Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

JULY 28 2018

KANN AUCH EIN PASTOR SELIG WERDEN?

A personal story.

For 10 years – from 2000 to 2010 – I wrote a weekly column for the regional daily, THE BELLEVILLE INTELLIGENCER.
My column featured my picture, of course, and its title YES….. BUT…I still remember where I was when I decided on this heading. My wife and I were on the way to Minneapolis, intending to take the ferry across Lake Michigan, and just before reaching the hotel on the eastside of the lake, the heading came to me.

I was allotted 750 words, and I adhered to that, naturally. My column was stopped when the paper was sold, when, as a money saving measure, all local columnists were given the boot. In those days I also wrote for the Christian Courier, but when they went right – to please the increasingly Conservative readership – and I went left, our ways parted.
So I started my own blog and, having no editor to curtail me, I expanded my content to some 2,000 words.

So why do I write?

I have a mission in life. I am re-reading Jordan B. Peterson’s “12 RULES FOR LIFE, an antidote to chaos”. This Toronto professor in psychology writes, “If you’re reading this book, there’s a strong probability you’re a privileged person. You can read. You have time to read. You’re perched high in the clouds. It took untold generations to get you where you are. A little gratitude might be in order. If you’re going to stand your ground, you better have good reasons. You better have thought them through.”

All that is so true, “It took untold generations to get me where I am”. Indeed, I am the fruit of the thinking of previous generations. It is now up to me to make their lives, and mine, worthwhile.

And what is that makes my life redeemable? Have I thought through what my mission is so late in life? What is it that I try to convey, something that is so difficult that it had to gestate for centuries? I already know my vision creates animosity, even enmity. More than one person whose friendship I valued have become shall I say, unfriendly?

Yes, I have a mission in life. That mission started even before my mother was born, when her father, born 150 years ago, in 1870, experienced financial trouble.

Martje, my mother, born in 1900, was the oldest of 5 children, 3 girls, two boys. Raised on a farm, she adored her father, a lean wiry man, highly regarded in his community, a perpetual elder in his church, who had to abort his education when the family fortune vanished. His great-grandfather had been a regional leader, a member of the Provincial Parliament: a plaque honoring his achievements has for 200 years been embedded above the door of the church where my ancestors have been members for centuries, judging by the gravestones on the cemetery surrounding the church in Doezum.

So my Opa opted for farming, as did all his children, except my mother, who settled in the City of Groningen.

As then was the custom, children were named after grandparents, thus my oldest brother became Wieger, after my father’s father. My two older sisters were named after my father’s mother, Jantje, and the next one also a Jantje, my mother’s mother, which they changed to Jansje.

My turn came next, child number 4 in 5 years – and my mother was sure it would be a boy, to be named after her father. She told me that she wished that I would become what her father had failed to achieve: a minister of the gospel. So on October 14 1928 I, Egbert Drewes, was born, all of 5 kg, 11 pounds, giving me a healthy start in life.

In grade school I was a devoted student, blessed with good teachers, getting all A’s, even on handwriting, now so bad that I often can’t read what I have written.
Well, I am not a quitter. As a kid I must have displayed an early independence, a bit of stubborn streak, perhaps not a bully, but certainly not a boy to be bullied.

I remember a fight I had.
I went to the Christian School, while the Public school was a block away and those kids passed each day 4 times through our street. One particular brute pestered my neighbor’s boy who was not too bright and easily picked upon. I simply could not stand seeing this somewhat handicapped boy so abused, so I clobbered the much bigger bully, landing my fist on his nose which started to bleed. That was it: my first and last fist fight.
I always had and maintained a strong feeling for justice. Daring as many kids are, I was an initiative-taker, reckless perhaps to the point of danger. I remember climbing to the roof of our three-storey school to retrieve a football, clinging to the drain pipe.
Thinking about it now gives me the shivers. I guess children do what they know they can do, although accidents do happen. My right index finger still has a scar when I jumped off a bicycle shed where it got hooked into the barbed wire that lined its roof. I was in the hurry because I was pursued by a policeman. In those days cops patrolled on their bikes and especially used the back alleys. I was then perhaps 10 years old.

My careless life changed on July 27 1941 when I was in my 13th year. Why do I remember that date so clearly? Well, it was my mother’s birthday, and birthdays always were celebrated with festive gatherings, where friends were invited, the best of the chinaware displayed, the finest of pastry offered, fancy chocolates, called for a reason ‘bonbons’, made the rounds, the choice of cigars smoked, and the toasts were made featuring an assortment of alcoholic beverages, mostly gin for the men, advocate for the ladies, a strong liqueur, made with eggs and brandy: no expense was spared, which meant that in war-time the Netherlands a lot of barter had taken place prior to the birthday event: my father had a large quota of sugar for his bakery-supply business: a pound of sugar equalled a bottle of Bols Jenever –gin – and so on.

On that particular date one of the friends invited was the family doctor.

So what was the talk among the gathering of a dozen friends? The topic was about the war, of course, where Germany had just invaded Russia. After a lull in the conversation – I can perfectly picture the scene – the doctor friend remarked that a few weeks ago he had enrolled his oldest son, Tom, a week younger than I, to attend the local university prep school, a semi-private institution. He wanted him to become a doctor.

That set my father thinking and my mother speculating. What if?
The next day Papa phoned the school. I did the entrance exam, and pronto, a few weeks later around September 1 1941 I was enrolled at the Willem Lodewijk Gymnasium, a 6 years course.

I have the memorial book published at the occasion of its 50th anniversary in 1959. It lists all those enrolled since its inception. In my year, 1941, 26 students entered grade 1, 24 male, two female. Of these 26, 10 finished the school without repeating a grade. Of the 16 remaining six of them dropped out over the years: failing a grade twice resulted in an automatic suspension. It took me eight years to finish the school. My friend Tom, the son of our doctor, kept pace with me: we finished at the same time.

Once graduated in 1949, I had PTSD: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It took me 10 years before I read a serious book again, and many more years later before I stopped dreaming that I had failed to pass the final examination, which involved translating episodes in 6 languages, Latin and Greek among them, and solving problems in 7 mathematical and science subjects.

My diploma stated that I could without further notice enter the faculty of medicine, law or theology. The latter was the reason why I had been sent there in the first place, but the army had the first call, so I was conscripted, and trained to fight these poor people in Indonesia, who wanted independence. In 18 months I made it to sergeant, and then was demobbed. Left the army on April 1 1951 and was in Canada 3 months later.

There my real life started. Within a year I was independent: first as a life insurance agent, then adding general insurance. Within 2 years was married to my fiancée, whom I have known since 1932. In 1963 we built an 1800 square feet house with a built-in office; in 1965 – then having 5 children – I also became a real estate broker.

