Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

OCTOBER 20 2018

MURDER

In the Beginning: Cain murdered Abel.
Sarajevo 1914: Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Istanbul 2018: Murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
GLOBE Twenty First Century: Murder of CREATION.

Cain murders his brother over a religious dispute.
In June 1914 a radical anarchist killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, Duchess of Hohenberg. Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne. Their assassination in Sarajevo sparked a series of events that eventually led to World War I.

In October 2018, a Saudi murder squad, on orders of Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, known colloquially as MbS, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, and the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, killed journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, who had criticized him, comparing him to Putin. This murder, I believe will lead to the dissolution of Saudi Arabia.

Creational Murder. Twice this year surveys have indicated that arthropods, invertebrates including insects that have external skeletons, are declining at an alarming rate. In Puerto Rico’s Luquillo rainforest with data taken during the 1970s scientists found that biomass had fallen 10 to 60 times. Identical declines have occurred in the lizards, frogs, and birds that eat arthropods. Over the past 30 years, forest temperatures have risen 2.0 °C, and studies indicate that Climate Heating is the driving force behind the collapse of the forest’s food web. Earlier surveys in Germany tell the same story. As the insects go, so do we.

Unintended consequences.

Abel’s death distorted creation forever.
The 1914 murder led to World War I, which killed millions of French, British, German and Russian soldiers. Its aftermath caused a complete realignment of the world, with the Austro-Hungarian Empire disappearing, countries splitting mostly along linguistic and ethnic lines, while the German African colonies were divided between France and Great Britain. The Czar was killed and Russia became a Communist state.

The harsh conditions imposed on Germany after WWI, eventually led to World War II, 1939-45, which again caused untold millions of death and wounded and the displacement of many more.

Saudi Arabia fuels the world. It has the largest deposits of precious petroleum of any nation. The world needs the Saudis and its ruler knows this all too well. It has filled MbS, that young Arab prince, with untrammeled hubris, thinking that he can get away with murder. Pride comes before the fall.

Cosmos-cide, due to our love for fossil fuels – of which a good portion originates in Saudi Arabia – spells the death of humanity, as EVERYTHING IS CONNECTED TO EVERYTHING ELSE.

THE MURDEROUS 20TH CENTURY

In the years prior to World War I Europe was a divided continent. Kaiser Wilhelm was closely related to the British throne, an admirer of the Anglo-Saxon way of life, and fond of everything military. His status of high royalty had isolated him from common sense and thorough insight, which led to foolish actions and stubborn persistence in following the wrong path. His generals catered to his militaristic tendencies and encouraged his battle plans to attack France, prepared decades in advance.

Based on books such as Christopher Clark’s “The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914” it is clear that, as Clark writes, the European leaders were “watchful but unseeing.” He feels that all world leaders then were equally foolish.

In “The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914” Margaret MacMillan wonders why this war occurred at all. In the years prior to 1914 there had been minor crises that had not burst into full-blown war such as in the Balkans, Bosnia, and Morocco. These incidents actually had brought a new dedication to defusing conflicts, as Andrew Carnegie and Alfred Nobel bent all their powers toward promoting peace, yet this GREAT WAR happened for no real apparent reason. She concludes that Germany was more responsible for starting the 1914-18 conflict than France or England, whose commercial interests too played a role.

World War II was a direct consequence of World War I. Eric Hobsbawm, a noted historian, saw World War I and World War II as one event, also expressing the belief that the 20th Century started in 1914, and ended in 1989, with the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire, making it the shortest century in human memory.

Including the HOLOCAUST an estimated 100 million people died violently in the 20th Century, ten percent of those alive in the year 1900.

The 1989-2018 Interlude.

I am now starting to see that 1989-2018 is merely an interlude to the LAST EPOCH OF HUMANITY, with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and the global incidence of COSMO-CIDE as opening bells.

So what is my reasoning?

There is mounting evidence that Mohammed bin Salman, de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia sent a 15-man death squad to the Saudi consulate, armed with a bone saw, to murder and dismember Khashoggi, who was a member of an influential and prominent Saudi family.

This past week I had an almost 2 hour discussion over coffee with a friend, a retired Political Science Professor at McGill and the University of Toronto, centering solely on Jamal Khashoggi. He feels, and I concur, that dismembering his body, allegedly while he was still alive, portrays a religious fanaticism and a heinous hatred, that suggests that these murderers wanted to expunge the very soul from his body.

In the Middle East history as we know it began started with a murder fueled by religious differences when Cain killed Abel.
I also believe that there, in the Middle East, history as we know it, will end.

That needs clarification.

I believe that Khashoggi was killed, with one of the reasons being religion. I base this on the fact that Muslims, like Christians, believe in an afterlife.

Khashoggi’s death, as reported, suggests a religious ritual, an exorcizing execution as he was seen as an infidel/dissident. His torment was cruel. First his fingers were cut off, so that he could not write anymore; then his tongue was removed, so that he could not speak anymore; then his head was severed so that he could not think anymore. Perhaps they also cut off his penis. Yes, as my wise friend suggested: it was a ritual murder.

We also wondered why Khashoggi entered the consulate at all, suggesting a naivety that led to his death. It seems to me that he had a close friend there, a Judas, on whom he relied for security, and that this man betrayed him.

Khashoggi was no innocent, knew the workings of the Saudis. He was intimately acquainted with the methods the Saudi consuls and ambassadors employed. He himself had worked in two of them: Washington and London. He knew the beast, the way it thought, the way it acted, the way it smelt.

He also thought he knew the rules. He had worked for Turki bin Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief. The rules of the game were brutal, but they were rational. There were clear red lines. If you knew about them, you could calculate the risks you were taking.

Totally unaware.

Khashoggi had just bought a flat in Istanbul. He was going to get married the day after. The couple was still waiting for the furniture to arrive. He might have thought the worst they would do was to question him. But would he have risked kidnap, let alone his life, for a piece of paper that would allow him to remarry in Turkey? My learned friend suggested that they could have gone to Las Vegas to be married, if they really wanted to be formally united.

Khashoggi told his friends that he had left the kingdom because he could not stand the prospect of prison. That was why he felt a moral duty to speak out. If he was free, and thousands like him languished in jail, then it was his duty to speak.

I believe Khashoggi’s murder was a sacrificial act, carried out by a religious fanatic, a man for whom there was no rationality, no rules, no restraint, a man who could act with total impunity, and from whom no one was safe.

I believe that the 33 year old Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, by ordering Khashoggi’s execution, has unleashed Satanic forces, and sealed his own death sentence, and, since he has a wide following, the entire Saudi Arabian ruling clan is in disarray, especially since the country is so religiously divided. It has a sizable Shia minority of roughly 10 percent and also millions of adherents of a puritanical brand of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism that is an enemy of Shia Islam, the ruling religion there.

Tom Freedman of the New York Times writes, “I believe that the promise of M.B.S….. is finished. He’s made himself radioactive. All of his reforms had intense conservative opponents. This is not Denmark, and yet, without sweeping social, economic and religious reforms, Saudi Arabia could well become a huge failed state. Remember, one of ISIS’ biggest sources of young recruits was Saudi Arabia…..It’s a mess….”

The Middle East: as the cradle of life, is it also its death scene?

