AUGUST 30 2015
HOW ACCURATE IS REVELATION, THE LAST BIBLE BOOK?
For the last 2 months I have been translating a Dutch book on Revelation. The book’s original title is: En Voort Wentelen de Eeuwen , which I have translated as And On and On the Ages Roll. The publisher will be Eerdmans Grand Rapids, and the publication date probably Fall 2016. This is the third book I have translated from the same author: Johan Herman Bavinck, a professor of mission at the Free University of Amsterdam.
I have almost finished the English version. I have given it my utmost, doing 4 pages each day, seven days per week. With 232 pages, densely printed at 360 words per page, I have so far done more than 75,000 words out of a total of some 83,000, so I have a pretty good idea what the book is all about.
I was really struck by the accuracy of the predictions because the book itself is a vision, a view 2000 years ahead, of what basically is the situation today.
Basically the book depicts the struggle between the forces of heaven and the forces of God’s opponent who was thrown out of heaven and landed right here on earth. That scene is described in Revelation 12, and the book starts with that chapter. Read it: it’s an interesting piece, and sets the tone for the entire book. Because Satan rules the earth now, Jesus calls him “The Prince of the World.” John too in one of his letters readily says (1 John 5: 19) that Satan controls the earth. That is all too evident today.
In my blog this week I will quote a few excerpts which I found striking. Here is one paragraph that accurately describes today’s world:
“As yet the industrial complex keeps on functioning. As yet the flowers bloom, the harvests ripen, and the heavens above the earth seem peaceful, revealing nothing of the bitter battles fought there between the powers of heaven and the powers of hell. But all this is soon to end. There is a spirit of despair in the air; there is something of skittishness affecting all of nature. All human certainties seem under threat, and all facts we always have regarded as true, now are being exposed as fiction. That’s what John observes with growing amazement.”
Isn’t that striking! It accurately describes the world today, where nothing really is what it seems. I have for a long time been writing that we live in the last of days. This seems to confirm it.
Here is another quote from the book:
“In the next scenario (Rev. 15: 5 till 16: 21) the last things are set into motion. The picture John provides us with is again a succession of sad disasters. In several aspects they remind us of those that happened in Egypt during the ancient Pharaoh regime, but here they are considerably more intense and dangerous. They are of cosmic proportions and even the sun and the earth are part of all this. Pandemics produce panic in the planet’s population, deadly droughts, hellish heat devastate the crops. The culmination of the natural disasters and the pinnacle of pain are caused by an earthquake (16: 18) “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth.” The seismographs in the capitals shake wildly and record numbers beyond any ever registered. And the houses tumble, the palaces are ruined. No human technological expertise is any help. Nothing can withstand this force of nature: no nuclear bomb has this devastating power. Now an endless series of ever more frightening events rolls over the world.”
Another picture of today. So far we have seen drought and floods. As yet no earthquake but all the signs of the BIG ONE are out there. It will come, and so will a pandemic. Lancet magazine reports that some 90 percent of the world’s population suffers from one or two maladies. Indeed the stage is set for this as well.
Here is something very evident today:
“The catastrophes mentioned here all are of a cosmic nature. They affect people everywhere. Earlier we have seen how in the disastrous happenings preceding the last things, two types of distress can be detected. There are calamities that originate from above, that find their source in nature and there are those that are the result of human action. Here is only the first type mentioned. It is as if the earth, given by God as a present to humanity to be her own domain, is now rebelling, is now rising up against her tormentor. It is as if nature which for so long, for many centuries, has faithfully served humanity and provided it with all its needs, now has become recalcitrant, and full of revenge has thrown herself upon humanity. And this humanity, this so superior human race, with her atomic energy, her mighty medical system, her military prowess, and her entertainment establishment all of which made her feel so immense mighty and strong, these same men and women are now confronted, in a total humiliating fashion, with the fact that in the final analysis they amount to nothing, are a mere rag that is thrown out as useless.”
Once nature turns against us, we are helpless. That is the situation today.”
This passage reminds me of James Lovelock’s book THE REVENGE OF GAIA. That book too says that Climate Change is a ‘man-made’ curse. Revelation is totally accurate here. We are the cause of all this trouble. Creation is taking revenge for all the pain we are afflicting on her.
Gail Tverberg in her latest blog – August 26 2015- predicts that “The big thing that is happening is that the world financial system is likely to collapse. Back in 2008, the world financial system almost collapsed. This time, our chances of avoiding collapse are very slim. Without the financial system, pretty much nothing else works: the oil extraction system, the electricity delivery system, the pension system, the ability of the stock market to hold its value. The change we are encountering is similar to losing the operating system on a computer, or unplugging a refrigerator from the wall. We don’t know how fast things will unravel, but things are likely to be quite different in as short a time as a year. World financial leaders are likely to “pull out the stops,” trying to keep things together. A big part of our problem is too much debt. This is hard to fix, because reducing debt reduces demand and makes commodity prices fall further. With low prices, production of commodities is likely to fall. For example, food production using fossil fuel inputs is likely to greatly decline over time, as is oil, gas, and coal production.”
