January 5 2019
BROTHER, ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?
“Brother, are you born again?” I have been asked that question a number of times. Not in the Dutch religious community where I had been active for many decades, but doing appraisals in North Hastings County, around the municipality of Bancroft, where there are large charismatic churches. All I had to say was, “yes”, and I was accepted as being born again: no further questions asked.
When Jesus, in John 3, suggested to Nicodemus, an important member of the Jewish hierarchy, that he needed a re-birth, it was a concept totally alien to this religious leader.
Nicodemus took it literally, “simply not possible” he said, so Jesus explained to this leading clergyman that it requires a ‘metanoia’ a radical new approach to living, a different mindset. In his case – and he was rich – it may have meant to sell everything he had, including that burial cave where Jesus’ body later was stored after being crucified.
In the end when Jesus was dead, Nicodemus finally came out.
Back to that secret meeting that led to two of Jesus’ most important pronouncements. Here Jesus connected ‘being born again’ to his real mission. Nicodemus, that prominent leader, a member of the Jewish elite, was the first to hear the two most important rules for eternal life:
(1) We must be born again. “Being born again” literally means that we abandon the way we have lived before, and make a totally new start: leave behind the old, and make a radical break, a total metanoia, doing away with all the assumptions we have taken for granted, realign ourselves for what is to come: the Kingdom.
(2) God loved the world – the cosmos – so much that he gave his one and only Son as ransom to buy it back from the Devil. Those who follow in Jesus’ footsteps – loving creation with acts of kindness and devotion – shall not perish but will enjoy eternal life in a renewed creation.
Jesus told Nicodemus, and via him, us, that his mission was not to save sinners, that too, but that he primarily had come to wrest the cosmos, the earth and everything we take for granted, from the power of The Evil One, and to restore all this to its original, pristine, perfect condition.
In other words, Jesus came to accomplish total renewal of everything, soil, oceans, air, humans, our minds, bodies, psyches, animals, relationships: the list is endless.
Which then begs the question, “The Kingdom: what is it?”
Jesus, in the Sermon of the Mount, tells us to make our priority in life to “seek the Kingdom”. It is also the first petition in The Lord’s Prayer: Thy Kingdom Come.
There’s been a lot of confusion here.
The Roman Catholic Church maintains that its institution is The Kingdom. The Reformed Christian movement often sees Church, Family, and Christian Education as aspects of The Kingdom, but seldom do they see God’s Creation as The Kingdom, and yet, that’s what it is.
When Adam and Eve dwelt in The Garden of Eden, then, indeed, they lived in God’s Kingdom, the completed creation which God called ‘good’ seven times.
Based on that, God’s Kingdom has certain character traits, and here I rely on Dr. J. H. Bavinck, and on his books I have translated.
As I already mentioned, God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants.
This implies that originally all parts of the world were attuned to each other. Nowhere was there a false note, nowhere a dis¬so¬nant that disturbed the unity, as everything fitted harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality.
This applied both to each individual specimen but today still equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation. The celestial bodies follow their orderly tra¬jectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice. And so the stars in their courses sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water-saturated earth, their proud summits piercing the clouds; yet even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power.
On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation resides only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other, as Psalm 19 tells us, “The heavens proclaim the glory of God, and the firmament shows forth the work of his hands.”
Things have changed.
We still live in that same earth where Adam and Eve dwelt in total perfection. I am not sure how long that lasted: perhaps One Thousand Years, who knows. What we do know is that this ideal situation did not remain: perhaps they were bored: sinning is more exciting – for a while.
But sin means letting God go, and making ourselves gods. It also means leaving the Kingdom, abandoning Paradise, because there’s where God dwells, even now.
All that happened a long time ago, but it took many millennia to extinguish the heritage of the Garden of Eden.
It is our dubious honor, being among the last generations, to totally rebut the will of God’s and cause the entire world order to plunge into chaos.
Who knows: this might happen this year. Here’s a thought.
Any year ending on a “9” may have ominous content.
This past century in 1919 there was the Russian Revolution and that disastrous Versailles conference, which gave rise to Hitler and the Middle East problem still with us.
1929 was the start of the Great Depression.
In 1939 World War II began.
1989 saw the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
In 2009, just one decade ago, we experienced the Collapse of the Banking system, with the governments pumping in trillions of dollars.
Way back in 1789 the French Revolution occurred.
This year, 2019, we may well see THE ICE disappear from the Arctic, which more and more people see as The End of the World. Just look up NEAR TERM HUMAN EXTINCTION and an impressive list of concerned academics are of that opinion.
