Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

THE  DEVIL VERSUS DIVINE DUEL

“But woe to the earth and the sea,
    because the devil has gone down to you!
He is filled with fury,
    because he knows that his time is short.”

Revelation 12: 12.

Mark 4: 39 indicates Jesus’ deity, and his continuous struggle with his opponent, the Devil. Continuous? Yes. History actually is typified by the struggle between God and the Devil. When the kings of Egypt menaced Israel, tried to eradicate her, then it was not Israel, but the ‘child’ that was the target. When centuries later Jerusalem was destroyed, and the entire population exiled, that too was all about the child that had not yet been born.

The history of the world basically is the unending duel between Good and Evil, between the Divine and the Devil, who has been pursuing Jesus from Paradise to the present.

Here is an example.

The twelve disciples were doing what they do best: Sail the rough waters of the Sea of Galilee. Experienced sailors they are, not easily frightened, they suddenly were exposed to a storm of the century, and thoroughly afraid, call out for divine help.

Divine help?

Yes, Jesus is there, asleep, so, desperately afraid – and that means something for these professionals, grown up on the ups and downs of the waves – they think they are about to drown. Then Jesus does an unusual thing: he talks to the waves and the waves oblige, because their motions were induced by Jesus’ opponent: the Devil.

When Jesus ‘rebuked’ the waves that threaten to drown him and his 12 disciples, he, actually, put a stop to the Devil and his attempt to eliminate ‘the Message’, all part and parcel of the age-old struggle between evil and good.

More intensity evident today.

That battle is now intensifying. With the Devil thrown out of heaven, and landing feet first on earth, everything in the human sphere is affected to an immense degree: Satan, banned from God’s presence, uses his defeat to start a new activity. From now on, world events will be more frightening, accelerate with greater ferocity, assume more ghastly proportions, drag millions along in a danse macabre, speed relentlessly to chaos and social upheaval.

The Almighty Human?

Today we see an immense increase in human power. It almost seems as if God for centuries has blindfolded humanity to prevent it from seeing all the planetary powers and possibilities, and then, suddenly, God rips away the blindfold, so that the one perspective after another opens up. This wild, unrestrained progress of human thought and technical prowess comes with a good dose of triumph, but also with visions of frightening nightmares. We read the harrowing words – applicable right now – “Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you.”

Enter Climate Change.

That is all too evident in The Climate. Every morning I receive an update from ARCTIC NEWS. I will share with you yesterday’s communication:

Temperature anomalies for February-March 2025 over the Arctic were as much as 20°C higher than 1951-1980, as illustrated by the image on the right.
The fact that these anomalies occurred at a time of year when little or no sunlight was yet reaching the Arctic indicates that the cause of these very high anomalies is extremely high ocean heat. 

This rapidly warming Arctic Ocean is quite shallow, and covers zillions of tons of Methane, 100 times more lethal than Carbon Dioxide (CO2). Once this is released, Global Warming will kill all that lives and moves and has a being.

That’s precisely what the Devil has in mind: Destroy, destroy, destroy. Climate Change is one way; nuclear war is another. We, the human race, now have the power to annihilate what God in Genesis 2 called ‘good’ seven times. We – with rare exceptions – are participants in this process, because the outcome for our way of life is anything but good. When God destroyed the world in which Noah lived, he promised not to repeat such an event, knowing that this time we – guided by the Devil – would do so.

Hope.

The Devil thought that when Jesus was killed, he had won the battle. And then the impossible happened: “Up from the grave he arose!”.

What was true for Jesus, will become also true for the cosmos. God loves his Son: he loves his cosmos equally well: Revelation 21 will soon become reality, because Jesus is stronger than death.

Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. 

There is a clear choice: the duel will end. Being the Devil’s dutiful disciple ends in death. Being Christ’s gracious co-worker brings LIFE, and that to the full.

PAROUSIA, CHRIST’S RETURN.

Parousia indicates the Second coming of Christ.

The word itself is found in that terrifying chapter of Matthew 24, where Jesus describes the very circumstances, we are experiencing today. In its 3d verse, He uses the GREEK word Parousia, also found in 1 Corinthians 15:23, and in 1 Thessalonians 2:19.

You may not have noticed, but the concept of Parousia – the ending of this world, and the onset of THE NEW WORLD – frightens the billionaires of our age. They are preparing for this event by building elaborate retreats, while, ironically, those who call themselves followers of Christ, are fixated on going to heaven, a Greek, pagan notion, deeply ingrained in Christendom.

Why is heaven so preferred?

