Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

March 24 2018

EASTER: HOPE.

No, it’s not the noises in the
streets
which does not let us sleep.
It is the earthquake soon to come
that will shake the world
and put everything in its place.
Accompany us then on this vigil
and you will know what it is to
dream!
You will know how marvelous it is
to live threatened with Resurrection.
An excerpt of a poem by Julia Esquivel, published in the Presbyterian CONNECTION, Spring 2018.

You know how I always start a new blog? I type in the date, and then let the spirit take over, the SPIRIT, that mysterious force that defies description.

I read a lot. That helps. As a matter of fact I always have books on the go, especially last week when my Internet service and telephone were off: it was the CORD that was defect: the simplest of devices can stop access. Society take heed!

And I think.

What so preoccupies me these days are the words Jesus uttered in John 17, “I have given them your word – REDEEMED CREATION! – and the world has hated them, for they are not of this world any more than I am of this world.

Is that where the Spirit leads me?

This text is usually misinterpreted. People see in here that we do not belong to this world – abandoning Creation – that, as one hymn says it, “I am a stranger here, within a foreign land, my home is far away upon the golden strand”.

People forget that in this same prayer, (John 17: 15), Jesus mentions that “My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one,” whom Jesus knows is really in charge today. Matthew 4: 8-9 clearly indicates that the world is dominated by the evil one. Here’s what the Gospel says, “The devil took Jesus to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor. All this I will give you if you bow down and worship me.”

This is what Jesus refers to when he indicates that the world now is in the temporary possession of the devil. 1 John 5: 19 confirms this, “The whole world is in the power of the evil one.”

Last week I quoted two professors, one a Jew and one a Christian, both were convinced that God has left us. I concur. That vacuum is now filled by the Satan. Jesus, on the cross, quotes Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you left me?” Jesus there and always represents all of humanity. Today God is absent and Satan rules. In general “absence makes the heart grow fonder and makes love go stronger”.

We live in different times.

I believe that today evil has the upper hand. And because that is the case, we have to proclaim the radical exclusiveness of the hope that is in Christ. Because evil is so powerful, human beings are losing the capacity for faith in God. Faith no longer belongs to our times. Humans are not looking anymore, and so they cannot hear the Gospel anymore, also because the Gospel is hard to find.

By and large the church has lost the Gospel. Let’s face it: faith-communities placed Trump in the White House. Faith communities help elect Doug Ford as the leader of the Conservative Party in Ontario, and the likely next Premier there. Faith communities shouted to crucify Jesus. Of course we all need fellowship: yes, going to church has definite health benefits.

Still………..

Another reason that faith is hard to find is that people are content, they are too rich. Jesus repeatedly states that the wealthy, those who are rich (us), have already received their reward (Luke 6: 24). That is the crucial message of the Beatitudes, which concludes with the alarming, mind-boggling message: Seek first the Kingdom (Matthew 6: 33), which is perhaps the most overlooked text after John 3: 16, “Love creation!” Both comprise the heart of the Christian gospel: clinging to these two crucial commands is where the Christian life starts and ends. Then everything else will fall into place! But because these two texts are so controversial churches do not dare to prescribe them, because it means that we have to pursue a way of life in line with eternity, the New Creation to come.

In a society where the churches no longer know how to interpret the gospel, no longer know how to interpret the kingdom, no longer know how to interpret eternal life, no longer know what faith is all about, the creeds too lack total credibility.

For centuries the church has focused on the preaching of the Scriptures, on the will to be converted to the content of faith. That is no longer possible, both because folks today are no longer listening, and also because within the church they are experiencing an insoluble confusion over what precisely is the content of the faith: church people no longer know what exactly is meant by faith, even if we still know what we believe as individuals.

Actually the stakes are even higher: these same faith communities, by denying Climate Change, by believing that death is an escape from an evil earth, kill creation, and that means that, in essence, churches are killing God, the creator.

It is my contention that both faith and love no longer apply to modern society. People are too spoiled materially: heat at the flick of a finger, cool a matter of turning a knob, mobility at any speed, anywhere in the world in a matter of hours: sick of the winter, fly south.

With such riches available, faith no longer enters into the mix. Love? How can people love God, that is, love creation, when every one of their actions is fraught with infidelity to God’s cosmos? Only those who truly love Creation, have the capacity to love.

1 Corinthians 13 is one of the most famous chapters in the Bible. It concludes with the well-known words, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these ls love.”

That has been true for many millennia, but now, in the End Times, this no longer is the case, because faith has become an empty boast, love has become so distorted that nothing meaningful remains, as love for creation – God – has disappeared, thus there only rests us HOPE.

The central question today is not whether a person believes or not, but whether he or she has HOPE or not.

Look what’s happening out there. More and more people are coming out – and I don’t mean sexually, that too. More and more people are speaking their mind and warn that we are at the cusp of climate disaster. It is knocking at the door and there’s not a blooming thing we can do to stop it: nature has its own rhythm, nature bats last, God has the final Word.

There has been an epochal shift: a global climate crisis is upon us. Pollution, the poison of pesticides, the exhaustion of natural resources, falling water tables, an ice-free North Pole, and growing social inequalities – these are all problems that can no longer be treated separately. The effects of global warming have a cumulative impact, and it is not a matter of a crisis that will “pass” before everything goes back to “normal.”

Our governments are totally incapable of dealing with the situation. Economic warfare obliges them to stick to the goal of irresponsible, even criminal, economic growth, whatever the cost. Remember Katrina? It is no surprise that people were so struck by the catastrophe in New Orleans. The response of the authorities – to abandon the poor whilst the rich were able to take shelter – is a symbol of the coming barbarism.

The same happened when Houston, Texas, was struck last year. Both New Orleans and Houston are in for a repeat performance. And what’s next? 2018 will top all other years disaster-wise: it already has so far.

So how then do I cope in these TIMES OF ABANDONMENT?

I pray a lot, and I run a lot. Three times each week: Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday from 4-5, regular as clock work, whether I feel like it or not.
I run for 34 minutes and 44 seconds, exactly 5 km on my treadmill, when the weather is unwelcome, which is about half the time. Now that I am a bit older, I prefer the indoors. After my run, I go to my stationary bike which is arm-leg synchronized, giving me the chance to exercise more than just my legs, and bike another 5 km, after which I employ another machine, where I push strenuously on the handlebars, while also stretching my legs to the full, a sort of a push-up machine. I do that 50 times. Basically these three different movements affect my entire body and take about an hour.

My exercise room also contains the larger part of my library. I love books, and I find it exhilarating to strain my body, to work up a solid sweat, to use every part of my physical being, amidst the gathered wisdom of the ages. It really makes true one of my favorite Latin saying, Mens Sana in Corpore Sano, a healthy mind in a healthy body.

I love Psalm 8. We often are too down on ourselves: yes, we are crowned with glory and honor, rulers of creation. That’s where Matthew 5: 48 comes in. Based on this text Bonhoeffer called himself an ANTHROPOS TELEIOS. Jesus urges us to be ‘teleios’ as he is teleios, wrongly translated as ‘perfect’. It really means ‘to be holistic’, since everything is connected to everything else: the New Creation is totally ‘holistic’.

