January 1 2023
Zeitenwende.
I better explain the title: Zeitenwende. My search resulted in a German explanation:
das Ende einer Epoche oder Ära und der Beginn einer neuen Zeit.
Which, in turn needs translating: “The end of an epoch or era, and the start of a new time-period.
Olaf Scholz, the German Chancellor, used the word when Russia attacked Ukraine. He backed up his remark by increasing German’s military budget by $100 Billion, more than doubling its existing allotment.
Olaf Scholz, me thinks, expressed a change in circumstances far beyond the Russia-Ukraine Conflict: it could well be the end of the world as we have become accustomed to it. That future points to war unending. Already, the USA increased its military budget to an unprecedented $858 Billion, more than half of its total spending.
I should point out that ‘defense’ spending is highly negative: it causes extreme environmental damage through higher Green House Gases: the USA war machinery alone uses more barrels of oil than the 4 Baltic Countries combined. By the way, the USA promised $30 Billion for poor countries to offset the environmental damage caused by rich nations there, but in its 2023 budget of $1.7 Trillion, no provision for this was made.
A curious note.
Before I elaborate on what I see ahead in 2023, a curious note.
While 2022 added up to 6, and was divisible only be ‘6’, the number of the Devil, 2023 adds up to ‘7’ and is only divisible by ‘7’, representing the Holy Number. Something to think about as we enter this ‘epoch-changing’ year!
The Romans and War.
The Roman Emperors had a saying to persuade the ruling Senate and the top decision-makers to finance their wars: “Si vis Pacem, Para Bellum”, “If you want Peace, Prepare for War.” Utter baloney, of course: the Roman Empire, with its legendary legions, was always at war, witness 70 A.D. when the Jewish Temple was destroyed, always new nations to plunder, always new rebellions to squash, always new sources of food to find for Rome’s teeming millions.
As is often the case with me: Zeitenwende reminds me of the Bible, and of Deuteronomy 31: 17-18, where God confided in his friend, Moses, who was about to stop being Israel’s leader. God said, “They – the people of Israel – will abandon me, and I will hide my face and they will be destroyed. Many disasters will come upon them”. This claim is repeated in Deuteronomy 32:10. So true. Of the 12 tribes that entered the Holy Land, only 2 – Judah and Benjamin – survived. The other 10 tribes simply vanished. Their destruction came because they had abandoned God.
How about us?
We too have abandoned God. We are destroying God’s Word, his creation, and the Zeitenwende will greatly accelerate this process. After all, ‘God’s Works are God’s Words’. We can’t stop destruction anymore: Tesla is no panacea.
The End Game.
2023 is the start of the earth’s endgame, the onset of a series of increasingly interlocking disasters, culminating in total destruction of all man-made devices and forms of human inventions.
We better become accustomed to this new reality and be prepared. “We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot on the accelerator,” said the UN secretary general, António Guterres. We have no choice now; everything must change, but human nature will not change: see COP 27.
In the last decade everything has fundamentally been affected: more global hunger; more migrants forced to move; more violent demonstrations; more regional conflicts; more diseases and deaths; more droughts and floods; more natural disasters; more heat and cold; more disease transmitted from animals to humans; more forest destruction; more biodiversity decline; more ideological extremism; more cyberattacks; more large-scale fraud.
Everything is connected to everything else.
Barry Commoner’s four rules of ecology are more relevant than ever, of which the first one is “Everything is connected to everything else.” The other three are: (2) Nature knows best; (3) Nothing disappears; (4) Nothing comes free.
That ‘everything is connected’ must start with our mind: a ‘mindset-change’ is needed, a conception that the Earth is HOLY, that misusing the earth is ‘sin’ against the Creator and his creation. We have to sit down, and pray, and, with inner conviction, confess that “Nature” knows best, that the Divine Creation is a living item, representing God to us; that “nothing comes free”, that whatever we have taken from Creation need to be repaid. Today we are in that ‘pay-back’ situation, because ‘nothing ever disappears’. The oil we burn is composed on elements that stay with us: forever.
We know that. God knows that. “Will I find faith when I return”, Jesus lamented. No. Not that ‘holiness’ faith. That’s why he returns to renew the earth. Pray for grace.