Heaven is the church’s favorite, because it is much easier to exploit earth’s riches than to appreciate, cherish, yes, love the earth as God’s precious gift to us, not to exploit, but to enhance. That’s why Jesus’ repeated warnings – open your Bible and check such passages as John 3: 13, John 7: 33, John 8: 21 – clearly state that where Jesus is going, we cannot come. However, the erroneous ‘belief’ that Christians, upon death, go to heaven, is almost universally accepted as ‘gospel’ truth. It is clearly the Devil’s teaching, inspired by pagan preaching, propagated by Plato and Socrates, who separated mind from matter, heaven from earth, seeing mind as good and matter as evil. Socrates drank the poison with pleasure, in the false notion that leaving ‘material life’ would lead to ‘eternal’ bliss. Yet, this unbiblical heaven notion has dominated Christianity almost from its inception, in spite of Genesis 2, where God surveyed his creation and pronounced it ‘good’ seven times.

Enter Dietrich Bonhoeffer and J. H. Bavinck, two prominent theologians. 

First the eminent Dutch theologian, the late professor of Missions at the Amsterdam Free University. He writes: “It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual Salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal.

In other words, personal salvation and the salvation of creation go hand in hand: you can’t have one without the other. 

Bonhoeffer, as outlined in Dr. Sabine Dramm’s book on Bonhoeffer, goes a step further: Christians exist with both God and the world. And that means: worldly Christianity, a religion-less Christianity. In Bonhoeffer’s eyes, for us to be Christian and for the church to be Christian, believers must be fellow travelers with the world; God’s kingdom comes whenever the church remains in solidarity with the world while awaiting the Kingdom from God alone…….God wants to be revered by us here on earth, in our brother and sister, nowhere else. And then she quotes Bonhoeffer: Christianity in its present form has no future as a religion.

Quoting Bonhoeffer again, she writes: “God himself mended this sundering of religion from life by living in Christ a human life in a human body, and thus life lived in the discipleship of Christ is a full, undivided life as a full human being. It is simply impossible to experience God without the world, and to taste the reality of the world, without God: worldly existence and Christian existence are not simply two sides of a coin, but they are at one and the same time the entire coin.”

It is well to re-read the above passages, both based on John 3: 16. In that dialogue Jesus outlined to Nicodemus, an important teacher in the Jewish most important school of theology, God’s plan for salvation: Love Creation just as God does. 

What does this mean for us, as Christians?

Embrace creation: work for her betterment, ask for forgiveness when we harm her. I tentatively see the cosmos as God’s female expression, God’s beloved daughter, just as Jesus is his male counterpart, his beloved Son.

Back to Dramm: ‘We are off the beaten track or even secularists when we no longer believe in God’s kingdom. Secularists are Christians who accommodate by denying God’s kingdom on earth and a flight from the earth. Christians exist with both God ‘and’ the world and with God ‘in’ the world: that means ‘religion-less’ Christianity, worldly Christianity.’

What does the immediate future resemble?

I experienced the Hitler regime from 1932-1945. Its aim was to establish a One Thousand Year Kingdom of Peace, preceded by a period of purification, not unlike Trump is pursuing. The Nazi experiment lasted a dozen years, ending in total destruction and millions of deaths. The Trump Era too will end in bloodshed and global demise. Watch what’s happening on the Climate front: In the Polar Regions heat threatens to reach sediments at the seafloor of the Arctic Ocean and destabilize hydrates contained there, resulting in eruptions of huge amounts of methane:  the most lethal of gases. 

Could that trigger the Parousia? Stay tuned.

DOES FOREWARNED MEAN FOREARMED?

This my work is more about seeking than finding; of that which was found only a little bit is truly certain; the rest, however, is marked as “problem to be found”.                                                        Augustine.

Augustine of Hippo, also known as Saint Augustine and in the Eastern Orthodox Church as Blessed Augustine, was a theologian and philosopher of Berber origin and the bishop of Hippo Regius in Numidia, Roman North Africa. He was born on November 13, 354 AD, and died August 28, 430 AD (age 75 years). According to Dr. Douglas Hall of McGill University, “he was perhaps the main architect of Western theology who, writing in Latin – as then all people did – wrote: Si comprehendis, non est Deus, (if you think you understand, it isn’t God you are talking about). “God remains the unknown one, even when God reveals Godself – no, especially then!”, writes Dr. Hall in his book, What Christianity is not.

Here is one of my educated guesses about the many unknowns in the Bible: In these last days, much that was pure guesswork, becomes plain when it actually happens. When there is a mention of ‘let the reader beware’, it often means that we can only grasp the mystery, when it knocks at the door.

