Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

July 29 2017

WHY GOD HAS DISAPPEARED

In THE HIDDEN FACE OF GOD Richard Elliott Friedman, professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature in California traces God’s physical appearances in the Bible, and also how, on several occasions, God hides his face.
One of the most intriguing statements in the Bible is found in Deuteronomy 31: 17-18; 32: 20. There God for the last time talks to his ‘friend’ Moses, and says, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be.” Dr. Friedman, who knows his Hebrew, writes that the word ‘end’ does not mean their finish, but rather their distant future. I believe we now live in ‘that distant future’.

God hiding his face indicates two things: (1) It gives humanity an opportunity to grow up; (2) it also means his abandonment. Both events are intimately connected with the COVENANT God made with Humanity and CREATION.

God’s gradual disengagement.

God initially was quite involved with humanity, evident in the first Bible chapters where we can easily trace God’s direct concern with the human race. This was quite extensive with Adam and Eve, intimate even. God personally breathes life into the first human being, personally forms the first woman, personally shapes the Garden of Eden and fashions the animals.
Then each day he walks there where the humans hear him. There’s constant contact between God and Adam and Eve. God sees them as children, tells them to multiply, what to eat and what not. In other words, Adam and Eve take little responsibility themselves. When they are embarrassed over their nudity God even makes them their first clothing. All this makes them appear quite immature.

Noah is completely different. While God gives him the broad outlines about the building of the Ark, Noah does all the work: a gigantic task, involving decades of hard labor.

Then there is Abraham. He is told to start a journey without really knowing where he would end up, and when he arrived, he is told to “take your son, your only one, whom you love, Isaac, and offer him”. Imagine being tested that way! The stakes of human responsibility are raised sky high. His implicit trust in the Lord gives him the audacity to argue with God about the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. Quite a change in attitude!

Then, except for an appearance with Moses on Mount Sinai, God never appears again in person. His voice is heard – Samuel – and his presence felt, but, he’s never seen again.

THE COVENANT WITH CREATION!!

Because Noah believed in God, his family was chosen to make a new start in creation. For that purpose God made a Covenant involving all of creation.
In this Covenant, related in Genesis 9, we read that God repeats six times that this Covenant is with every living creature and with the earth. It sets the tone for the entire Bible. In essence God says here: “People of the earth, I am the Creator. Here I now pledge to form a triad, a Covenant with three parties (1) With the Earth, (2) With you as my image bearers, and (3) With me, as the Head of the Covenant.”
It should be noted that the parties to the covenant are considered to be equals!!

“Remember,” God said, “the line of the Covenant is not vertical: first Me, then you, then the earth, with the earth not really in touch with Me. No, no, the earth, the trees, the rocks, the bees and buffaloes, all are my creatures, the works of my hands. Consider them equal partners and treasure them as you treasure me!”
Picture a triangle: God is on top and the two corners occupy us and the earth, with two lines extending to and from each corner as we all are interdependent, as the Earth gives life to us humans, but also receives input from us. We are dependent on the earth, but must also enhance it. God gives life to us and the earth and both praise God in return: “the hills clap their hands, the mountains leap with joy”, the Psalms say.

In other words, when we look after the earth and after ourselves and our fellow creatures, caring for the crocodiles in the jungle and our cousins next door, then God will look after us. That’s what Genesis 9 says. That’s what a COVENANT is all about: a mutual help society, like a marriage.

This Covenant, said God to Noah, will endure throughout eternity. God, People, the Land are an inseparable Triad. To seal it all, God sent his Son, as the New Head of the New Covenant. Jesus, God’s Son: Jesus, the heart of our religion; the Head of the Covenant.

The signs of the Covenant.

In 1 Samuel 18 we read that David and Jonathan made a covenant. As a sign of the Covenant Jonathan, the crown prince, took off his clothes and gave them to David. He also gave his sword and other weapons. And David did the same.
They completely exchanged their personal belongings, as a sign and symbol that they were one. Imagine!! God did that with us!! He gave all he had, his creation and his Son, and we do the same with God!

David and Jonathan also did something else, not related in the Bible, but part of the general rule of personal Covenant. This ritual required an incision in their wrists. Both parties would then raise their wrists to heaven and let the blood mingle. In the incision they would rub dirt to leave a scar as a permanent sign of their mutual allegiance. They then would sit down, make a list of their possessions, and exchange those lists with the promise that whatever the one part owned would become the rightful property of the other.
In order to seal all this they would walk in the figure of an 8 around two altars as a sign of eternity. Then the two parties to the covenant would eat a special Covenant meal, a lamb and unleavened bread, with each party bringing its own bread and offering it to the other, and the same with wine, pouring the wine of the one into the goblet of the other.
That’s what God did with us!! Made us equals!
Jesus’ blood flowed for us. His wounds are still visible as an eternal sign of the Covenant, an everlasting scar on the God of the Trinity, that whatever is God’s, is also ours.

Yes, the Lord of Creation gave it all to us. He is the God of the Universe. He signed over the ownership of this cosmos to the people of the Covenant, those who confess Jesus to be their Lord.

An amazing treaty!

Yes, God and we have become one in Jesus Christ. Look at the Lord Supper. There Jesus says the familiar words: “This is my body, given for you, and this cup is the New Covenant in my blood poured for you.”

Now not God, but Jesus is the party of the Covenant. God has disappeared from the scene and Jesus is now at the center. Paul tells us to clothe ourselves with the cloak of righteousness, with the Lord Jesus Christ, and so become a new creation, for God has reconciled the cosmos to himself in Christ’s full-bodied Covenant language.

The Covenant idea is woven throughout the entire bible. In essence the Bible is the Covenant story. God made a covenant with us and with all creation. The covenant between God- Jesus- humanity-creation is the intimate foundation, the meaning and purpose of creation.

Creation is the visible basis of the Covenant, its ultimate realization. Creation is there because God in Jesus desires to enter into a Covenant with humanity. We, as human beings, exist because God continuously calls us to the Covenant. God makes us discover our existence more and more as the daily experience of living in the Covenant, in his creation. All this is derived from the loaded expression of “created in God’s image and likeness.”

Our day-to-day life refers to God. Our life resembles God because we, as men and women, as conscious persons, experience our living as participants in the Covenant. We realize the meaning of God’s self-revelation in creation through the Covenant. In the created world, we are the visible representatives of the invisible God. Psalm 82: 6 says, “You are all children of the most High,” so we must not sell ourselves short.
Jesus is the original human pattern, the prototype of all human existence. God, in his plan of salvation, revealed himself fully in Jesus, who represents humanity for us and in this way completed creation and attained the perfect life in God.

We are created after the pattern of Christ. Through the Covenant we experience that likeness to God in a personal response of love. As Children of God, as his heirs, through the Covenant with God we share our humanity with the Son, who is the Lord of all that exists, and through whom the universe was made. The entire creation is there because it is permanently willed in Christ by the Father, because the Father loves it as the Christ.

SO, WHY HAS GOD DISAPPEARED?

