bach from his music, or van Gogh from his paintings! Yet we do it with God. Go figure!

Slowly, but, I am afraid it is too late, we are discovering that we are indeed part of nature: harm nature and we are killing ourselves as well. Church leaders, almost to a man (!) vote for heaven: it is so much easier to go there than to live a life that reflects the eternity that is to come in a New Earth.

I once submitted a manuscript to an agent. His reaction: well-written, but due to the lack of a heaven perspective it will never sell. Does that really mean that this is an either/or situation? Either I am right or the church is? Is there no common ground in this matter?

John 3: 16 has convinced me that I am right and that the church is wrong. That famous text says that God loved the world, the cosmos, which God created perfectly, and which he gave to us as a totally harmonious entity. We – stupid we – sold it to The Evil One. (Will we do it again when the USA elects TRUMP?) God, however, still loved his precious earth so much that he offered his only Son as a sacrifice to buy it back – redeem – from the current owner, The Evil One. On Calvary, Jesus on the cross, the deal was made final, but the final transfer – the new owners moving in – will take place when Christ returns: in the meantime trouble, big time.

By and large almost the entire church remains heaven-oriented. I know why: the church wants to conform, just like the church in the Hitler days. Yet Jesus always was unconventional and always was direct, that’s why we too must dare to be different.

Yes, the Bible is controversial. We hardly ever hear a sermon on Jesus’ words that “many are called but few are chosen”. Matthew 20: 16 happens to contain that discouraging news.

Or take Christ’s obscure wondering whether he would find FAITH on earth when he returns. Luke 18: 8 relates Jesus’ question, surely a rhetorical one, of course, meaning that no, he will not find much of the sort of faith that sees his creation as holy, because faith in the New Creation is so downright unorthodox.

If the church really would proclaim that, if the church really would LIVE that God’s earth is holy, then very, very few people would come to church, because it would break with all accepted conventions, and would change the church into a “struggling for answers” community, making efforts to see the earth as holy, trying integrated living, venturing to factually live in harmony with God’s creation, attempting to change our way of transportation, switching to growing wholesome food, to sharing possessions with the less well off. Then efforts would be made to build and occupy energy efficient housing and perhaps doing away with automobiles and flying everywhere.

It looks that the Amish have the right answers after all.
Our entire political, social and economic establishment is set up to prevent us from questioning and thinking. Thinking is not enough, of course, because thinking has to result in action.

Basically most of us are conventional people: we hate to be different; we hate to stand out; we hate to go against the grain. In a word: we hate to be controversial because that is unpopular.

And that brings me to the LAST JUDGMENT.

Picture yourself standing face-to-face with Jesus. I imagine he will ask us some very pointed questions.

Here’s a little story about JUDGMENT.

When reluctant Peter was dispatched by the Holy Spirit to preach in Caesarea, in the heart of the Roman Occupation Force in Israel, he faced a large assembly never before exposed to the gospel. You know what his opening words were? Here’s what Peter said to these aspiring Christians: “(Jesus) is the one whom God has appointed as judge of the living and the dead.” (Acts 10: 42).

Those were his exact words. First thing Peter talked about was Jesus being the Judge. And what will Jesus ask us when we face him?
He will ask us first and foremost about our love or lack thereof of the cosmos for which he gave his life.

That brings me to THE LORD’S PRAYER, the most recited and least understood of all prayers. HALLOWED BE THY NAME is the first line. We have left the word HALLOW in there for a reason: it’s obscure, it’s basically meaningless, because we never use the word in daily encounters.

Nevertheless it means HOLY and refers to God’s creative powers as expressed in Psalm 33: 9 where God spoke and the earth was formed by his HOLY Word. Jesus, when he asked us to use that prayer as a model for all other prayers, started with the suggestion that we regard God’s creation as HOLY.

Back to JUDGMENT.

It seems to me that when Jesus sits in Judgment, every person alive or dead, you, me, our parents and grandparents, everybody, will be asked how we have dealt with that first, and presumably most important, part of the prayer he taught us: how have we dealt with creation. One of Jesus’ questions, perhaps the only one, will be: “How have you lived in relationship to my creation?” And we will tell the truth: before him no lie can stand.