What will happen? Why do I see this event as so calamitous?

I believe that Mohammed bin Salman’s actions will lead to a religious civil war within Saudi Arabia, a nation already at extreme odds with itself. The fuse is creeping not only to this brazen prince, but also to the oil riches the nation hoards, a substance the world cannot do without. Civil wars are among the most cruel, the most atrocious, the most ferocious of all conflicts.

This comes at a time when we see that world-wide RELIGIOUS OPINIONS are becoming more entrenched: people are becoming more fanatic and less accommodating.

So, yes, I see a fitting parallel with Cain and Abel, with 1914 and Sarajevo, an unfortunate murder which made the 20th Century the bloodiest epoch ever, with 100 million people dying in or because of war. I believe that the murder of Jamal Khashoggi will unleash an even greater fury, unparalleled in human history.

Why?

At stake is the fate of the world, because the world’s fuel is in danger. Once the globe’s population is deprived of the billions of barrels of Saudi oil, the West will starve in a matter of months.

Combine that with CREATION lacking its POLLINATORS, and thus preventing fruits and grains from forming, together with abrupt warming from exploding Arctic methane, and the doom of society is certain.

God’s Providence.

The Lord, in his wisdom, after the FLOOD, foresaw all this. He solemnly promised never to destroy the earth again. That doesn’t mean that the earth is now safe. No, as Bonhoeffer writes in CREATION AND FALL, “The extent of the (human) fall is such that it affects the whole created world.”

God voluntarily surrendered his ownership of the earth and let humanity have its way. As Roman 6: 23 tells us that “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” These wages include the death of creation, for which we are responsible.

MURDER

In the Beginning: Cain murders Abel.
Sarajevo 1914: Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Istanbul 2018: Murder of Journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
GLOBE, Twenty First Century: Murder of CREATION.

The world is a wicked place. Its wickedness will cause it to be destroyed. “Stronger than Lover’s Love is Lover’s Hate: incurable, in each, the wounds they make”, wrote Poet Euripides 2400 years ago. The love so evident in the Garden of Eden turned into hate for God, for humanity and creation. The unfortunate consequence of sin is death. Fortunately God has made exceptions: “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

By the grace of God the incurable becomes curable. The wounds we make and have made throughout the ages in ourselves, in others and in creation can be healed when we turn to Jesus, the Redeemer.

That’s what makes John 3: 16 such an important text in the Bible. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life”.

OCTOBER 13 2018

ABRUPT HUMAN CHANGE? NO AND YES.
ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE? YES AND YES.

Almost a 1000 moons ago I portrayed Sisyphus in a school play. It was partly a musical, and one of the songs I had to sing centered on Sisyphus’ infinite punishment for displaying scorn for the gods.

Sisyphus was no saint: he was the ultimate trickster, lived by deception and dishonesty, thus his sentence too was specifically in line with his life: an endless effort to redeem his shortcomings and waging an eternity of hopeless struggle, deep down in the underworld.

After so many years I still remember one song which, translated, depicts his particular punishment.

”I, Sisyphus, am always dead beat,
I roll this rock up, in the hellish heat,
And when I’m near the summit
The rock hops down without a stop:
My actions always a terrible flop.”

We too live by deception, and will also suffer the same fate as Sisyphus, our actions also are always a terrible flop, because we’ll never reach the summit of carbon-free bliss.

Why are we bound to fail in preventing ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE?
We fail because we are humans, and we cannot change human nature: ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE REQUIRES ABRUPT HUMAN CHANGE, something that will never happen because of the words drilled into me when I was a youngster at Catechism lesson, “We are conceived and born into sin, and therefore children of wrath”.

That wrath we now face, as the last generation. This may sound downright ugly, but it happens to be the truth. What we are experiencing today is the culmination of the sins of the fathers, augmented with our own failures.

The sign of true religion is captured in one sentence, “Love God – and thus his creation – above all, and our neighbors as ourselves” (Matthew 22: 38). By fashioning our lives on the fallible foundation of carbon fuel, we no longer can change direction. The grim reality is that we have created a society totally opposite to the aims of the kingdom, the New Creation. This means that our conversion too must be all-encompassing.

Since our foundation is faulty, we, like Sisyphus, are doomed to try, as the IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – did again this week – and also doomed to fail.

IPCC explained.

Ah, to be a permanent member of the IPCC, a United Nations body. It’s a dream job. These scientists are stationed in one of the most desirable and most expensive cities in the world, Geneva, Switzerland, and enjoy a high, tax-free salary. So to preserve this situation, they simply have to deliver an optimistic report, because telling the world that we now live in unstoppable Climate Change will automatically suspend their lucrative employment, even though, deep down, they know this is the case.
And then there are these annual conferences where some 2000 delegates come from everywhere in the world where there is weather, to hear reports and make resolutions, and cause untold tons of Green House Gases through flying –possibly first class – and being buried under an avalanche of paper.

I know all about it: I had first-hand experience there because I attended such a conference in the year 2000: COP 6, in The Hague, Netherlands, from 13–25 November 2000.

I had a press pass from the regional paper for which I wrote a weekly column: no expenses spared as long as I paid for them myself.

The conference took place right after the disputed election of Bush, and his ghost dominated the discussion. Had Al Gore come out as the winner, history might have been closer to a climate victory, but the Bush’ platform was anti-climate while Gore had written a book on climate which I bought and NEVER read, ‘THE EARTH IN THE BALANCE.”

Later Al Gore became famous for a film. AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, which became quite popular, but, like Sisyphus, the book and film never really had an impact large enough to change the course of the world.

Now 18 years later, nothing has been accomplished on a world-wide scale. Like Sisyphus the world picks up that rock again, makes another try, gives the can another kick, and, looking at human nature, and the addiction we have to OIL, we know that another failure is in the cards.

But the politicians love conferences as long as their governments pick up the expenses: visiting a beautiful city, staying at a nice hotel, enjoying good meals, take in a different culture: that’s a bonus, not to pass up.

All sorts of NGOs also attend. In The Hague I visited the INNUIT group, showing those interested that the Arctic was changing fast. Remember that was 18 years ago!

In 2015 the COP took place in Paris, and resulted in THE PARIS ACCORD, hailed as a breakthrough.

Empty words.

And there we go again. Another IPCC report and they all keep getting more alarming than the previous one. And then nothing substantial happens, until the next report is issued and makes everybody’s headlines for a day, or two. Rinse, spin and repeat. “Now we really have to do something! World leaders have a moral obligation to act!”

Oh boy. To start with that last bit, world leaders don’t act because of moral obligations. They act to stay in, or get in, power. And they all know that to achieve that goal they must keep their people happy, even if dictators do this differently from ‘democratically elected’ leaders.
Leaders, politicians, think short-term. They may see further into the future than the next election, but that is not useful information. If they enact measures aimed at 10 years from today or more, they risk being voted out in 2 years, or 4. It’s not even their fault, it’s how the system works. It is different for dictators, but not even that much.

So a false foundation fosters more falsehoods.

My life is dominated by the coming of THE KINGDOM. All my actions are geared to reducing my carbon footprint, in preparation for the Kingdom to come.

I know that I am in a privileged position, living away from the city, able to heat with recycled wood from the local pallet factory, and having enough land to grow food.