In the following years I was deeply influenced by two books – yes I had again become a voracious reader –
(1) by a Dutch minister, Sterven…. And dan? ( After Death….what) which changed my thinking from being heaven-bound to forever belonging to God’s precious earth. That was a real awakening, and a true conversion.
(2) THE LIMITS TO GROWTH, a rather technical book with all sorts of graphs and tables and computer projections, basically saying that in the future we will hit limits in mineral use and in agriculture. It brought home to me that we live on a FINITE PLANET even though we treat it as inexhaustible.

Later two people deeply impacted me: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Johan Herman Bavinck, especially the latter whose “De Mensch en zijn Wereld”, I translated, appearing in English as BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION, published by Eerdmans, Grand Rapids: a real good read!!.

Bavinck opened my eyes to the KINGDOM VISION, a concept almost totally missing in contemporary Christianity, and it is exactly here where I see my mission in life.

I guess I am a late bloomer. Had I become a minister I really don’t know how I would have developed. I have a book by Helmut Thielicke, “The Trouble with the Church: A Call for Renewal”. In it he wonders, KANN AUCH EIN PASTOR SELIG WERDEN? (Can also a Pastor be saved?). James 3:1 comes to mind, “Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly”.

I am afraid that this would have applied to me: familiarity could have resulted in contempt.

Fortunately the Lord has given me a long life, a healthy constitution, an active brain and, after 40 years in business, and an equal time living among the trees, close to creation, He judged that this sort of training was better than pursuing theology.

All this reminiscing was fueled by a church service last Sunday.

The reader read Acts 1. In it Jesus appears for the last time and for 40 days he again spoke about “The Kingdom of God.” The preacher did not mention this: preachers hardly ever refer to the Kingdom, probably have no inkling what it means.

Jesus wanted once more emphasize the Kingdom concept. For three years he had talked Kingdom, often using parables, but his disciples had failed to grasp what Jesus really had in mind, so, during these very last weeks, Jesus again broached The Kingdom of God. And their reaction? The disciples were still obsessed by nationalistic desires: “When will you restore the Kingdom of Israel?” Oh, my!!

If Jesus couldn’t do it, who am I?

I’ve been hammering that Kingdom concept, and people simply don’t want to understand it. I repeat again: The entire mission of Jesus, his very purpose for coming to the earth, was to restore the cosmos to its original state.
That’s why when he returns he will bring back the NEW HEAVENS, cleared of all that space junk and CO2 and methane, and the NEW EARTH, similarly cleansed all of polluted items, so that THE NEW HUMANITY can have a fresh start, wiser, God’s law written on their hearts, fully mature.

If we are God’s children then we already are a NEW CREATION. 2 Corinthians 5: 17, “Therefore those who are in Christ, they are a new creation.” And live a New Creation LIFE!

July 21 2018

THE ONCE AND FUTURE CHURCH

Panta rhei, oude menei.

That’s a queer start. If it is Greek to you, then you are right. Perhaps you recognize the word ‘panta’, the first part of it, ‘pan’ is found back in ‘pan’-theism, in ‘Pan’- America, indicating the whole ball of wax. The Greek Panta means ‘all things’, ‘everything’. The word ‘rhei’ we find back in such rivers as the Rio Grande, the Rhine and the Rhone, indicating streams. So the first two words really mean that “Everything flows”. For the second part I better give you the lowdown right away: it says, “Nothing remains (the same).” So the entire ancient Greek proverb means, “Everything is always in motion, nothing remains the same.”

Change applies to all people and all institutions. The physical world is changing so fast that, books are outdated as soon as they are published.

Take the Arctic. Last week I read in The Arctic News that on:
July 6 sea surface temperature near Svalbard (near the North Pole): were in
2014: -0.8°C or 30.6°F
2015: 6.2°C or 43.2°F
2016: 8.3°C or 47.0°F
2017: 14.4°C or 57.9°F
2018: 16.6°C or 61.9°F

(Created by Sam Carana for Arctic-news.blogspot.com with nullschool.net images.)

Everything is in a state of flux, nothing is static, especially in the Far North. When the ‘eternal’ ice cover at the Arctic – it could well be ice-free in September – has disappeared, it exposes the trillions of tons of methane, 50 – 100 times more dangerous for Climate Change than the CO2 emitting from cars, chimneys, forest fires, airplanes, cows. Global Warming will go in overdrive. This is a sure sign that THE end is near, and the prophecy of 2 Peter 3: 13 is about to be fulfilled, “because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.”

Everything changes, except organized religion. No wonder it is hemorrhaging members left and right. The church has lost its moorings, has failed in its mission, has not observed the signs of the times, and has stuck to its outdated symbols, offices, doctrines, and confessions. OK. That’s easy, so what’s next?

The church has failed to heed Bonhoeffer’s words, “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”

Jesus, in his Sermon on the Mount tells us “Be Perfect as I am Perfect” (Matthew 5: 48). The word Jesus uses here is in Greek ‘teleios’, which we find back in ‘tele’phone, ‘tele’gram, ‘tele’pathy, which comes from the Greek word ‘telos’ meaning ‘end’ or ‘far’.

What Jesus had in mind – and Bonhoeffer understood that – is that our lives must have a goal, and that this goal is ‘the end.’ And the END is the New Creation.

J. H. Bavinck, in his “Between the Beginning and the End: a radical Kingdom Vision” writes, “The goal of our lives can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are unified under the one and only will of him who lives and rules forever.”

Bavinck also makes the radical statement that “There is no such thing as individual salvation. All salvation is of necessity UNIVERSAL”. Jesus did not come just to save sinners, like you and me: he came to restore creation as it was before the FALL into sin.

This cardinal truth is slowly penetrating into wider circles. Dr. David Bosch, a South African theologian and missiologist, writes in his “Believing in the Future: Toward a Missiology of Western Culture”, “What we do not need, then, is to introduce more religion. The issue is not to talk about God in a culture that has become irreligious, but how to express, ethically, the coming of God’s reign, how to help people respond to the real questions of their context, how to break with the paradigm according by which religion has to do only with the private sphere…”
(I found this quote in BEYOND THE MODERN AGE, by Goudzwaard and Bartholomew).

All three, Bosch, Bonhoeffer and Bavinck point out that the Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ ministry.

I repeat Bosch’s statement, “how to express, ethically, the coming of God’s reign, how to help people respond to the real questions of their context, how to break with the paradigm according by which religion has to do only with the private sphere.”

Panta Rhei, Oude Menei.

The church remains in the deadly groove of the private sphere, of personal salvation. We just love to sing, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.”

Wrong, at least partly so.
The Bible tells us –John 3: 16 – “God so loved the world that he offered his Only Son as a ransom to buy back the cosmos from The Evil One, that whosoever believes this will have the privilege to dwell eternally in God’s precious work of ART.”

That is the heart of the Gospel.

“Brother are you born again”, as my Pentecostal friend asked me, is a meaningless question and a cheap one at that because it does not bind us in any one way to God’s beloved cosmos. My “speaking in tongues” friend tells me that “Upon death I go to heaven, reminding me of the old hymn, “I am a stranger here, within a foreign land, my home is far away upon the golden strand”, oh so pious and oh so pagan.

Nothing remains the same.

