July 5 2020
WHAT TO EXPECT AND WHAT TO DO.
“The Harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not (yet) saved.” Jeremiah 6: 20
This anguishing outcry portrays our isolation and exile. It signifies our anxiety stemming from our despair for an uncertain future with ever expanding planetary pandemic pockets, with accelerating atmospheric heat and no feasible solutions to solve the intractable need for carbon energy. These perils encompass us all. It’s not like the plagues in Egypt when the Jacob tribe was excluded. Today the plea in the Lord’s Prayer, “Don’t put us to the test”, goes unheeded, because no person, rich or poor, of any possible color or orientation, is excluded from the current wave of tribulations.
Sorry RAPTURE crowd, there won’t be exceptions for you either: all will be LEFT BEHIND to endure the unbearable heat, predicted in Malachi 4, “Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a fire.”
That “Christians” around the world will be taken up into heaven prior to the unleashing of these cataclysmic events that most associate with the end times, is pure poppycock. Those images of empty piles of clothes and rudderless cars whose drivers had suddenly disappeared, are outright nonsense, plainly contradicted in Matthew 24. There Jesus is quoted, warning us about the Last Days, “As it was in the days before the flood people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the Ark, and they knew nothing about what would happen, until the Flood came and took them all away. That’s how it will be at the coming of The Son of Man.”
In other words, God’s people are The Left-behind-Crowd: those who, like Noah, believe in God’s deliverance.
In 1974 I bought a book by Dr. Robert L. Heilbroner whose textbook I used taking Economics 101 at Queen’s University. In his An Inquiry into The Human Prospect, he concluded, “If then, by the question ‘is there hope for man?’ we ask whether it is possible to meet the challenge of the future without the payment of a fearful price, the answer must be: No there is no such hope.”
The Fourth Turning.
I have been re-reading a book I bought 20 years ago, The Fourth Turning, with as subtitle, An American Prophecy: what the Cycles of History Tell Us about America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny.
Written in 1997 the two authors, William Strauss and Neil Howe, apply their generational theories to the cycles of history and locate America in the middle of an unraveling period, on the brink of a crisis. (Remember this was written 20+ years ago.) They specifically mention the year 2020 as being at the center of The Fourth Turning.
The authors convincingly demonstrate how history like the annual seasons, like a human life, has 4 stages called Turnings. The most recent First Turning corresponds with the era from 1946-1964, the American High, followed by the Second Turning, which the authors call, The Consciousness Revolution, from 1964-1984. The Third Turning comes with a question mark Culture Wars from 1984-2005? because this was written in 1997-8. It is now clear that the real ending of the Third Turning was 2008, when the great financial collapse took place and governments pumped in trillions to rescue the banks. This indicates that we now, since 2008, are in the midst of the Fourth Turning.
I am the great under-liner in my books, mostly an odd collection that nobody else would want anyway. Here’s what I emphasized: “The spirit of America comes once a saeculum (a life-time) only through what the ancients called ekpyrosis, nature’s fiery moment of death and discontinuity. History’s periodic eras of Crises combust the old social order and gives birth to a new.
Ekpyrosis explained.
Ekpyrosis is Ancient Greek: ekpýr?sis, “conflagration” and is a Stoic belief in the periodic destruction of the cosmos by a great conflagration every Great Year. (The time frame of destruction was never defined or given by any of the Stoics).
Here’s a relevant quote:
On the Earthen floor of the rounded hogans,
Navajo artists
sift colored sand to depict the four seasons of life and time.
Their ancestors have been doing this for centuries. They
draw these sand circles in a counterclockwise progression,
one quadrant at the time, with decorative icons for the
challenges of each age and season. When they reach the
end of the fourth season, they stop the circle, leaving a
small gap just to the right of the top. That signifies the
moment of death and rebirth, what the Hellenists called
ekpyrosis.
Back to the make-up of The Fourth Turning, some excerpts.
“Eventually, all of America’s lesser problems will combine into one giant problem….. the product of all the wrong choices…. The more we endeavor to defeat nature, the more profoundly we are at the mercy of its deeper rhythms … We cannot avoid history’s last quadrant….The epoch that began with VJ Day (in 1945) will reach a natural climax and come to an end.”
The book continues, “An end of what?”
“The next Fourth Turning (Now in progress, I might add), could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing.”
Let me leave it by that.
WHAT TO EXPECT AND WHAT TO DO?
I have repeatedly hinted at what to expect.
The Bible is quite clear on this point. 2 Peter 3: 10-11 pictures reality and also hints at the solution: 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 its works will be laid bare. Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness.
“Conduct yourselves in holiness and godliness”.
That concerns our personal behavior. We need a new mindset, a ‘metanoia’, a different approach, an attempt to live a totally creation-friendly life, because we now must assume the life-style of eternity to (sort of) qualify. Prayer is not enough. God made creation: we un-made it: that has to change. When we are asked ‘to conduct ourselves in holiness and godliness’, then this also applies to our conduct vis-à-vis creation, because God made it and this means it is holy.
If you believe in God and The Son of God and the Holy Spirit, and believe that our future is upon a new earth, then now is the time to assume the ‘Life Style of Eternity’.
I know this is next to impossible, so pray, pray for enlightenment, spiritual insight, and pray for forgiveness, because we all are implicated in the disastrous situation we find ourselves in, and all are guilty. The Lord’s Prayer, that so often mis-explained and misunderstood prayer, has the line “forgive us our trespasses”. Trespasses occur when we invade someone else’s property to cause harm. That’s why I understand that phrase to refer to us abusing nature, something we constantly do. That’s why I see John 3: 16 – telling us how much God loves the earth – is for us, today the most important text in the Bible.
“The Harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not (yet) saved.” The Fourth Turning is upon us, and ‘ekpyrosis’ is rapidly approaching.
Ora et Labora, Pray and Work.