Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 9

We all are ‘Covenanters’.

Strong claim! You a covenanter? I a covenanter? Yes, everyone who is alive is bound by the covenant God made with the human race. Of course most of us don’t even know this, just as billions in the world have no clue that the sign of the rainbow means that God will never again be the cause of a global disaster that played havoc with all that was alive, as he did with the flood in Noah’s time. So what is that covenant claim all about?

Let’s retrace our steps a few thousand years, paraphrasing in many aspects Frederick Buechner’s book: Telling the Truth. The scene is the area of present-day Israel, or, as it was called in those days, Canaan. Picture a woman, pushing 91. She is laughing. She is laughing because she has just been told by an angel that she is going to have a baby, she who never had had a child before, was barren, could not get children ever according to the best medical information.

Today you may have heard about that woman in Romania who had a child at age 61 thanks to the products of modern technology. But here it’s the natural way: through husband- wife intercourse. That’s the miracle, and to her it sounds unbelievable.  Even though it was God’s angel who told her, she can’t control herself and her husband can’t control himself either. He keeps a straight face a few seconds longer, but he ends up cracking up, too. They are laughing at the idea that their baby will be born in a nursing home: yes, a really appropriate name this time, nursing a baby there. They are laughing because the angel not only seems to believe it but seems to expect them to believe it too. They are laughing because laughter is better than crying and may not be all that much different. They are laughing because if by some crazy chance it might just happen to be true, then they really would have something to laugh about.

Abraham, so goes one account, laughed until he fell on his face. And Sarah? She hid behind the door of the tent. Actually it was her laughter that got them all going.

According to Genesis, the Bible book which records this story, God then interrupted and asked about Sarah’s laughter. Sarah was scared stiff and denied the whole thing. But God insisted, “No, but you did laugh,” and, of course, he was right.

The most interesting part of it all was that God, far from getting angry at them for laughing, told them that when the baby was born, he wanted them to name him Isaac, which in Hebrew means ‘laughter.’ So you can say that God not only tolerated their laughter, but blessed it, and, in a sense, joined in, which makes it a very special laughter indeed: God and humanity laughing together, sharing a glorious joke in which we all are involved.

What is all this laughter about? The laughter is about the Covenant. Some 25 years earlier, when Abraham was 75 years old and Sarah, his wife, a mature 65, barren and thus childless, they were both living in Mesopotamia, the present Iraq.

God, out of the blue, called Abraham and said, “Abraham, I have something special in store for you. You see the world around you? People are doing well. They are growing rich and comfortable and somehow this causes them to forget me and go their own way. I want you to be different and treasure my way and I want you to leave your family and friends and cozy position and go to a country where I will make a great nation out of you, even though you have no son as yet. I will make your name great and will bless those who bless you and all people on earth will be blessed through you.” All people! That includes you and me!

God, in other words, made a contract with Abraham, a Covenant. Remember, he then was 75 years old, Sarah 65, and incapable of having children. Even for those days, when people did live long, this was a pretty advanced age for child bearing. And, I’m sure, Abraham figured that, once he had settled in Canaan, the present day Israel, matters would soon fall into place and his heir would come along.

But God’s time-scale is different to ours. As a matter of fact God has no time-scale: he is beyond time. So the years rolled by until finally, when Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah 90, 25 long years after God called them, the angel arrived with his amazing announcement. Then they laughed. They were going to have a baby after all. The stranger who appeared at the door turned out to be not a man who sold angel food-cake mixes, but a genuine angel. Who could have possibly expected such news from a man who talked and moved like a mere mortal, and yet they knew him to be a personal messenger from Him in heaven? It all happened so handily, even hilariously. What could they do but laugh at the craziness of it all. So they laughed until tears ran down their cheeks.

And thus the child born under the Covenant God made with Abraham is called laughter. And because we are all part of that covenant, we too are children of laughter. I think the joke is on us.

God chose us, the human race. He even made us in His image. Yes, that means we look like God. No wonder we often act like God too, but that’s another matter. I don’t know about you, but I do know that God made a pretty foolish choice to include me as a child of the Covenant, because more often than not I break that covenant.

What happens when one party breaks the covenant? Marriage, of course, is a covenant. Many know the heart sore resulting from divorce, and the suffering of children when parents separate. What happens when we split with God? The result is environmental chaos, seas depleted, forests devastated, mountain mined, prairies ploughed under, species disappearing. Yet through this all, through all this evil, God speeds up his coming, and the arrival of the Kingdom.

In Abraham God chose the Jewish people. Why them? Why not the sophisticated Greeks, or the clever Egyptians, or the dominating Romans? I think he chose the Israelites because, as somebody has said, they are just like everybody else, except more so – more religious than anybody religious, and when they are secular, being secular as if they invented the concept. What applies to the Israelites then, and the Jewish people now, certainly applies to contemporary church people as well, I am sure, and actually to the entire human race, where foolishness, so evident in the squandering of our resources, is the ultimate hallmark of humanity.