Gospel preaching needs a new direction, away from individualism to an all-embracing life style, analogous to early Christianity when there was no such thing as an easy conversion.

In Paul’s time switching from a pagan position to a radical Christian stance involved fracturing family ties, being shunned by one’s community, ejected from one’s social and societal status.

To go forward today entails that we have to go BACK, all the way to early Christianity, to the church that once was viable. Acts 2 tells us about Peter. Addressing the Pentecost crowd gathering in Jerusalem, he says, “Save yourselves from this corrupt generation,” and some 3000 heeded the call. This chapter of Acts, depicting the early church, also gives us insight in what they thought: they really expected the imminent return of Christ, and so the rich members sold their holdings, and distributed their wealth among the others, so that all had enough. The early church, because of this radical commitment, grew.

In THE RISE OF CHRISTIANITY, Rodney Stark, a professor of sociology and comparative religion at the University of Washington calculates that Christianity grew at the rate of 40 percent per decade, from 1,000 in the year 40, to 1400 in the year 50 to 7,530 at year 100 to 40,500 fifty years later, to 6,200, 832 at year 300.

And who are they? Who joined this radical religion?

Based on the development of Mormonism, a recent movement with great missionary zeal, Dr. Stark concluded that the majority of converts to American cult movements were overwhelmingly from relatively irreligious backgrounds. He concludes that the Christians were not a mass of degraded outsiders but from early days had members, friends, and relatives in high places, often within the imperial family……. In other words, Christianity was not a proletarian movement, but recruited members in the middle and upper class.

What do we see today?

We see a church that loses members at a rate of 40 percent compound per decade since 1900, the exact opposite of the early rise. Why? Because the church has retained a ‘business plan’ that has proven to be increasingly fallible: outdated confessions, static church services, sermons based on the message that Jesus came to save me, me, me, a sinner, and much more.

On July 16 the New York Times gave a front page place to an article by Roy Scranton, a professor at Notre Dame University. Its telling title in bold print was RAISING A CHILD IN A DOOMED WORLD. He is the author of “We’re Doomed. Now what?

Today all signs point to the END, the end of nature, the end of stable weather, the end of arable land, the end of potable water, the end of large wild animals, the end of faith, of economic stability, and the list goes on.

If we are honest with ourselves, when we strip away the veils of sentimentality about the fate of our offspring, now clouding our vision, when we look at this world with a realistic mind, and also remember what REVELATION tells us about our planet, now dominated by evil, we can only conclude that our world has a definite expiry date: we must admit that, indeed, our way of life is doomed. Bonhoeffer’s words come mind again, “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”

This message offers the church a golden opportunity to tell those people, now in despair about the FATE OF THE EARTH, that the only HOPE is the New Creation.
This vision allows people to dream of never-ending bliss, total harmony, eternity to research, unlimited time to build the perfect tools, to invent the newest of the new, to really be what we were meant to be, without camouflage, without hidden motives, without making us appear better than we are.

The TRUMP troopers and the Rapture crowd will not agree. The heaven adherents will not welcome this message. The “Jesus Loves Me and creation be damned” believers will not take this to heart. The Dogmatic element, seeing Baptism and Theology as the overriding message, will be left in the dark. They will not alter their life, will not become creation-lovers, will not curtail energy use, have no desire to alienate their peers and relatives, as the early converts in Peter’s and Paul’s days had to do.

The Belgic Confession comes to mind and the question “How do we know God?
We know God by two means:
First, by the creation, preservation, and government
of the universe,
since that universe is before our eyes
like a beautiful book
in which all creatures,
great and small,
are as letters
to make us ponder
the invisible things of God:
God’s eternal power and divinity,
as the apostle Paul says in Romans 1:20.
All these things are enough to convict humans
and to leave them without excuse.
Second, God makes himself known to us more clearly
by his holy and divine Word,
as much as we need in this life,
for God’s glory
and for our salvation.

This means that CREATION is God’s Primary or Direct Word and thus HOLY, while the Scriptures, which we often refer to as God’s Holy Word, is the Secondary or Indirect Word. The Church has basically no regard for God’s Primary Word, while worshiping his Secondary Word, which has led to the church now having some 40,000 different denominations, each claiming to understand the Scriptures in a different way.
It is about time that we honor Creation as divinely originated and thus HOLY.

That’s why Dr. David Bosch has stated: “What we do not need, then, is to introduce more religion. The issue is not to talk about God in a culture that has become irreligious, but how to express, ethically, the coming of God’s reign”.
“Ethically”, the question of “How then shall we live” is what counts.

More than half of the church we attend went to visit an Amish settlement nearby to find out how a community can live without electricity, without cars, without TV and cellphones and live a self-sustaining life: and thrive.

Can we proceed or rather can we, as church community come back from our polluting, carbon-dependent life, and go to a creation-friendly, a divinely-ordained life?

When we do that then we can also invite others to join, not based on religion or dogma but founded on a life that follows Jesus’ example, a life where He, we and the earth form a unity.
Among the discerning people there’s a lot of despair. For them only a miracle can save creation.
That miracle happened on Calvary where Jesus said, “It is finished”: the New Creation is about to come.

July 14 2018

BE GLAD

There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.
Ecclesiastes 8:15.
Be glad as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.
1 Peter 4: 13.

A while ago I went to a lecture on “You are what you eat.” I have been preaching that line from time to time and went there to hear my thesis confirmed. I drove in my bio-diesel powered car for some 45 km one way, praying that the inevitable pollution caused by this trip would nevertheless pay off in some golden insights by which I and perhaps my odd reader might benefit.

Well, I learned that the title had been deceptive, that we are not only what we eat, but equally are what our genes have made us, which we cannot change.

Looking around in the room, I discovered one reason why women live longer than men: their presence exceeded men by a ratio of 5 to 1, which made me conclude that women are more curious, more willing to learn, which is a brain exercise, which, in turn, prolongs life. Perhaps that’s why I- as the ‘odd’ man there – am still around pestering people with my semi-sermons.

I chose the biblical title, “be glad”, because the ‘preacher’, supposedly King Solomon, knew a thing about life’s enjoyment, and, although he was reputed to have had 1,000 wives and concubines, he preferred a good meal and a good beverage over female companionship. You may not remember this, but Jesus was accused by his adversaries of being a glutton and a winebibber, something I, stern Calvinist, took a while to make part of my life. Being depression bred, and war-time conditioned, food has always been something to treasure and never to waste. Perhaps that’s why I today weigh no more than 140 pounds or, for the metric devotees, 63 kg.

The sub title of the lecture was: “Diet, Obesity, Dementia and Our Future Health.” I did learn that, although minds do suffer when aging, verbal knowledge increases while growing older, which explains my still wide-ranging vocabulary. For the rest, most of what I heard was old hat: exercise. My goodness, so far this year, I have run, walked, consisting of pushing my electric – solar powered – lawn mower, weeded, or biked more than 1800 km, or about 9 km each and every day. You could say that I am a fitness fanatic, and you would not be far off.