But I drive a VW diesel. I trusted the authorities and believed that with driving a diesel car my environmental impact would be less.

The lesson in diesel is that Big Business cheats: the bottom line on the balance sheet is more important than THE TRUTH.

By buying a diesel I still cause air pollution, so today I drive a lot less. So far this year, I have driven less than 5000 km and will probably do less than 7000 km for the year, even though we live close to 6 km from the nearest store.

We only have 2 meals per day, breakfast – organic oats cooked in a slow cooker, with added flaxseed and fruit – and a noon meal, usually home grown stuff, salads, 2-3 per week, potatoes- vegetables or soups: no meat at all. The evening snack is home-made yogurt with our own maple syrup.

Tipping points.

The scariest issue today is the melting ice that uncovers and destabilizes permafrost. This layer is known to contain vast quantities of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas with a warming effect many times that of carbon dioxide. Melting permafrost will release that gas into the atmosphere, with lethal consequences.
Arctic News reported that “On October 2 and 7, 2018, peak methane levels were as high as 2838 ppb and 2859 ppb respectively. Methane levels over the Beaufort Sea have been high for some time, and have remained high at very high altitudes.
“The threat is that a number of tipping points are going to be crossed, including the buffer of latent heat, loss of albedo as Arctic sea ice disappears, methane releases from the seafloor and rapid melting of permafrost on land and associated decomposition of soils, resulting in additional greenhouse gases (CO?, CH?, N?O, water vapor) entering the Arctic atmosphere, in a vicious self-reinforcing cycle of runaway warming.”

Can we do anything? Yes.

Pray.

Pray for what? Pray that abrupt climate change will occur, so rapid that it speeds up the COMING OF THE KINGDOM. That is our only hope because The Coming of the Kingdom, the wonderful appearance of perfection on earth will also herald Abrupt Human Change combined with Abrupt Climate Change, back to stable, perfect weather.

But not yet.

Big trouble lies ahead. Sam Canara – who edits the ARCTIC NEWS – believes that by 2026, a mere 8 years away, we will see a rise of 8 degrees Celsius, sufficient to fulfill the prophesy of 2 Peter 3, among others.

Eight years is a bagatelle in terms of eternity. But it allows time for conversion. The Lord is good to us, and gives us plenty of warning. With Noah and his Ark, the warning was also decades, as long as it took the Noah clan to construct that huge vessel. He also used lots of outside help, and constantly preached disaster, but, hey, the money was good, he was a good employer, but heeding his warning? No. Life was too good.

So, today too, very few will heed the warning. Nevertheless those who have their ear to the ground and hear the rumbling, (soon the BIG ONE will come, shattering the earth as no earthquake before) and believe what the Bible says in 2 Corinthians: 17, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here”.

That means: A new Life style, in line with the New Creation.

We have to let our imagination go wild and picture The New Creation, and how we will live there, because that situation is to last forever. This means that we NOW, October 2018, must start the NEW LIFE.

That entails change.

Our constant attention must focus on the New Creation. That includes exercise, sleep 8 hours, eat healthy food, not too much, preferably local, mostly plants, suspend watching TV or limit it to a minimum, and pray without ceasing. Love the earth and love its people. Buy fewer things and consume less. Recycle wherever possible and – even better – reuse things. Demand a low carbon option in everything you consume, from clothes to food to energy.

Remember the ancient Greek fable involving Sisyphus.

”I, Sisyphus, am always dead beat,
I roll this rock up, in the hellish heat,
And when I’m near the summit
The rock hops down without a stop:
My actions always a terrible flop.”

The IPCC portrays this mythical figure. For decades now it has produced reports. We know the score. The panelists always express optimism: they sound upbeat, because being negative angers the rich who, themselves, are building bunkers and buying hideaways in far-away New Zealand. But with every IPCC report the rock rolls back to zero, and a new report is written, more ominous, more specific and the cycle goes on.

The Bible is clear: this world will go up in flames, because we are playing with fire. We simply are creating hell on earth: there’s no escape anymore: the die is cast: there won’t be a ABRUPT HUMAN CHANGE: there will be ABRUPT CLIMATE CHANGE before the Lord returns.

TWO IMPORTANT CHANGES

Then two important permanent changes occur: ABRUPT HUMAN CHANGE, as “The Redeemed of the LORD shall return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away, (Isaiah 51: 11).
Isn’t that wonderful language! Isn’t that a marvelous message!

And the other ABRUPT and permanent change will take place on our planet: perfectly restored! Perfectly in shape to receive the redeemed of the Lord!

Perfection at last, thanks to Christ: John 3: 16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

AND THANKS BE TO GOD.

OCTOBER 6 2018

ATONEMENT instead of THANKSGIVING?

The Day of Atonement (Leviticus 23:27-28), was the day on which the high priest performed elaborate rituals to atone for the SINS of the people.

The word speaks for itself. It’s a word I like: ‘atonement’. It suggests making amends, straightening out something that is out of kilter, and returning it to its proper place.

Celebrating Thanksgiving this weekend is out of touch with the times. It implies that matters are fine, that there is cause for rejoicing. Thanksgiving Day is one for celebration, for praising our accomplishments, for believing that we have done great. Atonement advocates apology and penitence and sacrifice, uttering expressions of regret, while thanksgiving contains seeds of self-congratulation, of being prideful and positive and prosperous.

So should I list the perils we face? Should I recite what is in store for us? Should I enumerate the dangerous future we face because of our greed, our stupidity, our SINS? If we are really in tune with the times, we should weep, we should pray to God on our knees, asking forgiveness for the acts of aggression we persist in doing to God’s creation.

JESUS WEPT

Jesus wept (John 11: 35) is the shortest text in the Bible. That’s how the editors liked it, I guess, to make it stand out that Jesus was an emotional human being.

Of course he was a man like all other men because Jesus wept. You know what? Jesus still weeps.

Did he ever laugh? Of course he did. He chided others for not showing how they really felt, “We played the pipe for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.” (Matthew 11: 17.) Nobody dances with a long, unhappy face, no, laughing, elation, clapping, exuberance go hand in hand with dancing, just as shedding tears go with sounds of weeping, with exclamations of sorrow and pain.

Did Jesus ever fall in love? Yes, he did, because he was human: nothing human was alien to him. How did he deal with that delicate situation? How did she? They both frankly talked about it, and decided to wait until meeting again in the New Creation.

Being a human is being emotional. When was the last time you cried? Me: I am a tear-guy, cry very easily; my eyes moist at the least tragic news, or good news, for that matter.

Today is the time for weeping.

Why did Jesus cry, even though he knew that in the next instant he would call Lazarus back from the dead? Jesus did not cry because Lazarus had died. He cried because he knew that the wages of SIN is death, including the death of the creation, the cosmos he loved so much. He cried because of us, the humanity of the world, so callously sowing destruction everywhere, so that now not a spot on the planet has remained spotless.

Oh, that heaven heresy again. It is at the root of our global disaster. In my youth I was totally indoctrinated in the heaven heresy. At the Christian School I attended, each Monday morning my mother made sure that I could recite the assigned hymn, one of them being: “In the hemel is het schoon, waar men zingt op blijde toon”, which I translate as, “Being in heaven is the best: there we sing with joyful zest,” or something to that extent.