Forewarned is forearmed?

This past week, close to Easter, I read Luke 18: They will mock him, insult him and spit on him; ³³ they will flog him and kill him. On the third day he will rise again….The disciples did not understand any of this. Its meaning was hidden from them, and they did not know what he was talking about.

The mindset of the 12 disciples was fixed on ‘power’, on becoming important functionaries in the “Jesus” Empire, where victory over enemies was assured, where providing bread was no problem, as Jesus fed thousands of people, so Jesus’ words of his impending death fell flat.

Today is no different. Creation/God is speaking loud and clear that our increasing use of fossil fuels will kill creation, but we ignore the signs, and continue our rapid descent into the cosmic holocaust that awaits us. 

Or take another one of Jesus’ sayings.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. (John 10: 10). 

This begs the question: ‘Who is the ‘thief’, and what is ‘life’?

My simple answer is: “We”. We, especially we, the latter-day earth-dwellers, especially we, the affluent Western folk: we are the thieves. ‘Life’ is living in tune with creation.

I sincerely believe with Psalm 24: The earth is the LORD’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it. I also believe Psalm – 115: 16 – The highest heavens belong to the LORD, but the earth he has given to mankind. Yes, God gave to earth to us, not to exploit, but to enhance, to beautify, to improve, and make better. 

He gave it to us to delight in its intricacy, be amazed at its coherence, where everything is connected to everything else, where the chemical air composition is just perfect, health-enhancing, where the waters covering 70 percent of the globe, always have the perfect temperature, just to give 2 examples.

But just as the disciples ignored Jesus’ repeated warnings that he had to suffer, had to die, would voluntary surrender himself to ultimate trauma and the most horrible death, we too ignore the increasing signs that God’s creation, leased to us under strict conditions of betterment and enhancement, will suffer the same fate of Christ, as Peter, the apostle, among many, wrote: “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 everything done in it will be laid bare”.

The above is the ultimate happening: total incineration. ARCTIC NEWS lately brings daily examples of situations how this can could play out. Up, way up North, in the Polar regions, where the shallow Arctic Ocean is rapidly warming, it threatens to melt the immense mass of METHANE accumulated there, one hundred times more lethal than the GHG – the Green House Gases – generated by our so adored automobiles. Here the prediction of the apostle Peter, is being implemented, but we refuse to believe it, just as the disciples did not absorb Jesus’ sayings.

Who says that the Bible is a mysterious book? As the theologian Karl Barth told us: Always read the news with an eye on the Bible, and always read the Bible with an eye on the news.

We have been warned. We ignore the warnings. We are forewarned, but refuse to be forearmed.

THE FINAL MARRIAGE.

“There is more between heaven and earth than you can see…. Hell is empty. And all the devils are here,” wrote Shakespeare in Hamlet and The Tempest, quite well applicable to year 2025. Just look at Revelation 12: 7: Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back.

That’s why hell is empty: the war in heaven did that when God’s angels drove the devils away. Where did they go? They all landed feet first on earth. And what happened then? A marriage took place then and there, between the devils and those who control the American economy. Just look at Trump and his financial backer, Musk, or Netanyahu and the Palestinian tragedy: their actions are totally in tune with the Devil and his loyal following.

Yes, Trump and the Devil have become partners: That is the most recent marriage, but it gives marriage a bad name. 

Is that why Jesus argues against marriage? No, there is a deeper reason.

Jesus and Marriage.

Jesus has something to say about marriage and its future. He was closely questioned on that score by some of his opponents, who were curious about the Hereafter, as I am. They painted a possible scenario: ‘A husband died, and the widow married his brother, who also died. This happened again and again. Their question: In eternity – yes, they believed in a Hereafter – who will this woman be married to?’   

Jesus never married. If I see Mother Mary correctly – she was a bit of a pusher – she urged him to do so: all mothers want grandchildren, but Jesus resisted, because he represented the Kingdom. That’s why Jesus’ answer was: “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” Both Matthew 22: 30 and Luke 20: 36 state this. 

That simply means: No more sex! 

“I don’t believe that”, a good friend told me. 

But there are good reasons: What’s wrong with sex? 

I believe that eternity demands full and total equality for men and women! Sex, however, is not an equal matter: there is a giver and a taker. There is a slight degree of coercion in sex, however unintentional. Sex also implies conception, and conception is not immaculate, as Mary’s was when the Spirit ‘overshadowed’ her. 

God, in his wisdom, decided that the total of people in the Kingdom to come, will be a fixed number, based on the contributions they made in the arts and sciences, education and manual skills. 

Manual Skills?