Actually in these last days FAITH has become a truly simple affair. Dogmas mean nothing anymore. Denominations have become irrelevant. Creeds lack all credibility, sacraments have become empty rituals while church buildings are as empty as their rituals. People flock to astrology for answers to life’s big questions.

Why do people turn to aura reading and tarot cards? The church has already lost the love angle and the faith phenomenon, that’s why hope is the only aspect that, in the week before Easter, has retained validity.

The world as we know it, is rushing to the End, the TELOS. The cosmos – for which Jesus gave his life as fully outlined in John 3: 16 – is, as 2 Peter 3: 12 tells us, ready for a total garbage cleansing.
The ultimate hope is to be ANTHROPOI TELEIOI, people who openly live `the distant future` and are holistic in their living habits, ready at any time to enter THE PROMISED LAND, the New Garden of Eden.

THAT IS THE HOPE that Easter brings us.

No, it’s not the noises in the
streets
which does not let us sleep.
It is the earthquake soon to come
that will shake the world
and put everything in its place.
Accompany us then on this vigil
and you will know what it is to
dream!
You will know how marvelous it is
to live threatened with Resurrection.

Matthew 24, that terrible chapter also mentions earthquakes (perhaps referring to the super volcano in Yellowstone Park, now getting fired up). All these are signs of The Last Days: how totally marvelous it is to live threatened with RESURRECTION.

The threat is that, before we are resurrected to LIFE, we all have to pass through DEATH, the last enemy.
But today we can and must dream of the New Creation.
The church as an institute is finished. That too is a sign of the Last Days. We must be like Noah who, at great ridicule, built an ARK in the middle of the desert, so we too must totally reorient our lives to focus on the life to come, where LIFE TO THE FULL awaits us.

That is the message the church should preach. It has to be prophetic in the fullest sense and visualize the life to come and paint it in multi-colored facets and sceneries, the one more enchanting that the other because no pen, no painting, no video can even begin to grasp the glory that awaits those who now have that HOPE.

MARCH 17 2018

JEWS AND CHRISTIANS

John 17: 23, “May they be brought to complete unity.”

This was Jesus’ fervent prayer at the end of his mission. Jesus really wanted all who love God’s creation and see it as God’s work of Art, to forget all theological and historical differences and strictly unite under the banner of The New Jerusalem.

Now that the world is on the threshold of eternity, this ought to be our fervent prayer as well: complete unity between Jews and Christians.

To the keen observer our sinful life is speeding to its completion, and just as Jesus in his last prayer, we too should reach out and unite on what both Jews and Christians believe.

What then do we both believe?

Both Jews and Christians believe in the God creator. The Hebrew Bible as well as the New Testament has this compelling commandment, “”Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.”

Exactly these same words are in all three synoptic Gospels, affirming the importance of this statement, appealing to the totality of our efforts to love the Lord.

As I have written time and again, this love finds its fulfillment in loving Creation, the account of which we find in the very beginning of the Old Testament.

There’s something in the Jewish way of worship that appeals to me. I was deeply touched by a column in the New York Times a few weeks ago on the Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer of mourning.

The author writes, “Three times a day, wherever I am in the world, I strive to find a minyan (quorum) so I can recite these ancient Aramaic verses as a last measure of devotion to my father. At each service, I repeat the mantra: “Magnified and sanctified be His [God’s] great name in the world He has created according to His will.” To which my coreligionists respond with great force: “Let His great name be forever blessed for all eternity.” I say those words and hear that refrain three times daily.”

I detect sincere devotion there, something I often miss among the more sober-minded Reformed people.

The Kaddish prayer centers on MOURNING, the death of a close relative. My mourning is concentrated on THE DEATH OF CREATION of which we see multiple signs today. I’d wish that in Christian circles there too was a sort of minyan, a stated number of people who come together to pray. The text “where 2 or 3 are together in my name” really does not apply here, as this refers more to counselling than to forming a community.
That sense of community is inherent in a minyan, a company of 10 males before an official Jewish service can start. I know, there is a strong basis of male superiority there, so, of course, 10 people – both male and female – are preferable.

Especially today all religious communities ought to be in mourning for CREATION, God’s precious treasure, and daily gather to pray for her preservation and enhancement. I believe we can only bless God’s great name when we with everything we possess honor his creation.

The article continues, “Yet, the Kaddish is an odd prayer to have become the centerpiece of mourning. Despite its association with death and dying, it does not mention the word death. Instead, it is an endlessly repetitive celebration of the glory of God.”

Some personal observations.

I remember that, some 40 years ago, I brought a high school class to the Belleville synagogue on a Friday night. We had to wait quite a long time, while some frantic telephone calls were made before the tenth member was persuaded to come to form a minyan.

This was a return visit: I had written a play on Esther – by Jews still remembered in the feast of Purim – and the Rabbi and his family had attended its performance.

One of our daughters at one time lived near Beverly Hills, in a Jewish neighborhood, where I counted 10 synagogues, but no churches. On Friday night I could not miss the Jewish fathers and their sons, walk to their particular place of worship, all in solemn black.

One of the cars parked on her street had a bumper sticker, “Waiting for the Messiah”. That decal filled me with compassion, as they do this in vain.

Next to our hotel on Beverly Drive we attended a service in the Messianic Synagogue complete with a cantor, the kissing of the Torah, the wearing of a yarmulke, and an excellent sermon on Corinthians. The after the service announcements included notification of teaching Hebrew to whoever interested: all and all an excellent experience. Had I lived in that area, no doubt I would have joined that congregation.

Two books I love.

It is striking how two authors, one confirmed Jewish, the other a confessing Christian, have almost identical titles: Richard Elliott Friedman, professor of Hebrew at the University of California, wrote THE HIDDEN FACE OF GOD, and Jacques Ellul, professor of Law at the University of Bordeaux, France, HOPE IN TIME OF ABANDONMENT.

Dr. Richard Elliott Friedman’s book starts his book with these words, “God disappears in the Bible.” He then traces how this happens, how initially God is utterly involved in the affairs of the first humans. God personally breathes life into the first man, personally forms the first woman, personally plants the Garden of Eden and fashions the animals, and personally walks in the garden.

After the Fall, God makes their clothing for Adam and Eve. Little personality is described to them in the text, so much so that they appear as weak, childlike creatures.

With Noah there’s not the same intimacy, still Yahweh speaks to Noah and brings on the flood, not just rain, but a cosmic crisis in which the windows in the sky are opened. God allows Noah much more freedom as he and his family are in charge of making the Ark. He must have been busy for decades to cut the trees, saw the planks, apply bitumen – quite abundant in the area – gather the food and make it last, both for his immediate family and the expected animals.

Abraham reflects a further step in the growing up process. He later argues with God about the number of chosen people in those wicked cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Then, when these cities are about to be destroyed there is that curious passage where Lot and his family are urged to hurry, because “I cannot do a thing” until they have safely reached their destination. The humans are not independent of God here, but somehow the human voice is certainly growing louder.

Jacob signals another phase: he wrestles with God. There certainly is progression: Adam disobeys God, Abraham questions God, Jacob fights God. Humans are confronting their creator, and they are increasing their participation in the arena of divine prerogatives.