Actually, a closer look at the Christian Religion it self, reveals it also to be a ridiculous affair. The Bible tells is about a king who tramps around the country side with a bunch of uneducated fishermen as his bodyguards. The Prince of Peace, as he calls himself, looks more like a Prince of Fools, who, in spite of his miraculous powers, is not taken seriously at all, and ends up being hanged as a common criminal.

Today it’s no wonder that people find Christianity a laughing matter. I can well see their point. Just listen to these lines taken from Luke 6: “Blessed are you when you are poor.” Tell me, do you want to be poor? “Blessed are you when you weep.” Who wants to be unhappy for Pete’s sake? “Blessed are you when people hate you.” Well, don’t we all want to be liked and respected?

Yet, there is comedy in all this. Comedy is being different. We laugh not at the usual. What is common place is not funny. Says one text book for aspiring reporters: “If a dog bites a person, that’s not news: if a person bites a dog that must be reported because such an event provokes laughter.”

God makes those people part of the Covenant who are not afraid to stand for justice, justice in creation, justice in the nation, who place communal interests above personal desires, all for the coming of the Kingdom. There we have that Kingdom idea again, the dominating factor in history. God does not want people who, in the eyes of the establishment, do the commonly accepted thing. God wants atypical people, people like Abraham who went out on a limb, leaving friends and relatives, on a promise to become a father of a great nation. And He wants people like us, those who too often squander his creation, who too often act selfishly in too many ways, who too often live as if there is no God, but who yet struggle to do the right thing, even though too often it amounts to little.

So what really is the significance of this Covenant?

More about that in the next chapter.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 8

How can we live holy and godly lives?

The Apostle Peter (2 Peter 3:11) urges us to “live holy and godly lives’. I connect this admonition to an old-fashioned concept: the Covenant, which my dictionary defines it as “An agreement, usually formal, between two or more persons, to do or not to do something specified.”

The most everyday form of covenant is a marriage, where two persons agree to do something specified, in this case, to keep troth, to remain faithful to each other, whatever the circumstances.

Believe it or not, but every living creature, both human and animal in the world are part of God’s covenant, something we hardly ever pay attention to. Since the concept is so seldom explored, yet fundamental to our relationships to all global creatures, I will explore this quite extensively, devoting the next three chapters to this special relationship.

The idea of Covenant has intrigued for a long time. As a youth I often heard the word. My parents called themselves ‘Covenant Children’. I grew up in the Netherlands when, during the war 1940-45, within the Reformed Churches a serious theological dispute erupted concerning the Covenant and Baptism. This ecclesiastical controversy was so severe that families split, congregations were torn apart, and brand new denominations emerged. I had a first-class seat in all this, as in the Christian College I attended, the sons and daughters of the ministers most intimately involved in this hair splitting, were my classmates. This experience gave me an early taste of religious intolerance when teenage boys refused to be exposed to the prayer of teachers who attended the church whose synod had not approved of the actions of the dissidents. I found that nothing is more vicious than Christian intolerance.

In my time Covenant applied only to baptism, and thus was a concern to church-goers only. I remember that in my church, whenever a child received that sacrament, we would automatically sing after the ceremony Psalm 105: “Jehovah’s truth will stand forever. His covenant bonds he will not sever… The Covenant made in days of old, with Abraham he does uphold.” That covenant had a meaning beyond generational significance never entered into the picture.

Yet, although the Covenant is the key to understand both God and His Kingdom, the concept itself is seldom explored. It reveals some of God’s characteristics that the church hardly ever points out. Since understanding the Covenant is vital to understanding the church, some elaboration is need, of which two of the most striking are the care God has for the entire creation, and the great sense of humor God has.

First it is significant how God expresses his utmost love for all his creatures. Immediately after the flood, when Noah and his family and all the animals had emerged from the Ark, God made a solemn declaration, (Genesis 9:9-11), “I will establish my covenant with you, and with your descendants after you – which means the entire human race – and with every living creature that was with you – every living creature on earth, the birds the livestock and all the animals.”  The prophet Hosea picks this up in Hosea 2:18-20, where the Bible says, “On that day I will make a covenant for them, with the beast of the field and the birds of the air, and the creatures that move along the ground.” These passages show that God’s covenant is all-encompassing, and will find its full expression in the Kingdom to come, because Covenant and Kingdom are two sides of the same coin.

That God has a real sense of humor is not a trait that the church has discovered. If ever it does, the church might become a more saleable commodity. Perhaps I should call this chapter “The Comedy of the Covenant.” Why? God made a covenant with Abraham and the first child born under the Covenant God made with Abraham, is called “Laughter.” Laughter sets the stage of the Covenant. It means that we, as children of the Covenant, are also children of Laughter.