Exodus 35 refers to ‘hand intelligence’, in connection with the building of the tabernacle: (verse 30). There it says: “See, the Lord has chosen Bezalel….and he has filled him with the Spirit of God, with skills, ability and knowledge in all kinds of crafts… and he has given to him and Oholiab… the ability to teach others.” 

It is that sort of talent that is also needed in the new World to come. Frankly I am pretty useless on that score, but given time – and eternity has that – even I can become skilled, but need a teacher.

Jesus already lived ‘the Kingdom Life’, that’s why he remained single, even though women adored him, and largely financed his divine mission. O yes: they fell in love with him: passionately, and, I am sure, Jesus too fell in love: after all, he experienced all human emotions.

And yet…

Still marriage will be maintained! For this I go to Revelation 21: 2, where “I saw the Holy City, the New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband….Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them.”

Revelation 21: 9 elaborates: Then the angel said to me: “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.” `

So, what did the angel show? 

He proudly displayed the New Creation, in all her glory, and also mentioned that in that new habitation for the new humanity, ‘I did not see an altar in the city’.

The usual explanation of this text is that the church will finally come into her own and truly be united with Christ. But that is contra to the mention of ‘no altar’. That, however, indicates the end of organized religion, as ‘the knowledge of God’ is written in the hearts of the new humanity: no more church, no more Bible.

What this new marriage really indicates, is that the new humanity – including Jesus Christ as ‘the primus inter pares’ the first among equals – will be married to the New Creation, The Bride, for which Jesus gave his life: see John 3: 16. Holy Creation married to Holy humanity: The final marriage.

EVERYTHING MUST BE VIEWED IN THE LIGHT OF ETERNITY!

That needs clarification. We all, no exceptions, face death, even creation. Death is the great equalizer. The ultra-rich may keep death at bay for a while, but there is no escape. Creation too, faces death, as she too has been – just as we – contaminated to the core, and needs a total rejuvenation. 

Christians are followers of the WAY, the WAY that leads to eternity, an eternity not enjoyed in heaven, as John 3: 13 clearly attests, but on a renewed earth, outlined unambiguously, in Revelation 21. She, terra firma, on ‘mother earth’, remains our destination: there is where we go, to enjoy God forever, in total subjection to his will. That’s why now, today and every day, we must have our aim in life directed to that goal: “Everything must be viewed in the light of eternity”! That, and only that, must motivate our actions, in thought and deed.

When our youngest daughter moved to Minneapolis/St. Paul, her house was close to the Luther Seminary and its bookstore. There I discovered Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian, who was born in 1906, obtained his first doctorate at the age of 21, his second one a few years later. There I bought three Bonhoeffer books, his 560 pages A Testament to Freedom, and Creation and Fall, and Dr. Sabine Dramm’s book: “Dietrich Bonhoeffer: an introduction to his thought”. 

At the conclusion of that book, she writes: “What Bonhoeffer presents as specific to the Christian Faith is the perception of God and Creation as one, and the perception of life that has its wellspring in this world in God, and in turn proceeds from this world back again to God.” Yes, reread that last quote: it is revolutionary! Yet it makes eminent sense to me. 

Great artists – Shakespeare, Bach, Rembrandt – are known by their legacy. In the same way, God is primarily known by his ‘work of art’, that’s why Paul, in Romans 1: 20, writes, “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–his eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

That’s why my writing has been dominated by The New Creation.

There’s where my mission now lies: writing a world-wide-web BLOG: www.hielema.ca., indeed, viewed everywhere.

In 1995 I wrote a novel, imagining THE NEW CREATION. I called it: DAY WITHOUT END, still available both in print and on the web. It set the course for my life. 

I write every-day. I start the day with reading the lectionary for the day, obtained from Vanderbilt Theological School. Done it for 36 years. The daily Bible readings usually contain a Psalm or a portion thereof, an Old Testament and a New Testament reading. I highlight and copy a text that appeals to me, paste it in my Word section, and start writing some 250-300 words. Good discipline. 

All week I have my weekly blog in mind. That too is an excellent tool. There is a saying: a person does not know what he/she thinks, until read what was written.

And then I read.

It is only out of the future that the present can be lived….

I sincerely believe that: “It is only out of the future that the present can be lived…. We are children of the future…..Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other worlds beyond, rather, he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children….but …We have fallen into secularism, and by secularism I mean pious Christian secularism….the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth.”

FREEDOM.

That truth – God as Lord of the earth – allows as tremendous freedom. We must work from the principle that Jesus Christ has liberated us to think, to write, to act, to move in total freedom, and allows us to proceed ahead ‘in love’: freedom and love go hand in hand. Everything must be viewed “In the light of eternity”! And then, the course taken will be the right one. 

