IS MY ANALYSIS CORRECT?
“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”
Jeremiah 20: 8
So, how do I explain this text from Jeremiah, the prophet famous as the ‘bringer of doom’. He enriched our modern parlor through ‘Jeremiads’, those long, mournful complaints or lamentations.
In this text, what is this man, Jeremiah, commonly known as a major prophet, trying to say? Is there anything applicable for today, 2025, now 2500 years later?
Yes, I sincerely believe that the Bible speaks to us now, even after many, many centuries. Why? Because human nature has not changed at all, thus the message brought to us after some millennia, remains relevant, and so do the prophecies.
Take Isaiah 24:
For the LORD has spoken this word.
4The earth mourns and withers;
the world languishes and fades;
the exalted of the earth waste away.
5The earth is defiled by its people;
they have transgressed the laws;
they have overstepped the decrees
and broken the everlasting covenant.
6Therefore a curse has consumed the earth,
and its inhabitants must bear the guilt;
the earth’s dwellers have been burned,
and only a few survive.
True then, true now.
So, let me refresh your memory, and repeat the words of the original text: “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”
As the quote from Isaiah 24 shows, human destructive nature remained constant during the past 2,500 years: then as now the earth is under attack by us, sinful creatures, while God/Creation fights back.
While I am writing this, my eyes are fixed on the semi-tropical portion of the Atlantic Ocean, and also on the Pacific: Both huge waterbodies are given birth to immensely destructive natural phenomena, known as Hurricanes and Typhoons. They now increasingly are the direct products of our enslavement to fossil fuels that – unimaginable until now, I should add – we have heated these immense waterbodies covering 70% of the globe, to the point of generating aquatic super-monsters, capable of nuclear-size calamities. Should I mention earthquakes? Revelation 11: 13 does, and so does Jesus in Matthew 24. Expect them too!
Back to the original question again: “The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”
We have harvested the earth, have taken out her easy treasures, the low-hanging fruit, and now the glorious days of summer are gone, and we face the unpredictable days of depletion, pollution, storms, rain, snow and ice, procuring a plethora of poisonous by-products in the process. New dangers loom. By exceeding 420+ parts per million of CO? in the atmosphere, we have crossed an unprecedented threshold for our species, forcing our bodies, our lungs, to operate in a chemical environment for which it was not designed. This planetary experiment is already showing its effects, and the price could include our own mental acuity, in addition to the perils, hitherto unknown in human history. New reports show that Carbon Dioxide dilutes the human intellect to think properly, and thwarts our reasoning powers, prevents or obstructs our judgement and hampers the drawing of the rightful conclusions for altering our destructive behavior. Just as the disciples did not believe that Jesus would die, neither do we believe that Creation shares that fate, also.
Blame CO2. Inhalong CO2 plays havoc with the very features that makes us human, while our being created in God’s image is reduced, and so is our ability to absorb the Good News.
“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”
What does this mean for you and me?
The harvest is past. This means that no more revelations are in the offing. We have heard and experienced all the possible Good News that was available. Now with the harvest past, and the summer ended, preaching has become difficult. The ears that are capable to hear, are shut, our sermons fail to reach the intended targets: the summer of solace and security for gospel proclamation, has come to an end, and, by and large, salvation is no longer possible, humanly speaking.
For the church this new situation means securing what has been learned, throwing overboard denominational structures, in the process, negating theological, that is human devised doctrines, while emotionally, spiritually, yes, also physically, preparing for the Parousia, the ‘sudden and unexpected appearance of the Lord in all his glory’.
“The harvest is past, the summer has ended, and we are not saved.”
Call it the warning before the door closes, the door to salvation. The 10 tribes of Israel, refusing to repent, disappeared from the world scene. We, as the human race, have remade God’s creation in our image, have poisoned every cubic millimeter on earth, water and air, have made sane life, have made obedient life, impossible.
Pray for Parousia. Now.
Is my analysis correct? Remember that Jesus comes as ‘the thief in the night’!