That sort of song, made me, as a 6-8 year old, ask my mother why Jesus would call Lazarus back from heaven where things are so much better than on earth? There’s where the germs of my conversion started, as a pre-teen boy. Perhaps my query stayed with my mother: just before she died she asked me what would happen then. I told her that she would be with Jesus.

So why did Jesus weep? Why is that short text in the Bible?

True, Jesus also wept because his friends were distraught. He did not weep for Lazarus: his tears were for Mary and Martha and today they are for us and for creation for which he was responsible, as Colossians 1:16 tells us, “For by Christ all things (ta panta) were created.”

Jesus is still crying because much of what he created is in a sorry shape, is in a state of decomposing, and threatened with annihilation. The earthquake and tsunami in Indonesia, the floods in the Carolinas, the wanton war in Washington, the hurricanes, the typhoons, the melting of the Arctic, the methane madness in Siberia, all are the results of THE SINS OF THE PEOPLE.

Proverbs 29: 18, “Where there is no vision the people go hog wild, but blessed are they who heed wisdom’s instruction.”

Take North Carolina, the home of 10 million hogs and untold millions of chickens, generating sewage equivalent to the City of New York. When animal waste gets into the water, it causes a deluge of nitrogen, phosphorous, copper and other nutrients that throw the rivers out of balance. The damage can be immediate and dramatic. In the 1990s it filled the Neuse River there with millions of dead fish, bleeding from open sores. It could well be that large sections of the Carolinas will become inhabitable thanks to the floods that have poisoned much of the two US states.

One Hundred Million Barrels per Day.

I have a book, SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN, bought it in Stratford July 1 2001. Dr. J. R. McNeill, professor of History, sees our addiction to Carbon and the resulting Climate Change as something new.
Among other things he traces the Energy History since 10,000 B. C. Here’s a quote, “My very rough calculation suggests that the world in the twentieth century used 10 times as much energy as in the thousand years before 1900 A.D.”
Now in 2018 the pace of oil use has accelerated, so that we, 7.6 billion earth-dwellers, DAILY use 100 million barrels of oil.

WE SHOULD GET READY TO LIVE WITHOUT CARBON-BASED FUEL.

We did during the war 1940-45, in the last frosty and snowy winter in occupied the Netherlands. For cooking we had an hour of coal-gas, hardly enough to cook a meal. For lighting we had some candles as electricity was no longer provided. Churches still had it, and since we lived next to a large church, we stole it from them via an extension cord: one light only.

To keep the house warm in that horribly cold spell, we had a meagre ration of black coal, carefully burned for a few hours, and so spent long hours in bed, under many woolen blankets and walked around in double layers of wool, even indoors.

With a curfew from 8pm to 6am, we played monopoly games, chess and checkers all the time: TV had not yet been invented and all radios were confiscated, so entertainment was strictly home-made. It was energy and food starvation in slow motion, but we knew it would get bad and were mentally prepared for hardship.
It was different in farm country, where people had cows, chickens, pigs, grew grain or potatoes, had stuff to barter, but city people with no country connections fared badly.

Will history repeat itself? Don’t be too quick to dismiss this scenario. We survived the war because we knew that the future would be different. Next time there isn’t that prospect.
So why do I start reminiscing about events that happened 70 years ago, in faraway Europe?

Times have changed.

Eighty years ago there were 2.5 billion people in the world. Today there are three times as many. Then the majority was rurally based. Now, thanks to industrial farming, even farmers need the city for food, while we need 10 energy calories for every food calorie we consume: we eat OIL. We are so OIL dependent that once the oil is gone – a finite item – we too are gone. When the next extended black-out happens there won’t be a future.

A hidden peril.

Thanks to our oil use we have created a global haze that prevents the full power of the sun to penetrate the earth’s atmosphere. A drastic global recession, a sharp curtailment of oil use will lift that curtain in less than 2 months, giving the sun extra power to heat up the earth: it’s called Global Dimming.

Here are the hard facts: there’s no reason to celebrate and every reason to ask God for forgiveness with a heartfelt DAY OF ATONEMENT.
1. The earth is finite. Fossil fuels are not renewable. In earlier times the energy supply was maintained by careful cultivation: that’s no longer possible. Fuel used is gone forever.
2. When collapse comes, it comes without warning. The Bible is quite definite on that score. Matthew 24 unequivocally states that “they –the rest of the world – knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took all (the sinners) away”. In other words, Rapture is reserved for SINNERS. 2 Peter 3: 10 reiterates that, (verse 10) “The Day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night.” Revelation 18 illustrates how the Capitalists will be fooled with (verse 14) their stock in trade suddenly being worthless as the economy collapses.

Just as the people in Noah’s days were shown a certain sign – that enormous ship being built with no sea in sight, by that family known for their godliness and impeccable reputation, so Jesus too, in that notorious Matthew 24 Chapter tells us that there will be plenty of warning signs out there, but people will ignore them.

Like old Simeon and Hannah (Luke 2:28), we all must constantly look for his coming, are daily called to repent and pray without ceasing both for forgiveness and for THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM.

That concept, THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM, is the central theme of the Bible. That’s why the Bible is so necessary in these days of expiry dates. Jesus is very explicit in his message, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6: 33)”.

That gives us our mandate, even though this direct indication has become a blurred directive. We must always keep John 3: 16 in mind. There the Lord tells us that God the Father offered his only Son as payment for buying back the cosmos which we sold to the great adversary.

Loving Creation assures us eternal life. Loving creation is fulfilled in seeking the kingdom, by constantly striving for the betterment of creation, and following the creation laws, so well captured by Dr. Barry Commoner, who coined the 4 laws of ecology,
1. Everything Is Connected To Everything Else. There is one ecosphere for all living organisms and what affects one, affects all. Humans and other species are connected/dependent on other species. With this in mind it becomes hard to practice anything other than compassion and harmlessness.
2. Everything Must Go Somewhere. There is no “waste” in nature, and there is no “away” to which things can be thrown. Everything, such as wood smoke, nuclear waste, carbon emissions, etc., must go somewhere.
3. Nature Knows Best. Humankind has fashioned technology to improve upon nature, but such change in a natural system is, says Commoner, “likely to be detrimental to that system.” The Creation, one can argue, has an intelligence, and to tinker with that “unintellectually” we get global warming pollution, etc.
4. There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Exploitation of nature will inevitably involve the conversion of resources from useful to useless forms. In nature, both sides of the equation must balance, for every gain there is a cost, and all debts are eventually paid.

Oh, I know that all this is old stuff. Nevertheless it’s not what we SAY but what we DO that finds favor with God.

The time for repairing the planet is past. Only prayer can save us. The Psalms say it so beautifully, “My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you, God, will not despise.” (Psalm 51: 17)

Still Thanksgiving is in order, not for our wealth and health, but for Jesus’ sacrifice and death to assure eternal life.

SEPTEMBER 29 2018

THE OLDER, THE WISER?

In a few weeks I will turn 90. Ninety years sounds old, but the time has gone by as a shadow, reminding me of a song I learned while in school – Latin of course – Horae, dies, menses, anni, sicut umbrae fugiunt – translated as Hours, Days, Months and Years fly by as shadows.
They have, indeed, flown by quickly. When Jacob was presented to the Pharaoh his words were perhaps typical: Genesis 47:9, “And Jacob said to Pharaoh, “The years of my pilgrimage are a hundred and thirty. My years have been few and difficult, and they do not equal the years of the pilgrimage of my fathers.”