Two reasons. (1). God withdrew his presence when we refused to abide by THE COVENANT, the treaty between God, the Earth and Us, when we ventured on our own, and declared God irrelevant.
When one of the parties to the Covenant reneges, that’s it. That is the tragic situation we now experience every day, as is evident from an article in THE NEW YORK MAGAZINE, entitled
THE UNINHABITABLE EARTH,
an essay that has been widely circulated. The article predicts famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: total chaos: soon.

Genesis 15 gives an illustration of what happens when we break the conditions of the Covenant. There it is related how God and Abraham covenanted. Abraham is asked to cut animals in two and both God, in the form of fire, and Abraham in person, pass through these severed animals. The cutting of these beasts illustrates that if the covenant is not kept the bodies of the parties concerned would be cut in half as punishment. But those who abide by its terms will, when Christ returns, share in his glory and complete the work of creation: an eternal assignment, because Creation is Infinite as God is Infinite.

I started this essay by stating that, “One of the most intriguing statements in the Bible is found in Deuteronomy 31: 17-18; 32: 20. There God for the last time talks to his ‘friend’ Moses, and says, “I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be.”

The warnings are out.
Just as all future forecasts have been far too optimistic, with the NEW YORK MAGAZINE article the most pessimistic so far, it will also turn out to be too optimistic, with far worse to come and far sooner. It paints the world without God.

Hebrew 10 relates what happens when we break THE COVENANT. Verse 31 says, “It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” God’s revenge is built-in into Creation. By breaking our treaty with God and creation, a Covenant sealed by the blood of Christ, we have heaped on our heads the wrath of God, who so loved the world, the cosmos, that he offered his Son to buy it back from the Satan.

(2). Another reason why God has disappeared is that he wanted us to become what we are: mature enough to stand on our own feet, without God’s help.
God made a virtue out of us breaking the Covenant by giving us the opportunity to live ‘etsi deus non daretur’ to quote Bonhoeffer, ‘to live as if God no longer exists’.
Bonhoeffer calls this our “coming of age.”
God wants us to grow up to be ready to inhabit the New Creation. Adam and Eve needed God’s help. Over the many millennia God has directed us to maturity. Yes, this time we will be and can be on our own.

Thanks be to God.

JULY 22 2017

EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.

Everything becomes what it is. That is the basic message of the last Bible book: REVELATION.

The name of the book itself points to that. The word “Revelation” indicates the un-shrouding of secrets, the opening up of the hidden, the unmasking of the carefully tucked away mysteries, the stripping away of all camouflage.

I believe that we must take what’s outlined in the last Bible book quite seriously because it does reveal the future, not in detail, not so that we can say ‘on such and such a date this or that is going to happen,’ but, in broad strokes it tells us what is to come. Today to the discerning believer the portents are clearly visible.

It’s main message is that evil will be unmasked as evil, and good will be acknowledged as good, because the book of Revelation has one dominating theme: EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS and also everybody will show his or her true nature.
I conclude this from Revelation 22: 11, its very last chapter. There it says, “Let the one who does wrong continue to do wrong; let the vile person continue to be vile; let the one who does right continue to do right; and let the holy person continue to be holy.”

This text conveys to me that there’s no more changing of minds: people stick to their opinion, no form of persuasion is possible anymore, any appeal to reason or clear logical proof will fall on deaf ears, which is exactly what we see today.
Does this mean that missions and conversions are no longer possible? Good question.

The Rapture believers will still look forward to be fetched up to heaven, even though Matthew 24 clearly says that the sinners will be taken away while the believers will remain and delight in living on a pure earth.
The Climate Change deniers, while more and more seeing and experiencing wild and wilder weather, will nevertheless insist that nothing bad is happening.
The Heaven crowd will still look forward to see God, even though the Bible says that “God lives in inapproachable light and nobody can see him or has seen him”.
The Trumpians will stick to the Donald deceptions, and anything else will be labeled FAKE NEWS”.
That’s all perfectly in tune with the Book of Revelation.

Why?

Chapter 12 explains a lot. It tells us that the Satan was hurled out of heaven together with the angels devoted to him. Just imagine: in heaven, the place where God lives, there was a terrible fight which resulted in the evil spirits being kicked out. Before that the Satan had functioned as ‘the accuser’ witness what he did to Job, as related in the book by that name.
In chapter 12 the Satan is driven out of heaven, landing feet first right here on our earth where he was warmly welcomed. He now is busy day and night leading the whole world astray, evident in the ‘evil’ we have experienced in the last 100 years: two World Wars, a Hitler, a Stalin, now a Trump, a devastating 1918 Pandemic, many small wars, such as Vietnam, Algiers, Indonesia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria today.
Also this past century we saw the start of the immense danger of Climate Change, it too the result of the Satanic forces.

It now becomes clear that the Satan seduced humanity to start using carbon-based fuels, knowing full-well that this would end up in destruction. Ever since the Satan, also known as The Evil One, was banished from heaven his all-consuming passion has been to destroy God’s creation, THE COSMOS God loved so much (John 3: 16). This is now becoming crystal clear and points to the ultimate TRUTH of the book: everything becomes what it is.

You can be assured that in the NEW CREATION there never will be carbon-based fuels, as we have learned this lesson.

When I was in the fourth grade in elementary school in 1938, we had a good laugh when we learned how in 1838 the first train started to operate in the Netherlands between Amsterdam and Haarlem. We snickered because then some people claimed this was the Devil at work. Now, 180 years later, I realize that I was wrong in ridiculing this attitude.

Let’s be honest: when the Satan was expelled from heaven we welcomed him with open arms, everybody quick to buy a car, the ultimate freedom machine. Also we eagerly embraced industrial farming, ignoring the way we treat chickens and pigs and cows, while abandoning the church, spending countless hours watching TV and sports instead.

It now is becoming clear that all the time we have lived in an unreal world, a world speeding to disaster. Matters are not what they are: our carbon-rich way-of-life is totally unsustainable. That is the secret our world wants to conceal: we’ve been living a lie.

That same Satan is the fraudulent force behind today’s ill-fated illusion that Jesus no longer counts, that Jesus did not die to buy back creation from the Satan. He planted the lie that we are heaven-bound, an assumption the church has gladly adopted. He has also sold society on the notion that religion is something stale, old-fashioned, situated in the past and that the local church is no longer relevant. And, oh yes, he convinced the Western world to strive for ECONOMIC GROWTH at all cost, which is still the mantra of any and all governments, fully well knowing that this in impossible in a FINITE WORLD.

Yes, that same Satan is the prompter of the GRAND ILLUSION that humans can create heaven on earth. He is the magical trickster and the mass murderer of the species God would have wanted to conserve, witness Noah and the ARK.

However, the TRUTH is that he was defeated a long time ago. Jesus did that on that little hill just outside the Jerusalem perimeter 2000 years ago when he died on the cross and said: “It is accomplished.

That phrase“, it is accomplished” reminds me of my earlier career as a Real Estate Broker. When I listed a house for sale the selling transaction went through a number of stages: the showing with clients, the signing of the offer to purchase and sell, almost always subject to some conditions, such as arranging financing. Once the conditions were removed the sale was ‘final’, with the occupancy date still some time in the future. This meant that the sellers, the vendors, still lived in the place until the deal was closed, the moneys transferred and my commission cheque issued.