Eating is only part of the puzzle of health. We not only are what we eat, we also are what we drink. We happen to consists of 70 percent water, and I heard recently that most of us North Americans are water deficient, but, rather than take in more aqua, we fill that void with ever more food, ballooning in the process. Want to lose weight? Drink a lot of water. And sleep 8 hours.

So, what to eat?

For the rest: eat the whole plant, and lots of it: carrots, cooked red beets, beans, salads, fruit, nuts. That, more or less, is the short answer to the complicated question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy. A little meat won’t kill you, but a lot will. If you can, do without, as we do: my wife and I have been vegetarian for some 40 years.

Another stab at the future.

If you treasure health you better take charge yourself. Our medical system will only get worse as the population ages, and governments run out of money. The good times of high tax revenues are over. Prevention is the best medicine, which is obtained by eating whole fresh foods and not processed products, which are food-like substances, creations of food science festooned with health claims. The food processors invent fancy edibles each year by the thousands, good for their financial health, but little else.

So here is another rule: if you’re concerned about your body, avoid items that make health claims: they are a good indication that it’s not really food, and food is what you want to eat. Stick to the stuff your grand mother ate: locally grown, pesticide free, organic, if possible, meals prepared from scratch, such as oatmeal porridge to start the day, easily done in a $20.00 slow cooker, left overnight.

Diets?

Forget about them, and forget about juice as well: eat the whole fruit. Drink water, even tap water. Walk, run, bike, sleep a lot, have fun. A bad meal in good company is better than a good meal all by your lonely self.

But, staying healthy and eating properly is becoming more difficult.

Perhaps you have noticed that we live in crazy times, enormously abnormal. Get used to it. When you start getting temperatures above 28 Celsius or 86 Fahrenheit certain crops, such as corn, soybeans, wheat, start to suffer from heat stress. They don’t grow as well. If the crops end up failing, the inevitable result is food inflation.

It looks that this summer is the start of perpetual food shortages. Now is the time to change eating habits, from prepared foods – mostly unhealthy – to meals made from scratch. Become vegetarian, because animals excrete a lot of C02 and methane which is many times more dangerous. Prepare for the worst. Remember, matters will never get better again: we are locked into a perpetual downward slope. Accelerating heat events, extreme weather patterns will increasingly jeopardize crops everywhere.
Plan for a pandemic.

In today’s climate we must be prepared for any eventuality. A pandemic is overdue, and, once it hits, it will very quickly paralyze the transportation system, because travel will have to be restricted to prevent the disease from spreading. This means that all supermarkets near you will run out of stock in less than a week, and even faster if shoppers panic. A pandemic really is not a question of if: it’s a question of when. Chances are it will be avian flu (bird flu) but it might be something else, which will spread very rapidly just like flu does normally because it’s a highly contagious organism.

Based on that, and also because of severe weather threats, it makes eminent sense to stockpile enough food for at least 10 weeks. Ten weeks allows people to stay at home and avoid contact with infected people until a vaccine becomes available, or until the disease has run its natural course.

What to store?

The lifeboat includes affordable long-life staples such as rice, biscuits, milk powder, canned tuna and soups, chocolate, lentils, dry cereals and other durable staples. It makes sense to have staples that are easy to store, have a long shelf life and not dependent on refrigeration.

Ideally it should be stuff that can be eaten without cooking in case gas and electricity fail. It’s up to you to decide what this should be: fill your pantry with a good variety. Also, with food inflation rampant, it is a hedge against rising prices.

I started out with, “There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.”

There also is a different tack on ‘being glad’.

So far my spiel seems completely contrary, because the future I have outlined is so totally opposite to anything we usually classify as being glad.

Well, and here I come again with the Bible, where the apostle Peter has a different take on reasons to be glad. He writes, “Be glad as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4: 13).

So, what’s up? Where am I heading? Peter reminds us that suffering precedes deliverance. Jesus tells us that we will not share in his glory unless we also share in his suffering, and, you can be assured, suffering lies ahead. The only comfort I can offer is what the saying tells us, ”Forewarned is forearmed.”

Signs are becoming more pronounced that we have passed the peak of oil production, and it’s all downhill from now on. It could also be argued that we have passed the peaks for water, fertilizer and land, and that we will all soon be made painfully aware that we have passed it for food, as wealthy nations experience shortages and rising prices, and poorer ones starve.

I can pretty well assure you global chaos, a tidal wave of people fleeing their own countries for wherever they can find food. It looks that the European Union is falling apart on the very issue of immigration, and the USA and Canada too are facing that matter.

Of course, arguments that overpopulation will lead to famine or worse are nothing new; in the early 19th century the Rev. Thomas Malthus contended that the human march toward progress would be derailed by a cycle of overpopulation leading to shortages and misery. Thanks to ubiquitous TV coverage the majority of global citizens is beginning to demand the same kind of existence we Westerners have enjoyed, but we also know there simply isn’t enough of the Euro-American way of life to go around.

Climate Change is at the root of the problem, at a time when we also face overexploitation of the sea and natural resources, overuse of chemical fertilizer, reliance on fossil fuels, protectionism, subsidies, biofuels, waste and other factors.

There are two elephants in the kitchen: population growth and overconsumption. A projected 33 percent growth in population in the next 20 years, combined with increased consumption of meat as the global middle class grows larger, means that food production must grow by at least 50 percent in that same period.

And it can’t, so can we still be glad?

We are faced with two drastically opposed visions. There is Solomon in all his glory, the then richest king in the world, evident from being able to afford 1000 wives, all having their own clan, household, slaves, connections, a virtual city in itself. He preached the gospel of prosperity, a predecessor to Joel Osteen, the current promotor of the glory of wealth. For Solomon and Osteen this text is the gospel truth, “There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.”

And then there is Peter, the disciple who betrayed Jesus three times, not unlike all of us, who also do this repeatedly. He preaches a different gospel, more in tune with today, “But rejoice, inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. (1 Peter 4: 13).”

What a contrast! Solomon proclaimed never ending wealth, all the treasures of this world: Eat, Drink, Have Fun, for tomorrow we die and then it’s over.

Peter, betrayer Peter; Peter, impetuous Peter; Peter, passionate Peter preached the opposite. He foresaw Climate Change; he foresaw global disorder; he foresaw planetary panic, and wrote, (2 Peter 3: 11-13), “Since all these things are to be destroyed in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be destroyed by burning, and the elements will melt with intense heat! But according to His promise we are looking for new heavens and a new earth, in which righteousness dwells.

So who do you believe today?

It reminds me of the choice God gave to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai as recorded in Deuteronomy 30: 15,
See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the LORD your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.

Today loving the Lord primarily means LOVING HIS CREATION – and all creatures, including humans -with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our intellect and actions.

Yes, suffering is in store: there’s no escape anymore, but we can rejoice because a new earth awaits us. There again applies the Old Testament condition:
There is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat and drink and be glad.

JULY 7 2018

THE STATE OF THE WORLD MIDWAY 2018.