I like that word ‘pilgrimage’. It portrays Jacob’s wisdom, his learning through trial and error, through deceit and subterfuge. He tricked his brother out of his birthright and used clever lies to cheat on his father-in-law, who was not a stranger to this himself. Through sorrow – losing his beloved Rachel – and trial – the cruelty of his sons – he gained wisdom when he recognized that we are pilgrims on this earth, eagerly awaiting the coming of the Messiah and with it the glorious new creation, where we belong. It is not, as the old-fashioned hymn has it, “We are strangers here, within a foreign land, our home is far away upon the golden strand”, whatever that means. Our home is not far away: it is right here, but it is in foreign hands as the Evil One has temporarily taken possession.

Jacob was also right in saying that his years were few and difficult compared to his father, Isaac, and his grandfather, Abraham who both lived a lot longer and lived tranquil lives compared to Jacob, with this two wives, his troublesome sons, and the heartache involving the disappearance of Joseph.
In that sense my 90 years are different: they have seen only blessing: children doing well, grandchildren doing well, we ourselves doing well, considering our age.
My wife of 65 years recently had a mastectomy but recovered well, and for some years has suffered from short-term memory loss, but otherwise is fine. Our doctor is amazed that it has not resulted in more severe symptoms.
I, well, last week, I ran the Terry Fox 10 km in about 67 minutes, not bad for an old man, even a tad faster than last year. Perhaps they shortened the route to make people feel better. And my mental facilities and memory are still in perfect order, even though some may dispute that.

I have been very blessed with my marriage partner, who always encouraged me to take courses and learn more. She herself did that too, becoming a master grapho-analyst, a hand-writing expert, giving courses and even writing a column. She also became a celebrated public speaker through Toastmasters, took courses in English and assertive training, and, especially nowadays, loves reading, something we both do all the time. No television, except for the occasional newscast.

The older, the wiser?

In the Bible the office of “elder” is honored. The Old Testament frequently refers to ‘the elders in the gate’ pronouncing their verdict on a matter of law. They certainly were seen as wise and able to make sound decisions in a matter of dispute.

Not anymore. Today old age is equated with obsolescence and irrelevance, and the young call the tune, as they are the pushers of new technology and the inventors today of what makes the world go round. The role of the old is delegated to TV viewing, a bed in the nursing home, and voting conservative.

Yet, more than ever in the history of the world wisdom is needed. More than ever, given the intractable and unsustainable issues we face, such as an over-indebted world economy, resource depletion, species loss, Arctic Ice melting, Methane emerging: near term human extinction, just to name a few occurrences. To cope with these threats, more than wisdom is needed. Are we up to it?

That is the burning question today.

If wisdom were a matter of numbers; if wisdom and the quantity of old people were to go hand in hand; if wisdom were to depend on sheer volume of aged men and women, then there would be no problem, but that is simply not the case.

Perhaps this is because old people never had it so good: they belong to the more avid participants in the political system, and that’s why the elected rulers have favored them above any other class.

To prepare myself for this essay, I read Jimmy Carter book “The Virtues of Aging,” not a great help. He mentions that, “It is interesting to note that Prince Otto von Bismarck, age seventy-four, first set the retirement age at seventy in 1889 in Germany, when the average lifespan was forty-five. If we had the same twenty-year interval beyond present life expectancy our government checks wouldn’t begin coming until we were almost a hundred years old.”
(I detected an error in Jimmy Carter’s reasoning: Bismarck either set it at 65, or the interval was 25 years.)

This promise of receiving handouts at 65 will someday backfire. There never have been so many old people in the world as there are today, and never, in proportion, so few young people whose contributions in taxes are supposed to finance the pensions and the accelerating medical outlay for the seniors.

Demographic imbalance

My wife and I live in an area where the young leave and the old people stay. Apart from education, the health clinic- 3 doctors, many nurses – and the local Hydro One department, there are not a lot of well-paying jobs here. Farming has become too mechanized to employ many. Perhaps we will see an influx from city people because urban air pollution plays havoc with our brains, a new study shows. At least here we have good air, living among the thousands of trees and drinking the pure well water gushing up in our well – 150 liters per minute. Combine this with the home-grown food and we keep somewhat saner than our urban friends and families.

It always amazes me how few people attend church even though being a member of a church creates fellowship and communion, a necessary ingredient for a long and healthy life. Around 1900 more people lived in our area than today, in spite of an influx from ex-urbanites. Then churches flourished and locally-produced entertainment was thriving, which generated more wisdom through intimate contact with the earth and with people, the most difficult and complicated species around.

Wisdom and religion are closely related, and with religion receding wisdom too wanes. The world defines wisdom as “the ability to grasp human nature, which is paradoxical, contradictory, and subject to continual change”. I prefer the biblical saying, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”, a line that appears repeatedly in the Bible- Proverbs1: 7; Proverbs 9: 10; Job 28: 28; Psalm 111:10. The fear of the Lord points to pious devotion to his creation, a gesture that is increasingly missing in church and society. John 3: 16 affirms this.

Dr. Paul Tournier.

In addition to reading Jimmy Carter’s book, I also dug up a book I bought in 1973, when I was exactly half my current age. The author, Dr. Paul Tournier, a medical doctor and psychiatrist, practiced in Geneva, Switzerland. Judging by my notes and yellow markings, I read The Meaning of Persons twice before.
Dr. Tournier is a sincere Christian and believes that being a confessing person gives him a better grasp of the human psyche. He states that it is impossible to totally fathom what goes on in a person’s mind, not even for a psychiatrist.
When I read that, I gained a grain of wisdom realizing that when Jesus returns we meet him in eternity as incomplete persons, and that it will take eternity to fully understand ourselves. Only Jesus possesses perfect wisdom; only Jesus is the ultimate in wisdom. Imperfect is our self-knowledge, but we will be perfect in our desire to learn more, not only about ourselves, but also in our desire to explore creation, which also is an eternal quest. There we can readily and eagerly consult Jesus, our constant companion.

Today we live in the Information Age, of which T. S. Eliot, many decades ago, wrote,
“Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”
In eternity knowledge, information and wisdom will perfectly fit together, no longer items in isolation but all complementing each other.

Now Wisdom is lost.

I believe there is a direct connection between Paradise Lost and Wisdom Lost. The further we stray from Paradise, from the “Urzeit”, the further we distance ourselves from wisdom. Christ’s coming is a return to the Urzeit, the original state of creation, the state of the utterly pristine condition, where harmony is guaranteed and maintained forever. Then our wisdom and God’s wisdom in creation will go hand in hand. The further we stray from God’s creational wisdom, the further we distance ourselves from true wisdom.

The End is in the Beginning, and the Beginning is in the End. In the End we can observe evolution, can ascertain the development of human and animal, plants and microbes, stars and planets. In the End, which also is the Beginning, we will learn about ourselves, our bodies, minds and spirits: and that at our leisure, totally at ease, a perfect meeting of minds. No more personal ambitions, no more trying to compete, no more vying to outsmart each other: complete cooperation, completely united to probe the eternal mysteries of God’s infinite wisdom: that’s how we slowly and surely attain perfection, a journey that will never end.

