JULY 22 2017
EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.
Everything becomes what it is. That is the basic message of the last Bible book: REVELATION.
The name of the book itself points to that. The word “Revelation” indicates the un-shrouding of secrets, the opening up of the hidden, the unmasking of the carefully tucked away mysteries, the stripping away of all camouflage.
I believe that we must take what’s outlined in the last Bible book quite seriously because it does reveal the future, not in detail, not so that we can say ‘on such and such a date this or that is going to happen,’ but, in broad strokes it tells us what is to come. Today to the discerning believer the portents are clearly visible.
It’s main message is that evil will be unmasked as evil, and good will be acknowledged as good, because the book of Revelation has one dominating theme: EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS and also everybody will show his or her true nature.
I conclude this from Revelation 22: 11, its very last chapter. There it says, “Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy.”
This text conveys to me that there’s no more changing of minds: people stick to their opinion, no form of persuasion is possible anymore, any appeal to reason or clear logical proof will fall on deaf ears, which is exactly what we see today.
Does this mean that missions and conversions are no longer possible? Good question.
The Rapture believers will still look forward to be fetched up to heaven, even though Matthew 24 clearly says that the sinners will be taken away while the believers will remain and delight in living on a pure earth.
The Climate Change deniers, while more and more seeing and experiencing wild and wilder weather, will nevertheless insist that nothing bad is happening.
The Heaven crowd will still look forward to see God, even though the Bible says that “God lives in inapproachable light and nobody can see him or has seen him”.
The Trumpians will stick to the Donald deceptions, and anything else will be labeled FAKE NEWS”.
That’s all perfectly in tune with the Book of Revelation.
Why?
Chapter 12 explains a lot. It tells us that the Satan was hurled out of heaven together with the angels devoted to him. Just imagine: in heaven, the place where God lives, there was a terrible fight which resulted in the evil spirits being kicked out. Before that the Satan had functioned as ‘the accuser’ witness what he did to Job, as related in the book by that name.
In chapter 12 the Satan is driven out of heaven, landing feet first right here on our earth where he was warmly welcomed. He now is busy day and night leading the whole world astray, evident in the ‘evil’ we have experienced in the last 100 years: two World Wars, a Hitler, a Stalin, now a Trump, a devastating 1918 Pandemic, many small wars, such as Vietnam, Algiers, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria today.
Also this past century we saw the start of the immense danger of Climate Change, it too the result of the Satanic forces.
It now becomes clear that the Satan seduced humanity to start using carbon-based fuels, knowing full-well that this would end up in destruction. Ever since the Satan, also known as The Evil One, was banished from heaven his all-consuming passion has been to destroy God’s creation, THE COSMOS God loved so much (John 3: 16). This is now becoming crystal clear and points to the ultimate TRUTH of the book: everything becomes what it is.
You can be assured that in the NEW CREATION there never will be carbon-based fuels, as we have learned this lesson.
When I was in the fourth grade in elementary school in 1938, we had a good laugh when we learned how in 1838 the first train started to operate in the Netherlands between Amsterdam and Haarlem. We snickered because then some people claimed this was the Devil at work. Now, 180 years later, I realize that I was wrong in ridiculing this attitude.
Let’s be honest: when the Satan was expelled from heaven we welcomed him with open arms, everybody quick to buy a car, the ultimate freedom machine. Also we eagerly embraced industrial farming, ignoring the way we treat chickens and pigs and cows, while abandoning the church, spending countless hours watching TV and sports instead.
It now is becoming clear that all the time we have lived in an unreal world, a world speeding to disaster. Matters are not what they are: our carbon-rich way-of-life is totally unsustainable. That is the secret our world wants to conceal: we’ve been living a lie.
That same Satan is the fraudulent force behind today’s ill-fated illusion that Jesus no longer counts, that Jesus did not die to buy back creation from the Satan. He planted the lie that we are heaven-bound, an assumption the church has gladly adopted. He has also sold society on the notion that religion is something stale, old-fashioned, situated in the past and that the local church is no longer relevant. And, oh yes, he convinced the Western world to strive for ECONOMIC GROWTH at all cost, which is still the mantra of any and all governments, fully well knowing that this in impossible in a FINITE WORLD.
Yes, that same Satan is the prompter of the GRAND ILLUSION that humans can create heaven on earth. He is the magical trickster and the mass murderer of the species God would have wanted to conserve, witness Noah and the ARK.
However, the TRUTH is that he was defeated a long time ago. Jesus did that on that little hill just outside the Jerusalem perimeter 2000 years ago when he died on the cross and said: “It is accomplished.