And we have a lot to laugh about. Suppose that Queen Elizabeth, reputedly one of the richest women in the world, worth perhaps 20 billion dollars, would tell your extended family, all 20 of them, including spouses, children, and grandchildren: “I will have a contract made up, a Covenant. All my possessions, my castles, my land holdings, my stocks, shares, and crown jewels, everything I own, I will share with you. One condition I will make however, you must also share all that you own with me.”

Not a bad deal, we would say and we would be utterly foolish not to take her up on it; because suddenly each one of us would have a net worth of $1 billion. In addition, we all would be princesses and princes and wherever we went we would travel free and others would pay our hotel bills and meals.

This unlikely situation would certainly be a cause of great merriment and laughter.

Well, that is the Comedy of the Covenant. And it is no fiction but reality. God made such a contract with us, with all of us. He first made it with Noah, extended it through Abraham twice, then with Moses, David, and finally renewed and sealed it in Jesus Christ. In this contract with us God promised to share with us, as rightful heirs, as his daughters and sons, this whole universe, the entire creation, the gold it contains, the diamonds, the lakes and rivers and sea front, the
mountains and meadows, the houses and forests, the birds and the animals: all that the world contains, a gift much more valuable than the Royal $1 Billion. And in addition, things the Queen cannot give: perpetual peace of mind, eternal life amidst loving people, a life without disease or death, no dead lines, only life lines to pursue. The only condition on our part is that “We do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with the God Creator (Micah 6:8).” Those conditions also are comprehensive, they include doing justice to animals, treat them with respect. That today it becomes more and more dangerous to eat meat has everything to do with the way we handle animals. That we have Global Warming has everything to do with the way we do injustice to the air, the soil and the water on which our lives depend; showing mercy means to help those who need help, who are destitute and hungry; walking humbly with our God means living in awe of his greatness as revealed in creation. Doing all that – something Jesus calls an easy burden – means keeping our part of the Covenant and simultaneously preparing ourselves for the Kingdom to come.

In other words, keeping God’s Covenant is a sort of bonding, a welding together of lives to each other and to all living matter, a promise to be faithful no matter what comes, just as a marriage, which, ideally, is a life time arrangement between two persons to stay together, whatever comes, to share the good and not so good times, in riches and in poverty, till death part them.

Curiously, the word ‘Religion’ also means ‘binding together.’ Thus, in essence, Covenant and Religion, are one and the same thing, and both find their fulfillment in The Kingdom.

And is Religion like a comedy? You must be kidding! It’s more like a tragedy the way we witness it. The religion we usually experience is solemn and serious, a matter of death and sickness more than life and enjoyment.
Yet, both Covenant and Religion are like a comedy.

More about that in the next chapter.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 7

Who’s in Charge?  (continued)

There is a curious, but nevertheless quite convincing passage in Matthew 4: 8 – 11 that shows conclusively that we, for now, live under the reign of Satan. Yes, that accounts for such things as our car culture, with a million deaths each year, and 20 million injured, yes that accounts for… the list is endless.

Here’s what the Bible tells us. I supply the comments.

Then the Devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their magnificence. Satan tells Jesus: “All this, all these kingdoms, all this splendor, I will give you if you bow down and worship me.”
Somehow Satan made to pass before the eyes of Jesus a gorgeous and impressive scene: not just the poor lands of Palestine, but the glorious highlights of Rome, the wonders of Greece, the treasures of Persia, the pyramids of Egypt, the Maya Empire in Mexico, the miracles of the Incas, the architectural treasures in China and Java, the Far East with its beautiful temples, St Peter’s dome yet to be built.
Then the Devil says: “All these things will I give to you, if you will fall down and worship me.”
The fact is that Satan’s claim is based upon certain unquestionable facts: the kingdoms of the entire world have become largely under Devilish control. They were then and are now submissive to his will, obedient to his laws, captive to his bidding.
Going back in history, we now know that the Inca and the Maya civilizations offered children to their gods. We know that the Roman crucified Christians and used them in the arenas as prey for the wild animals. We learned from the Bible that the Greeks scorned the approach of Paul and ridiculed his claim to resurrection. And today it is no different. Recent history points to a Stalin, a Hitler, the holocaust, the cruelties of the Khmer Rouge, each causing the death of millions.  General Romeo Dallaire aptly called his book: Shake hands with the Devil, the failure of humanity in Rwanda.
Satan’s influence is not confined to wars: Global Warming is part of that too, so are the millions felled by cancer. Satan, as Jesus acknowledged – later calling him ‘the Prince of this world’ – has, at this point, the upper hand. The fact of his sway is indeed undisputed. He was in charge in Jesus’ world and he is today, exercising authority over all who are in darkness.