Here’s a quote from Guy McPherson:
“I, myself, doubt that many people reading these words have three years to live. Habitat for humans on Earth will disappear shortly after the Arctic ice is gone, which is likely to occur in the summer of 2019”.
Dr. Guy McPherson
Let’s not kid ourselves: we have ruptured the Kingdom; we have brought total chaos into the world order.
Today Satan rules.
We are now faced with a development in creation that we can no longer control, but of which we daily exper¬i¬ence the terrifying consequences. (1 John 5: 19)
We now see God’s work of art embroiled in the power of demons. Satanic forces have thrown themselves onto nature, onto us humans, onto the entire radiant creation.
The world in which we live is dominated by demons. Every hour we experience the terrible influ¬ence of this satanic situ¬a¬tion.
But, believe it or not: it’s all part of God’s great plan.
God never abandoned his Kingdom concept. On the con¬trary: he opted for an even greater and more conspicu¬ous version. Even though you may never have given it a thought, the Kingdom concept has become the most pronounced motif of the history of the world: everything today centers on the emergence, the new birth of the Kingdom.
This kingdom that God is busy realizing has a very particular char-ac¬ter. If we wish to some degree to fathom its superb beauty, we must point out some of its features.
The Kingdom of God is depicted in the Bible as a reality of the end-time: today all signs point to this: it will only be in the end-time that all the strands of world history come together again: today we truly live in the world: any event, however insignificant, is known within hours everywhere thanks to satellites, drones and email.
The Kingdom has always been.
Of course the Kingdom was there already in pre-historic times, the Urzeit, and straight through the rubble and ruins of history it will again be manifested before our very eyes as an overwhelm¬ingly grandiose reality: we are rushing to the End, and that means that The Kingdom is near.
Jesus made it his chief mission. In the Old Testament book of Isaiah the glorious future of the Kingdom forms the central theme which dominates all other aspects.
Its main premise is that on the Great Day of the Lord, in the end–time, the Lord God will reveal his kingly power and on that Day he will permanently expel all decaying and destructive forces that have penetrated his creation.
On that Day the indescribable glory of the new reality of the eternal Kingdom will appear in living colour, a reality in which all things will again have their rightful place.
Nowhere is this future better outlined than in Paul’s profound descrip¬tion in Ephesians 1:9–10, when “the times will have reached their fulfillment—to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”
These times are about to come, perhaps as early as 2019.
Here is a mind-shattering statement.
It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one over¬arching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal¬vation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the King¬dom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.
I repeat: There is no such thing as individual salvation. All sal-vation is of necessity universal. Our goal in life is to become part of God’s Kingdom. Rapture is the most unbiblical concept.
WOW. That upsets the entire ecclesiastical applecart.
BROTHER, ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?
When Jesus had that dialogue with that member of the Jewish elite, when the discussion between an important theologian and the Son of God, took place away from the public eye, then Jesus summarized his teaching in stating that love for the cosmos was the nucleus of his message. The COSMOS contains all created matter.
Jesus later gave another directive: Love God – and thus his creation – above all, which automatically includes the human race as well, loving it as much as we love ourselves.
Loving ourselves automatically includes love for all things, because ‘everything is connected to everything else’.
This is my first venture into 2019, and it already shapes up like a disastrous year, even though it has hardly begun.
Are the churches up to this new phase?
No. No. They are becoming a hindrance, rather than pointing the way ahead. Not all, of course, but, in general they are an anachronism: the buildings energy hogs, the songs often praising heaven, the sermon approach an incentive to sever nature from grace, their parking lots an ode to GMC, Ford, Korea and Japan.
BROTHER, ARE YOU BORN AGAIN?
That’s not a question easily answered. If I am right in my analysis, then Jesus’ saying, “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many are called, but few chosen”, (Matthew 22: 16), makes sense.
Perhaps the last who shall be first are those who try to conscientiously and continuously minimize their carbon footprint.
If I am right in my analysis, then Jesus` saying, “Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” (Luke 18: 8) makes sense.
Let it suffice to say that “Being born again” is not a simple matter.
Fortunately we know from Acts 15: 11, “We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved.”
P. S.
I love statistics.
Last year 26,390 people visited my website; I wrote more than 100,000 words in my columns – a good sized book of 300 pages. I also ran, biked, and walked 3,360 km, an average of more than 9 km each day, and drove a total of 5,700 km. I started running in 1959 when I quit smoking. Since then I have run every week.