Don’t call me a pessimist.

Yes, we live in a messy world, where every government is busy to hide the sorry situation, which will only succeed until reality, the crazy present, catches up to the ugly truth, the ugly truth being that matters out there are much more dire than the papers, the TV interviews, the sermons, make out to be.

There’s a biblical truth that neither society nor the church dares to acknowledge: God is no longer in charge of his creation. There are three instances in the Bible that clearly indicate that.
(1) Matthew 3: 8-9. There the devil tempts Jesus and offers him the entire world: “all this I will give you if you bow down and worship me.” This is clear proof that the devil calls the shots on the earth.
(2) Then, just before Jesus is arrested and put to death, he prays for protection of his so vulnerable flock, so easily deceived, as is all too evident today. All this is recorded in John 17, especially verse 15, “My prayer is not that you take them out of this world but that you protect them from the evil one.” Yes, the evil one is in charge and we need all the protection possible. Of course, just like DE NACHTWACHT, that famous Rembrandt picture, will always be tied to that great Dutch painter, but is no longer his, but the property of the Amsterdam Museum, so the world will also always belong to the creator, but now is in the temporary possession of the evil one. To buy it back Jesus died – see John 3: 16, the most relevant text for today’s circumstances.
(3) 1 John 5: 19 unequivocally states that “the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” That needs no further elaboration, because this situation is becoming more evident by the day. We may enthusiastically sing, “He’s got the whole world in his hand,” and that is ultimately true, but today, in this final human era, this is no longer the case.
People who say that THE HOLOCAUST was an act of God, and so have lost their faith, have it all wrong: it was an act of the pure evil one. When Jesus (Luke 8:28) ‘rebukes’ the wind, then he implies that the storm is caused by ‘the evil one’. 1 John 5: 19, “The Whole World is in the power of the Evil One”, is just another indication that Global Warming is Satan’s doing.
We must never forget that it is Satan`s foremost goal to destroy as much of the planet as possible before the Lord returns to renew it. The Evil One is a true fanatic, full-well knowing that he cannot possibly win but still he redoubles his efforts, and, sorry to say, in this venture we are his willing helpers.

I always find it puzzling that sincere Christians, fully exposed to biblical teaching, are nevertheless reluctant to admit that for the New Earth to come, the old earth has to go, and since God promised with the Flood, not to repeat this act, it is plain that this time around we, the human race, will be the culprit.

So….. what is the state of the world 2018 at this point, halfway the year? How far are we in our suicidal planetary demise?

Much worse off than even a year ago.

More up-to-date analysis based on NASA data shows that the earth has long crossed the 1.5°C increase set by the Paris Climate Agreement, which Obama joined, but from which Trump withdrew.

There is strong evidence that the world may also be crossing the higher 2°C guardrail later this year, with temperatures threatening to keep rising dramatically beyond that point.

Since we all are fully allied with THE EVIL ONE, nothing will be done to fight this phenomenal climate warming anomaly. Too strong a statement? Tell me, have you cut down your automobile use, still drive in an air-conditioned automobile to listen in climate-controlled comfort to a preacher, who promises heaven forever? Do you still fly everywhere in the world? Will you vote again for a president who has been married three times, who is the LIAR in chief, who insults friends, breaks promises, prefers the company of dictators and thugs, and so far has rescinded all laws to stall Climate Change, because “the Christians” don’t believe that creation ultimately belongs to God?

The state of the world midway 2018 is worrisome with worse to come.

Take TREES.

Every DAY, 365 days per year, an area the size of New York City is lost to cutting them down and other human interference.
Every 100 DAYS an area the size of Scotland is wiped of the tree map. Within one year an area the size of Italy is deprived of the trees which give life to us, humans.
Global tree cover losses have doubled since 2003, while deforestation in crucial tropical rainforest has doubled since 2008. A falling trend in Brazil has been reversed amid political instability and forest destruction has soared in Colombia.
In other key nations, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s vast forests suffered record losses.
Forest losses are a huge contributor to the carbon emissions driving global warming, about the same as total emissions from the US, which is the world’s second biggest polluter. Deforestation destroys wildlife habitat and is the key reason that wildlife ln the last 40 years has diminished by 40 percent, starting the Sixth Mass Extinction.

“The main reason tropical forests are disappearing is not a mystery – vast areas continue to be cleared for soy, beef, palm oil, timber, and other globally traded commodities,” said Frances Seymour at the World Resources Institute, which produces Global Forest Watch with its partners. “Much of this clearing is illegal and linked to corruption.”

Forest Fires.

When fires burn on Colorado and California, it is on TV. When far larger fires burn in Siberia and Northern Canada no TV crew is at hand to tell us about it.
Destruction by humans causes virtually all deforestation in the tropics, a vast haven of both carbon and wildlife. Fires are dominant at higher latitudes, causing roughly two-thirds of losses in Russia and Canada, and may be becoming more common due to climate change.

SYSTEM FAILURE

This week I again picked up a book I bought in 2006 by Thomas Homer-Dixon, now a professor in Waterloo, THE UPSIDE OF DOWN.
The book outlines the problems we face and clarifies their scope and deep causes. He traces the FALL of ROME in detail and clarifies how this was inevitable. A city with a million and more inhabitants needed ever more food and logistic support, and in the end the then world was not big enough to sustain its population as everything had to come from ever further distances.

My question: when – not if – will our complex society collapse.
It is all too evident that the USA is engaged in a frenzy of self-destruction. In an age of increasing complexity and interlocking crises, the Trump administration has embarked on a mass deskilling and simplification of the state. It is defunding departments, disbanding the teams and dismissing the experts they rely on, shutting down research programs, maligning the civil servants who remain in post, and destroying the public protections that defend us from disaster.

Life expectancy is at best stagnating, as three times as many deaths are caused by pollution as by AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.
Pollution now threatens the very survival of societies, while at the same time the Trump government systematically destroys the effectiveness of the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, guts the Clean Power Plan, nullifies standards for motor vehicles, and the list goes on.

What this really amounts to is that The Evil One, The Devil, also known as the Satan, has found a willing ally and an enthusiastic supporter in POTUS, the President of the United States who now has become his most important collaborator in destroying Creation and so, willy-nilly speeds up the coming of the New Heaven and Earth.

Here’s where we are.

Now, Mid 2018, in the USA we witness the pursuit of simplistic solutions to complex problems, as environmental protection is being dismantled by right-wing governments, resulting in accelerating destruction of natural habitat worldwide. In spite of the United Nations efforts to stem Climate Change the annihilation of wild life, the disappearance of insects and birds, the depletion of aquifers, the degradation of soil, continues at an astonishing rate. Don’t for a minute expect that these interlocking crises will not affect you.

The current 7.6 billion people on the Earth are alive in a very special moment of human history. It had never happened before and it will never happen again.
That so many people are alive today is because there exists a sophisticated and incredibly complex system engaged in keeping them alive. That apparatus is the stupendous transportation system that carries food from all over the world, powered by fossil energy and controlled by the financial and political system we call “globalization.” As long as fossil energy and globalization exist, people will be fed and population may continue growing.