After Moses

What this all means is that humans are growing up, maturing, and separating from their creator. Dr. Friedman quotes Bonhoeffer who develops the idea of humans’ “coming of age,” the notion that even if God does exist humans must live in the world, self-subsisting, as they would if there was no God.

And I believe that this is what God intended all along. God wants us to grow up and wants to see how we will ‘end’ up. Friedman, a Hebrew language expert bar none, notes the word ‘end’ there does not mean their finish, but rather their distant future.
It reminds me of Jesus who, in the Sermon on the Mount, uses the same word in Matthew 5:30, “Be ‘teleios’ – always keep ‘the distant future’ in mind.

And then there is Jacques Ellul and his timely book, HOPE IN TIME OF ABANDONMENT.

The title says it all: God has left us. We are on our own. The only HOPE we have is in the COMING OF THE KINGDOM, something which, in his Preface, Ellul stresses, “the decisive importance of the promise, the approach of the Second Coming, the eschaton which comes.”

It is clear to Ellul that society and its members –us – live as if God has turned his back and is silent. He is particularly harsh on the church, “The church, in her confused, grandiose, and childish actions, seemed to me proof that this (God turning his back) is indeed the case.”

Ellul writes, “Speaking for myself, what I see is that we are abandoned by God. Oh, I do not say forever, or that we are excluded from salvation, but that here and now, in this moment of history, in this night which perhaps has refused the light, no actual light is shining any longer.” And I fully concur.

In his wide ranging book he also devotes a section to THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT, a matter much disputed, and certainly a difficult question.

Ellul writes, “If hope is the response to God’s silence…I can still ask myself whether in our day the sin against the Holy Spirit isn’t precisely the rejection of hope or the inability to live by it.”

He then goes on to say that this is not a fixed matter when he writes, “The sin against the Holy Spirit varies in content according to the times.”

I believe today in 2018, 46 years after the book appeared in France, in days of environmental collapse, I see the Sin against the Holy Spirit as knowingly polluting creation, fully aware that it is God’s Holy Cosmos.

Ellul concludes to say that the only hope we have is THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM, the New Jerusalem.

Friedman also mentions CREATIONAL RENEWAL, pointing to TIKKUN, the path of cosmic restoration. The book final sentence is, “we are created more in the divine image than we have suspected. There is some evidence that the universe IS the hidden face of God.”

Finally Martin Buber.

Martin Buber in 1924 wrote ICH AND DU, translated as “I and Thou”. The essence of the book is that human existence is fundamentally interpersonal. We are not isolated, free-floating objects, but subjects existing in perpetual, multiple, shifting relationships with others, the world, and ultimately with God.

Now, 100 years after it was written, these personal connections and being in touch with God have basically disappeared. We are closer to our machines than to our neighbors, while our God connection has largely vanished.

Martin Buber, in his POINTING THE WAY, writes, “The end of all history is near. Creation has grown old….The present aeon, that of the world and of world history, hurries powerfully to the end…..The coming age of all historical ages is expressed most strongly by the sentence of the Revelation of John that surpasses all that can be imagined, “Time will no longer be.”…..Man cannot achieve this future, but he also has nothing more to achieve.”

Buber goes on to say that we must become what we are intended to be. Only then can we achieve eternity. He quotes John the Baptist in his cry of the prophets, ‘metanoia’, which I translate as “Make a U-turn”, because the ‘axe has already been laid to the root of the tree.’

I see Martin Buber as the bridge between Jews and Christianity, especially today as all signs point to an early end.

Buber translated the entire Hebrew Bible, and thus certainly was familiar with Isaiah 65: 25, “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the LORD.

Among God’s last words to Moses, just before Israel enters The Promised Land, the Lord says, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be (Deuteronomy 31: 17, 18).

Now with Satan in full control, also just before the New Jerusalem will come, we too experience God’s total absence, with Satan in full control. I am certain that we are speeding head over heels toward to End. To be silent now, means to align ourselves with the Satan, because silence means approval.

For both Jews and Christians the real mantra is “Metanoia” which means that we must think and act the opposite of what we do today: live as if eternity has started.

Jesus prayed (John 17: 23), “May they be brought to complete unity.” That especially points to Jews and Christians in their belief that God created, we uncreated, and we both must strive for SHALOM.

MARCH 10 2018

BE WARNED: SATAN ON THE LOOSE!

”When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth” (Revelation 20:7).

Of course Satan has always been active, especially when Jesus walked the earth. Jesus was acutely aware of the Satan’s presence. When Peter’s mother-in-law suf¬fered from a fever, Jesus “rebuked” the illness and “it left her” (Luke 4:39). When Jesus and his disci¬ples were at sea and a severe storm endangered the ship, Jesus “rebuked” the wind and said to the sea: “Be still!” (Mark 4:39).

Rebuke implies reprimand. Isn’t that strange? Jesus reprimanded the illness, and reprimanded the wind. Reprimanding means that the feverish body and the stormy sea were acting against their true nature. The normal state of humanity is health, is LIFE in its fullest sense. The normal state of the earth is beneficial: rain in time, no destructive storms: shalom all around.

Sickness and severe winds are unnatural, even if we call hurricanes, drought, Climate Change, NATURAL disasters: in essence they are abnormal, that’s why Jesus reprimanded them, because normally, according to the NORMS of creation, illnesses and typhoons should not occur, and when they do they are caused by Satanic forces.

Ever wondered why epidemics strike and bad things happen to good people? 1 John 5: 19 has the answer, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

Under the influence of Satan we have saturated the atmosphere with pollutants, with cancer-causing chemicals affecting everyone: there is not a pollutant-free person on the planet. Ever wonder why we are on the way to Rapid Global Heating? Under the influence of Satan we have saturated the air with CO2 and are uncovering the much more lethal METHANE.

Jesus sees the forces behind that storm and behind that fever as satanic, because the world of hid¬eous demons, play a blasphemous role in these occurrences. In both everyday examples – sickness and weather – Jesus paints a scenario concerning life in general—awesome storms and mysterious diseases—which today have become global phenomena, pointing to Satan’s universal reach.

Yes, Satan calls the shots today.

Without any doubt, the Devil is in total charge. We see it everywhere: politically, environmentally, financially, in matters of faith, in economic concerns, in the mental state of people: there are no exceptions anymore and anywhere.

It is not an entirely new situation, of course, but what is new is that all restraints have been eliminated: Satan has become unshackled, has, for a short while, been given complete freedom to do his thing. Just one recent example: For the second time this past week Boston was lashed by a HUNDRED YEAR storm. We are now faced with a development in the world that we can no longer control, but of which we daily exper¬i¬ence the terrifying consequences.

I repeat: today Satan is in full control. There’s no longer any holding back. Everything is embroiled in the power of demons. Satanic forces have thrown themselves onto nature, onto us humans, onto the entire radiant creation. I have often quoted Deuteronomy 31: 17, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be.” That situation is now being fully realized.

Am I wrong?

I can see you shake your head and think, “Here he goes again, one of his usual unreal utterances, another in the series of his menacing messages that always fail to come true”.

Well, let me rehash some ancient history. I believe this process already started in the Garden of Eden, and very gradually evolved into the situation we have now, where we experience a total God Eclipse.

