September 28 2022
VENGEANCE
The oceans are angry; the earth is boiling with rage.
When sailors first approached the American shores, the fish were so plentiful that lowering a bucket into the salt waters would yield a teeming catch. Today that same haul would see millions of plastic fragments: no wonder the oceans react violently against our sacrilegious acts. And the earth, where our footprints lie? That same surface also is shifting from friend to foe. It reminds me of Hebrew 10: 30-31, “Vengeance is mine: It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Yes, creation represents the living God!
Vengeance is exactly what we are experiencing today, because God is what he does. Psalm 24: “The earth is the Lords, and all it contains.” That includes the 70 percent of seas and oceans, and the solid ground which we call our home, now increasingly under extreme stress, either burning or desiccated.
Of course, we have inflation, never to let up. Of course, prices will accelerate, as the very base on which we live, dries up, becomes desert, and unyielding. Of course, food will become hard to grow, and the already hungry masses, will starve. Upping interest rates will only aggravate the economic situation: it will not restore depleted soil nor fill up the empty seas. What worked yesterday is ineffective today: the entire world has changed.
The weather used to be an independent force, not subject to human intervention, a phenomenon that was largely predictable, stable, with summer heat and winter cold, both with moderate temperature differences, and with spring and fall that eased us into the higher or lower fluctuations.
Ice ages.
We know for sure that the earth experienced both a Big and a Little Ice Age. The Big one ended about 10,000 years ago when much of the northerly part of the globe was ice-covered, while the oceans were 120 meters lower than today. There also was a Little Ice Age from about 1450 to 1850, when the average temperature was about 1 (0ne) degree Celsius lower. Why these century-long cold snaps happened, is still a question. They had nothing to do with human interference.
Just recently scientists have suggested that the human mind emerging from the Big Ice Age, was fundamentally different from earlier anthropological versions, now having, what I call, a spiritual dimension. What these findings do not mention – and what my biblically-influenced mind whispers to me – is that the human pair mentioned in Genesis 1-2, was of that unique, fully formed species infused with God’s Spirit, a man and woman emerging from the then existing humanity, yet with a particular trait not existing before, call it spiritually inclined, aware of God as Father and Creator.
The Little Ice age too saw a different humanity, evident in its artistic expressions, never since experienced in such a pronounced manner. For example, during these 4 centuries we saw Michelangelo, 1475-1564, Luther, 1483-1546, Shakespeare, 1564-1616, the great painters, the van Eyck Brothers, Rembrandt, and the still unsurpassed composers, Bach-Handel, 1685-1750, just to name a few. Today’s great names are technicians, such as Bill Gates of Microsoft and Steve Jobs, the inventor of the Mac Computer. The machines they made were mere extensions of the abacus, an ancient tool used for thousands of years.
Where has that inventive spirit gone? The unequaled greatness of a Mozart, the daring of a Martin Luther, the vision of a Nietzsche?
How will it all end?
I have long wondered how the apostle Peter’s prophecy will play out. In 2 Peter 3 he writes, “The Day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear like a roar; the elements will be destroyed like fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.”
That, for me, is a mystery no more. The answer lies in the Arctic Ocean, a shallow sea resting on a foundation of methane, that hundred-fold more dangerous greenhouse gas. For many millennia it was safely secured in the cosmic freezer where it lay undisturbed, and largely forgotten. Now the freezer is gone, replaced by a furnace: Global Heating is nowhere more pronounced than exactly there where all these destructive gases are buried.
There are also more aggravating elements at work: this past week two hurricanes, one between Alaska and Siberia, and another between Baffin Island and Greenland, have pushed hot ocean water into the very polar regions where these explosive gases are situated.
Arctic News has warned us, and predicts that the methane release there, will cause an EIGHT (8) Degree Celsius rise in global temperature, obliterating everything alive.
Vengeance?
The oceans are angry; the earth is boiling with rage.
“Vengeance is mine. It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”