THE FINAL PHASE

JANUARY 27 2018

THE FINAL PHASE.

My wife and I are part of a small weekly prayer group. Often prayers are requested for old and frail parents who suddenly need immediate care, and for their children who are caught in the middle without warning, confronted with almost insurmountable problems as access to a Nursing Home is impossible in the short term because the waiting lists are so long.

Just a few weeks ago a friend of ours had a fall, could no longer remain in her trusted surroundings and was banned to an unfamiliar apartment, deprived of mobility, settled by her daughters in the nearby city, where she probably will soon die of loneliness.

I am involved with the 128 bed Long-term care facility in our village as the sole male member of the community advisory committee. The waiting list there is 2 years for private care and even longer for semi-private.

Years ago a friend showed me the long-term care facilities in the Holland Homes in Brampton, and when for the first time I saw the women and men there, most having lost the mental segment of their humanity, tears sprang into my eyes: I wondered whether I too would end my life this way. For them it is THE FINAL PHASE.

WE ARE AFRAID

In 1992 I bought a book by Walter Brueggemann THE LAND. I started to read it in 1994, reread it in 2014, and last week I picked it up again and soon became engrossed in it again.

Its opening words are, “The sense of being lost, displaced and homeless is pervasive in our contemporary culture. The yearning to belong somewhere, to have a home, to be in a safe place, is a deep and moving pursuit.”

It is true: we increasingly are living in a Nation of Strangers, where the concept of “home” is disappearing. This is especially the case for ‘the end of life’ seniors, unable to remain in their trusted abode.

In his book Brueggemann points out that conventional Christianity always wants to talk about Yahweh and, in the process neglects the Land, while secular humanism always wants to talk about land and never of Yahweh.

Brueggemann places special emphasis on the people of Israel who, after having wandered in the desert for 40 years were afraid to settle in The Promised Land.

Basically their sojourn in the desert was quite comfortable: the Lord provided them with their daily bread, there always was a cloud hovering over them to keep them in the shade and, at night, served as a beacon of light. Their clothes and shoes did not wear out; they usually had plenty of water, and, when they ran short, Moses would intervene for them with Yahweh: no responsibilities, no real hardship. Oh yes, they complained once in a while, but generally, desert life was not all that bad.

So when they came to the Promised Land they hesitated, and Joshua, the new leader, had to give them a pep talk (Joshua 1: 9), “Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

A new phase is always scary, that’s why Joshua (Joshua 1: 6, 7, 9) said, “Be strong and of good courage… only be strong and very courageous ….be not frightened”.

We prefer the old and familiar to the new and unproven, even when we know that change is necessary. C. S. Lewis once said, “Indeed the safest road to hell is the gradual one – the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
Jesus too had his bit to say on this, “Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are MANY who enter through it. For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are FEW who find it. (Matt. 7: 13-14)

Yes, we rather go to hell on the familiar road than to take “the road less traveled.”

And that brings me to today.

I subscribe to the weekly New Yorker. The January 22 issue started with an article on LAND, and what a sorry tale it was! If there ever was a complete disconnect between the USA government and the care for the 500 million acres of land it has been entrusted to preserve, it is now. Under the new Trump administration, from the redwood forests to the Gulf Stream waters, the only question is how fast these resources can be auctioned off.

By and large the church in North America too has no clue of stewardship and no idea that WE are the land. Right in the very beginning of the Bible, Genesis 3: 19, the Lord tells humanity, “You will eat your bread – provided by the earth – until you return to the ground, from which you are taken, for soil you are and to soil you shall return.”

Selling off the land for commercial exploitation is akin to suicide: witness today’s unstoppable Climate Change.

ARCTIC NEWS calculates that 2017 was significantly warmer than 2016. Also the storms, the floods, the fires, the weird weather all were at record levels. Trump and his trolls of planetary plunderers are pushing the globe to limits never before experienced.

You may remember that 1.5°C (or 2.7°F) was set at the Paris Agreement as a limit not to be crossed. The trend shows that we’ve meanwhile gone 1.6°C above pre-industrial level and look set to exceed the 2°C limit within years.

Fact is that the LAND is holy, but, since, by and large, we’ve split God from his creation in the mistaken notion that “we have dominion over land and sea”, we believe that we are the masters of the universe. However Jesus (Mark 10: 45) said, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” As ‘servants’ of God we are ‘servants’ of creation as well. We belong to the whole universe: we are in a cosmic relationship.