And this brings me again to THE USA PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN

In the entire 18 months election campaign, Climate Change was hardly mentioned. Trump and the Republicans deny this takes place.

But to live so that GLOBAL WARMING will not get worse, will never happen, or to put it in a positive stance, Climate Change will accelerate because we are too complacent and too self-satisfied. It’s simply too inconvenient, will require too many changes.

That means that, basically we all are little TRUMPS. The comfortable are just that and the underclass want to be like the comfortable. Climate Change will only speed up, unchecked, until we are confronted with self-inflicted collapse.

Here’s a little known item that I gleaned from THE ARCTIC NEWS. It writes that “One reason for the low sea ice extent is the high and rising temperature of the Arctic Ocean. On October 31, 2016, (LAST WEEK!) the Arctic Ocean was as warm as 17°C, or 14°C warmer than the average during 1981-2011.”

High Arctic temperatures mean that in these shallow waters, the methane Hydrates are starting to be released, a gas 100 times more lethal than our common automobile exhausts. When this happens, we could see a 10°C increase in the Global Temperature. Welcome to Hell on earth.

This indicates that any measure we take to reduce GHG, Green House Gases, is totally futile. No wonder 2016 will be the hottest ever recorded. It used to be that ice and snow would bounce back the warm sunshine, but now with most of the ice and snow gone, the dark waters absorb all the heat.

IT’S US AGAINST CREATION, IT’S US AGAINST CHRIST.

We, the human race, are fighting the War of all Wars: us against creation, us against the CREATOR. Not surprising that Jesus questioned our faith and wondered why so few follow his teaching
Of course, the result will be our total defeat, at the cost of all that we hold dear, including our own lives. THE WAR IS UNIVERSAL. The war is caused by our refusal to let go of the conventional, our refusal to accept our wasteful ways as sinful.

Before, when we were in wartime conditions, the poor and marginalized would face greater food scarcity and price insecurity, and the threat of violent conflict connected to this instability. In actual wars such as World War I and World War II, these people would often find themselves on the front lines while the richer were insulated or even benefited.

Not so this time. In our war against God and his creation, the rich, possessing more, will also lose more. It reminds me of the Iconoclast, when in 1530-60 the masses revolted against the rich church and against all established authorities. Now 500 years later, the dispossessed again will go where the possessions are and destroy them.

THE CONVENTIONAL VIEW SERVES TO PROTECT US FROM THE PAINFUL JOB OF THINKING.

Convention no longer works. All established authorities, from political to business to ecclesiastic, will cease to be. We have to start to think outside the box, think the way Jesus taught us: Love God and his creation above all other matters. That must be our priority from now one. And the second is like the first: love your neighbor, including your enemy, the Muslim, the Gay and Lesbian, like yourself. These two commandments have priority over all other rules.

THE BIBLE AND THE BIG BANG

Here’s what I think will happen.
It will start with a gigantic BIG BANG EARTHQUAKE. There may have been a BIG BANG to start it all, but there will be a BIG BANG to end it all. Of course, I am referring to our poor planet.
I know, you know, that the Bible is not a book that can be used to predict that then and there we will experience this or that. But the Bible does tell us that this earth which we have made into an ANTHROPOCENE, a human dominated planet, will someday be totally destroyed, not by an act of God, but by the fatal distortions we have introduced into our fragile atmosphere.
One of these killing conditions will be human induced earthquakes.

Oh, that frightening 24th Chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.

Its translators have given it the brief one-liner heading: SIGNS OF THE END OF THE AGE. That’s what we are experiencing now, these coming decades, which also may be among the last.
Here’s a direct quote from that chapter: “Nation will arise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains.”
All this is happening right now!
I like that description: birth pains. Romans 8: 22 too uses that same phrasing: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”
Childbirth indicates that a New Earth will be born. The old earth, now almost totally polluted in all its formations, the soil, the air, the waters, will vanish, will disappear and a radical overhaul will take place, completely cleansing her from all human-induced contamination. Our old, tired, worn out earth is, nevertheless, young enough to be pregnant with the New Earth.
Once the mess we have created is repaired – which might take a couple of thousand years as the damage is so extensive, but happen it will because the earth has a tremendous self-cleaning capacity – then God will recall those (Revelation 14: 13) who have died in the Lord. They have completely rested from their labor and their deeds will follow them.
“What were their deeds?” you might ask. Jesus’ great commandment comes to mind: “Love the Lord and all his creation above all, and your neighbor as yourself.” These deeds are for eternity.
But before that happens we will experience tremendous – human-induced – earthquakes. Yes, Human-Induced. When God caused THE FLOOD he promised that he would never again destroy the then known world, implying that we would have the honors next time. And that’s what will happen.