But not for long.

The whole system is under heavy strain because of depletion and pollution. Natural resources are more and more costly to produce while fighting pollution – and now increasingly global warming – is becoming increasingly costly. Every day we witness more fires, larger storms, higher heat, and bigger floods. So far earthquakes have been absent, but for how long?

A major financial collapse will totally disrupt the transportation chain which ships food from all over the planet. Without this system, the food will rot where it is produced and the people at the other end of the chain will starve. It will be GOOD BYE to the whole system, including the human population. That may happen as soon as later this year, so be prepared.

ENTER THE BOOK OF REVELATION.

Here is what it says about TODAY.

The book is dominated by one theme: the things in this world are really not what they are in the final analysis. Everything in our world is fake, carries a mask, is disguised; everything is different than it is. Yes, John predicted the FAKE NEWS syndrome.

John points out is that at long last matters will become what they are, that their masks will be torn off. In the last chapter of Revelation (22:11), he really sounds the alarm bell: “Let those who do wrong keep on doing wrong, and those who do right continue to do so, and let those who are holy continue to be holy”. That really means that matters are fixed: Climate Change will remain, wars will continue, evil will accelerate. Out of all the chaos and collapse at long last the truth will emerge. All camouflage will vanish and everything will finally show the true character that corresponds with its ultimate essence. That is the melody that vibrates through the entire book of The Revelation of John and makes it so engaging and vibrant.

That’s what we see today.
Yes, we live in a messy world, where every government is busy to hide the sorry situation, which will only succeed until reality, the crazy present, catches up to the ugly truth, the ugly truth being that matters out there are much more dire than the papers, the TV interviews, the sermons, make out to be.

Matters are not what they seem. The prosperity, the riches, the fancy BMWs, the palatial homes, the pensions we enjoy, the healthcare we receive, the air-conditioning we need more than ever, all of this has been borrowed from the future, a future in which all this glitter will be exposed as phony, nothing but make-believe and sham.
Once this becomes clear, once this truth hits, society will collapse, as sure as Rome did 1600 years ago and, as Homer-Dixon writes, “That unraveling would make Rome’s decline pale by comparison.”

A children’s song comes to mind, “The Bible tells us so.”

JUNE 30 2018

HAS RELIGION BECOME A RELIC?

Last week my wife and I went to a community event sponsored by the Tweed and Area Art Council. The council a few years ago purchased a disused United Church building, just north of where we live, and fixed it up nicely, the interior that is, the exterior is pure marble – a locally mined product – and as such it is known as THE MARBLE CHURCH.

The program was quite varied, and completely carried out by local people, who had written the plays, directed and performed them. Apart from six people – including us two- who belonged to our Presbyterian church, I was quite sure that very few in the audience as well as of the actors, musicians and dancers ever attended a religious event. Oh yes, I recognized some Roman Catholic people, and probably there were others who would go to mass regularly. It was quite evident that the performers were really dedicated, perhaps more than many church people to their institution.
By the way: among the total audience, some 100 hundred people, there was not a single minority member, quite typical for small rural communities which also vote conservative.

While watching I wondered what religion meant to both church goers and the unaffiliated. I don’t want to sound judgemental because I cannot see into their hearts, but I am pretty sure that religion really plays no role in most people’s life at all, both church goers and non. Do they ever have questions about GOD and how things started, and now especially, how it all will end?

J.H. Bavinck, in his THE RIDDLE OF LIFE opened his book this way:
“When we for the first time are consciously aware of what really is going on in the world, and therefore suddenly look at the world with renewed eyes, that is the precise moment when we are overwhelmed with questions. Why? Because the problems that confront us today are so numerous and in the main so intractable that, while trying to solve them, we cannot escape the distinct notion that we have an impossible fight on our hands.”

Yes, questions abound. But do people still seek answers?

I am a weather freak, not quite obsessed by it, but I certainly have a more than passing interest in what happens in the atmosphere. Every day I look at the website of the National Hurricane Center and the Wunderground.com. Both keep me posted on the weather-related events especially in North America. When this blog is posted it is supposed to be 35 degrees Celsius. Pretty hot stuff.

Will people wake up? Will they change their ways, so that they will have a clearer conscience when, appearing before the Judgement Seat, they can plead a degree of resistance to the looming weather-related disaster known as Climate Change? The Judgement Seat, What’s that?

A new book.

Our oldest son gave me a book last week: “12 RULES FOR LIFE, an antidote to chaos,” by Jordan Peterson, Clinical Psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto. He is quite forthright, and quotes the Bible repeatedly. Example: Matthew 7: 14, “narrow is the way which leads to life, and few find it,” and Matthew 10:34: “Think not that I have come to send peace to earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword”. None of that cheap grace stuff for him.
Peterson is not a member of a church. Is that why he quotes Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s last book?

It’s called “The Grand Inquisitor”. It’s a story that Ivan, the atheist Karamazov brother, has composed and recounts to his younger brother Alyosha, the aspiring priest. In it Jesus returns to the earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Ivan says: “It is fifteen centuries since signs from heaven were seen. And now the deity appears once more among the people.” Everyone recognizes him, because a blind man sees and a dead child rises. But the old cardinal, in charge of the Inquisition, takes Jesus to prison and tells him that: “You have no right to add anything to what you have said…. Why have you come to hinder us?” Ivan explains that this is a fundamental feature of the Church that God cannot ‘meddle’ now because “all has been given by you to the Pope. The Church is the authority now.”
The Grand Inquisitor then tells Jesus that he erred when he resisted the devil’s three temptations in the wilderness, where the devil offered him miracle, mystery and might, which the Church has accepted. Jesus, however, wanted them to have freedom of choice. But, says the clergyman, freedom is too difficult and frightful for the masses and so the Church has taken the three awesome gifts for them. The Inquisitor concludes: “We are not working with you, but with the devil– that is our mystery.” Jesus, still not speaking, kisses him on the lips. “That was all his answer.” The Grand Inquisitor opens the cell door and says, “Go, and come no more, never, never.” And the divine visitor leaves.”

I repeat: “Freedom is too difficult for the masses” says the cardinal, but that is an important part of Jesus’ teaching: “The Truth shall set you free”. True, the church of his day and of today rather not give the people a free hand. I wonder, is the result of this the following?
“Whenever God erects a house of prayer
The Devil builds a chapel there;
And ‘twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.”
Daniel Defoe in The True-born Englishman

Dr. Peterson comments (page 191): “Dostoevsky saw that the great, corrupt edifice of Christianity still managed to make room for the spirit of its Founder………. With his great generosity of spirit, Dostoevsky granted to the church, corrupt as it might be, a certain element of mercy, a certain pragmatism. He admitted that the spirit of Christ, the world-engendering Logos, has historically and might still find its resting place – even its sovereignty – within that dogmatic structure.”