Frankly it pays to be in league with the devil. He constantly is posting a rich reward to those who serve him. If Judas desires 30 pieces of silver, the devil will find them for him, on certain conditions, of course. Wealth, fame, power, position, all are in the gift of the devil.
And so, in effect, Satan declared to Jesus that whether the people knew it or not, they were at the Devil’s bidding, that he, undisputedly, was the Prince of this world. Just imagine, he offered Jesus the whole of the kingdoms, the glory of them. Under one condition, if only Jesus would but render homage to him, then he would receive the entire world as his gift. Satan said that most others had already submitted to his direction to gain some imagined advantage, and now he boldly suggested to Jesus that he should do the same.

Believe it or not: the temptation meant more to Jesus than even Satan in the deepest reaches of his subtlety could possibly understand. It was impossible for Satan to fathom the current and future nature of Jesus’ terrible suffering. Christ, of course, knew that his father had assured him these kingdoms, but he also knew the coming of unutterable agony and immeasurable darkness: the cross and the grave, his descent into hell. The fierceness of Satan proposal lay in the suggestion that all the grandeur of these possessions might yet belong to Jesus without going through the pathway of shame and suffering and death.
Not that Jesus entertained or meditated for a single moment the possibility of yielding to the foe, but the Christ understood the very core of its meaning and grasped even as the Great Tempter could not, the infinite cost at which he was yet to possess the world.
Of course, Jesus answer was short and to the point: “Get lost.” It was a command.

And that’s exactly what Satan did, after hearing that there is only way to go: worship the Lord Creator and serve him.
To worship is always to serve. The enemy did not ask for service, only worship. Christ knew that worship and service go hand in hand. Had he worshiped Satan, he also would have been in his service, as the first Adam found when he was deceived.
Satan promised kingdoms. Kingdoms have a degree of glory and grandiosity. Obama has Airforce 1 and the White House and Camp Davis.  But being a politician always means lying and deceit. Worldly affairs are always permeated with evil. We know that only too well.

What Christ promises is not kingdoms in the plural, but Kingdom in the singular. Says Revelation 11: “The kingdoms of the world have become the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever.”
Jesus chose to move toward the establishment of one Kingdom and one throne. The devil showed the Master the kingdoms, tribes, divisions, containing the elements of conflicts and break-ups. Jesus refused them. He did not desire the kingdoms. He had come for the Kingdom with a capital K. He refused the tarnished glory of a wrecked ideal and chose the radiant splendor of the kingdom to come, the New Creation, even though the pathway to the goal was the pathway of the cross.

That’s all part of God’s master-plan. The Kingdom concept dominates all the world’s happenings. While we worry about job security, about money and the day-to-day business to keep body and soul together, the invisible kingdom of God is coming into its own, at first slowly but surely, and now with increasing tempo. It will find its true formation in the end-times, which are fast approaching, when all separate threads of the world’s happenings will unite to culminate in the Closing act when the Lord will assemble these separate strands to compose his Kingdom to come.

That Kingdom has always been present in the background of events straight through all the brokenness and schisms of history. Soon, in these Last of Days, the Kingdom will be revealed for all to see as the dominating reality. In the End Times, now imminent, on the Day of all days, when Jesus Christ will be revealed as the Lord of Lords and King of Kings, He will forever banish all powers that have had a destructive and negative impact on his creation. Paul speaks of that when he, in Ephesians 1:9-10 writes, “He made known to us the mystery of his will according to his good pleasure which he purposed in Christ to be put into effect when the times have reached their fulfillment – to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.”

The entire chain of human events, from its very beginning until now has only one purpose: the coming of the Kingdom. Our life’s goal is not that we personally may enjoy God forever and our soul be saved, but the real purpose of our existence lies only therein that we be part and parcel of the greater context of the Kingdom of God in which all things in heaven and on earth be under the aegis of Jesus, the Christ, who lives and reigns forever.

It is he who through his life and death has restored the Kingdom and has reunited all things under his rule, which is universal and cosmic.

We don’t hear too much in the church about the kingdom to come or of the New Creation, which Revelation describes as ‘the kingdom of the world’, meaning the entire cosmos.

I repeat: John 3:16 says: “God loved the cosmos so much that he gave his only Son to redeem it.” Redeem means ‘to buy back.’ Jesus bought back the entire cosmos, the land on which we live, the rivers and seas on which we sail, the air in which we fly, together with all that lives and moves and has its being. All the splendor of material things shall, under the perfect reign of Christ, be beautified and perfected. In the final victory, the whole creation, which to-day groans in agony under the rule of Satan – who is out to destroy God’s creation and we are often willing helpers there -will be redeemed, put aright, restored to its original beauty.