That’s how the situation stands with the Satan. He is still occupying our globe, even though all conditions have been removed and the sale of our planet, from the Satan to Jesus Christ, is final.

In that ‘in between time ‘, with the Satan still in possession of the earth, he is creating bedlam, havoc, causing all possible damage to the globe, desperate because he knows he has been defeated.

Yes, for the time being the Satan continues to sound like a victor. He continues to daily gain immense victories witness the TRUMP ascendancy, the man who scrapped all regulations to stem environmental degradation, resulting in increasing dangers of Global Heating and the rising godlessness of the world’s population. He is Satan’s instrument, fully in tune with the aims of the Evil one.

EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.

What we now see is the vengeance of godlessness, caused by religious heresies, and stupidity generating television, not for nothing called The Boob Tube. Ignorance is celebrated and serious thought is called fake news, inspired by the US president whose speech resembles an 8 year old and whose negotiation powers are bluster and bamboozling. Elected officials, in power to do good invariably end up doing well, selling themselves to the highest bidder.

We now see that democracy, officially ‘the rule by the people’ has degenerated into plutocracy, the rule by the rich.

We know today that we are ruled by deception and cynicism, by corporate interest and regulatory rollover. Even Christian Education has become like the public kind with a sprinkling of Jesus, generating what Bonhoeffer called PIOUS SECULARISM.

Democracy, especially in the USA is a perpetual reelection game, based on promises that are only kept when it favors Capitalism.

Remember the Paris Climate Agreement?
It is nothing more than a paper piece of deceit, a pact that has no teeth, no enforcement mechanism, thus sheer window dressing. Trump could easily have signed it with much fanfare and flourish, but he and his followers probably were totally ignorant of its emptiness.

EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.

A path to a better understanding what’s happening today in the real world I found in an essay by Neal Devers, THE OVERTON BUBBLE.

Wikipedia summarizes it:
“The Overton Window, also known as the window of discourse, is the range of ideas the public will accept…. The term is derived from its originator, Joseph P. Overton (1960–2003), a former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy….
Devers refines the definition:
The Overton Window is a concept in political sociology referring to the range of acceptable opinions that can be held by respectable people. “Respectable” of course means that the subject can be integrated with polite society. Respectability is a strong precondition on the ability to have open influence in the mainstream.

This raises the question: who exactly is in this corps of “respectable people” who set the parameters of acceptable thought?

In Canada this would be the people who read THE GLOBE AND MAIL and watch CBC NEWS; in the USA they are the New York Times readers and the PBS viewers. They also include the bureaucratic functionaries of the permanent government bureaucracy who make and execute policy, along with the universities which educate the “respectable people” (the thinking class) into the prevailing dogmas and shibboleths of the day, and finally the think tanks and foundations that pay professional “experts” to retail their ideas.

The Overton Window can be viewed as a mechanism of political control, demonizing anyone who departs from the consensus of respectable thought, and especially if they express their heresies in public speech.
Devers explains:
The trouble with the Overton Window as a mechanism of political control, and with politicization of speech and thought in general, is that it causes significant collateral damage on the ability of your society to think clearly. If some thoughts are unthinkable and unspeakable, and the truth happens in some case to fall outside of polite consensus, then your ruling elite and their society will run into situations they simply can’t handle. In other words: We’re now living under that condition of “intellectual (and religious, I might add) martial law.” The consequent degradation of thinking means that the polity can’t construct a coherent consensus about what is happening to it (or devise a plan for what to do about it).

This is exactly the point where the Overton Window turns into an Overton Bubble, as described by Devers. The bubble comprises ideas that are assumed to be self-evident (though they actually aren’t) and notions that are potentially destructive of society, even to the point of societal suicide.

Here are two examples of the current falsehoods inside today’s Overton Bubble:
First the church. It has to perpetuate the HEAVEN HERESY because to preach THE NEW EARTH would turn off too many people and stop their contributions. That is a clear example of THE OVERTON WINDOW.
On the political platform: the Paris Agreement is hailed as the solution to CLIMATE CHANGE. To openly say that Global Heating is out of control and will lead to Global Disaster would hurt our economy, the real object of worship. The quest for Economic Growth is another shibboleth, stubbornly maintained, in spite of its impossibility.

What it amounts to is that current news sources – our respectable papers, our official government announcements, our Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, cannot reveal this TRUTH, and are indeed part of the FAKE NEWS being published.
The cruel truth is that we are on the way to disaster.

That’s why the INTERNET is a blessing: it by-passes the FAKE NEWS outlets. It is an instrument if realizing that EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS.

JULY 15 2017

IS GOD DEAD?

Here’s what I believe.

Climate Change is a result of us declaring God superfluous and his creation as disposable. Today we see this culminating in Global Warming which is humanity’s defining issue, affecting everybody and everything everywhere forever.

Here’s where I become controversial.

I believe that Organized Religion carries the blame for this global disaster by refusing to see creation as holy. That’s also the reason why the instituted church has never considered Creation as God’s Primary, Direct Word and has always insisted that the Bible is God’s sole revelation.

This sort of theology has resulted in the killing of creation and has led to the death of God. The Old Testament church killed Jesus. Is history repeating itself?

Suppose….

Suppose that by order of the authorities all Bach’s music were to be destroyed. Within a few years J. S. Bach would be forgotten, dead for all practical purposes. Suppose that all paintings by van Gogh would disappear: within a few years nobody would recognize his name anymore.

That’s exactly what we are doing to God. We are wiping out his creation and fashioning it in our likeness, and in the process we have eliminated God from creation, in essence declaring him DEAD.

The consequence is that we no longer live in the world God created. While initially creation was our ally, it now has become our enemy.

Danger ahead.

Curiously our greatest peril lies there where almost nobody lives: the tundra in Siberia and Canada, those regions where the heat is melting the ‘permafrost’ which no longer is ‘perma-nent’ as the methane-laden earth emits a much more dangerous Greenhouse Gas. Arctic News reported last week that temperatures at two locations on the Mackenzie River, which flows north into the Arctic, were 32.6°C or 90.8°F at the mouth of the Mackenzie River and another one of 34.7°C or 94.5°F further inland. Warm water from rivers substantially warms up the sea surface and thus melts the sea ice while warm rain melts the “perma” frost. There also are multiple 10 meters wide gaping holes where the tundra has exploded, spontaneously bursting into flames signifying the emerging of methane gases 37 times more lethal than the stuff we spew into the air with our car exhausts.

The world tries—- in vain

The entire world – except the USA Government – is taking measures to combat Climate Change. At one time America prided itself to be THE CITY ON THE HILL, the example for all nations to follow. It now is fast becoming THE CITY ON THE way to HELL, as it openly encourages to flout all Climate Change reduction rules, even though as a nation it is the largest emitter of Green House Gases in the world.

There is a saying “Come Hell or High Water”, meaning that no efforts will be spared to accomplish a goal. Well Hell AND High Water is exactly what is in store for much of the USA, as Hell means unbearable heat and forest fires, while high water signifies flooding, through an overabundance of rain, hurricanes and thunderstorms.