A recurring theme in the Bible.

All of Scripture talks about that event, not just Revelation. The Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, repeatedly refers to that last earthquake as well. And not only earthquakes but total sun eclipses, events not appearing in the time tables of the astronomers.

Amos 9: 5 already says: “the whole land will rise like the Nile, it will be stirred up and then sink.” Ezekiel 38: 19: “In my zeal and fiery wrath I declare that at that time there will be a great earthquake in the land of Israel”, and Joel 2: 10: “Before them the earth quakes.”
Eclipses of the sun? Amos mentions them too. “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.” And Isaiah, speaking about the Day of the Lord, says: “The stars of heaven and their constellations will not show their light, and the rising sun will be darkened (13: 10). Also in Matthew 24, in that great forecast for the future, Jesus (verse 29) says that the darkening of the sun is one of the signs of the coming end. Also that the moon shall be as blood, is a well-known thought in the prophecy. Joel speaks of this in the promise of the coming of the Spirit (2: 31) “The sun will be turned to darkness and the moon to blood before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord.
Revelation, the last Bible book, on four (4) occasions mentions the earthquake: Chapters 6: 12; 8: 15; 11: 13, and, in the most ominous terms, in 16: 18, where it says that “No earthquake like it had ever occurred since humanity had been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. (19) The great city split into three parts and the cities of the nations collapsed.

Is this really true? Yes.

I follow Karl Barth’s advice: “Have the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other”. (That was before the Internet, of course.)
Here is part of an article that appeared in the GUARDIAN last week. The headline said:
HOW CLIMATE CHANGE TRIGGERS EARTHQUAKES, TSUNAMIS AND VOLCANOES.
The essay said in part:
Global Warming may not only be causing more destructive hurricanes, it could also be shaking the ground beneath our feet.
Tornadoes, typhoons, hurricanes and mid-latitude storms – along with heatwaves and floods – are widely regarded as climate change’s shock troops; forecast to accelerate the destruction, loss of life and financial pain as planet Earth continues to heat up. It would be wrong to imagine, however, that climate change and the extreme events it drives are all about higher temperatures and a bit more wind and rain.
The atmosphere is far from isolated and interacts with other elements of the so-called “Earth system”, such as the oceans, ice caps and even the ground beneath our feet, in complex and often unexpected ways capable of making our world more dangerous. We are pretty familiar with the idea that the oceans swell as a consequence of the plunging atmospheric pressure at the heart of powerful storms, building surges driven onshore by high winds that can be massively destructive. Similarly, it does not stretch the imagination to appreciate that a warmer atmosphere promotes greater melting of the polar ice caps, thereby raising sea levels and increasing the risk of coastal flooding. But, more extraordinarily, the thin layer of gases that hosts the weather and fosters global warming really does interact with the solid Earth – the so-called geosphere — in such a way as to make climate change an even bigger threat.”

And THE GUARDIAN IS NOT ALONE.