That’s what the Kingdom is all about. There’s where history is leading to. Jesus came to restore creation. As humans, we were created to help in that goal. God made us so that we might act in co-operation with Jesus for the fulfillment of God’s divine purposes.
As I have shown, at this time not God, but Satan is in charge of this world. This is the situation now more than ever, so evident in a world where troubles multiply and sin becomes more flagrant.
We know that Jesus is the ultimate owner. We know that he has redeemed the world, that is, has bought it back.
How should we view today’s situation? Compare it to a real estate transaction, where a property is bought by making an offer, and when all the conditions have been met, the deal is final with a possession date at a later time. That’s how I see the world at this point. Jesus, on Calvary, fulfilled all obligations, making the sale irrevocable. He bought it for us and paid for it, but we can not yet move in. That will come when Jesus returns. In the meantime Satan still occupies the house of creation and tries to afflict as much damage as possible, because he knows his time will soon be up soon.

How then shall we live in that interval? Peter gives the answer: “because the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the Day of God and speed its coming.” (2 Peter 3:12)

Why can we live holy and godly lives? More about that in the next chapter.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 6

Who really is in charge of this world?

I remember singing a song “He’s got the whole world in His hand”, the He being God, of course. Well, to me the statement there sounds no longer true. There simply is too much evidence around us and also in the Bible that takes issue with this claim. If God is no longer calling the tune here, then this has tremendous implications for the church, which brings me to a preliminary thought on the church, a very tentative one, one that came to me while I was stimulating my brain by running outside.

Jesus once made a reference to wine. He himself loved wine, as was evident from his first public miracle where he turned water into Israel’s national drink, wine of the highest quality. His enemies even called him a ‘wine-bibber’, probably somewhat justified.

Jesus stated that new wine should be stored in new wineskins rather than re-use the old ones. He said in Matthew 9:17 that when we store new wine in old skins, they burst. The same is true for bringing new ideas to a church that is stuck in the old format: it just won’t work. The church is too rigid to accommodate radical ideas.

We have a striking precedent there in  what happened at and after Pentecost in Jerusalem, just after Jesus had gone to heaven. Then a radically different Christian church emerged, abolishing circumcisions, changing the date of worship from Saturday to Sunday, from the 7^th day to the first day of the week, the day of Jesus’ resurrection. It also abandoned the rigidity of the law with the flexibility of freedom.

So, when Jesus talks about new wine in new containers, he really means is that new ideas also need new structures. By suggesting this already so early in my writing, could well mean that this will have significance for my theme The Church in Flux later on.

Something also struck me when we were reciting the Lord’s Prayer in church. We often do this as a matter of routine, mindlessly almost. When we say that second line: ‘Hallowed by Thy name’, my bet is that no more that one in a hundred – I am being optimistic – realizes what these words mean for today. God’s first recorded words in Genesis 1 and 2 were His Creation Words, where He spoke and things came to be, created ‘in His name.’  This makes everything that God did holy. Yes, that means that creation is holy, something usually not reflected in our daily life.

This is confirmed by what follows in the prayer Jesus taught us: “Thy Kingdom Come.”

You know what that line is? It is a prayer for the speedy arrival of the New Creation. If we take this prayer as its face value, and if we really want to follow Jesus in this, should all our actions, our entire life-style not reflect this prayer? As a matter of fact, the bible shows on every page that the meaning of creation can be traced directly to the concept of Kingdom, to the idea that all our actions must be geared toward its coming. That’s why Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount – Matthew 6:33 – urges all believers to “Seek first the Kingdom and its righteousness and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Radical statements from Jesus. He unambiguously states that our first duty in life is to seek the welfare of creation, and when we do that, when we make that our life’s motto, then we will never want for anything.

I again say: that Kingdom is not the instituted church but God’s creation, God’s beautiful work of art. Jesus’ command to ‘Seek the Kingdom’ means that we must get up in the morning with the overriding desire to improve the creation God so graciously has given us. And when we go to bed at night we must confess to God that we have miserably failed to do that, probably have made matters worse, have not treated this earth as God’s precious possession and have not promoted its well-being. Yet, that is what “seeking the Kingdom” means, the pursuit of which is our foremost task in life.

So here again, if I am correct in my reasoning, we have to ask the question whether the church even can change its course so that in all its proclamation and direct action, the emphasis is on The Kingdom.

The other side of the coin is that when we fail to keep the Kingdom in mind or worse actively do harm to the Kingdom, we sin.

There are sins of commission and sins of omission. Not effectively seeking the welfare of Creation, God’s kingdom, is a sin of omission. Doing damage to creation is a sin of commission, something that is increasingly going to haunt us, as sin often carries it own punishment. Rather than giving God the honor due to his name- which literally means that we must love creation as He loved it – in claiming that we can do to the earth as we please, we have made ourselves equal to God and with that act we have effectively cut off communion with God. That is the real cause of our alienation from the divine. We have cut ourselves loose from God, and, by our actions, are refusing to acknowledge God as the creator and creation as His kingdom.

I want to go even further: in essence we have destroyed the Kingdom.  Genesis 3:17 tells the sorry story that the ground is cursed because of our actions. Paul reiterates this in Romans 8:20 when he says that creation has been subjected to human stupidity, that’s why a curse has descended upon the earth.