For a thousand years – which means a very long time – God allowed the full deployment of the human potential, necessary so that in eternity we know what to preserve and what to avoid. Now that we basically have come to the end of human inventions, the end will come with the Satan making the most of his brief reprieve.

So why does God free Satan?

Why does God allow the universe, where once only beauty and harmony set the tone, to become threatened with annihilation from all directions? Why is our world now entirely dominated by demons? Why do we now experience evil more than ever? Why do we, wherever we look, see the terrible influ¬ence of this satanic situ¬a¬tion?

Malachi 3: 2 tells us why, “But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.”

Well, the final selection is about to occur. We have reached the stage referred to in Ephesians 1: 10, which mentions THE FULLNESS OF TIME, when history has run its course, and God, who directs all things, has said ‘enough’.

The new normal.

We must face the fact that the Thousand Years of rapid development are over, and tribulations are upon us. With the oceans warmer than ever, the meteorologists want a new hurricane category: a number 6 to measure the increased ferocity. Now Arctic ice-loss is the most ominous sign ever.

No pre-tribulation Rapture.

Don’t for a minute believe that there will be PRE-TRIBULATION RAPTURE. There won’t be Rapture, but there will be world-wide RUPTURE. Luke 12: 51-55 makes this abundantly clear, “Do you think I have come to bring peace?… No way”, says Jesus, “There will be RUPTURE galore, especially between family members and MARRIAGE partners.”
This implies that enabling – not protesting Satanic concepts between spouses such as RAPTURE – will be seen as the SIN it is, as all fundamental differences must be exposed, because everybody and everything will reveal their true nature.

The Bible tells us so.

Where God, the Creator sees cosmos, Satan, the dissolver, sees Chaos. I love Hosea 4. It never mentions RAPTURE, it does mention RUPTURE.
Listen to the word of the LORD, O children of Israel,
For the LORD has a case against the inhabitants of the land,
Because there is no faithfulness or kindness
Or knowledge of God in the land.
There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery.
They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed.
Therefore the land mourns,
And everyone who lives in it languishes
Along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky,
And also the fish of the sea disappear.

Yes, the land mourns because THE LIVING EARTH IS DYING.

One of the merits of James Lovelock is that he has recognized that the earth is a living entity, which he calls GAIA.
In his book, “The Revenge of Gaia”, Lovelock – not a Christian – starts with a text from Matthew 23:24, “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (A gnat is the tiniest of animal). Here Jesus is referring to the spiritual and political leaders of Israel, who take offence when their petty religious rules are disobeyed, but turn a blind eye to God’s commands of love and justice, the requirements of the COVENANT.

Today is no different: we try to impose carbon taxes but promote air travel and build highways to accommodate cars. We know that perpetual economic growth is impossible yet devise tax laws that promote it. Economic Growth is like a drug that will kill us if continued and also kill us if suddenly withdrawn.

There are definite signs of the Planet’s terminal illness.

Take the Arctic. The situation there is desperate, with sea ice north of Greenland collapsing overnight. If there ever were warning signs of what is in store for us, this is one. Early February 2018, sea ice north of Greenland was still up to 5 meters thick: in the space of 3 weeks that house-high ice was gone: that thick wall got pushed away and open water emerged north of Greenland in the middle of winter: simply stunning, totally Satanic.

MME: Mass Mortality Event.

Here is another one. I found it in THE GUARDIAN.
“There was almost something biblical about the scene of devastation that lay before Richard Kock as he stood in the wilderness of the Kazakhstan steppe: dotted across the grassy plain, as far as the eye could see, were the corpses of thousands upon thousands of saiga antelopes. All appeared to have fallen where they were feeding.
“Some were mothers that had travelled to this remote wilderness for the annual calving season, while others were their offspring, just a few days old. Each had died in just a few hours from blood poisoning. In the 30C heat of a May day, the air around each of the rotting hulks was thick with flies.
“The same grisly story has been replayed throughout Kazakhstan. In this springtime massacre, an estimated 200,000 critically endangered saiga – around 60% of the world’s population – died. “All the carcasses in this one of many killing zones were spread evenly over 20 square km,” says Kock, professor of wildlife health and emerging diseases at the Royal Veterinary College in London. “The pattern was strange. They were either grazing normally with their newborn calves or dying where they stood, as if a switch had been turned on. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“The saiga – whose migrations form one of the great wildlife spectacles – were victims of a mass mortality event (MME), a single, catastrophic incident that wipes out vast numbers of a species in a short period of time. MMEs are among the most extreme events of nature. They affect starfish, bats, coral reefs and sardines. They can push species to the brink of extinction, or throw a spanner into the complex web of life in an ecosystem. And according to some scientists, MMEs are on the rise and likely to become more common because of climate change.”

Can a MME affect humans as well?

I can well imagine that, what is happening to wild-life, can also affect humans: a Mass Mortality Event, a sudden pandemic for which there is no immediate cure. It happened exactly 100 years ago in 1918 when the so-called Spanish Flu killed between 50-100 million humans, mostly young adults. That will happen again.

More signs.

We do ignore the signs, but we cannot deny that at least 5 factors are telling us that THE SATAN is on the loose:
1. changing climate,
2. declining environmental productivity,
3. disease,
4. warfare, and
5. combinations thereof.
Examples.
“Ocean seasons are changing as a result of too much heat and CO2… The scale of ocean warming is truly staggering with numbers so large that it is difficult for most people to comprehend.” (D. Laffoley, IUCN Global Marine and Polar Programme).
The ocean’s acidification rate of growth is unprecedented in Earth’s known history. (Jane Lubchenco, NOAA).
Ocean acidification occurring at least 10 times faster than 55 million years ago based upon paleoclimate record. (C.L. Dybas, Oxford)
Nearly all marine life that builds calcium carbonate show deterioration due to increasing levels of CO2 and acidification. (Richard Feely, NOAA).
But the most dangerous is still THE ARCTIC, as permafrost melts caused by human-induced global warming, awakening forgotten pathogens from the depths.

Ever heard of PINGOS?

A pingo, also called a hydrolaccolith, is a mound of earth-covered ice found in the Arctic and Subarctic that can reach up to 70 meters high and up to 600 meters in diameter. The term originated as the Inuvialuktun word for a small hill. A Russian team found extremely abnormal viruses there which survived 30,000 years frozen in ice. They also contain METHANE.

There could be 100,000 explosive methane pingos in Siberia alone. It so happens that, due to ABNORMAL Arctic heat the East Siberian Arctic Shelf has reached “thaw point,” the turning point from linear to exponential release of METHANE leading to runaway global warming. (Natalia Shakhova, Int’l Arctic Research Centre).

Already methane emissions in East Siberian Ice Shelves are 100 times higher than normal.

”When the thousand years are over, Satan will be released from his prison and will go out to deceive the nations in the four corners of the earth” (Revelation 20:7).

BE WARNED: SATAN ON THE LOOSE!

In spite of numerous warnings – the Bible is full of them – we want to be deceived because seductive OIL has constructed (Matthew 7: 13): “the gate that is wide and the road that is broad, leading to assured destruction, and many enter through it.”

MARCH 3 2018

AM I A SIMPLE SIMEON OR AN ANXIOUS ANNA?