That’s why we must, as Scott Peck wrote, take “The Road less traveled!”. Perhaps a lonely road, but all is well that ends well. It’s the goal that counts. 

Nietzsche, in his Thus spoke Zarathustra, wrote: “I entreat you, brothers/sisters, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.” 

We are here to discover the truth. The truth is that Christ gives us back to the earth as its loyal children: total freedom to love and explore:

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8: 32

WHAT CONSTITUTES CHRISTIANITY?

John Maynard Keynes said: “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.”

Trump has been told that tariffs made the US rich in the 19th century and will do so again now, 200 years later, during a time when world population soared from 1 billion to 8.

Just as President Trump, unknowingly, bases his imposition of tariffs on outdated theories, so today the church, too, has fallen into this trap.

Luther, the great church reformer, spearheading the secession from Roman Catholic domination in 1517, retained the doctrine that God had ordained two regiments: the spiritual which by the Holy Spirit produces Christians and pious folk under Christ, and the secularsector, seen as evil, a dualistic view based on ancient Greek, pagan, thinking, propagated by Plato and Socrates. 

Descartes expanded on this, based on his famous slogan: “Cogito, ergo sum”, meaning “I use my brain, therefore I am”. He then relegated anything not human to be of no consequence, and even evil. Hence the split between grace – good – and nature – bad. 

That thinking has dominated the church until this day, culminating in Heaven being our destination. It allowed Hitler to rise and present-day Russia to be so cozy with the church. And….. it is the basic reason why we today are facing extinction through Climate Change, as the church preaches ‘HEAVEN’, leaving earth to rot.

A different view.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer took issue with this false doctrine and wrote: “Credo, ergo sum” = I believe therefore I am, relying on John 3: 16: God so loved the world, the cosmos, everything that God created, from microbes to mammoths. That’s why the Trump administration, catering to its base (his Christians) has promised additional environmental rollbacks in the coming weeks. “The Energy Dominance Council that the president established last month is looking to eliminate a vast array of regulations in an effort to boost the fossil fuel industry”, the interior secretary, Doug Burgum, told the oil and gas conference in Houston last week: “We will come up with the ways that we can cut red tape, we can easily get rid of 20-30% of our regulations.”

So: What is Christian?

I read an interesting book report in the New York Times. Its heading was: ”Like a Prayer”, subtitled, “A grieving atheist searching for peace retires to a convent but finds crisis instead.” 

The book is STONE YARD DEVOTIONAL by Charlotte Wood, a nonfiction account. In 2021, the world faced the Covid pandemic, and, where she lived in eastern Australia, the region contended with a great surplus of mice ravaging crops and communities alike. 

It’s basically the diary of an older person, tired of trying and failing to rescue the planet from man-made destruction. 

The article makes me wonder about the concept of ‘salvation, and ‘original sin’. I have long believed that Adam and Eve, in the Bible portrayed as the first humans, took the ‘fruit’ from the tree without asking the tree’s permission. In her book, Charlotte Wood grieves creation’s current day outcome. She mirrors God who, in His unfathomable LOVE for creation, offers the life of his only Son, as payment for buying back the totality of Creation from the Evil One. 

That to me is definite proof that Jesus died, not exclusively for our personal salvation – that too – but primarily for liberating the ‘cosmos’ (everything that has a being, from the tiniest insect to the majestic whales and elephants) from the clutches of the Evil One. 1 John 5: 19 confirms this: “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

Here is a rhymed version of my concept of ‘redemption’.

RENEW YOUR VOW.

Renew your vow                                                             

And do it now,

The world’s is quickly warming;

The poles melt fast

The die is cast

World’s state is quite alarming.

Renew your vow,

And do it now.

Do love God’s good creation:

Do it with force

It is our source

For life and for salvation.

Renew your vow,

And do it now.

The timeclock now runs faster,

The hour is late

God has a date

He is earth’s only Master.

Renew your vow,

And do it now.

For Christ will give no warning

He comes again

We don’t know when

It could be the next morning.

(There is a tune to this: God enkel licht)

Actually, there are plenty of warnings: Every 100 years storm, almost every week, heralds the looming end.

I believe the author, Charlotte Wood, a confessed atheist, in her lament for creation, is closer to redemption than most church-members, who Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in his essay on Thy Kingdom Come, calls “Pious Secularists”.

All of this makes me wonder: “What really constitutes Christianity? Can an atheist be saved?“

P.S.

Due to a needed operation, my weekly blog was postponed a few days.