“Is God dead?” an idolatrous question?

Dietrich Bonhoeffer wondered whether we should live ‘etsi deus non daretur’, as if there were no God.
I believe that Bonhoeffer always saw life in terms of eternity. In the New Creation God no longer plays a role because that pristine state fully represents God’s will for creation: everything is perfect, including the people, and since our life is a proving ground for eternity, this implies that “living as if God no longer matters”, is part of that trial process.

Bonhoeffer felt a great kinship with Nietzsche, who once wrote, “Once the sin against God was the greatest sin; but God is dead, and these sinners died with him. Today the sin against the earth is the most dreadful sin.”

Who is without sin in that regard? Admit it: we constantly sin against the earth to the extent that there is not a molecule left on the planet untouched by our sinful action: the oceans, the air, the soil all are contaminated: all divine influence has been compromised.

What does “the death of God” mean for us?

Romans 8: 17 tells us that God had to die. There it says that “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

Only when the testator- God in this case – dies can the heritage be claimed. The heritage is the NEW CREATION.

The death of God assures that we will inherit the earth!! Sharing in Christ’s suffering means that we must love the earth and express that love in our actions. Those actions must be totally pro-Climate. Christians must be the most active Climate Change fighters and pro Climate workers, even to the point of SUFFERING. Are YOU going to forget about air travel, long automobile trips, cruises, all items that cause of lot of pollution, and start living as if God will come back tomorrow? Are you willing to suffer for that cause?

A new era

We already have entered a new era, where TRUTH is in retreat and the LIE lurks as the most believable.

We, as a society, Christian in name, are no longer able to gauge matters in the light of Jesus who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, of which Colossians 1 says that “ALL things were created by him (Ta Panta in Greek), which make “all things” holy.

In John 8 there is an example of the POST-TRUTH SOCIETY. Jesus points to the Devil and says: “When he lies he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies.” 1 John 5:19 tells us that today he rules the world with lies and deceit.

That’s the situation we are in today. To deny Climate Change is speaking the language of the devil and by doing so we obstruct Jesus who said in the same chapter: “The Truth shall set you free” John 8:32.

REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH!

Nietzsche in THUS SPOKE ZARATHUSTRA writes, “I entreat you, brothers, remain true to the earth, and do not believe those who speak to you of super terrestrial hopes! They are poisoners, whether they know it or not…..To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offence…”

Nietzsche`s rebellion against the church originated from the preaching of the Heaven Heresy, still ruling the church today. The much maligned Nietzsche was a genius. His father and both his grand fathers were Lutheran preachers, one even a bishop. He was also slated to join the ranks of clergy but, seeing that the church was dead and so concluding that God was dead as well, he changed course and at a very young age became a professor of classical languages.

“Remain true to the earth!” is certainly a timely reminder. Our downright cruelty to the earth is overly clear. Most people see the earth as something to be exploited for personal gain, resulting in shrinking soil fertility, disappearing potable water, and climate change, signalling immense future problems.

This past week I again was reminded of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who knew that his time was short: at the age of 39 he was killed by the Gestapo (Geheime Stats Polizei or Secret Police) weeks before the end of WWII. One statement really stayed with me: “God cannot be understood without the world, nor the world without the God who has entered it in Jesus Christ.”

That makes sense. We cannot understand Bach without his music or van Gogh without his paintings. That’s why we cannot understand God without his creation. The Scriptures have been given us to make that possible. By killing creation we are killing God. Here I hear an echo of Nietzsche’s words: Remain true to the earth!

Why did Bonhoeffer write that it takes creation to understand God? In his CREATION AND FALL, dealing with the first three chapters of the Bible, Genesis 1-3, he writes, “The human being is the human being who is taken from earth…. The earth is its mother…. It is God’s earth out of which humankind is taken….. Its bond with the earth belongs to its essential being. Human beings have their existence as existence on earth.

Johan Herman Bavinck says essentially the same. In his Between the Beginning and the End: a radical Kingdom Vision he writes,
“A long time ago, the Bible tells us, God fashioned the first human pair from the earth. The Hebrew word for soil is Adamah, from which Adam comes. The word adam reminded the Israelite immediately of the first Adam who was taken from the soil of the earth, hence the well-known saying: soil we are and to soil we shall return. Just as we have red clay and black soil, we too have people of different colors. The word ‘adam’ typifies the human race in its unbreakable unity. We all come from the earth and we all go back to the earth. Earth-bound we are, forever. We, the human beings, are adam, and belong to adamah, the life-bearing earth. With every sinew of our exis¬tence we are tied to the earth, which bears us and feeds us.”

Back to us humans who, by and large, regard soil as disposable. We trample on it, pave it wherever we can, and, stupidly build our cities on its most fertile sections, because that sort of earth is good for digging and drainage, so we abuse it: it’s only dirt after all. Yes, soil is treated as dirt that’s why we regard it with contempt. Yet all human life depends on it. Ancient Sanskrit texts have warned us: “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel, and our shelter and surround us with beauty. Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it”. Yes, destroy the earth and we destroy ourselves, and that’s exactly what we are doing.”

In these Last Days.

In these LAST DAYS we have to implement the words of Psalm 119: 105: “Your word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path (in creation)”. With the two divine words at the ready – Creation and the Scriptures – guided by the Living Word that came to us in Jesus Christ, we have to outline a life that reflects God’s will now and for eternity, meaning that the current format of the church service has to change from the exclusive elaboration of the written word to a meaningful integration of both the created and the written word, fully recognizing that the created word, God’s direct revelation, has priority over God’s revelation in Scripture, his indirect word.

For most people God means little or nothing at all. For the bulk of those who go to church their quest is centered on heaven, but since we are of the earth, and eternally bound to the earth, this simply means a life lived in denial.

This is all too evident in the USA, the most ‘Christian’ of the Western world. There Christianity has become so distorted that people like me are almost ashamed to call myself Christian. Nowhere in the world is the ‘world’ more abused and more reviled than in the USA where the average person generates 15 tons of CO2 per year, while the world average is less than 5 tons.

Bonhoeffer’s words, stating that we cannot find the God who has entered into the world in the form of Jesus Christ, unless we see and treat the world as originating from God and thus holy, are today more true than ever. Even though there may be churches that proclaim that truth, hardly any hymns reflect that belief.

The church, by preferring heaven over the earth, in essence says that God erred, that he made a fallible earth, which no longer matters. A fallible God is a dead idol.

But Jesus lives! He has overcome death and we live with him and through him.

JULY 8 2017

CANADA VERSUS THE USA.

… Where there is no vision, the people perish: but
they that keep the law, happy are they. … Proverbs 29:18

In this past week when both Canada and the USA celebrated their birthdays – 150 for Canada and 241 for the USA – I was looking at the differences between these two nations who, like no other countries in the world, share a border many thousands of miles long, and where US television broadcasts, magazines and newspapers have a lot of adherents in Canada. Many of us also have relatives there. My immediate family is almost evenly split between these two countries.