Now there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. The Holy Spirit had revealed to him that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. Led by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts. And when the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for Him what was customary under the Law,
Simeon took Him in his arms and praised God, saying:
“Sovereign Lord, as You have promised,
You now dismiss Your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen Your salvation,
which You have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles,
and for glory to Your people Israel.”
The Child’s father and mother were amazed at what was spoken about Him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to His mother Mary:
“Behold, this Child is appointed to cause
the rise and fall of many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be spoken against,
so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed—
and a sword will pierce your soul as well.”
The Prophecy of Anna
There was also a prophetess named Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, who was well along in years. She had been married for seven years, and then was a widow to the age of eighty-four. She never left the temple, but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming forward at that moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the Child to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem. (Luke 2: 25-39)

I guess this looks more like a sermon than my regular piece, basically because I start with a long Bible passage. Well, why not? There really is nothing wrong with citing the Scriptures.

I call him simple Simeon: simple because he is an uncomplicated man: righteous and devout. That’s the hallmark of a true human being. Wish all people would be so easily categorized.

I love that little scene playing out in the temple court, the place where each day thousands of people come and go, where merchants are busy exchanging Roman coins for special temple money, because the Imperial currency features the image of the hated Roman ruler. And then there are the sellers of animals.

The temple was the hub of the nation of Israel where an untold number of people from everywhere visited, where priests came and went, where intimate scenes, such as described above took place next to animals being slaughtered and rebellious crowds demonstrated with banners and noisy drums. Yes, the temple court was a busy place where stately Pharisees stood out and important scholars strode on their way to give lectures to the hundreds of students studying the Torah, ignoring the hubbub of the plebs.

Herod had financed this temple, trying the win favor with the Jews. At one time some 18,000 artisans had been busy building this most magnificent structure. It simply was huge and even today some remnants are visible, with devout Orthodox Jews reciting their biblical regulations standing in front of that sacred wall.

There, with thousands milling about, two lonely figures were hardly noticed amidst the thronging masses, the bleating of lambs, the loud voices of merchants trying to be heard, some praising the quality of their wares, others claiming to give the best exchange rates.

Back to the Bible which simply states, “Now there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon, who was righteous and devout.”

I like that man. I can picture myself in this lonely figure. I can identify with him: righteous and devout, nothing complicated about him: a true man of God.

Simeon was waiting, just as I am waiting. He was waiting for the CONSOLATION of Israel. I am waiting for the final consummation, the fire that will cleanse God’s holy earth.

“Consolation is a curious word. The Greek is Paraklesis. Translating it as CONSOLATION does not sit well with me: it reminds me of being second best, such as receiving a Consolation Prize; it reminds me of being sad and somebody commiserating with me, consoling me.

So I looked it up, and found that there are numerous references to this word. The explanation I prefer is favored by the Greek Orthodox Church and Eastern Catholic Churches, where the language is Greek, and therefore they are better able to sense the intrinsic value of the word Paraklesis. It so happens that these churches have a special service devoted to Paraklesis and they have named it: “a service of supplication for the welfare of the living”.
Isn’t that beautiful, “A special prayer-service for the benefit of those who are alive”!

Simeon was a real prophet. He saw in that baby the key to LIFE with capital letters, prophesying that Jesus would bring us LIFE and that to the full.

Are WE alive?

In my experience most people are dead. I pray daily for a friend to become ALIVE, still stubbornly sticking to staid convention. Of course these dead people move around, eat, drink but they never dare to be different, never want to stand out, are always afraid to reveal their true personality, risking their eternal destiny.

Actually this is not surprising because our entire environment entices us not to question, not to dig deeper, not to critically look at what we are doing. TV is not for nothing called “The Boob Tube”. Neil Postman hit it dead-on when he named his book dealing with modern entertainment, “Amusing Ourselves to Death.”

Nevertheless we are created to investigate what’s behind the spirit of our age, almost impossible today because people are mesmerized by the miracles of modern technology.

Matthew 5: 48 tells us how to live. Jesus told us to “be teleios as I am teleios. The Greek teleios does not mean perfect – the common translation: it has its root in ‘telos’ as in ‘telescope’ – see far. It really means to keep ‘the end’ in mind: the coming of the New Creation: that’s how we have to LIVE.

WINE AND LAUGHTER.

It is often downplayed that Jesus’ first miracle was at a wedding where he made water into the best – alcoholic – wine possible. No wonder his opponents called Jesus ‘a glutton and a winebibber’, noticing that he really delighted in a good meal, was a true gourmand, loved good food and was a true wine connoisseur as well: lived LIFE to the full. No wonder he scolded those who (Matthew 11: 17), when the pipe was played, did not dance; and when a plaintive song was aired, did not mourn.

Yes, Jesus loved all-round LIFE, a true example for all. Simeon, that righteous and devout man, was waiting for the ‘consolation’ of Israel, for Israel to come and be alive, for us to come and be alive, dance when dance calls for, shed tears when sad things happen. That’s why the Holy Spirit made him use that word.

Unbelievable.

When Mary and Joseph brought in the child Jesus to do for Him what was customary under the Law, the Spirit directed him toward this young couple and the Christ child. It takes a lot of faith to believe that a tiny baby is the Messiah.

Simeon prophesied that the Child would be highly controversial, would force people everywhere to open up, to reveal their true selves: “so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.” Good advice because we usually hide behind platitudes, afraid to show our true selves.

And then there is ANNA. I call her Anxious Anna.

There was also a prophetess named Anna, who never left the temple, but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming forward at that moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the Child to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

The Bible passage says it all: day and night, fasting and praying. She was watching what was going on around her all the time, her eyes roaming, her entire being focused on the multiple activities out there.

The prophetess Anna recognized the Messiah when he appeared as a small child. She was so convinced that she simply spread the word to whoever was within earshot: “Hey you people: here’s the long expected Savior”. Nobody listened, of course, another demented old woman.

Why did Jesus come at that particular time?

I can mention a couple of reasons.
1. Nobody, except a few old people were on the lookout.
2. The church had no idea that the TIME was ripe.
3. There were no boundaries thanks to the PAX ROMANA, so the gospel could spread throughout the world.
4. The Jewish religion had become stale, ripe for a renewal, that’s why Jesus always challenged the church leaders.

So how does that compare to today?
There too I could mention a couple of reasons.
1. Nobody, except a few old people are on the lookout.
2. The church has no idea that the TIME is ripe.
3. Thanks to the INTERNET the Gospel can spread throughout the world.
4. The Christian Religion has become stale, ripe for renewal, with the false RAPTURE belief now universal and The Gospel of the Earth totally lost.
5. The entire planet is suffering from exhaustion fatigue.

Simple Simeon was warned by the Holy Spirit.
Today the Holy Spirit is still at work, but she does not whisper particular dates into the ears or hearts of the believer, because, as Matthew 24: 36 tells us, the exact day and the hour of the Lord’s return are unknown. (Matthew 24: 32)

Note the wording: day or hour! But there are definite signs!!

What is known is the general time, not the exact date, but I expect that the decade can be predicted, and I am bold enough to say that the Lord will return within 10 years: there are too many indications of the planet showing a definite expiry date: all the signs are there.