That phrase“, it is accomplished” reminds me of my earlier career as a Real Estate Broker. When I listed a house for sale the selling transaction went through a number of stages: the showing with clients, the signing of the offer to purchase and sell, almost always subject to some conditions, such as arranging financing. Once the conditions were removed the sale was ‘final’, with the occupancy date still some time in the future. This meant that the sellers, the vendors, still lived in the place until the deal was closed, the moneys transferred and my commission cheque issued.
That’s how the situation stands with the Satan. He is still occupying our globe, even though all conditions have been removed and the sale of our planet, from the Satan to Jesus Christ, is final.
In that ‘in between time ‘, with the Satan still in possession of the earth, he is creating bedlam, havoc, causing all possible damage to the globe, desperate because he knows he has been defeated.
Yes, for the time being the Satan continues to sound like a victor. He continues to daily gain immense victories witness the TRUMP ascendancy, the man who scrapped all regulations to stem environmental degradation, resulting in increasing dangers of Global Heating and the rising godlessness of the world’s population. He is Satan’s instrument, fully in tune with the aims of the Evil one.
EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.
What we now see is the vengeance of godlessness, caused by religious heresies, and stupidity generating television, not for nothing called The Boob Tube. Ignorance is celebrated and serious thought is called fake news, inspired by the US president whose speech resembles an 8 year old and whose negotiation powers are bluster and bamboozling. Elected officials, in power to do good invariably end up doing well, selling themselves to the highest bidder.
We now see that democracy, officially ‘the rule by the people’ has degenerated into plutocracy, the rule by the rich.
We know today that we are ruled by deception and cynicism, by corporate interest and regulatory rollover. Even Christian Education has become like the public kind with a sprinkling of Jesus, generating what Bonhoeffer called PIOUS SECULARISM.
Democracy, especially in the USA is a perpetual reelection game, based on promises that are only kept when it favors Capitalism.
Remember the Paris Climate Agreement?
It is nothing more than a paper piece of deceit, a pact that has no teeth, no enforcement mechanism, thus sheer window dressing. Trump could easily have signed it with much fanfare and flourish, but he and his followers probably were totally ignorant of its emptiness.
EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.
A path to a better understanding what’s happening today in the real world I found in an essay by Neal Devers, THE OVERTON BUBBLE.
Wikipedia summarizes it:
“The Overton Window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept…. The term is derived from its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy….
Devers refines the definition:
The Overton Window is a concept in political sociology referring to the range of acceptable opinions that can be held by respectable people. “Respectable” of course means that the subject can be integrated with polite society. Respectability is a strong precondition on the ability to have open influence in the mainstream.
This raises the question: who exactly is in this corps of “respectable people” who set the parameters of acceptable thought?
In Canada this would be the people who read THE GLOBE AND MAIL and watch CBC NEWS; in the USA they are the New York Times readers and the PBS viewers. They also include the bureaucratic functionaries of the permanent government bureaucracy who make and execute policy, along with the universities which educate the “respectable people” (the thinking class) into the prevailing dogmas and shibboleths of the day, and finally the think tanks and foundations that pay professional “experts” to retail their ideas.
The Overton Window can be viewed as a mechanism of political control, demonizing anyone who departs from the consensus of respectable thought, and especially if they express their heresies in public speech.
Devers explains:
The trouble with the Overton Window as a mechanism of political control, and with politicization of speech and thought in general, is that it causes significant collateral damage on the ability of your society to think clearly. If some thoughts are unthinkable and unspeakable, and the truth happens in some case to fall outside of polite consensus, then your ruling elite and their society will run into situations they simply can’t handle. In other words: We’re now living under that condition of “intellectual (and religious, I might add) martial law.” The consequent degradation of thinking means that the polity can’t construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to it (or devise a plan for what to do about it).
This is exactly the point where the Overton Window turns into an Overton Bubble, as described by Devers. The bubble comprises ideas that are assumed to be self-evident (though they actually aren’t) and notions that are potentially destructive of society, even to the point of societal suicide.
Here are two examples of the current falsehoods inside today’s Overton Bubble:
First the church. It has to perpetuate the HEAVEN HERESY because to preach THE NEW EARTH would turn off too many people and stop their contributions. That is a clear example of THE OVERTON WINDOW.
On the political platform: the Paris Agreement is hailed as the solution to CLIMATE CHANGE. To openly say that Global Heating is out of control and will lead to Global Disaster would hurt our economy, the real object of worship. The quest for Economic Growth is another shibboleth, stubbornly maintained, in spite of its impossibility.
What it amounts to is that current news sources – our respectable papers, our official government announcements, our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, cannot reveal this TRUTH, and are indeed part of the FAKE NEWS being published.
The cruel truth is that we are on the way to disaster.
That’s why the INTERNET is a blessing: it by-passes the FAKE NEWS outlets. It is an instrument if realizing that EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.