Yes...but!

June 30 2008

Home > Columns >Yes...But! Year 8-34

Bishop James Ussher, in early 1600, calculated that God created the world on October 23 4004 B.C.

We now find this exercise in biblical arithmetic quite ridiculous, yet the authors of the “Left Behind” series and the equally popular “The Late Great Planet Earth” – both sold more than 60 million copies – deal with the “End of the World” in a similar fashion. And so do John F. Walvoord and Mark Hitchcock in their recent “Armageddon, Oil and Terror”, subtitled, “What the Bible Says about the Future of America, the Middle East, and the End of Western Civilization”.

The phrase in its title “What the Bible Says…” reminds me of a children’s’ song “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells you so”. The basic message of the Bible is, indeed, the love Jesus has for the world – cosmos- and all who dwell therein. Our answer must be to also passionately love creation and her creatures.

American politics has been greatly influenced by the “End of the World” scenarios as painted by Tim LaHaye, Hal Lindsey, and such mega-church preachers as John Hagee, Joel Osteen, Pat Robinson and the late Jerry Falwell. They all see the establishment of the State of Israel as the prelude to “The End of the World” and “Rapture.” That’s also why they elected President Bush, welcomed the Iraq war and push Bush to attack Iran.

Of course, there are definite signs that the world is growing tired and old, plain to all who have ears to hear and eyes to see.

When I was born there were about 2 billion contented souls. Now there are close to 7 billion restless creatures, all wanting a greater share of available food and water and parking places. No wonder “End of the World” parlance is popular.

Of course, this is nothing new. Barely had Christ shaken the dust from his sandals when the Saints sold everything and had everything in common in expectation of Christ’s second coming. Many also signaled the year 666 for that purpose, a date that carried the ‘mark of the beast.’ And in the early 19th century, the Millerites believed the world would end precisely at the close of October 22, 1843. They gave away their property and gathered on hilltops to await the coming of the Lord. At least one man with an extraordinary confidence in his pocket watch leapt off a barn roof at midnight, expecting to be taken up to Heaven in the moment of rapture. The night became known as the “Great Disappointment.”

Near the end of the first millennium, German Emperor Otto III interpreted a solar eclipse as an exterminating omen. At the end of 1999, it was a computer glitch that spelled annihilation. If the computers failed, said the doomsters, the control systems for trains and trucks wouldn’t work. And the banks wouldn’t be able to honor cheques or pay out cash. No money. No food. Millions would starve.

The history of the financial markets, too, is full of great disappointments: we are living in one now. In Britain’s, in the “City” in London, office space tripled from ‘03 to ’06. There corporations were ready to take up every new square foot, so that higher prices begat further construction which begat more commercial space which begat a glut which begat a bust.

The same process of over-doing it led to the current correction in America’s residential housing market, will soon hit its commercial property market, as well as the New York Stock Exchange.

Now many believe that food and water will be in short supply. Dr James Lovelock of ‘Gaia’ fame, wrote in “The Revenge of Gaia’ that hardly anybody will survive Climate Change. And true: we are destroying the planet by over fishing and over consuming and over producing. The North Pole will be completely ice-free this summer. Here is another item that will cost us: Oil output is expected to decline at about 2% per year beginning in 2010, while population grows at 1% per year, as 54 of the world’s 65 leading oil fields are in decline. In the early ’60s, the world’s drillers were finding nearly 60 billion barrels of new oil deposits each ear. In this decade the rate had fallen to less than 10 billion per year with a world-wide consumption of 30 billion per year. And then there is water, or the lack of it: over the next 2 decades, the average supply of water per person, worldwide, is expected to drop by a third.

Is that how it will end? With our throats parched, our stomachs empty, and an empty gas can in our hands? It will not be “the End of the World”, but it certainly looks like it will be “the End of the World as we know it.”