That our actions make no sense is certainly evident from our economic priorities, where we demand from creation the impossible task to supply us with all our wants, which are, of course, infinite while, if we would stop and think, we would realize that we must strive for such economic conditions that the needs of all people in the world can be met on a sustainable basis. That this is not happening – and the result is Global Warming, Peak Oil and loss of species – suggest all too clearly that God has let the human race do its thing, has surrendered his kingdom – temporarily at least – to the powers of evil, allowing humanity to pursue its own course, away from God and away from Shalom. That too is something the church has failed to recognize.

This means that the world now is in the power of demons. The kingdom is in the clutches of Satan. He is in charge of this world.

The protestant theologian and author of many books, Jacques Ellul, former professor of law in Bordeaux France, laments in his Hope in Time of Abandonment: “It is my belief that we have entered upon an age of abandonment, that God has turned away from us and is leaving us to our fate. I am sure, of course, that he has not turned away from all, that is he is perhaps in the life of an individual. But it is from history, our societies, our cultures, our science, and our politics that God is absent. He is keeping quiet, and has shut himself up in his silence and his night.”

He continues to list all the arguments against this view – the usual quotes from the Bible, true in David’s time, but now no longer valid as Ellul continues: “God has indeed turned away, and that his word as such is no longer spoken…. It is not the unbelievers who are keeping God away. It is, on the one hand, a matter of structures. On the other hand is it the responsibility of Christians and of the Church, who do not know how to be what God expects of them.” Ellul goes as far as saying that the church no longer understands the true situation in the world, and the message it brings carries no longer any power.

And here we come to a crucial point. What then should the church do and what should be their message? The church often provides the easy answers, because it doesn’t want controversy, doesn’t want to upset people and doesn’t really want to confront reality. Pointing to Psalm 24, the preachers proclaim: “Of course God is in charge. Doesn’t it say there that ‘The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it”? The Gospel ministers don’t want it any other way, because then they have to change their triumphant heaven-bound message to a plaintive cry of ‘How long O Lord, when will you return?’ Then they have to surrender their claim of certainty to a more hesitant approach, realizing that what they proclaim from the pulpit is open to question, especially because of the church’s failure to see the significance of the Kingdom.

I don’t dispute that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”, as other Psalms also readily admit. However – and here is something I have never heard in a sermon – “If the cosmos is really in God’s hand, why does it say in John 3:16 that God sacrificed his Son, his one and only Son, to buy it back?” The word ‘redeem’ means ‘to buy back’! We can only buy something back, if we first have sold it.

And that’s exactly what we did. The original sin in Paradise is that God gave the earth to Adam and Eve, who then became not stewards, not  caretakers but owners. That’s why Psalm 115:16 quite plainly says that “The heavens belong to the Lord, and the earth he has given to the human race.” They, in turn, transferred title to Satan.

 More about this in the next chapter.

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 5

When will Christ return? Finally an approximate date. 

So far I have painted a very bleak picture for the future. I haven’t gone into any gruesome details, but it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to visualize that an 80 percent reduction in the world’s population in one generation will not be a peaceful process. But the Lord is gracious. In Matthew 24 verse 22 He makes a promise. Here’s what he says: “If those days have not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect those days will be shortened.”

And that is what this chapter is all about. And, yes, it involves Primary Productivity, rapidly speeding up because of economic development in China and India, and continued growth in the rest of the world, in spite of a recession. The vast rainforests in Cambodia, Mongolia and Indonesia are being stripped to feed the building booms there, while in Brazil and Argentina they are cut down to supply China with soy beans.
Primary Productivity now stands between 40 and 45, meaning that almost half of the world’s basic energy vested in plants, trees, animals, has been consumed for the benefit of the human race, but in such a way that once it is used, it cannot be restored. Depleted oceans, soil degradation, disappeared species, cannot be re-created by human technology. Matthew 24 very fittingly speaks about ‘the abomination that causes desolation’, and notes ‘let the reader understand’, meaning that the significance of this event can only be grasped when it actually occurs. We now can begin to detect what this abomination referred to here means: it concerns Global Warming, a world-wide event that will cause tremendous upheaval everywhere.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) foresees “global mean temperature changes greater than 4°C above 1990-2000 levels”. At this point there’s nothing we can do to prevent the loss of ecosystems, the melting of glaciers and the disintegration of major ice sheets. The most recent report also mentions that global food production is very likely to decrease when temperatures rise more than 3°C. And it doesn’t stop there. The IPCC also finds that, above three degrees of warming, the world’s vegetation will become “a net source of carbon”. This is just one of the climate feedbacks triggered by a high level of warming. Four degrees might take us rapidly to five or six: the end – for humans – of just about everything. These are official U.N. reports, which we should take seriously, but we don’t.