Our task today: SEARCH FOR A NEW WISDOM.

That journey to perfection starts today. The road to wisdom is infinite: our searching and probing and learning never stops regardless of age. The fight is made more difficult by television and Google and Facebook and the Information Age, all conspiring to prevent us from acquiring true wisdom.

One of our current problems is that experience is no longer an asset. Our young people can no longer turn to the wisdom of the elders because, by and large, they don’t have it anymore. They are mainly responsible for the present state of affairs. “The faith of our fathers” has become a misnomer.

Also the so prevailing RAPTURE belief expresses the opposite of wisdom. It is a direct denial of God’s promise and a negation of his judgement. Aiding, abetting and silently condoning this heresy is contrary to “seeking the Kingdom” the most explicit command the Lord left with us.

Proverbs 1 contains words of WISDOM, eminently applicable to today.
20. Out in the open wisdom calls aloud,
she raises her voice in the public square;
21. on top of the wall d she cries out,
at the city gate she makes her speech:
23. “How long will you who are simple love your simple ways?
How long will mockers delight in mockery
and fools hate knowledge?

That’s the state today! The foolishness of the world is evident in our quest for endless exponential economic growth on a finite planet. It is not simply senseless but self-destructive, and therefore, clinically insane. And yet we persist, in spite of ever clearer signs that we are killing the earth and ourselves. This summer the West has sweltered and baked through 50 degrees Centigrade, and that’s now lurking as a regular condition. This is our new normal.

So who are we in these times? Who do we want to become? Where do we find NEW WISDOM? I believe that Galatians 6: 15 contains the answer, “Neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything; what counts is the new creation.”

This means that today the choice between infant baptism and adult submersion is irrelevant. It means that today being Jew or Muslim, Protestant or Roman Catholic, Hindu or Buddhist matters no more. The old religious wisdom no longer counts: all religions have gone astray.
Only the New Creation counts.
In Christ we are a new creation, and that newness is evident in living that new creation NOW, today, 2018, by being true to the Earth, God`s Holy Temple, God`s direct and primary Word.

How? That’s for you to decide. How? That’s for me to decide, the most important decision we will ever make, because on it depends our eternal life.

SEPTEMBER 22 2018

ARE WE COMMITTING INFANTICIDE?

All economists talk debt nowadays, meaning money owed in loans to financial institutions, or in bonds issued by governments on all levels and by corporations. Monetary debt is always repaid somehow either by being discharged in full, by getting a discount or by writing off the loan which will be the case for much of the money owed world-wide, now more than $250 trillion.
Consider this simple calculation: Twenty years ago there was $40 trillion of debt in the world; today there is $250 trillion. The leverage of the world has gone from 1.3 times the world’s GDP, which is stable, to 3.3 times, which basically means the world has created huge temporary prosperity by burying itself in debt: the world’s economy, the so fabulous rate of growth, has entirely been artificially created by debt.

No wonder there is trouble on the horizon.
1. Interest rates are rising, because inflation is shooting up as droughts and floods play havoc with harvests. Blame Climate Change.
2. Entitlements. I like that word: it suggests that we are entitled, are worthy, have a right, to receive life-long pensions and free medical care. With people living longer, a lot longer, pension funds are not really able to fulfill their obligations. Also the rates of return on money are too low, causing a double whammy. Combine that with (1) older people increasingly having physical problems such as dementia, cancer, fragile bones, all calling for care, so medical bills balloon, (2) while fewer enter the workforce, signaling double trouble.
3. And then there is the world at large: it is dying, and that too requires remedial measures. Just take last week’s hurricane: it will take untold billions to heal the damage caused by Hurricane Florence, perhaps as much as 50 billion, while the USA budget is already in the red to the tune of more than $800 billion for this fiscal year, with $1 Trillion deficit expected next year.
4. The ultimate result will be that quite soon all lenders will go broke: governments, pension funds, mortgage companies, and with them the people, billions of them, now depending on the generosity of these sources. Yes, even the so celebrated Ontario Teachers Retirement Fund which pays teachers a pension equal to 70% of their highest earnings will be affected. And then what?

What is meant by DEBT?

The German/Dutch word for Debt is SCHULD, which has two meanings:
(1) debt/trespass, as in Dutch “Vergeef ons onze schulden” = Forgive us our trespasses, and
(2) blame/guilt/fault/sin.
We simply are sinful people. In the very beginning Adam faulted Eve for taking the fruit: “she was to blame” (het was haar schuld), he told God. Debt is a form of SIN, especially where it concerns environmental debt, taking more from the earth than we are entitled to. So, yes, the wages of DEBT is DEATH. Not for nothing is a loan against a property called a MORT-gage. The word MORT means death.

New Times.

Today creation is calling in the debt owed to it by revolting against humanity. Tomorrow the financial world will do the same. It will be foreclosing on the money debt, and that means the collapse of the Capitalistic world, the system that has been a Capital Offence against everything and everybody that exists.

The most dangerous debt.

Indeed, greater than the monetary gap is the creational debt, simply impossible to express in dollars and cents. This much greater deficit is the environmental emptiness we have pushed on our children and grandchildren. How in the world do we remedy that situation? To the extent that we are today eroding the carrying capacity on which future generations would otherwise depend, our way of life could be characterized as intergenerational “predation”, or to put it bluntly, we, the old, are “eating” our young, we are committing infanticide.

Deterioration.

It definitely looks that the climate situation is getting worse, of which the Florence fiasco is just one of the many. Take far away Asia. There six great river valleys have supported most of human civilization for the past 5,000 years. During that time, the snow melt from the region’s high plateaus has always arrived at precisely the right moment, and in precisely the right volume, to support the crops upon which the region’s teeming billions rely, while another billion people plus depend on the monsoon arriving at the right time, and in the right place, each year. And yet, as the planet heats up and sea levels rise, the pattern of cyclones in the Bay of Bengal and elsewhere will change. If they grow stronger and start roaring north toward the 250 million people living at or near sea level in the greater Ganges Delta, the world will face a long train of catastrophes.

The international community is in no way prepared for such a scenario. Just look at the US, the wealthiest country in the world: it wasn’t ready for Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, or for Hurricane Sandy in New York, or for Hurricane Harvey in Houston, or for Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, which is now estimated to have taken 2,975 lives.
And the latest? Florence is hitting perhaps the most vulnerable of all states, the Carolinas, with close to 10 million pigs, lots of buried chemicals and the filthy slurry of pig effluence. On every TV screen we see a disaster of epic proportions unfolding.

Remember: these last five hurricanes have been among the most damaging in US history, and they have all occurred in just the past 15 years. The severity of their impact was not merely a product of administrative incompetence or the increased density of coastal residential and commercial development. Precisely it was the predictable result of a changing climate. Even worse, as natural disasters go, these were small pinpricks compared to what the future holds in store if current trends continue.

There’s one more.

So I have mentioned two kinds of debts or deficits: monetary and environmental. There is one more.

There also is what I could call “the GOD deficit”, ”the religious” debt, the moral inheritance our ancestors have left us, and we scorn.