Peterson is not always that gracious. He takes the church to task in not following Christ’s example of total service, writing, “He not only demands sacrifice, but the sacrifice of precisely what is loved best”, and he then relates how Abraham was asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, something Abraham did not need to do after all, but which the Father God did when the Son Jesus died on the cross.
Wonders Peterson, “Why does God – why does life – impose such demands?” Bonhoeffer, in his The Cost of Discipleship, makes the same point.

Fact is that the church – in the vain hope that more people will join – usually compromises the message. I believe that only radical preaching, in the form of “Seek first the Kingdom, the welfare of Creation,” will save the church from extinction. The failure to do so has caused religion to be on the retreat. But, paradoxically it also may lead to what Bonhoeffer calls RELIGION-LESS RELIGION.

Yes, religion, which has long provided the institutional and social scaffolding for a life of meaning, is in steep decline. The entire Western world, especially young adults are unlikely to identify with a religious faith, attend church or engage in other religious practices. But the sense of meaningfulness provided by religion is not so easily replicated in nonreligious settings: When these white people abandon traditional houses of worship, they increasingly search for alternative religious-like experiences (including those involving ideas about ghosts or space aliens) in order to feel as if they are part of something larger and more meaningful than their brief mortal lives.

Thomas Homer-Dixon – a Waterloo professor – wonders whether there is a direct correlation between environmental degradation and the peoples’ minds. Does a healthy atmosphere make people choose healthier options, including religion, while foul air, foul water, foul soil influences people to become foul themselves: after all we are what we eat, breathe and drink? Fact is that today, right now, longevity is faltering and people are starting to die at younger ages.

In 1919 Prof. Dr. J Huizinga wrote HERFST-TIJ DER MIDDEL- EEUWEN. The English translation has as title THE WANING OF THE MIDDLE AGES.
Today we witness THE WANING OF THE HUMAN AGE. We are managing – in total agreement with the purpose of the Lord – the total destruction of what took place in the first chapters of Genesis: the ever faster pace of environmental destruction of creation that God called `good` after each phase and `very good` when it was completed.
The curious part of this is that this final act of annihilation may well include the Waning of RELIGION.

That needs some elaboration. While in prison in 1944, and months before the Nazis killed him, here’s what Bonhoeffer wrote in a letter to a friend,
“What is bothering me incessantly is the question what Christianity really is, or indeed who Christ really is for us today. The time when people could be told everything by means of words, whether theological or pious, is over, and so is the time of inwardness and conscience–and that means the time of religion in general. We are moving toward a completely religion-less time; people as they are now simply cannot be religious anymore. Even those who honestly describe themselves as “religious” do not in the least act up to it, and so they presumably mean something quite different by “religious.”

Our whole nineteen-hundred-year-old Christian preaching and theology rest on the “religious a priori” of mankind. “Christianity” has always been a form–perhaps the true form–of “religion.” But if one day it becomes clear that this a priori does not exist at all, but was a historically conditioned and transient form of human self-expression, and if therefore man becomes radically religion-less–and I think that that is already more or less the case (else how is it, for example, that this war (1939-45), in contrast to all previous ones, is not calling forth any “religious” reaction?)–what does that mean for “Christianity”? It means that the foundation is taken away from the whole of what has up to now been our “Christianity,” and that there remain only a few “last survivors of the age of chivalry,” or a few intellectually dishonest people that we are to pounce in fervor, pique, or indignation, in order to sell them goods? Are we to fall upon a few unfortunate people in their hour of need and exercise a sort of religious compulsion on them?

If we don’t want to do all that, if our final judgment must be that the Western form of Christianity, too, was only a preliminary stage to a complete absence of religion, what kind of situation emerges for us, for the church? How can Christ become the Lord of the religion-less as well? Are there religion-less Christians? If religion is only a garment of Christianity–and even this garment has looked very different at different times–then what is a religion-less Christianity?
End of the Bonhoeffer quote.

I ask the same question: Why is Climate Change or the Trump Tragedy not calling forth any “religious” reaction? What does that mean for “Christianity”?

My struggle is, “What does a church, a sermon, a liturgy, a Christian life mean in a religion-less world? How do we speak of God without religion? We are killing God’s creation. Are we killing God in the process? In what way are we “religion-less-secular” Christians? What does it mean, as Bonhoeffer elsewhere stated, that “God, Humanity and the Earth are one?”

Romans 1: 19-20 comes to mind, “What may be known about God is plain to them…..For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.”

In other words, Creation itself places us before God. Does this mean that those people are “Christians” who see creation as God’s, as Divine, and as such honor God as the creator and live accordingly?

If that is the case, where does this place the church? Does it spell the end of religion? Is attempting to live a creation-enhancing life sufficient to win favor with God? In other words, has Religion become a Relic?

Since living a completely non-polluting life has become impossible, even though we must aim for that, grace and prayer are our only refuge.

JUNE 23 2018

BE NOT AFRAID

Lately I have been rereading a book a friend gave me: BEYOND THE MODERN AGE, written by Bob Goudzwaard and Craig Bartholomew. My first reading was more or less cursory, gaining an idea, trying to discover whether my vision is also shared by these illustrious authors.

The first time I did not notice it, but in a more careful going-over I detected a statement I identify with, a quote from David Bosch, a South African theologian who wrote that “The Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ ministry”. This means that seeking the Kingdom should be our goal in life as well.

True, calling for a ‘care economy’ – as the book does – is a worth-while aim, but I strongly believe that pursuing this within the framework of the Kingdom Ideal must be the aim for both church and all believers.

I know this book is not a theological work and, as such, these two Christian authors, one an economist and the other, Bartholomew a philosopher were perhaps loath to express a particular theological opinion, although the book is a deeply religious one, but, in my non-professional status, the Kingdom concept goes beyond any scientific consideration and any ecclesiastical enterprise because it entails all of life, after all the Kingdom of God is simply the world, the perfect planet that now is prepared for us for eternity. It encompasses the totality of creation and it is the most single event for which we all must prepare: after all it is our future!

That’s why I believe David Bosch should have been featured more prominently, because it constitutes the real answer for the young people for whom this book is written,

Still there is much to recommend in the book. It certainly points to multiple resources and quotes many eminent scholars, some of them saying that there’s no longer light at the end of the tunnel: that life has become “a closed loop”. The raw current reality today is that all nations, all economies pursue growth, all advocate expansion of the economy at all cost. The recent purchase of the Kinder-Morgan pipeline by the Canadian Federal government illustrates this point: dirty Albertan tar-sand oil needs an outlet. By all indications Climate Change advocates are losing.

BE NOT AFRAID

I also believe that the authors did not sufficiently emphasize the disasters to come, as outlined in Matthew 24 and in much of the book of Revelation. One of the students of the university where Bartholomew taught, Liz Harmer-Windhorst, did that in her book entitled THE AMATEURS, where she implicitly said that unchecked technology, with which the public has falling in love, can be so dangerous that it will depopulate the earth.
And that is just one possible danger, one example of the many dystopian views around nowadays, this time written by a Christian student. These young people know the score, read the signs, experience a post-modern world much more intensively than the older generation.