Revelation, that last bible book, also offers an explanation of this process. There in Chapter 11:2 it says that “they will trample on the Holy City – God’s beloved cosmos, the world we live in – for 42 months.” “They” are we, the citizens of the Western world, the so-called Christian part of the Globe. Revelation 13:5 repeats that claim: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise authority for 42 months.”

Just a few words now about this last text, because in the next chapter I will expand on the role of the Beast. Satan, God’s great Adversary, is the Beast whose aim has been from the beginning – starting in Eden – to destroy God’s beloved cosmos. (John 3:16). He’s been hitting God where it hurts, and we have been his willing allies, sorry to say.
There is significance in the number of 42 months, which is 3.5 years, exactly half of that perfect number ‘7’.
Allow me a brief detour by means of a riddle, illustrating the nature of exponential growth. A lily pond contains a single leaf. Each day the number of leaves doubles – two leaves the second day, four the third, eight the four, and so on. “If the pond is full on the thirtieth day,” the question goes, “at what point is it half full?” Answer: “On the twenty-ninth day.”
Back to two things: that 3.5 year period and Primary Productivity.
It is my contention that we are quite close to the end of that 3.5 year mark, judging by the Primary Productivity tally, which now is somewhere between 40 and 45 percent. The 50 percent threshold will coincide with the end of the 3.5 years and the point in time where the Lord returns. This Day is rapidly approaching, due to the scramble for more oil to keep our economic system lubricated, and especially the increasing pace of Global Warming which will greatly speed up environmental destruction. We now are very close to being half- way to total chaos, just as 3.5 years is halfway to 7, the number of fullness.
Based on the foregoing – I arrived at this after a period of intense prayer for an answer – I believe that the Lord will not return on Day 30, but on Day 29, when, seemingly, the glass is still half full, and the world is still full of hope, while politicians will play down that danger. Of course nobody has the full range of accurate data to being able to perfectly calculate the exact point when this ‘half-way’ mark is reached: only God knows, who only can read the true state of his beloved cosmos.
At that moment the trumpet will sound and all will be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of the eye. The words of the apostle Peter come to mind: “Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day – but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.” (The Message: 2 Peter 3.)
What constitutes a Holy Life? Each of us must answer that question. That it has something to do with “LIFE”, our daily doings, our activities in God’s creation, is beyond question. This makes me think of Jesus’ words in Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect.” The Greek word there is ‘teleioos,’ which is best translated as ‘holistic,’ derived from ‘telos’, which suggests that we, in all we do, must keep the End – Telos- in mind, our final destination, the New Earth. Living “A Holy Life” means having a ‘holistic’ existence, indicating that we must live as much as possible so, that when the Lord returns and heralds in the New Creation, we will make this transition smoothly, without thinking twice what to do, instantly ready to adjust, because we then simply continue to live perfectly holistic, something we now try to do falteringly: recycling, reducing, reusing, living ecologically responsible, leaving few carbon foot prints.

And here I come back to ‘The Church In Flux.’ I have shown, perhaps not beyond the shadow of doubt, but with a degree of accuracy I believe, that the Day of the Lord is nigh, that we live in New Times, that the old no longer holds, that we are in the End Stretch.

What does all this mean for the church, that central question, which needs answering? Before I begin to deal with that directly, something else has to be explored: “Who is in charge of this world?”

THE CHURCH IN FLUX

Chapter 4

When does Christ return? Continued.

 Jesus is taken his time in coming back. No wonder that after 2000 years of waiting for him people have become tired and, actually, influenced by the church’s teaching of a heaven-bound message, have lost their desire for a New Creation. Now rapture is all the rage. That means that the church has totally switched direction, because, when the Apostles’ Creed was formulated, it clearly stated that “We believe in the resurrection of the Body and the Life Everlasting.”

Now it finally looks that Jesus’ return is imminent, and, as you may have guessed by now, it has something to do with Primary Productivity and its rapid decline. So why has Primary Productivity decreased so quickly? It’s the Oil we use that is causing this.

Oil is Primary Productivity stored as hydrocarbons, a trust fund of sorts, built up over many millions of years. However we have been robbing both capital and interest from that trust fund, to the point where we now can spot “The End of Oil” looming with drastic consequences for us, the human race, because lack of oil also means lack of food, and lack of food means lack of life.
Consider the following. In 1960 the expansion of the supply of unfarmed, arable lands came to an end. In spite of that, grain yields tripled. Ever since we ran out of land, food has become oil. Every single calorie we eat is backed by about ten calories of oil. That figure does not include the fuel used in transporting the food from the factory floor to the store, or the gasoline we burn by us driving to buy it. Dr. Harriet Friedman writes that one kilogram of asparagus sent from Chile to New York takes 73 kg of fuel energy and adds 4.7 kg of carbon dioxide to the air we breathe in. The same is true for out-of-season strawberries and other food items. In general the food-miles average of the supermarket items is more than 5,000 times greater than the same items bought in the farmer’s market. Compare this to 1940 when the average farm produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil energy it used. 