BE NOT AFRAID

Just as Israel was afraid to enter the Promised Land so we too are afraid to prepare for the Promised Paradise. Just as the Israel nation roamed the desert and had become accustomed to be desert dwellers, endlessly traversing the sandy seas, especially since God rained manna from heaven every single day and a double portion before the Sabbath, so too in the Christian Church we are the equivalent of desert dwellers.

We too have become accustomed to the Sunday worship rhythm, the routine sermon, the singing of the hundreds of years old hymns, the one hour for which the entire large space of ‘the sanctuary’ is heated for a 168 hours week.

That the church is charged to prepare the people for the FINAL PHASE is hardly ever mentioned. Just as the roaming tribe of Hebrew people had become accustomed to the ‘easy life’, so Brueggemann writes, “It is the new land that creates the contrast and creates in Israel a sense of fear and hopelessness. It is the very land of promise, the purpose of the whole journey of faith, which causes the failure of nerve.”

The church today is no different. The sterility of the desert has been transplanted into the church. No wonder the church is losing members, especially through deaths, because very few new people join.

In the church I attend several members have left, preferring the desert of ‘HEAVEN ’ preaching and the sterility of the ‘RAPTURE LIE’ to the rich promise of the new creation. It pains me no end: Satan is the only winner here.

Back to Trump’s USA. Just imagine: Ryan Zinke, the new US secretary of the Interior, in his first act as the person in charge of almost a quarter of the USA territory, overturned a moratorium on new leases for coalmines on public land, slashed the size of several national monuments to allow more development, while encouraging more fracking, that highly polluting way to obtain oil.

Oh, that erroneous HEAVEN notion. It’s the most subtly pagan of all beliefs. Satan certainly scored a fantastic victory when he sold the church on the HEAVEN HERESY.

The Ten Commandments tell us, “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” We do this all the time. God’s signature is on every creature. Both 1 Corinthians 10: 26 and Psalm 24: 1 shout identical truths, “The world is the Lord’s and everything in it”: everything, everything, no exceptions!!
By killing creation we are killing God. Trump and his cohorts are selling God down the drain in the name of Christianity.

Of course banning abortion saves some lives but the Trump regime, by abolishing climate regulations causes untold many more deaths. A report published in Lancet affirms that three times as many deaths are caused by pollution as by Aids, Malaria and Tuberculosis combined.

The only good thing the Trump tragedy is doing is speeding up time.

THE FINAL PHASE

The final phase will prepare us for THE END, and will speed up THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM.

Here’s what 2 Peter 3: 12 says,
“Since everything will be destroyed, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the DAY OF THE LORD, and speed its coming.”

I am doing my bit there, by constantly hammering on this theme. The church should be doing that as well, but, by and large, it has forgotten THE MESSAGE, just as the church in Jesus’ day did.

TRUMP and his crew of creational traitors are, in the name of God, bent to destroy God and so speed up his coming.

Satan thought that he, by killing Christ on the cross, would forever rid the world of his opponent, but God used the death of his Son to bring about ETERNAL LIFE. In the same way the Satan in the White House, by speeding up the destruction of the earth speeds up the coming of THE DAY OF THE LORD.

There is a little condition attached to become ready for THE FINAL PHASE: “You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the DAY OF THE LORD, and speed its coming”.

That is easier said than done. That wandering band of Hebrews, facing the Jordan, and about to enter the Promised Land, was afraid. That next phase would change their lives forever: no more easy street. They were on their own where only the old adage would apply: ORA ET LABORA, Pray and Work.

In our world, totally removed from nature, our food has become OIL: we spend TEN energy calories for ONE food calorie, while, where we live, we always need carbon-rich transport, which begs the question: “how in the world can we live HOLY AND GODLY LIVES?”

I constantly struggle with that. My life is fully engrossed with that problem.

Here’s where community comes in, the church really. I am proposing to the church we attend to convert the auditorium – 30-35 people in a 250 seat sanctuary – into assisted living apartments. Our church is across from the only food store in our village: living there could make it possible to live more HOLY and GODLY lives. The grounds of the church could feature a veggie garden, the roof could sport solar panels, the need for transportation could be cut drastically, and people would not need to be stacked up away from their roots, remaining where they live most of their lives. Will it happen? People are afraid.

WHY SO FEW?

For the gate is small and the way is narrow that leads to life, and there are FEW who find it. (Matt. 7: 13-14)

Personal salvation always takes place as part and parcel of the salvation of the cosmos: they go hand in hand. We cannot love Jesus while consciously harming the cosmos for which he gave his life (John 3: 16).
Love for Jesus and love for the cosmos are two sides of the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.

That’s what THE FINAL PHASE is all about.

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