The French have a saying: Vive la différence. That certainly applies to these two countries. It is a miracle that Canada, so physically close to the USA has become so different in outlook, in politics, in religion, even though their economies are intimately intertwined. The difference in leaders is one example.
Here’s what a New York Times commentator said about Trump:
“What we have as president is the closest thing to a nihilist in our history — a man who believes in little or nothing, who has the impulse to burn down rather than to build up. When the president eventually faces a genuine crisis, his ignorance and inflammatory instincts will make everything worse.
Republican voters and politicians rallied around Mr. Trump in 2016, believing he was anti-establishment when in fact he was anti-order. He turns out to be an institutional arsonist. It is an irony of American history that the Republican Party, which has historically valued order and institutions, has become the conduit of chaos.”
Contrast this with Justin Trudeau who is constantly promoting minority rights, especially for women and indigenous people, and is trying to unite rather than divide. Trudeau definitely has a vision: you may not always agree with him, but he is a visionary person.

Every morning we read a Psalm at breakfast time. Earlier this week, reading Psalm 12 made me think of the USA Republican leaders:
Help, LORD, for no one is faithful anymore;
those who are loyal have vanished from the human race.
2 Everyone lies to their neighbor;
they flatter with their lips
but harbor deception in their hearts.
3 May the LORD silence all flattering lips
and every boastful tongue—
4 those who say,
“By our tongues we will prevail;
our own lips will defend us—who is lord over us?”

In these days of global crises everywhere, we need ‘vision’ more than ever. That begs the question: “what does VISION’ really entail?

We in church sing that beautiful melody, “Be Thou my vision”, but unless we fashion ‘vision’ into something concrete, the words are meaningless, just as “Love God above all else.” How can we love God when we cannot possibly grasp what God is because he is beyond understanding? That’s why people make idols that are visible.
The way to love God is to love what he has created, the same way we honor great artists. That’s why the ‘vision’ the Bible refers to, always points to what God has created. Lacking ‘vision’ leads to creational exploitation which always ends in death. Trump excels in this regard.

The text continues, “They that keep the law, happy are they”, which leads to another question: ‘what constitutes the LAW,’ and what results in ‘happiness’?

Mark 12: 30-31 captures the meaning of LAW beautifully in Jesus’ own words: “The most important law is that you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second law is “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

Jesus is quite explicit here. He does not simply say: “Love God.” He says “Love God with your heart, with your soul, with your mind and with all your strength.” Loving God requires the use of the total human being, all our physical, moral, spiritual and intellectual facilities. It is not simply a matter of “our soul” loving God, no, it is a ‘hands on’ experience, involving getting our hands dirty improving creation, engaging our brains, explaining history in terms of eternity, inventing creation-friendly systems, loving all people, including Muslims, while always praying.

Why must we be so creation-minded? Because the Great Cosmic Love Commandment is John 3: 16: “God so loved the world, the cosmos, all that exists in the Universe (humans and animals, trees and blackflies) that he offered his only Son, Jesus Christ, as the price to buy back his beloved creation from The Evil One, who by hook and crook had acquired it.”

I still can remember the prayer of my paternal grandfather. It always started with the opening words of Psalm 115: “Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.”
To glorify God’s name, to honor his signature, to see him in all of creation as a most elegant book, God’s primary word, THAT is our first duty.

I regard myself a privileged person knowing that I have had parents, grandparents and great grandparents who were believers and have somehow instilled in me a vision, a vision that is different for each generation and even now is rapidly changing, as we proceed from personal to societal salvation.

That same Psalm, 115, has a line that mentions eyes: “eyes have they but cannot see,” referring to idols.
Here it is:
Not to us, LORD, not to us
but to your name be the glory,
because of your love and faithfulness.
2 Why do the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
3 Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
4 But their idols are silver and gold,
made by human hands.
5 They have mouths, but cannot speak,
eyes, but cannot see.
6 They have ears, but cannot hear,
noses, but cannot smell.
7 They have hands, but cannot feel,
feet, but cannot walk,
nor can they utter a sound with their throats.
8 Those who make them will be like them,
and so will all who trust in them.

That Psalm says: “those who make (these idols) will become like them, meaning that the false god worshipers lose their vision, and the loss of vision leads to death, so it is important to gain or regain that vision.

Eternity and us.

Last week after church a very learned friend wondered whether eternal life was worth pursuing. Would it not be boring, he wondered?
I pointed out that, since creation is infinite in newness, eternity is needed to explore it all. It seems to me that only curious people will inherit the kingdom, persons eager to pursue knowledge, because, as Plato-Socrates have claimed, “Scio, Nescio” (I know I know nothing). Eternity will not be long enough to fathom all plants, all butterflies, world history, astronomy: the list is endless. Since in eternity time plays no role, everything can be approached in the most relaxed way possible. No Google needed as we can instantaneously consult experts all over the planet to provide us with clues, and point us in the right direction. And if even then we get stuck, there’s always Jesus to ask.

All this implies that not heaven – where God lives in inapproachable light whom nobody has seen or can see (1 Tim. 6: 16) –but God’s beloved world is our eternal habitat, the object of our perpetual pursuit of knowledge. Remember, “God made no junk and will not junk what he has made”, as one of my friends put it.

That points to a vision mostly absent today, and also explains why there is so little happiness.
Happiness is evident when we do what we are created to do, something different for everybody, as our talents differ. We are only truly happy when we have found our niche, have discovered what we were meant to do, which, for everybody has a creation connection.

So what has this to do with CANADA and the USA?

Americans, especially conservatives, love to mock their northern neighbors, us Canadians for their accent, their apologetic manners, and above all, for its supposedly soft-headed, pinko style of government. And no wonder: With its liberal, tattooed Prime Minister, its universal health care, its enthusiastic embrace of pot and gay marriage and its generous refugee policies, Canada can sometimes seem downright Scandinavian.
The paradox is that often the less religious a country is, the more Christian is its behavior. Canada is far less religious than the USA, but more Christian in its conduct.

Among 55 of the most important countries of the world Canada has the best reputation, got a first place finish, up from second place last year. Canada bumped last year’s winner, Sweden, to third place, behind Switzerland.
Compare that to the United States which saw the largest decline among the 55 countries surveyed, dropping 10 spots to 38th, from 28th last year, something the RepTrak report blames squarely on U.S. President Donald Trump.

HEALTH CARE in Canada; HEALTH SCARE in the USA

Canada can thank Tommy Douglas, a Baptist minister and the Socialist Premier of Saskatchewan for starting Health Care in that Province, where Medicare was born on July 1, 1962. It would be the first government-controlled, universal, comprehensive single-payer medical insurance plan in North America.

Of course the North American medical establishment and the entire insurance industry were determined to stop Medicare in its tracks, fearing it would become popular and spread, and they were right. Within 10 years all of Canada was covered by a medical insurance system based on the Saskatchewan plan, and no serious politician would openly oppose it.