That’s why the End of Oil means also The End of Food. Throw in a bucket of Climate Change, which, knowing the human psyche, will only get worse, and the potential for catastrophes are so big that they remind me of the seven angels in Revelation 8.
The ‘End of Oil’ will mean that civilization as we know comes to an end. This is not the wacky forecast of a religious nut, but the conclusion of people in responsible positions.
Matthew R. Simmons, is one of them. He has written: “The situation (of peak oil) is desperate. It is past time. As I have said, the experts and politicians have no Plan B to fall back on. If energy peaks, particularly while 5 of the world’s 6.5 billion people have little or no use of modern energy, it will be a tremendous jolt to our economic well-being and to our health – greater than anyone could ever imagine.”
When asked if there is a solution, Simmons responded: “I don’t think there is one. The solution is to pray. Under the best of circumstances, if all prayers are answered there will be no crisis for maybe two years. After that it’s a certainty.”
The harsh truth is that for the foreseeable future there are no true alternatives to oil. The sun shines only a certain numbers of hours in a year and we can’t command the wind to blow when power is needed. I know. I have both power sources and still need the ‘grid.’
Consider energy history. When wood ran out, some 400 years ago, coal came on line. When coal proved to be too polluting, oil and natural gas were available. Now, what do we do? Rely mainly on Natural gas of which the world still has plenty, but all in very remote locations, such as Siberia or Australia? It will take trillions of dollars to feed the North American market with adequate supply, assuming there is plenty of it left.
Once we pass the oil production peak, a return to a medieval style of existence looks a frightening possibility. It will mean a greatly reduced human population. Thanks to oil, in my lifetime, the world’s population has more than tripled from 2 billion to 6.5 billion. As late as 1945 my maternal grandfather had no electricity on his small farm. He managed with one horse and one help. Then people were mentally and physically equipped to cope with little. These skills we have lost. In addition much of the earth has been spoiled, unfit for intensive, organic, agriculture. The End of Oil may mean a reduction in the world’s population to perhaps 1 billion. Imagine the hardship.
Now we have a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure powered almost exclusively by fossil-fuels. Cars, trucks, roads, boats, docks, airplanes, airports, hospitals, schools, farms manufacturing plants, food processing centers, water treatment plants – all run on fossil fuels. We have heat at the touch of a switch, and cooling is just as easy. All plastics, pesticides, and fertilizers are derived from that source as well.
The End of Oil means the End of growth, on which our economy depends.

What we have in abundance is debt: corporate debt, government debt, and consumer debt, all at record levels. In order to finance debt, we need economic growth. Economic growth requires a constantly increasing consumption of consumer goods – most of which are made from plastic, which comes from petroleum (oil) and are delivered by trucks, which consume diesel fuel (oil). Even a truly successful conservation program would require us to drastically cut our consumption of consumer goods, which would also stop economic growth. Conservation would cause indebted corporations, governments, and individuals to slide towards bankruptcy. Banks would call in outstanding debts, businesses would close, government services would cease, and people would lose their jobs. This is already happening.

During the Dirty Thirties many people had relatives in the country, where food, at least, was plentiful. That option is gone. Even farmers don’t grow their own food anymore.
I don’t have to be a prophet to conclude that without an abundant supply of cheap energy, transportation systems will break down. Electrical grids will collapse. Unemployment levels will skyrocket. Consumer goods will only be available to the super-rich. Food and water will become desperately sought after commodities. Riots and urban uprisings will become common.
The words in a recent Pentagon Report come to mind: “Every time when there is a choice between starving and raiding, humans will choose to raid.” Applied to the USA as a whole, it points to a World War for Oil, with the Middle East as the centre. Expect the US Army to expand, and perhaps re-institute the draft, in order to be able to conquer Saudi Arabia, the world’s treasure chest. War leads to more destruction, and a further rapid decline in Primary Productivity. Wars are always wasteful. The U.S. army requires 400,000 barrels of oil a day to maintain its troops in Iraq.
Yes, oil, the End of Oil, even a reduced supply of this vital fuel – and we all know that oil is a finite product – will cause tremendous disruption in our energy-dependent world. Even using less fuel has dangerous consequences. Dr James Lovelock makes in interesting remark in the introduction to this book The Revenge of Gaia. Here’s what he writes: “Curiously, smoke and dust pollution reduces global warming by reflecting sunlight back to space. This ‘global dimming’ is transient and could disappear in a few days if there were an economic downturn or a reduction in fossil fuel burning. This would leave us fully exposed to the heat of the global greenhouse. We are in a fool’s climate, accidentally kept cool by smoke, and before this century is over billions of us will die.”

So it seems that no matter what we do, we speed up the Lord’s coming, whether we curtail energy use or keep on using it. 

What does all this lead up to?

Read about it in the next chapter, where I finally come to a tentative conclusion on “When will Christ Return”?