The reliable journal NATURE affirms this. This prestigious paper provides convincing evidence for a link between typhoons barreling across Taiwan and the timing of small earthquakes beneath the island. Their take on the connection is that the reduced atmospheric pressure that characterizes these powerful Pacific equivalents of hurricanes is sufficient to allow earthquake faults deep within the crust to move more easily and release accumulated strain. This may sound farfetched, but an earthquake fault that is primed and ready to go is like a coiled spring, and as geophysicist John McCloskey of the University of Ulster is fond of pointing out, all that is needed to set it off is – quite literally – “the pressure of a handshake”.
And it isn’t only earthquake faults that today’s storms and torrential rains are capable of shaking up. Volcanoes seem to be susceptible too. On the Caribbean island of Montserrat, heavy rains have been implicated in triggering eruptions of the active lava dome that dominates the volcano there. Stranger still, Alaska’s Pavlof volcano appears to respond not to wind or rain, but to tiny seasonal changes in sea level. The volcano seems to prefer to erupt in the late autumn and winter, when weather patterns are such that water levels adjacent to this coastal volcano climb by a few tens of centimeters. This is enough to bend the crust beneath the volcano, allowing magma to be squeezed out, according to geophysicist Steve McNutt of the University of South Florida, “like toothpaste out of a tube”.
If today’s weather can bring forth earthquakes and magma from the Earth’s crust, it doesn’t take much to imagine how the solid Earth is likely to respond to the large-scale environmental adjustments that accompany rapid climate change. In fact, we don’t have to imagine at all. The last time our world experienced serious warming was at the end of the last ice age when, between about 20,000 and 10,000 years ago, temperatures rose by six degrees centigrade, melting the great continental ice sheets and pushing up sea levels by more than 120meters.
The bottom line is that as climate change tightens its grip, we must be prepared to expect the unexpected.

MELTING ICE MAY CAUSE THE ULTIMATE QUAKE.
As the kilometers-thick Greenland’s ice sheet melt, the faults beneath releases the accumulated strain of tens of millennia, spawning massive magnitude eight earthquakes. Quakes of this scale are taken for granted today around the Pacific Ocean’s “Ring of Fire”, but they are completely out of place near the North Pole. Across the Norwegian Sea, in Iceland, the volcanoes long buried beneath a kilometer of ice are being rejuvenated as the ice load weighing billions of tons melt away, prompting a “volcano storm” that will increase the volcano level by up to 50 times.
Yes, the most dangerous aspect of Climate Change is the melting of the ice in the world’s largest island, Greenland.
There the ice loss has been a staggering 270 billion tons of ice A YEAR!! during the last 10 years. Geologists expect that future ice loss may trigger earthquakes of intermediate to large magnitude if the crust underneath the modern ice cap contains faults prone to failure. The same applies to the huge volume of rain dumped by tropical cyclones, leading to severe flooding, which also may lead to earthquakes.
The bottom line in all of this is that as climate change tightens its grip, we will see more and bigger hurricane, more and bigger earthquakes, and in general disastrous natural disasters.
End of quotes.

THERE’S WHERE THE DANGER LIES!!: trillions tons of solid ice melting, torrents of water streaming into the oceans, unsettling the earth’s axis, robbing our planet of its delicate balance. Volcanoes darkening the skies.
Revelation tells us that the disasters will be world-wide: there will not be a safe hiding place, not a refuge anywhere. Cities, however, will bear the brunt of the turmoil.

I really don’t know what to advise because ‘nobody knows the day and the hour’, as that 24th chapter of Matthew tells us. Jesus does say that there will be general signs, and I believe that these signs are definitely there today.
There are clear indications today that the world is falling apart. Trump will not emerge as a winner in the US election, now only a few days away. But his popularity, embracing close to 2 out of 5 voters in the USA, serves as a sure sign that environmental turmoil translates into human misbehavior as well.
One of the laws of ECOLOGY states that “EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.” God formed us of the earth, and when the earth suffers we all suffer, because the suffering of the earth is our doing.
We do well to heed Nietzsche’s warning: “to blaspheme against the earth is the most grievous sin”, because we directly blaspheme God’s majesty.

When God dictated the Ten Commandments to Moses (Exodus 20), he said: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”

That has nothing to do with swearing, with saying “Oh My God” occasionally, and has everything to do with harming creation, with misusing God’s name, blaspheming God, scratching out his signature and substituting it for our own. Since we do this continually, since we do this without thinking and without letup, God will not let us get away with that.
The earth, God’s earth, has her built-in defense mechanisms. Disturb its precarious balances and watch how the planet fights back.
It is exactly that which we are beginning to experience. God is not easily provoked, but once he is, nothing and nobody will be able to withstand his fury.

Revelation 16: 1 has a frightening message:
“Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels: “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”
The great earthquake – THE REAL BIG BANG – is merely the beginning of God’s wrath.