By this I mean such matters as ‘faith of our fathers’, and the ingrained work ethic, the thrift and human frugality that were typical of those grown up during the depression of the 1930’s and before, when 90 percent of the population in the Western world had to live by their wits, depending on family, neighbors and friends, when there was little governments could do or wanted to do to help those in need.

These three different debts mean that everything is different: money owed that will never be repaid; environmental deficits that will never be remedied; a Religious heritage that is in the process of disappearing, so it’s no wonder the ECONOMIST doesn’t get it.

The Economist, that venerable British weekly magazine, last week published a special 175 year MANIFESTO, lamenting that the world is failing to rekindle the spirit of Radicalism. By Radicalism it means unfettered liberalism. It correctly states that during its 175 years of being the world’s leading periodical, life expectancy has increased from 30 to 70 years globally and literacy from less than 10% to more than 80. So, by rights, people should be extremely happy, but the contrary is true: the world is at odds with itself: discontent is universal.

The Economist blames the current moral malaise on the upper 1 percent, and calls on them for a return to compassion and genuine sharing.

It is true that global literacy has increased, but this has given people a false sense of accomplishment. Years ago Dr. Johan Huizinga wrote, “Onderwijs maakt onder-wijs”, indicating that “A little learning is a dangerous thing”.

A little knowledge makes people over-confident and unwilling to be led, while leaders are at loss as well, causing people such as Trump to exploit ignorance, by claiming scientific observations such as Climate Change, diet guidelines, exercise benefits and religious givens to be seen as fake news.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle summed it up neatly when he noted “The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” This was confirmed a couple of centuries earlier by the Chinese philosopher Confucius who observed, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing”, said Socrates.

The trouble is that, with the God Deficit, true wisdom too has gone, with living in a polluted, plastic filled climate minds too are affected, while pressing money problems cloud people’s judgement.

The Economist does not understand that we live in a different world where ignorance reigns, where people no longer can be influenced by so-called ‘rational’ policies. We are hooked on CARBON and will do so till the bitter end.

Of course people like Kate Raworth, an Oxford professor, struggle with this and have come up with good solutions. She has devised the “The Doughnut” symbol, focusing on the need for a deep renewal of economic theory and policymaking so that the continued widespread political prioritization of gross domestic product growth is replaced by an economic vision that seeks to transform economies.

Years ago E. F. Schumacher in SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL too found a wide following, but the opposite happened: bigger became better. Goudzwaard et al. in several publications such as AID FOR THE OVERDEVELOPED WEST, and BEYOND POVERTY AND AFFLUENCE, just to name two, also offered reasonable solutions.

The deciding factor in all cases is human nature. Attempts at wholesale redistribution haven’t worked out very well in the real world. Virtually all gains for the developing poor these days come in the context of economic growth that disproportionately benefits the wealthy and drives ecological overshoot.

Sorry, Economist, Sorry, Raworth, Sorry, Goudzwaard, there is no solution as human nature – conceived and born in sin – will never change. On the contrary, as the world turns uglier, so will humanity. As Gandhi said, the Earth provides enough to satisfy everyone’s need but not everyone’s greed.

That does not mean that we should give up. Revelation 14: 13 clearly states that “our deeds will follow us into eternity”, so praise to Schumacher and Goudzwaard and Raworth and the many others who struggle to make this world a better place to live.

What all these learned academics forget is that human nature is stuck in a paradigm that is promoted by the politicians, who talk one way- sometimes- and act a different way, because they want to be reelected, and nobody remains in power by preaching restraint and implying, let alone openly advocating, hardship now to ensure a future for the next generation.

The TRUMP phenomenon depends entirely on denial, and exploitation of the earth’s scarce resources. The increasing ferocity of forest fires and the increasing incidence of ever more destructive hurricanes simply do not translate in a greater awareness of Climate Change.

ARE WE REALLY COMMITTING INFANTICIDE?

By and large organized Christianity preaches only one aspect of sin, by concentrating on personal misbehavior. However, the original sin in the Garden of Eden was two-fold: disobeying an explicit divine command, and an environmental sin. That’s why J.H. Bavinck, in his book “Between the Beginning and the End, a Radical Kingdom Vision,” categorically states that (page 34-35):
“It is God’s intent to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity universal. The goal of our life can never be that we personally may enjoy God and be saved in him. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all wise will of him who lives and rules for ever.”

Does that mean that debt, especially environmental debt, killing our children with our extravagant lifestyle, is a sin against the Kingdom, and as such against the Holy Spirit?
That is a question I will not answer. Suffice it to say that there is such a thing as JUDGEMENT day, where each one of us will be called on the carpet before the Ultimate Judge who is the only ONE who really knows what goes on in our hearts.

SEPTEMBER 15 2018

ENDS AND ODDS

The End of Oil, Paul Robert;
The End of Science, John Horgan;
The End of Nature, Bill McKibben;
The End of History, Francis Fukuyama;
The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin;
The End of the World, A history, by Otto Friedrich;
The Beginning and the End: the Bible

Except for Fukuyama’s, all the other books I have.

THE ENDS.

THE END OF OIL I bought in 2004 in Kingston,Ont. Then Peak Oil was much in the news. I even attended a Peak Oil conference in Boston where at Boston University many learned people predicted that very event. Today, thanks to fracking, oil flows liberally, even though the environmental effects are disastrous, especially the abundant release of methane, that ultra-dangerous gas.
Still, for the time being, No End of Oil, but rapid increases in carbon-based Climate Change.

THE END OF SCIENCE I bought in 1996 in Raleigh, NC, when our youngest daughter lived there. John Horgan, then staff writer for the Scientific American gave his book the subtitle of `Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age.”
I think he was unto something. Today we see some refinement here and there, such as the Apple gadgets, but not really anything new. Sticking my neck out, I believe that we have reached the limit of scientific knowledge, while stupidity has no bounds as we see a drastic decline in wisdom, due to the disappearing ‘fear of the Lord’, which is the beginning of wisdom.

Bill McKibben wrote THE END OF NATURE, not fully realizing then, 30 years ago, how accurate he was: a real plus for this man. His book appeared years before the onset of rapid Climate Change.

THE END OF HISTORY: Francis Fukuyama, an American political philosopher, entered the global imagination at the end of the Cold War when he prophesied the “end of history” — a belief that, after the fall of communism, free-market liberal democracy had won out and would become the world’s “final form of human government.
How wrong he was. Today we see the opposite happening: right-wing movements, dictatorships are popping up everywhere: more like the end of democracy, of which Trump in the USA and Doug Ford, in my home province of Ontario, are the symptoms.

THE END OF WORK: Jeremy Rifkin in 1995 wrote that the decline of the Global Labor Force will be caused by the increasing influence of computers, robots and telecommunication devices. Indeed, he was quite prophetic in his prediction.

THE END OF THE WORLD, a History, was written by Otto Friedrich. I bought it in 1986, more than 30 years ago.
He divides it in three books:
Book I: Barbarians at the Gates:
The Sack of Rome, A.D. 410; the Birth of the Inquisition: 1209-44.
Book II: The Eye of God:
The Black Death 1347-50; the New Jerusalem 1525-33; the Lisbon Earthquake, 1755.
Book III: In Our Time:
The Coming Revolution, 1905; The Kingdom of Auschwitz, 1940-45; Epilogue, The Great War.

