Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

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.

MY BODY.

God has given me a special item to treasure and cherish, to nurture and preserve, to love and enhance, to exercise and keep from harm, to beautify and honor: I am referring to my body. Because it is God’s direct gift to me, my body is holy.

Some Biblical Backup.                                                   

Colossians 1: 15 tells me that: The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 

Here is my unorthodox explanation of this text. In the first place: it is impossible to fully explain what this means, because nobody was present at the moment “God spoke and it came to be”, as Psalm 33: 9 casually remarks. We cannot possibly grasp this event, and so, I will only offer my thought, and my hesitant interpretation. 

To me “The Firstborn over all creation”, suggests that Jesus – not Adam and Eve – was the first human. Jesus, in the capacity of ‘being human’, created all things, as the verses 16-20 of Colossians 1 further explain:  For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. These invisible items could   perhaps explain electricity, television, Internet – the invisible telecommunication system. 

Our basic holiness is further explained in: “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own”. (1 Corinthians 6: 19). 

Back to My Body.

Through Jesus, as the first human being, in whom everything finds its origin, we too have immense power and potential. We still have that capacity, even though we are squandering our talents through pursuing selfish goals. Our bodies suffer, also because we have disregarded its holiness. Through omni-present pollution, our very existence is mortally weakened.

A few years ago, the British medical journal, estimated that the largest percentage of the global population suffers from some medical problem: indeed, world-wide health is widely compromised. Our bodies are no longer ‘holy’, that is purely perfect. I, have, by the grace of God, maintained good health, have had a lasting loving life, from birth to old age, through infancy through teenage years, through marriage till today, experiencing daily the love of my children and grandchildren and good friends. I feel God’s love daily. 

The puzzle I am trying to solve is why my wife – who I had known since childhood – suffered from dementia at least 10 years before she died. She was very intelligent, and wanted to study, but she grew up in a time of strict male/female divisions. Her older sister, when the matter was discussed, said: “She will get married anyway”. That was in time when the women, who were in the workforce, were expected to quit their jobs, and devote their lives – and bodies – to their husbands. I tend to think that this old custom has been a source of grief – mostly hidden – for many a married woman.

I now live in a senior citizen environment, where women outnumber men at least 2:1. This past week I started to participate in a gym class. There were some 15 women and only 5 men. It is interesting to speculate why women generally outlive their male spouses. I will ask some of them what they think about this inequality in life expectancy. Are women, through evolution, tougher and more life-enhancing? 

The End of Children.

The March 3 issue of THE NEW YORKER, had a long article with the title: The End of Children, with the subtitle: What do falling birth rates mean for the future? I wonder whether giving birth, within reason, prolongs life. Having children, loving them, caring for them, worrying about them, does this prolong life? 

Is the current state of no child or less than 2.1 child, a subconscious admitting that the future looks so bleak, that it is preferable to forego the likely hardship that awaits the next generation, facing resource depletion and climate change?

I don’t know the answer. It seems that my life really belongs to an older generation. Since my wife and I were born in 1928, a radical change has taken place. As I see it, all in preparation for the NEW AGE to come, where sex differences will have disappeared, where everybody will be equal, where discrimination based on sexual orientation will have disappeared. 

Luke 20: 35 tells me that: they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection.

I am seeing more and greater signs that TIME is running out. Everything is becoming what it is, especially in the USA, always having been a leader in good and evil.

Make your constant prayer be: Maranatha, Lord, Come.

CHANGE

Change: real change.

Fifty Years Ago, I left St. Catharines, Ontario. I left the city for the country, far from the urban area, some 45 km north of the nearest small city, Belleville. 

In 1975, my family settled on 50 acres, in a passive solar, energy-efficient home, not far from a large pond created by industrious beavers, who build a huge dam in a small creek flooding hundreds of acres, resulting in a small lake, ideal for skating, and ducks: lots of them.

Now I am back in the Niagara Peninsula, with St. Catharines at its centre,

closer to doctors, specialists and hospitals, closer to the three of my children who live in Southern Ontario.

Change.

I am not quite sure why, at this time, I made the change. I believe that, somehow, the Lord wanted me to do so. In a sense I left St. Catharines 50 years ago, to avoid conflict, and to change the type of work – insurance – for which I was not quite suited. In these 5 decades of comparative solitude, I developed a radical new concept of what Christianity is all about. Dr. J. H. Diemer, who died in a German Concentration Camp in 1944-45, wrote in his book on ‘Miracles’, that God only hears a prayer when it furthers the Coming of the Kingdom. 

Think about this. It begs the question, “What is the Kingdom?” 

The Kingdom?

I believe that, even the best churches – and I rate them by their inclusiveness and their genuine belief in Christ – have little notion how to proclaim the reality of the Kingdom. For me, John 3: 16 “God so loves the world”, has become my life’s motto, and the beacon by which I steer my life. In my simple – and perhaps simplistic – opinion: “Creation is God’s primary and direct word”. “Seek first the Kingdom”, Jesus tells us. 

It is not my aim in life to discard the Written Word – every day I write a short meditation on a text of the lectionary – but I still see the Bible as God’s secondary and indirect word, while the church, even the most orthodox – perhaps especially those – see the Bible as the church’s special and only domain to salvation.

The key word for Christians is LOVE. Tolstoy has said: “If you feel pain, you are alive. If you feel other people’s pain, you are a human being.” Just add to the words ‘other people’s’ ‘all created matter’: the pain of animals – one reason why I am a vegetarian – the pain of trees, the pain of earth, especially since, basically “Earth we are and to earth we shall return”, something the Bible tells us in its very first chapters.

Pain and Suffering.

We live in a time of immense suffering. Unnatural disasters are multiplying, hitting poor and rich alike, witness the immense fires in the Los Angeles region. Today we experience the trauma of creation. Romans 8: 22 comes to mind: “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

This is so true: Today we experience that intense suffering, the birth-pangs, of the New Creation: AI = Artificial Intelligence, is part of that pattern.

During World War II, the race was on for the creation of the Atom Bomb. The Allies – the USA and Great Britain – won. This time AI – Artificial Intelligence – is the world’s target.

Russia and China are already using this technology against the USA, and the US brains are tooling up to address the threat. Just as the A and N Bombs, the new technologies are dangerous. The only solution to stop AI abuse is to use AI, so the reasoning goes, no matter what the costs are, even the destruction of the entire world.  It’s about a world turned upside down – a dark, fretful, more dangerous place where treaties and laws are no longer respected, alliances are broken, where principles are negotiable and morality is a dirty word. It’s an ugly, disordered world of raw power, brute force, selfish arrogance, dodgy deals and brazen lies. And the US president is setting the example.

An old song comes to mind.

Abide with me, fast falls the eventide
The darkness deepens, Lord, with me abide
When other helpers fail, and comforts flee
Help of the helpless, O abide with me

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day
Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away
Change and decay in all around I see
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

If there ever was a time when change and decay prevail, it is now, Anno 2025. Are God’s people ready? Or are they, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer calls them: “Pious Secularists”?

Change is needed. Kingdom Change.