WE ARE ON OUR OWN.
I SHALL HIDE MY FACE FROM THEM. I SHALL SEE WHAT THEIR END WILL BE.
Deuteronomy 31: 17
In this week’s blog I venture into – for me – new thinking. It is my gut feeling that new ideas must be offered, new thinking in which God, although ultimately in charge, has transferred his authority over his beloved creation to us, fallible humans. Yes: we are on our own!
My exploration will touch on three fields.
(!) Church teaching
(2) AI
(3) Climate Change.
Let me start with current Church teaching, which often proclaims Rapture, an embroidery of “The Heaven Heresy”, embraced by the greater majority of church attendees, reason why many of the traditional church hymns hail heaven.
Just one example among hundreds.
Among these songs is this super-pious, quite popular “By the Sea of Crystal, Saints in glory stand….. robed in white apparel”, with the final line: “They now reign in heaven with the Lamb of God.” The lyrics are inspired by Revelation 4: 6-8.
What great unbiblical nonsense.
John 3: 16 roars its thorn-crowned head: “God so loved THE WORLD! Jesus died to restore CREATION!
I once heard the late Dr. Lewis Smedes, of Fuller Seminary, comment: “How monotonous, how uniform, how boring: who wants to go in heaven!”. In eternity with 10,000 different butterflies, with 10,000 varieties of tiny insects, every ‘saint’ too will be unique, will dress as their personality portrays, and, with eternity ahead, will, at leisure, explore God’s world.
But, with God out of the picture for now, we are left with God’s legacy: His creation: treasure it, explore it, advance it, love it: become more cosmos oriented, less Bible-centered: Implement Psalm 119: 105. It’s now the way to Salvation. It’s God’s Word for our times.
Another example.
The Old is New again. The Old Testament church organization is coming back: both the US Vice President, and the US secretary of War, promote ‘Back to the Old Testament religious rules, where women are seen as inferior and subservient’. Of course, they jettison Jesus in the process. Too controversial.
Here is a more truth-full line: the conclusion of The Apostles’ Creed:
I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.
This creed, adopted by all Protestant and Roman Catholic denominations, put to rest the Heaven Heresy forever, as well as the Rapture Riddle, totally refuted in that dominant Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus points out that the sinners all drowned, and Noah’s clan was saved, contrary to Hal Lindsey’s Lie in his deeply erroneous book, “The Late Great Planet Earth”.
That 1970 book, first published by Zondervan, sold over 28 million copies and was translated into 54 languages. Rapture took over Jesus, vividly illustrated in the “Left Behind” films and books.
The Late Great Planet Earth illustrates God’s last words to Moses, recorded in Deuteronomy 31: 17, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be”.
The End?
I argue that today these words are fulfilled: In essence God has disappeared, and we are visibly experiencing the End, now a daily phenomenon. Just check the news.
Take a look at AI.
There’s a new book out, written by Robert Wright, dealing
with the evolutionary significance and geopolitics of artificial intelligence. It is called “The God Test”.
In a New York Times’ interview he concluded that “If there’s no international coordination, if we don’t have significantly more international coordination than we have now, very bad things will happen.”
It is striking that Robert Wright entitled his book The God Test. AI – like the Tower of Babel – is a direct challenge to replace God as the world’s ruler.
Climate.
Jesus warned us to be constantly on the lookout for ‘signs of the Last Days’. Said he: Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Matthew 24: 33.
In that same chapter Jesus mentions a long list of perils, many of which we are experiencing now, including fire. Just as AI, Climate Change has the potential to end the world. All our doing. God has no hand in this. We are on our own: God help us.
I SHALL HIDE MY FACE FROM THEM. I SHALL SEE WHAT THEIR END WILL BE.
Be ready. I will give Peter the last word.
But 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 done in it will be laid bare. 2 Peter 3: 10.