Of course, the End of the World did not come but many people centuries ago were deeply religious and saw these events as The Hand of God. Today, when the real End of the World is at hand, this religious notion is strikingly absent.

THE BIBLE: The Beginning and the End.

Well, the world still turns, and The End has not yet come, but multiple endings occur continuously, such as species vanishing, forever, democracies disappearing, dictatorships emerging, rampant anger and civility ceasing, the End of stable weather, the End of Capitalism, and, at the very end, THE END, when the Lord returns, pretty soon, I think.
We should not forget that the Bible is completely written with THE END in mind. Jesus came to prepare us for THE END. In the Sermon on the Mount, that very Christian Manifesto, he sums it all up with the words, “Be Tele-ios, as I am Tele-ios”, (Matthew 5: 48), which is translated as “Be perfect”. However, it really means “Always keep The End is mind”, the End as in Tele-phone, Tele-gram, Tele-pathy, Tele-vision, Tele-scope, all referring to the TELOS, the word for END or FAR AWAY in Greek.

THE ODDS

The ODDS refers to something unusual, something out of the ordinary, such as the unusual hurricane striking at North Carolina.
August had no significant storms in the Atlantic and people on the East coast felt better, North Carolina especially because the government there, when a scientific report came in that North Carolina with many low lying areas, was a sitting duck for rising seas, the government passed a law banning policies on such forecasts. So it allowed further expansion, also in pig farms, which now have 9 million hogs. The odds are that this poses more than a mere threat. There also are a dozen or so nuclear reactors there. The odds there are frightening in the extreme, as the plants generally reside near a body of water—a river, lake, estuary or ocean—because they require a constant source of water for cooling purposes. Without cooling water, a nuclear reactor will overheat, leading to core damage, containment failure, and release of harmful radiation into the environment.

Global Warming and Hurricane frequency go hand in hand: this past week I counted 9 of them churning their ways across the earth’s major waterbodies, four in the Atlantic and five in the Pacific.

Odds are that this is just the beginning: the dangers from the seas are just the start. And they are not the only threats that face us. New technology and climate change might make the world more different than we can possibly imagine.

The odds are that the job market will change the way we work. It could quite well mean the End of Work, as AI, Artificial Intelligence, outwits the ever shrinking brain capacity of the average human.
Neil Postman wrote “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”. That Death refers mostly to the death of thinking and the ability to reason critically. All our gadgets are making us less human and more like robots. Fight it tooth and nail: your spiritual wellbeing depends on it!

Some people believe that machine learning and robotics will make humans economically redundant. I believe that more rapidly than we can imagine, the way we work will change, but, somehow we will not, and that will cause untold misery. In many ways we are what we do: our work defines us.

There are certain dangers lurking out there, dangers totally new to our generation: computer! We are as much products of what we feel as what we think. And computers now know that. Already algorithms control much of our daily lives. Odds are that Google and Facebook will exercise undue influence.

The Bible is right: un-equality is becoming the norm. In Matthew 25 Jesus is quoted, “For everyone who has will be given more and he will have an abundance.” (Verse 29). In the past few decades, people all over the world have been told that humanity is on the path to equality. Yet the world has never felt more unequal with vast wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the few while others have nothing. This is very bad and may well get worse unless we do something about it.

Beware of online communities such as Facebook. Odds are that they are being spied upon. But the greatest dangers lurk in ecological disasters.

The ODDS on Climate Change.

Arctic sea ice isn’t just threatened by the melting of ice around its edges, a new study has found: Warmer water that originated hundreds of miles away has penetrated deep into the interior of the Arctic.
That “archived” heat, currently trapped below the surface, has the potential to melt the region’s entire sea-ice pack if it reaches the surface, researchers say.
The study appears online Aug. 29 in the journal Science Advances.
“We document a striking ocean warming in one of the main basins of the interior Arctic Ocean, the Canadian Basin,” said lead author Mary-Louise Timmermans, a professor of geology and geophysics at Yale University. She is Canadian-born, and has a perfect Dutch name.
She writes, “The upper ocean in the Canadian Basin has seen a two-fold increase in heat content over the past 30 years, the researchers said. They traced the source to waters hundreds of miles to the south, where reduced sea ice has left the surface ocean more exposed to summer solar warming. In turn, Arctic winds are driving the warmer water north, but below the surface waters.
“This means the effects of sea-ice loss are not limited to the ice-free regions themselves, but also lead to increased heat accumulation in the interior of the Arctic Ocean that can have climate effects well beyond the summer season,” Timmermans said. “Presently this heat is trapped below the surface layer. Should it be mixed up to the surface, there is enough heat to entirely melt the sea-ice pack that covers this region for most of the year.”
All this perfectly confirms what Dr. Guy McPherson has preached for the last decade. See his ARCTIC NEWS blog.

We live in an Age of Transition, from the normal, steady state, to the abnormal, unsteady state. Nothing is certain anymore. The past no longer holds lessons for us. Does that mean THE END OF HISTORY?

The ODDS on religion.

The odds are that faith in the return to earth of Jesus to restore creation, as he promised when he ascended to heaven, will wane, while false faiths will proliferate. Religion once provided meaning and identity, which it still does in my life, but, by and large churches have lost their bearings, and movements have taken on sectarian and bigoted views.
As natural disasters multiply, despair and hopelessness will abound.

Odds are there will be a backlash against immigrants at a time when the economy is faltering and traditional jobs are under threat. But immigration can be a force for good, both economically and socially in helping different cultures to understand one another better. The key is to find the balance between bad immigration and good immigration before everyone is either controlled by Google or wiped out by a natural disaster.

Terrorism

Billions are spent to prevent bad people to harm good people. I am writing this on September 11 that notorious date when the twin towers in the World Trade Center in New York City were attacked and some 3000 people died. Yet world-wide more than One Million people die in automobile accidents each year, 3000 every day! It’s about time we abolish cars and make the world Bike-Friendly, but the odds are that this will never happen.
True, if terrorists get their hands on nuclear weapons that would be scary.

Love.

With us being on the brink of a climate change catastrophe combined with economic collapse, will I really continue to love my neighbor as myself? What are the odds there?
I really do not dare to speculate on such a situation. The Bible – Matthew 24: 12 – tells us that, “Because of the increase of wickedness, the love of most will grow cold”. Already there’s something like donor fatigue: the problems everywhere are giving rise to far-right movements, truly scary.

So what is the answer?

Try Meditation: I meditate for two hours or longer every day while preparing for my blog. Turn off television, listen to good music, walk, run, bike, do physical exercises to clear your mind. Read good books. Discuss matters of importance with others.

We need to worry, because modern life does present plenty of reasons for concern: terrorism, climate change, the rise of A.I., encroachments on our privacy, even the apparent decline of international cooperation.

No, I am not a pessimist. I am a cheerful guy, always upbeat, take pleasure in life, love my wife and extended family, but when I run, (3 times per week) my running mantra is MARANATHA, LORD COME QUICKLY, because time is short.

Fortunately the Lord will cut short the age of trial for the sake of the saints, but, for the time being it will get a lot worse: the tribulations are about to start, and there won’t be a pre-tribulation Rapture.