So, who am I? A simple Simeon or an anxious Anna?

Simeon had a special line to the Holy Spirit which gave him peace of mind and made his life a lot easier. But I am more like Anxious Anna, who never left the temple, always fasting and praying, always on the lookout, always on edge.

I do know that the Lord gives me hints all the time by providing me with resources just in time for my next blog. Perhaps that is the Spirit in me, which works only when I am ready to receive it, but it is not a direct, articulated message, which Simeon received, such as “Go to the temple at such a specific time and meet that young couple then and there.”

Anna did not have that direct indication, and neither have I, thus she never left the temple, but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. That’s the sort of thing I do continually, not so much fasting, as well as praying every day for THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM.

It’s not that I am in desperate straits: not by any means. It’s not that life for me is so difficult that I long for deliverance. On the contrary: I have been blessed exceedingly.

What worries me, in general, is the total lack of preparedness for the holocaust to come, for the total destruction that is in store for the entire world, where we, totally integrated in the carbon-based society, will suffer in a superlative way, while the so-called primitive people will manage, somehow.

I associate myself with anxious Anna, who never left the temple, who worshiped night and day, fasting and praying, who gave thanks to God and spoke about the Child to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

I too speak about this Child, the Christ, to those who are waiting for the redemption of the entire creation. He is about the come again and will bring with him the perfect planet so that no human, no animal, no tree, no speck of earth will ever suffer again.
Thank you, Anna.

P. S.
Yes, it was a sermon after all.

FEBRUARY 24 2018

BILLY GRAHAM’S LEGACY.

In my blogs I laud LIFE, because we were created to live forever, never to die. Billy Graham saw eternity as heaven-oriented, away from the Life-Giving Earth, in fact spelling the demise for people and all of creation.

The Bible clearly says that “God, the Human race and the Earth belong together,” something Billy G. denied. The Bible called the human being ADAM which means EARTH, because earth we are as God shaped us from the earth and to the earth we return, forever. (Psalm 103:14).

Yes, I passionately believe in eternal life on earth: God made no junk and will not junk what he has made. I also believe that mortal life now is the training ground for eternity. What we do now will determine how we will live later. We can only live forever when we KNOW how to live creation-friendly NOW in spite of all the odds.

Today we are stuck in culture of death. It’s all around us. And America leads the way through its technology.

There was an interesting discussion in the Globe and Mail last week, where Jim Balsillie of Black Berry fame and Norman Doidge discussed smart phone addiction. Here’s what Dr. Doidge, a psychiatrist, in part had to say,
“Digital tech is especially good at changing our brains without our awareness. The brain is neuro-plastic, meaning it has a property that allows it to change its structure and function in response to mental experience. Digital technologies are uniquely “compatible” with the brain, because both are electric and also work at high speeds. Marshall McLuhan figured this out. He argued that all media extend us – the microphone extends the voice, the radio the ear, the computer the brain’s processing power. In 1969, he said, “Now man is beginning to wear his brain outside his skull, and his nerves outside his skin.” At the time it seemed like one of his more bizarre aphorisms. Few believed the brain was plastic and that the media could work by, in some way, connecting to and rewiring our neurons.”

He basically says that today’s digital technologies change the way people behave and make them into machines, and machines are dead. A few weeks ago I wrote a column on THE ANTICHRIST and postulated the same condition. Now it is official: we are losing our humanity.

Back to Billy G.

This past week Billy Graham died. He was the preacher who filled stadiums and advised Presidents, who spread his gospel brand around the world through a combination of religious conviction, commanding stage presence and shrewd use of advanced communication technologies.

The gospel he preached was THE HEAVEN HERESY, which was the forerunner of THE RAPTURE FRAUD, and set the stage for the TRUMP TRAGEDY to emerge, all contributing to humanity losing its SOUL and ensuring its eternal death.

A long time ago I saw Billy appear on the LARRY KING show on CNN. The blunt unbeliever Larry needled him, ”What will happen when you die?” The “great evangelist” answered, “Jesus will take me by the hand and bring me to God.”

Well this week B. G. died. Will his prediction be fulfilled? No, no, no.

The problem with Billy Graham was that he did not know the Bible. Paul, that really great evangelist who really brought the GOOD NEWS, wrote to his friend Timothy, “God lives in unapproachable light, whom no one has seen or can see.” (1 Tim. 6:11). Billy G. also neglected to remember Jesus’ own words in John 3: 13, “Nobody has ever gone into heaven, except the one who came from there, Jesus Himself.”

Billy Graham, however, had millions of followers, while my voice is one crying in the wilderness.

When I talk about LIFE, I have all the odds against me: our entire culture is totally ANTI-LIFE, including the ecclesiastical establishment. Yet, many centuries ago wise Christians composed the so-called APOSTLES’ CREED, which is a confession both the Roman Catholic and the Protestant churches subscribe to. It has a line, I BELIEVE IN THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY AND LIFE EVERLASTING.

The irony is that most of those who recite that life-proclaiming prayer believe that HEAVEN is the destination for ‘Christians’, even though this universal statement of faith makes no mention of HEAVEN.

Watch the eulogies for BILLY GRAHAM to glorify heaven. The American Religion which Billy G. proclaimed sees EARTH as evil. In the core of their hearts his followers believe that THE EARTH has been created by the Demiurge.

So who is this DEMIURGE?

“For the GNOSTICS – and all heaven believers are Gnostics – the DEMIURGE is the Yahweh, while Elohim, the Hebraic vision of the creator God in Genesis, is a god taken by the Gnostics to be at best a botcher or ignoramus, or at worst a spirit of malevolence”, writes Dr. Harold Bloom in THE AMERICAN RELIGION.

In my NIV study Bible, in the introduction to the 3 letters of John, the editors have added a section on GNOSTICISM.
“Gnosticism is one of the most dangerous heresies of the first two centuries of the church. Its central teaching is that the spirit is entirely good and matter is entirely evil. Thus
1. The human body, which is matter, is therefore evil.
2. Salvation is the escape from the body, achieved not by faith in Christ but by special knowledge (gnosis).
3. Christ’s true humanity is denied.
4. Since the body is considered evil, it has to be treated harshly.”

The present church is almost in its entirety GNOSTIC. There’s hardly a hymn that doesn’t mention heaven as the goal.

DR. Harold Bloom named his book, THE AMERICAN RELIGION, with as subtitle, “The emergence of the Post-Christian Nation.” That has now happened.

This prophetic book which I bought in 1993, thus 25 years ago, describes the ecclesiastical scene to a T. “We think we are a Christian nation”, writes Bloom, “but we are not…..The American self stands outside creation; it is older than creation, as old as God, of which it is a part.”

All this is totally evident in US politics with its lack of medical care for the poor, its gun violence, its abuse of creation, and its suicidal drug and war policies. What it inadvertently does: it speeds up The Coming of The Kingdom, the New Garden of Eden.

America’s policies are all in God’s plan for eternity. 2 Peter 3: 11 serves as a beacon of light, “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly LIVES as you look forward to the day of the Lord.”

And that DAY is rushing on: there’s little time left.