Yes, since 1972 all of Canadian citizens have been covered by health care: an amazing 45 years ago!! Today to insure all Canadians from cradle to grave with health care costs 11% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Will this happen in the USA? No, because the Insurance Industry and Big Business in general control the political system there. For them health care means profit. Our American neighbors spend almost 18 percent of its total expenditure on keeping its population from dying prematurely, yet leaving millions with no insurance, unable to pay the high premiums. Even those with insurance often face high deductibles which quickly can cause a family into bankruptcy.

What the USA lacks is a common vision. In Canada people and provincial governments have a social consciousness: their vision has a biblical basis, realizing that when one section of the population suffers, they all suffer. Canadians recognize that the state is a power to do good.

The American Republican Party’s right wing sees the state as a power for evil, and hates any state interference as unproductive. Also its Capitalistic system believes that the market is god, and a company can charge what ‘the market’ will bear.

Witness a paragraph I lifted from a New York Times article last week:
“It costs as little as $10 and as much as $10,169 to get the same blood test in California. A lower-back M.R.I. priced at $199 at one Florida clinic goes for $6,221 in San Francisco. A shoulder X-ray can run anywhere between $21 and more than $700 across the United States.
In Britain, the average price of an angioplasty is $7,264 versus $31,620 in the United States. Hip replacement in New Zealand is $15,465. The United States figure is $29,067.”

Healthcare in the USA has become a Health Scare. Obama, 7 years ago managed to get Obama Care accepted. It was utterly derided by the Republican Party, vouching last year that the first act of Congress would be its repeal. I still can hear the then running for President Donald J. Trump, boasting that he would replace it with a better plan AT A FRACTION OF THE COST. That lie is now being exposed.

… Where there is no vision, the people perish: but
they that keep the law, happy are they. … Proverbs 29:18

Near the end of her career, Helen Keller was asked by a student if there was anything worse than losing her sight. She replied “yes, I could have lost my vision.”

Today the USA is the most misguided modern nation in the world: it has lost its vision.
How can “God bless America” when its leadership has no vision, has no plan, except to destroy creation, and with it its people?

July 1 2017

GOING FULL CIRCLE.

To me it looks that the END will be like the BEGINNING. Then, millions of years ago, monstrosities roamed the earth, ferocious, crazily constructed creatures which, had they remained there and multiplied, would have needed several earths to keep them in existence, just like today when, if everybody would live as we all-consuming Westerners do, we too would need perhaps 2-3 similar planets to accommodate our totally destructive lifestyle.

Yes, it certainly looks that we have become like the dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals, devouring whatever is precious and necessary to extend our stay on earth.

In my book DAY WITHOUT END (Google: Day Without End, Bert Hielema) I imagined that these outsized animals were created by the SATAN. Somewhere in my book I have the Satan ask God to let him try his hand at creating new forms of life on earth, so a gracious God let him but, since they proved to be too destructive, God caused a meteor to hit the earth and put an end to their existence.

Of course my assumption about the Satan then is just that: speculation. What is true, however, is that TODAY the Satan is in charge, and since that is the case, bad things happen all the time. 1 John 5: 19 unambiguously states that, “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

Better get used to it: that’s the state of affairs today. The current world is controlled by The Evil One, which means that our present situation will only go from bad to worse. At this point in history WE are earth’s all-devouring creatures, endangering the very source of life. That’s why we also are destined for total destruction, just as prehistoric eras were.

History will repeat itself.

This time too natural forces will do us in. Before we became the current destructive force, in prehistoric times those awesome creatures caused havoc beyond repair. Today we, with our bulldozers and gigantic power shovels and monster dump trucks with wheels taller than the tallest person, we too rip up the earth and move mountains, dam rivers, drill tunnels, all in the name of ECONOMIC GROWTH.

But these immense changes are minor compared to what takes place at earth’s extreme ends, on the highest mountains and at both poles: there trillions of tons of solid ice are melting and seeping into the oceans, and we have no clue what that entails, because suddenly our tiny planet is losing trillions of tons of solid ice, upsetting earth’s precarious balance.

Are they causing Earthquakes?

Just picture our globe, with on each pole immense frozen masses that have been there for millions of years. Then suddenly, in a flash, in a few seconds on the planet’s time-scale, warm water melts all that stuff. What happens? Earthquakes?

I don’t know, but the Scriptures tell me that THE END will come with enormous EARTHQUAKES.

Not only are earthquakes mentioned in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, and of course in Revelation, but also repeatedly in the Old Testament, where it says in Joel 2: 10, “Before them the earth shakes, the heavens tremble, the sun and moon are darkened, and the stars no longer shine.” Ezekiel 38: 19-21 and Amos 9: 5 signal identical world-ending disasters.

The gospels are more explicit. Matthew 24 gives a terrifying description of the approaching last days. But curiously, while mentioning wars, famines, earthquakes, there suddenly appears the prophecy: “the Gospel of the Kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.”

I really don’t understand how the Gospel of the Kingdom will be proclaimed. Does the INTERNET play a role there? It certainly is not the message of the church today, a church that has no clue about the Kingdom being the New Creation, the real UTOPIA.

I could well be that the message will be primarily negative: “Look at all that destruction, those earthquakes and pandemics. Admit that humanity has bungled it all. Everything has failed. The only hope is the “U (good) – TOPIA (place)”. Repent and expect the Lord to return to rectify it all and establish perfection.”

Just as Genesis 1 and 2 tell us how the world began in terms understandable for an agrarian Jewish people, so too, in the New Testament, in Matthew 24 Jesus himself describes the END in great detail, while John in REVELATION does the same.
There it mentions how pandemics produce panic in the planet’s population, and how deadly droughts, hellish heat, drenching rains devastate the crops: all this is happening now. The culmination of these natural disasters and the pinnacle of pain are caused by an earthquake (Revelation 16: 18) “No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth.”

I can picture how the seismographs in the capital cities shake wildly and record numbers beyond any ever registered. I can visualize how the houses tumble, the McMansions are ruined, how no human technological expertise is any help. Nothing can withstand this force of nature: no nuclear bomb has this devastating power. Now an endless series of ever more frightening events roll over the world.

The catastrophes mentioned in Revelation 16 extend to the entire cosmos. They affect people everywhere. This last Bible book which shows the END as Genesis showed the BEGINNING reveals how in the disastrous happenings preceding the last things, two types of distress can be detected. These calamities are completely the result of our actions, are a direct consequence of us mistreating creation. We already see how CLIMATE CHANGE is purely our doing, but Earthquakes? Yes, they too are caused by us.

THE REVENGE OF THE PLANET

It is as if the tamed earth, given by God as a gift to humanity, as our own domain, is now rebelling, is now rising up against us, its tormentor. It is as if nature that, for so long, for so many centuries, has faithfully furnished humanity with all its needs, has now become recalcitrant, and full of revenge has thrown itself upon humanity. And these people, this so superior human race, with her nuclear energy, her mighty medical system, her military prowess, and her entertainment establishment all of which made her feel so immense powerful and strong, these same men and women are now in a total humiliating fashion confronted with the fact that in the final analysis they amount to nothing, that they are a mere rag that is thrown out as useless.

All this was brought home to me when I read an article on the YELLOWSTONE SUPER VOLCANO.