Her conclusion is that:
“We can’t say that no one warned us about the predicament we are facing. Instead, we chose not to listen. Public officials gave a further push in this direction, by channeling research funds toward distant theoretically solvable problems, instead of understanding the true nature of what we are up against. “
A few words about Gail Tverberg. She is an actuary interested in finite world issues – oil depletion, natural gas depletion, water shortages, and climate change. Her blog is called The Finite Earth.
The book I am translating continues in the exact way Gail Tverberg predicts. The human race, you and me, and basically all others, are not ready when the disaster strikes that Gail thinks will happen very soon.
Here is another excerpt of the book on Revelation. Will the human race turn to God? Will these coming disasters cause them to convert?
“There’s not a trace of confusion to be noticed. Of course people are unsure. Of course there also is a good amount of despair. But conversion? No, they cursed God, the God of the heavens! Strange, those modern men and women, who had become convinced that the concept ‘god’ did not exist anymore, all these people started to curse. They always had told themselves that they no longer believed in God, that it was a fairytale, something they had ridiculed all their lives. They had left the church in droves already long ago and had assured their neighbors that God was dead and that they, in line with the spirit of the age, had nothing to do with him anymore. On the census they had written “no church affiliation”, so how come that it was now possible that God suddenly was back, risen from the dead? How come that these educated people, so up-to-date with everything, with the latest gadgets, who never did need God, now suddenly seem to remember that he exists after all? Was there in the deepest crevices of their mind a secret notion that the meaning of life is that we always are in a conversation with him who made and even guides us? Have they understood this more profoundly than they would admit to themselves and to others? In any case, at this so critical juncture, now that the flames of defeat leap up high and start to scorch their fragile body frame, now irrepressibly the certainty arises that God is there after all. No wonder these nervous, these now so unbalanced persons, clench their tiny fists and threaten the Lord of the heavens. They wished they could aim a guided missile at him and so shoot God from his throne. They would crucify him again if they could, would cast him into the deepest black hole, dead, forever defeated. But all they can do is shout out their powerless rage against him who now so powerfully intervenes in the human endeavor of creation and construction.”
Revelation is quite clear here: no mass conversion.
Revelation also says something that concerns the Middle East, Iraq and Syria. It is there where the biblical world began, and civilization started. Is it also there
where it all will end? The Middle and Far East has four countries that possess nuclear capacity. It is a ‘powder keg’ and much more dangerous with these dangerous bombs, and even more dangerous with so many people who have nothing to lose. This next excerpt reminds me of the Middle East problems. John touches here on some problems that happened there in his time. For Scythes and Parthians read ISIS or Sunnis and Shiites.
“In the meantime the world of humanity is in motion. It is getting ready for battle. John relates it in a few small flashes. The river Euphrates dries up, opening the way for the kings of the east. The Euphrates is the borderline that separates the culture of Asia Minor from the barbarians in the East, the Scythes and the Parthians, whose masses have overrun the old (Western) world. The Euphrates is the last frontier, the last protection against chaos. Now that same Euphrates River has dried up. I imagine that this indicates that the kingdom suddenly has become vulnerable. Apparently there still are nations who have refused to submit to the authority of the tyrant. They never bothered this strongman before because then they were powerless. But now that the capital (Babylon) has been reduced to rubble, now that universal lawlessness is threatening to overwhelm the realm, now there is a real danger that they will invade the kingdom and destroy it. Again there is a real threat of war and the nations prepare for the worst.”
We really have no idea how volatile the entire world situation is. The newspapers are incapable of reporting the truth because their management is dominated by big capital and it is exactly big capital that is the anti-Christian force in this world. Its motto is ‘creative destruction’ which is better labeled as ‘creation-destruction’ because that is exactly what its main aim is, believing with the power of religion that the earth in infinite.
Jesus once wondered whether he, upon his return, would find ‘faith’ on earth. Of course there is ‘faith’ and ‘faith’. What he is referring to is ’faith in the coming of his kingdom”, the new earth that he is preparing. The book of the Revelation of John concludes with that, calling it “The New Jerusalem” which is adorned like a bride. The groom is the New Humanity, including Jesus Christ, “The Son of Man”, Humanity personified. The bride is the New Earth, and the we dding is the perfect union between the New Humanity, the Redeemed of the Lord, and the New Earth.
It is for that union we now must prepare ourselves. With the situation as it is today, where our economic situation is so fragile, there is no time to lose.