Here’s what came my way this past week:

Harvard professor James G. Anderson gave a speech at the University of Chicago in January 2018 when he received the Benton Medal for Distinguished Public Service. In 1987 Dr. Anderson was the force behind discovering and diagnosing Antarctica’s ozone hole, which led to the Montreal Protocol.

In his acceptance speech, James G. Anderson, professor of atmospheric chemistry, now warns that it is foolhardy to assume we can recover from the global warming leviathan simply by cutting back emissions.
He said that, “The only way humanity can dig itself out of the climate change/global-warming hole is by way of a WWII type effort with total transformation of industry off carbon and removal of carbon from the atmosphere within five years. The situation is so dire that it requires a worldwide Marshall Plan effort, plus kneeling in prayer.”

Anderson said the chance of permanent ice remaining in the Arctic after 2022 is zero. “Already, 80% is gone. The problem: Without an ice shield to protect frozen methane hydrates in place for millennia, the Arctic turns into a methane nightmare. This is comparable to poking the global warming monster with a stick, as runaway global warming (“RGW”) emerges from the depths. Interestingly enough, the Arctic Methane Emergency Group/UK, composed of distinguished scientists, seems to be in agreement with this assessment.”

This totally tallies with the warnings found on THE ARCTIC NEWS blog, which repeatedly has stated that, once the methane emerges, we have no more than a few years. It tells us to expect 10°C (18°F) warming which could happen within one decade when taking into full account the warming that could result from the various elements now in play.

On February 21 that blog said:
“Above freezing temperatures forecast at the North Pole for February 25, 2018, with surface temperatures as high as 1.2°C or 34.2°F are forecast. The jet stream to reach speeds as fast as 233 km/h or 145 mph over Greenland on the way to the North Pole on February 25, 2018. Surface temperatures over a large part of the Arctic Ocean are forecast to be up to 30°C warmer on February 23, 2018, compared to 1979-2000.”

Our LIFE is at stake.

My blog is all about LIFE. If ONE PERSON is saved through reading this blog, by the grace of God, then the angels in Heaven will be delighted. Jesus re-affirms this when he said,
“I tell you that in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents (from living a creation-killing life) than over ninety-nine righteous persons who do not need to repent. (Luke 15: 7)”. Oh the irony there!

There is a Chinese proverb, “If you save a life, you are responsible for that life.”

That Chinese saying made me think. Suppose that the issue here is not saving flesh and blood, not saving a person’s physical life, but saving something more important: being instrumental in saving a person’s spiritual life, being God’s tool to point a person to life eternal.

Augustine once said that, “We can’t do anything without God, and God won’t do anything without us.” That makes us God’s instruments of salvation, and gives us a heavy responsibility.

Suppose that a person who has always been told through scores of sermons that heaven is her ultimate destination, and that RAPTURE is a biblical concept. Suppose that through discussion and through direction to certain Bible texts, she starts to see creation as God’s Primary Word, and so gradually can visualize the panorama of a New Heaven and New Earth. All this would change her outlook completely and such a change would be much more significant than simply saving a physical life: by some gyration of grace she would suddenly see salvation in its proper light.

“If you save a life, you are responsible for that life.” If saving a physical life entails a lot of responsibility, how much more important would it be when it concerns ETERNAL Life?

Ephesians 6: 12 points to our plight. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.”

That pictures the situation today because where it concerns eternal life, enormous elements are at play: the spiritual forces of evil in the air are around us everywhere, sometimes even in our spouses, almost always in the churches, in TV, in our smart phones, entrenched in whatever we do and in almost everything we undertake.

The Devil is smart. He has infiltrated all of life because he does not want to lose one adherent. He fights tooth and nail to hang on to his charges, so be aware because many of us are unwittingly soldiers in his army and partake in ‘the powers of this dark work and are willing helpers, advancing the spiritual forces of evil everywhere around us”.

Back to Billy G.

Jesus warned us about Billy’s brand of the gospel. In verse Matthew 24: 4 Jesus said, “For many will come in my name claiming, ‘I bear Christ’s message’, and deceive many’’.

By preaching THE HEAVEN HERESY and by extension THE RAPTURE FRAUD, which today has brought us the TRUMP tragedy, Billy Graham deceived millions and aided and accelerated the disintegration of God’s Holy Earth at neck-breaking speed.

That, sorry to say, is THE BILLY GRAHAM LEGACY.

Next week: AM I A SIMPLE SIMEON OR AN ANXIOUS ANNA?

FEBRUARY 16 2018 – a bit early.

APOCALYPSE.

I do everything in my power to stay physically, mentally and spiritually healthy. I exercise strenuously three times per week for one full hour, first running (5K), then biking (5K), ending with rowing: all indoors in the winter, of course.
To keep my brain functioning, I keep on writing my blog. I started this almost 20 years ago as a weekly column for the regional daily from 2000 till 2010, and then expanded it in its present format till today. In it I often deal with matters spiritual, so it also functions as a religious stimulator.

All this keeps me healthy, alert and in tune with my Lord, aided no doubt by being happily married, with a beautiful extended family, by being at peace with my Savior, and by eating basically 2 meals: a porridge breakfast and vegetarian lunch, always made from scratch and mostly home-grown.

This weekend extra thanksgiving is in order, because during this FAMILY Holiday my wife and I, together with 38 relatives from far and near, plus our entire church family and dear friends will celebrate our 65th wedding anniversary and our 90th birthdays, a unique and tremendous blessing.

We were born in the Netherlands in 1928, endured the DEPRESSION and experienced the German Oppression from 1940-45. These happenings have colored our lives and have made the last Bible book a favorite.

What does Revelation tell us about the immediate future?

The Greek title of the book is APOCALYPSE, which basically means that the curtain is torn away and the doors thrown wide because the ultimate message of the book is that EVERYBODY AND EVERYTHING BECOME WHAT THEY ARE. All pretension is gone. That applies to each person, good and bad, and to each thing, good and bad. As Revelation 14: 13 tells us our good deeds will follow us.

Revelation 22: 11 sums it up, “Let they who do wrong, continue to do so; let they who are vile, stay that way; let they who do right, keep on doing that, and let they who are holy, persists in being holy.”

I believe that this applies to today and indicates that the time for ‘conversion’ is over and the time for the Apocalypse is here.

Revelation time.

Today REVELATION is everywhere. Males are increasingly exposed as chauvinists; females are increasingly seen as capable, assertive, and equal if not better than men, evident in longer lives and healthier attitudes. Business is increasingly seen as exploitive of nature, and unable to change its way. Nature is increasingly seen as vulnerable, evident in Climate Change. Churchy Christianity is increasingly seen as irrelevant, and politics is increasingly seen as self-serving. Finally the entire world is on the way to environmental and economic collapse, with God lending a helping hand.

So what are the specific dangers Revelation tells us about?

From Revelation 15: 5 till 16: 21 the last things are set into motion. Here John, the author, imprisoned on the island of Patmos, relates how the coming disasters resemble those 10 plagues the ancient Pharaoh regime experienced, culminating in the deaths of everybody first-born, and resulting in the EXODUS of the Jewish people under Moses. The coming – far worse -catastrophes will ultimately also result in an EXODUS, this time of sinners only, while the saints will permanently settle on the purified Earth.

