THE YEAR 2021: THE ENDGAME?
The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved. (Jeremiah 8: 20)
I am constantly amazed how prophetic Scripture is: I am discovering passages written 2500 years ago, that, in my mind, predict conditions that perfectly apply to today. Of course, I know that the Bible does not give me exact details, is not a book to instruct me how to cope with specific circumstances, such as dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic, yet I believe that, by and large, it tells me how to live: a life lived in total compatibility with everything created, because everything is connected to everything else. The pandemic is the result of breaking that fundamental law.
The Bible also provides me with an outline for my salvation, but only in the context of the totality of creation: my salvation and the salvation of the cosmos go hand in hand: that is the lesson my church has forgotten, and I believe, is now learning. Because God made it, creation is holy: that, I am sure, is the new ‘lesson’ the church must proclaim TODAY, with the immediate reminder that Jesus, upon his death, purified it, which will happen it when he returns to claim his own. Now that the earth is exhausted, no longer capable of properly functioning, John 3: 16 has become my central text in Scripture: LOVE CREATION, and by doing so I express my belief in God and my love for God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Last week I read in Lewis Smedes’ autobiography that: “God minus the universe equals nothing. If there were no universe, there would be no God.” That echoes Bonhoeffer who wrote that “God is nothing without the world and the world is nothing without God”.
My ultimate lesson.
And I? I too am nothing without the world, while the world would, perhaps, be happy without me and even more happy when I, falteringly, start to live in full recognition that I depend on the world in everything I need. The ultimate lesson I have learned in 2020 is that I finally recognize my total dependence on the world and ultimately on God!
As I enter a new year, I leave behind a world in deep decline. 2020 was a La Nina year, when a cool Pacific was supposed to generate cooler temperatures. Yet we saw disastrous weather with extreme heat, record forest fires, melting tundra, and a host of hurricanes. That signals that the weather this coming year will be much worse, as heat in the Arctic is jumping at double the rate elsewhere. Right now, huge storms are pumping massive amounts of warm water into the Arctic, likely unleashing methane Cyclades. Once these trillions of tons of methane there explode, God help us. Methane is an incredible potent greenhouse gas, up to One Hundred times more dangerous than our still increasing car exhausts.
Are we in the ENDGAME for our earth?
Yes, we are in THE ENDGAME: we have entered the last stage before it all ends, and the disorienting and sad message is that: The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.
Here’s a quote from the New York Times December 28 2020:
Having sown the wind with greenhouse gases for centuries, we’re reaping the whirlwind, sometimes quite literally. Add pestilence to this picture of drought, fire and flood and you have a scene straight out of the Book of Revelation, with the coronavirus, as invisible to the naked eye as it is from space, playing the role of the fourth Horseman, sent by nature to counter our continuing assaults on the natural world.
That citation sets for me the tone for the year, 2021. We are witnessing the ceasing of civilization: a winter of discontent, a spring to nowhere, an inferno – infused summer, a fall into the abyss, the endpoint of everything. Already, we live in the shadows of hell. All reserves are gone, we have robbed everything valuable from the earth, have plucked all the easy fruit, have fished the seas nearly dry. Now that we have exploited all the ready-to-obtain treasures, and, with depletion at hand, and 8 billion mouths to feed, with billions of cattle and poultry to sustain, with soils degraded, with forests denuded, with Climate Change knocking ever louder, we face mass starvation, an earth full of our carbon-thirsty playthings, but empty of God’s gifts: “The fulness of time” has come.
I like that expression: “the fulness of time has come”. In my reading Galatians 4 it popped up: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son.”
It’s the second time we face this fulness. It came 2000 years ago when Christ was born, right at the cusp of history, when the Pax Romana was in force, when the world spoke or understood the Koinonia, the language universal, made ready for the spreading of the Good News. Now, anno 2021, we again face ‘the fulness of time’. Again, a Koinonia, this time the English language, the language of my blog, where China is among my four most readers, after the USA, Canada and the UK. Again, the church had run stuck, again mired in man-made mandates. Again, the church has emptied itself in miters and rites, in customs and slogans. Again, the time is full, while the church is empty.
Why 2021? Why not?
The Scriptures repeatedly state that the Parousia will happen without advance warning, even though there will be telltale signs aplenty. What is becoming more evident, is that I live in a Finite Earth. Its resources, its water supply, its arable soil, even the air and the seas, seemingly infinite, are subject to limitation. This makes me live in the expectation of Christ re-appearance, this time not as a tiny human, but as “The Lord of Creation”, calling me to account, challenging me to answer questions on how I have lived and acted and taken care of God’s precious earth.
It increasingly looks that we are at a turning point in the world. With population growth marching ahead, resources are diminishing. Water, clean, unpolluted aqua is disappearing. The same is true for ores, where too the high quality has been used up and the next phase will be more costly. This applies to much of what we need: food, fish, fossil fuels.
Is Collapse in the cards? Are we in the ENDGAME for the earth?
In chess the ENDGAME is at hand when only a few pieces are still in play. That holds true for our earth as well: extinction is the topic of the day, the disappearance of trees, of animals, of fish…. The list goes on. Even the very necessities of life are at the edge: collapse is in the cards. The Pandemic and Global Heating are sure signs of the ENDGAME. At the start of a new year optimism usually is the main message. This year will be the same, of course, but, not unusual, let me be the odd man out. With the Bible as a witness, such as 2 Peter 3: 10-13, I believe that:
the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with
intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up. (The Arctic’s exploding Methane might do that!)
Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and
hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with
intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.