Here’s what the article said:

“If you follow my writings on a regular basis, then you already know that I spend a lot of time documenting how the crust of our planet is becoming increasingly unstable. Most of this shaking is taking place far away from the continental United States, and so most Americans are not too concerned about it. But we should be concerned about it, because a major seismic event could change all of our lives in a single instant. For instance, a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano would have the potential of being an E.L.E. (extinction level event).
There have been close to 800 earthquakes in the area. “They consists of one earthquake in the magnitude 4 range, five earthquakes in the magnitude 3 range, 68 earthquakes in the magnitude 2 range, 277 earthquakes in the magnitude 1 range, 508 earthquakes in the magnitude 0 range, and 19 earthquakes with magnitudes of less than zero,” the latest report said.

The biggest earthquake in this swarm occurred Thursday evening, June 15. It was initially measured to be a magnitude 4.5 earthquake, but it was later downgraded to a 4.4. It was the biggest quake in the region since a magnitude 4.8 earthquake struck close to Norris Geyser Basin in March 2014. This magnitude 4.4 earthquake was so powerful that people felt it as far away as Bozeman…
The main quake was centered about 5.8 miles underground.
The quake and aftershocks occurred just over 8 miles northeast from West Yellowstone, according to the U.S. Geological Service.
A witness reported that she felt the building she was in move.
Dozens of people reported that they felt it in and around West Yellowstone, Gardiner, Ennis, and Bozeman.
But by itself that one quake would only be of minor concern. What is troubling many of the experts is that this earthquake has been accompanied by hundreds of smaller ones.
There is normally a rise in seismic activity before a volcano erupts, and according to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku, a long overdue eruption at Yellowstone could “rip the guts out of the USA”…
Scientists currently believe that there’s a 10% chance that a “super volcanic Category 7 eruption” could take place this century, as pointed out by theoretical physicist Michio Kaku who appeared on a segment for Fox News.
Kaku said that a “pocket of lava” located under the park has turned out to be twice as big as scientists originally thought. I would like to try to describe for you what a full-blown eruption of the Yellowstone super volcano would mean for this country.
Hundreds of cubic miles of ash, rock and lava would be blasted into the atmosphere, and this would likely plunge much of the northern hemisphere into several days of complete darkness. Virtually everything within 100 miles of Yellowstone would be immediately killed, but a much more cruel fate would befall those that live in major cities outside of the immediate blast zone such as Salt Lake City and Denver.
Hot volcanic ash, rock and dust would rain down on those cities literally for weeks. In the end, it would be extremely difficult for anyone living in those communities to survive. In fact, it has been estimated that 90 percent of all people living within 600 miles of Yellowstone would be killed.
Experts project that such an eruption would dump a layer of volcanic ash that is at least 10 feet deep up to 1,000 miles away, and approximately two-thirds of the United States would suddenly become uninhabitable. The volcanic ash would severely contaminate most of our water supplies, and growing food in the middle of the country would become next to impossible.
In other words, it would be the end of our country as we know it today.
The rest of the planet, and this would especially be true for the northern hemisphere, would experience what is known as a “nuclear winter”. An extreme period of “global cooling” would take place, and temperatures around the world would fall by up to 20 degrees. Crops would fail all over the planet, and severe famine would sweep the globe.

In the end, billions could die.

So yes, this is a threat that we should take very seriously.”

THE BIBLE AND EARTHQUAKES

That’s the sort of disaster REVELATION is talking about. You should read the entire chapter 16. Let me quote verses 18-19: “No earthquake has ever occurred since humanity had been on earth, so tremendous was the quake….. and the cities of the nation collapsed.”

GOING FULL CIRCLE.

In essence world history is a circle. The beginning is in the end, and the end is in the beginning. The Bible starts with the Garden of Eden and beautiful perfection. Then there is the human experimental interlude, now about to expire, as the trial and error has resulted in mostly human failure. Fortunately Revelation 14: 13 tells us that, “Our good deeds will follow us.” Not all human ventures are lost. We have learned by trial and error and are able to apply our experience in the NEW CREATION, the KINGDOM TO COME, that same kingdom over which the first human pair presided in EDEN.

That is the future, a future where the new human race, with Jesus as the Primus Inter Pares, the First among Equals, will guide us in the perfect way, because God’s laws will be written on our hearts. We are going FULL CIRCLE.

June 24 2017

TRUMP: A GODSEND

Former President Obama, in his speech at the Montreal Chamber of Commerce on June 6, used the phrase: INFLECTION POINT, which Google defines as “A time of significant change in a situation: a turning point.” Having pledged not to criticize his successor for a while caused Obama’s speech to be quite run of the mill, even though the new president has set out to destroy any and every piece of legislation that originated from the Obama regime, of which Health Care and Environmental regulations are the most prominent.

I listened to Obama’s entire 40 minute address, and, apart from the word INFLECTION POINT, I heard not one sentence that was new. I can’t understand why people pay big bucks to hear past presidents such as Bill Clinton or, in this case, Barack Obama, spout platitudes.

A new era ahead.

Just as the church can no longer reform itself – see last week’s blog – so too the entire world economy is in the same position. After all: “everything is connected to everything else”, is one of the laws of ECOLOGY. Matters move in tandem. The financial system is on track to tip over the brink, because all elements have become too ossified, too far out from reality to be able to be reformed.

Here are some simple questions: “Do you really believe that CLIMATE CHANGE can be stopped? Do your really believe that if Hillary had become president, we would have seen a different political scene? Do you really believe that CAPITALISM will disappear? Do you really believe that the $250 Trillion World Debt will ever be paid? Do you really believe that CANCER can be beaten?”

NO to all these questions because we live in a culture where politics, the economy, US healthcare, the entire issue of climate, is beyond repair.

Oh yes, matters look basically normal: the sun still rises, the days still have 24 hours, people still go to work, children, grandchildren, greatgrandchildren are still added to the world, people still fall ill, suffer and die: in other words, life goes on in its normal rhythm, yet when we study matters closer, we see that standard solutions no longer work: we have gone too far to be able to remedy the situation.

I am old enough to have experienced the pre-industrial age. I don’t mean that I am 200 years old, but I have intimately known my grandparents, who were born in the 1860’s, now more than 150 years ago, in the rural Western part of the Province of Groningen, adjacent to Friesland. There rural life had been basically unaltered since 1700, at least at the remote location where my maternal grandparents lived: no electricity, the horse and buggy stage: only the bicycle was contemporary.

In 1923 my parents married and moved to the city, some 35 km away, the first ones to do so of the entire extended family.
I was their fourth child (in five years), and after me another five were born. Grandparents, being what they are, were quite eager to host me when another baby saw the light. (I was named after him). So I received, as a youngster, a good taste of what it was to live without electricity and running water, rising with the sun, and going to bed early. A tranquil life, centering on the animals, with the barn attached to the living quarters, on church and community based entertainment: choirs, brass bands, youth meetings, church gatherings, etc.

Then the INFLECTION POINT, the TURNING POINT, was the arrival of the automobile. Between 1950 and 1990 the car transformed the country to become an extension of the city and effectively killed small, mixed farming with a dozen cows, some pigs, and a flock of chickens. It also made the small baker and grocer superfluous, with the rise of box stores.