What is particularly frightening is that even the sun and the earth become enemies, with the sun becoming dangerously hot and the weather increasingly a universal threat. Just look at Chapter 16, where the vengeance of creation is reaching a climax, “From the sky huge hailstones of about 100 pounds each fell upon men and women. And they cursed God on account of the plague of hail, because the weather disaster was so terrible.”

Yes, weather disasters are out there NOW.

Last year the USA experienced three major hurricanes. A recent report tells us that the world’s oceans have never been warmer. We all know that there is a close connection between the severity of hurricanes and the temperature of the Seven Seas.

A TERRIBLE EARTHQUAKE.

But the real danger comes from THE EARTHQUAKE. (Verse 19) “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since humanity appeared, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts and the cities of the nations collapsed.”

Well, it looks like the world is getting ready for this: the entire Pacific Rim is in motion. The Ring of Fire, that major area in the basin of the Pacific Ocean, has already seen a large number of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are occurring there daily.
This horseshoe-shaped danger zone, containing 452 volcanoes, extends from the entire Pacific West Coast, through Alaska onto all of East Asia, including the Indonesian Archipelago.

Then there is Super-volcano at Yellowstone National Park. This past year have seen hundreds of small earthquakes there, caused by subterranean turmoil simmering just under the surface. The word “Super-volcano” says it all: once this erupts, it alone could wipe most of North America off the map.

Actually the entire world is astir.

Lately a cluster of earthquakes has hit the Greenland Sea indicating that there is a lot of stress where the fault line is bending. The real danger there is methane, a gas 100 times more dangerous for Global Warming than the car exhausts emanating from our very own billion tail pipes globally.

Sam Carana, actually Dr. Guy McPherson, writes THE ARCTIC NEWS blog. He monitors the METHANE there, buried under the so-shallow Arctic Sea, where trillions of tons of that dangerous gas are buried. As the Arctic warms – and it does that at a clip three times as fast as Global Warming – once the methane there is affected, the world would heat up 10 Degrees Celsius in a few years, burning everything, everybody to a crisp.

Today it’s anybody’s guess what the consequences are for an ice-free Arctic, where, on February 5, a few weeks ago, the temperature on the North Pole was 30 Degrees Celsius warmer than normal, well above freezing, while most of North America was suffering Arctic conditions.

Then there is the melting of trillions of tons of ice at both poles which harbors the dangers of the earth’s axle twisting, causing friction in all the wrong places, exacerbating the dangers of universal earthquakes and even threatening a switch in poles. A recent report states that a reversal of Earth’s magnetic poles is possible and could seriously mess with life as we know it. Fact is that we playing Russian roulette with the planet and anything can happen.

The situation on land is also worsening. Rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide have reduced protein in goldenrod pollen, a key late-season food source for North American bees. The title of a paper, in the 13 April 2016 issue of Proceedings of the Royal Society B, tells the story: Rising atmospheric CO2 is reducing the protein concentration of a floral pollen source essential for North American bees.

Scientists, historians and politicians alike have begun to warn that Western culture is reaching a critical juncture. Cycles of inequality and resource use are heading for a tipping point that in many past civilizations precipitated political unrest, war and finally collapse.

How do we react to all this?

The Bible comes right to the point: Revelation 16 quite accurately portrays how the people take this. Do they succumb to despair? No. Do they flee from the big cities to the wilderness and seek refuge somewhere in the quietness of the countryside? No. Do they abandon all norms of decency and start fighting each other as wild animals? No. Does this so cleverly constructed society degenerate in a desperate mass of people, a wildly possessed crowd? No.

No, nothing of this sort of thing happens. The Bible relates that there’s not a trace of confusion to be noticed. Of course people are unsure. Of course there is a good amount of despair. But conversion? No, they curse God, the God of the heavens! Revelation 16: 9, “They are seared by the intense heat – Global Heating!- and they curse the name of God, who has control over these plagues, but they refuse to repent and glorify him…..(verse 11) They gnaw their tongues in agony and curse the God in heaven because of their pains and their sores, but they refuse to repent of what they had done.”

The Fall of Babylon

In veiled, secretive language John continues to tell us how all this is unfolding. The entire Revelation 18 is devoted to the Fall of Babylon.

Why Babylon?

Babylon was the place of EXILE for Israel some 2,500 years ago.
How deeply had been the impression Babylon made on the ancient people of Israel, that after many centuries the name of this city appears in this prophecy: ancient Babylon, the city of Nebuchadnezzar, the city where Belshazzar spoke his haughty words, where he received a rude awakening when the Persian armies secretly invaded it during the night.

Today that ancient city is long gone, completely destroyed. Desert sand has covered it all, has crawled into its deserted defenses, and has blanketed the old ruins with a carpet of oblivion.
No, John’s prophecy has nothing to do with that ancient world city.

It has everything to do with current urbanization. It has everything to do with the world city now dominating the entire globe, where nothing has remained ‘pristine’, where the most remote regions, the most impregnable places are contaminated with human waste. There’s not a spot on earth, not a single molecule anywhere where either the air or the water or the soil, or all three have retained their purity, all thoroughly harmed by human action. Exponential growth has taken us in my life time from a relatively empty world to a world full of people and their furniture. It is now full of our things and empty of God’s things, witness THE SIXTH EXTINCTION. It needs TOTAL RENEWAL.

Yes, now with the entire world ‘urbanized’ the world BABYLON simply indicates our contemporary world.

So how will the world look like before renewal?

I love the language of that chapter, “Fallen! Fallen is Babylon the Great! New York, Toronto, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Moscow, Cape Town: all gone. She has become a home for demons and a haunt for every evil spirit, and a haunt for every unclean and detestable bird. For all the nations have drunk the maddening wine of her adulteries and the kings of the earth committed adulteries with her, and the merchants of the earth grew rich from her excessive luxuries.”

That truly depicts our current situation: pure madness. Climate Change, our incessant burning of fossil fuels, our destruction of The Trees of Life, our poisoning of soil, air, seas, is total folly: adultery, the Bible calls it, because adultery destroys from within.

God has infected the world with itself, curses it with insanity, witness the senseless politics everywhere. Madness, human madness, is the theme of this amazing chapter 18.

The mad race to the END.

Today we see the beginning of the total destruction. All the signs are there: we are rushing to the end. Do you for a minute believe that TV advertising will cease, enticing people to buy things they don’t need with money they don’t have? Do you really believe that GM, Toyota and Volkswagen will stop manufacturing their polluted products? Do you really believe that we will from now on become devoted environmentalists and make it our life-goal to refuse, reduce, reuse, recycle? Do you really believe that the billions in China and India voluntary will let go of Western luxuries and remain mired in poverty?

I repeat Revelation 22: 11, “Let they who do wrong, continue to do so; let they who are vile, continue in that way; let they who do right keep on doing that, and let they who are holy, continue to be holy.”

APOCALYPSE simply means that our cover is gone, that the mask is torn away, exposing the true nature of us humans and our possessions.

That is the basic message of the book of REVELATION:

EVERYTHING AND EVERYBODY WILL BECOME WHAT THEY ARE, both for good and bad.

If we want to be part of the NEW BEGINNING, now is the time to examine ourselves whether we truly are what we are meant to be, because the END will come without warning. Soon.