BEYOND THE MODERN AGE was written for students, and was to serve as a guide for the future, an uncertain future, a time when abnormality is the norm. We see that all-too-well today, that’s why my heading is BE NOT AFRAID.

A new age dawns.

Since the book was written, a lot has happened. Even though it was published last year, the authors relied on information a few years old. Matters change so fast that anything in print today is old news tomorrow.

Yes, there are many reasons to be afraid because the world is changing fast for the worse. Look at Africa.
There the Giant African baobab trees suddenly die after thousands of years. I have seen them when we were in Malawi.
Baobabs are a peculiar part of the sub-Saharan landscape in Africa. Wielding gnarled branches that can spiral up to nearly 100 feet into the air and with bloated trunks that send out branches spanning an average of 65 feet all together, the baobab is a vital part of the region’s ecology and a celebrated staple Africa’s culture. And like many parts of the natural world, the baobab suddenly finds itself threatened in these post-modern times.

The numbers are grim: 8 of the 13 oldest and 5 of the 6 largest trees on record have died or experienced deterioration over the past 12 years. The impact of their loss would have profound consequences on many levels. Baobab age has always been a difficult thing to tabulate, since the trunks produce only faint growth rings. Recent breakthroughs in radio-carbonating suggest they can live about 3,000 years. Nothing lives forever, but the latest spate of deterioration and death among the species’ oldest members is downright scary.

From the immense to the miniscule.

Not only are the titans of nature in danger, also an insect Armageddon is under way, the result of a multiple whammy of environmental impacts: pollution, habitat changes, overuse of pesticides, and global warming. And it is a decline that could have crucial consequences. Our creepy crawlies may have unsettling looks but they lie at the foot of a wildlife food chain that makes them vitally important to the makeup and nature of the countryside. They are “the little things that run the world” according to the distinguished Harvard biologist Edward O Wilson, who once observed: “If all humankind were to disappear, the world would regenerate back to the rich state of equilibrium that existed 10,000 years ago. If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”

The best illustration of the ecological importance of insects is provided by our birdlife. Without insects, hundreds of species face starvation and some ornithologists believe this lack of food is already causing serious declines in bird numbers.

Another reason to be on edge.

And it’s not only the trees, the insects and the birds that are suffering: nature herself seems to act unduly different. The Yellowstone Park’s Steamboat Geyser has erupted eight times since March 2018— that’s more eruptions than in the past 15 years combined. Scientists are unsure what is causing the eruptions. The geyser, which is the tallest in the world, erupted four times alone in the month of May, so University of Utah scientists installed a portable seismic array around the spring in hopes of gathering data to help reveal how intermittent geysers work, according to the USGS, U.S. Geological Survey.

The Book of Revelation predicts that an enormous earthquake will destroy a third of the world. Super-volcano Yellowstone is capable of doing that. Revelation 16: 18 tells us that “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since mankind has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake.”

And the animals also feel that worse is to come, and feel threatened.
A bison has gored a woman for the third animal attack in Yellowstone National Park this week.
Lately twice in a week a female elk with a calf injured two women near a Yellowstone hotel. Park officials aren’t sure if it was the same elk.
A bison rammed and slightly injured a woman in Yellowstone in early May.

There’s lots of political trouble on our ever more vulnerable planet

During 1940-45 I witnessed Nazis targeting Jews. Across the street from us lived a Jewish family. The Gestapo first picked up the husband. A few days later the children were taken away. The pregnant mother, in deep agony, of course, was left alone for a week, then she also was arrested in the middle of the night.

I was reminded of this when the Trump administration separated children from their parents, with the tacit approval of a large portion of Christian America.

History repeating itself.

The Trump and his dutiful followers are for me a scary reminder of the Nazi regime, where the German church too was a silent partner.
Then there was the G-7 summit in Quebec City. Its failure wasn’t fundamentally about trade, or even the Western alliance. It was about the steady collapse of the postwar order and the way power structures are being reorganized and renegotiated across societies and across the world.

Trump takes delight in sowing mischief. That proves that he is an important man: he really can upend the world order. He thinks that the world is a nasty place, and by his actions he accomplishes that: a pure power trip.
He thinks that everybody is out to get him, so he trusts nobody and suspects everyone: he judges people by his own standards, which are purely self-centered with no regard for others, no sense of history, no feelings of compassion whatsoever.
In this low-trust Trumpian worldview, values don’t matter; there are only interests. In this low-trust Trumpian worldview, friendship is just a con that other people try to pull on you before they screw you over. This low-trust style of politics is realism on steroids.
Never trust a man who cannot laugh, who cannot joke, who cannot cry: such a person resembles the Devil.
Trump loves dictators like Putin and Kim Jong-un; hates democrats like Justin Trudeau.

Here comes my sermon for the week, complete with a hymn.

BE NOT AFRAID.

… And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.
Luke 12:4.

… In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”
John 16: 33.

Those are two quotes from Jesus the Christ.

The Bible paints far more scary scenarios than those i quoted above. All point to a future that holds no promise: only more trouble and uncertainty. The realistic thing to do today is to prepare for collapse. The entire financial framework is becoming totally unhinged. I don’t want to repeat all the possible bad things that can happen, because it would far exceed my 2000 word limit I have imposed on my weekly blog.

Suffice it to say that, if we did not have the promise of Jesus the Christ that he will return and make all things new (“I am making everything new! Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.” Revelation 21: 5), we would indeed succumb in despair.

Today my favorite hymn is ABIDE WITH ME:

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, oh, 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.

BE NOT AFRAID.

Trump is not what scares me: his followers, mostly church-going Southern Baptists and heaven-touting Pentecostals: they are the people that frighten me. They use the Bible as a talisman, but they are totally ignorant of their biblical ignorance, and proud of it.
I once heard a man who was a firm believer in RAPTURE explain to me how this happens: he told how of the two pilots on a plane, one would suddenly disappear and with him also a number of passengers: they were raptured and united with Christ in the air.

I tried to explain to him how Matthew 24: 39 clearly indicates that not the sinners but the believers are LEFT BEHIND. Jesus – who should know the score – relates how: “they (the sinners as in Noah’s days) knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all – the sinners – away.
That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.” When Jesus comes again, the sinners will disappear (I have no clue what happens to them), but Jesus will gather his disciples around him because (see John 3-16) they are – like Jesus – earth-lovers. My explanation made him angry.

When the Son of Man returns he will give the renewed earth to his faithful, those who have ignored the RAPTURE rage and have remained faithful to the earth, the very globe out of which God the Creator, formed us, giving us the name ADAM, which means EARTH. Yes, Jesus has overcome the world, now ruled by THE EVIL ONE – see 1 John 5: 19.

Upon Jesus’ return the earth will be given to us totally renewed, cleansed of all pollution, indeed a new earth.
Thank you Jesus: that’s why we need not be afraid.