The last 25 years – from the Fall of the Berlin Wall and the arrival of the Computer to today – I regard as a period of gestation, where the real changes were born, found their footing and brought on immense modifications. Just as the automobile altered the entire way of life that existed before 1950– not for the better as we now discover – so the computer, in its manifold manifestations, is upsetting everything and I mean everything, from the way we eat, sleep, drive, work, communicate, think, court, worship, everything.

And just as the unintended consequences of global automobile use are now showing up in drastic Climate Change, so too the universal application of A.I. Artificial Intelligence, will fundamentally affect human behavior, also not for the better. Just as the automobile deprived us of natural mobility, walking, running, perhaps biking and horse riding, and was and is a factor in heart and respiratory diseases, not to mention physical injuries and deaths, so the remorseless advance of Artificial Intelligence may further deprive us of creative thinking, in essence rob us of our very humanity.

We now are faced with the unrelenting march of “progress” that has been the consequence of the computer. I put ‘progress’ in quotation marks because its consequences are still not entirely known.

Of course I am a computer user. I let my subscription to the Globe and Mail lapse – I had to pick it up at the store 5.5 km away – and now see it on line, as I do with the New York Times, the Guardian and other news sources: no paper waste, more efficient. But it also eliminated a lot of jobs in the newspaper industry. So there has been a definite INFLECTION point, a real change in the way NEWS is being delivered. Eventually it will affect all modes of life.

DEBT

The way we rely on money has also changed immensely. In the good old days people bought stuff when they had saved up the money.
Today the rapid rise in living standards and prosperity of the past 50 years has been largely based on rising debt levels, ignoring the costs of environmental damage and misallocation of scarce resources. Debt today stands at a ‘never-to-be-repaid’ 325 percent of global gross domestic product of about 75 Trillion Dollars, amounting to some 250 Trillion Dollars.

Debt has allowed society to accelerate consumption, as borrowings are used to purchase something today against the promise of future repayment. Unfunded entitlements to social services, health care and pensions increase those liabilities. The bill for these commitments will soon become unsustainable, as demographic – growing old and frail – changes make it more difficult to meet.
Debt is not confined to money: the greater debt is the degradation of the environment which will result in phenomenal future costs. It will entail either rehabilitation expenses – restoration of what once was – or irreversible changes that affect living standards or quality of life. We have not at all costed the profligate use of non-renewable natural resources which deny these commodities to future generations or increase their cost.
Expect a tremendous INFLECTION COST there once this starts to bite, a cost so high that it is impossible to remedy: we have gone too far.
Even though many now see DEFLATION as a threat – and it is – the odds are that INFLATION will kick in once food, energy, water becomes in short supply, as growing population, increasing living standards, pollution, erosion, floods, droughts, materialize.

The WEATHER turning point.

Over the past 130 years, global surface temperatures have risen about 20 times faster than when the Earth was in the process of slowly emerging from the last ice age. Over the past 40 years, the rate of global warming has been 3 times faster yet.

During the past 7,000 years, when human civilization was able to develop and thrive, Earth’s temperatures and climate were quite stable, with the temperature change varying not more than about 0.5°C. We, energy hogs, have now caused that much and more warming in just the past 25 years.

Margaret MacMillan in her book THE WAR THAT ENDED PEACE devoted one chapter to DREAMING OF PEACE. Yes, there were, prior to 1914 millions of people joining the various peace movements, because there was a general feeling that war could erupt, as everywhere in the Western world nations were preparing for war. It made me think of the environmental movements today, such as Greenpeace and the David Suzuki Foundation and the many, many books that warn us of coming Climate disasters. Yet, in 1914 war came, not to be concluded until 1945. So also WEATHER DISASTER will come, now already evident from the preliminary skirmishes we are encountering. Actually Sam Carana in his ARCTIC NEWS reports that on May 28, a few weeks ago, sea temperature was 1.8°C or 3.2°F warmer than 1981-2011, that means that the 2.0°C will be reached within a few years since oceans cover 70 percent of the globe.
Dr. Carana specializes in temperature readings, especially in the Arctic where the weather is changing 3 times as fast as anywhere else, and also where the buried METHANE, 30 times more lethal than CO2, our automobile exhaust, is in the process of escaping from the permafrost tundra there. THERE LIES THE ULTIMATE INFLECTION POINT, because once methane emerges it will result in a sudden TEN DEGREE CELSIUS spike in world temperatures.

A POSSIBLE CONVERGENCE OF EVENTS?

It has long been my conviction that we will experience a convergence of all possible disasters. I believe that the Middle East could well serves as the CATALYST, the area where civilization began and, I believe, will end, completing the circle of history.

This week I am reading Margaret MacMillan’s PARIS 1919, SIX MONTHS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD.
It is fascinating to read how this learned woman, in her PARIS 1919, describes how France and Great Britain haggled over the same countries now so much in the news: Syria, Mesopotamia (Iran-Iraq), Palestine, Lebanon, all regions formerly under the rule of the Turks in the Ottoman Empire that fell apart after 1918.

Then too OIL was at the heart of the conflict. Reading about Mosul and Aleppo and Baghdad and Basra in 1919– now constantly in the news as well – shows that the decisions made then, still affect us today.
Margaret MacMillan writes, “In 1919 there were no Iraqi people; history, religion, geography pulled the people apart, not together. Basra looked south, toward India and the Gulf; Baghdad had strong links with Persia (Iran), and Mosul had close ties with Turkey and Syria. Putting together the three Ottoman provinces and expect to create a nation called IRAQ was, in European terms, like hoping to have Bosnian Muslims, Croats, and Serbs make one country.”

The history of the dictatorship-plagued region has shown that there is no such thing as a short and decisive war. The Yemeni and Syrian and Afghanistan conflicts show this. Total instability in the heart of the world’s most energy-rich region will send global economies into shock, create more opportunities for terrorists, will bring further foreign interventions, spark new waves of refugees, and make the entire world less safe, less stable, and less prosperous. George W. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney, would have done well to have studied the Middle East History before embarking on war in Iraq and Afghanistan, a war now in its 16th year with no end in sight.

The fuse for today’s Middle East TURNING POINT was lit at the 1919 PARIS conference. The fuse is still inching its way toward its fatal destination. At the same time CLIMATE CHANGE is accelerating this process. The EROEI factor – Energy Returned on Energy Invested – plays a role as well, as real cheap oil is only available in the Middle East, while Oil-Sand Oil and Fragging Oil take a lot of energy –and thus pollution – to obtain energy.

The global TOTAL INFLECTION – TURNING POINT will occur when unbearable heat, Category 6 hurricanes and typhoons, gigantic earthquakes, a pandemic, nuclear war, collapsing economies, all coalesce to cause the entire world to succumb to chaos.

The election of TRUMP is a true indication of the impossibility to solve the world’s problems. He is the great DIVIDER, the great DISTURBER. His ascendancy will simply speed up the process of total disintegration. He embodies destructive evolution.

He’s the real GODSEND to bring about the COMING OF THE KINGDOM, God’s new creation.