Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

March 25 2017
ECCLESIOLA IN ECCLESIA

Patience, a bit later I’ll explain this Latin phrase. Actually it is not hard to guess what it means.

Late last year I was in Minnesota and Wisconsin for a grandson’s wedding and talked to American Christians: staunch Lutherans, staunch Republicans and also staunch Trumpians.

At one time I was not a Lutheran but a Dutch Reformed stauncher: born into the staunchiest of Calvinistic cradles. I grew up in a Reformed Christian extended family: twice to church on Sunday, weekly youth meetings; went to Christian schools. Christian thinking infiltrated all sections of our life. My father was active in a Christian Political Party, banked at the BOAZ bank; before the war my oldest brother played in a Christian Soccer Club: the whole ball of wax.

Soon after I arrived in Canada in 1951 I too became active in pursuing that same course: helping to start Christian schools from elementary through College and University. All our five kids attended these institutions.

Today it’s different. It is not that the institutions are changing: I am having second thoughts. Oh yes, I still go to church. Oh yes, I still financially support these various Christian organizations, even though I am afraid they are stuck in a rut. Once you build a church or a cathedral or basilisk or a St Peter’s or a mosque or synagogue you are stuck with them. Once you have installed a Pope, cardinal, bishop, priest, rabbi, imam you are stuck with them. Once you have seminaries to prepare preachers, have college professors to teach them the ropes, you are stuck with them. Once you have denominations, Anglican, Roman Catholic, whatever, you are stuck with them. In other words, I see institutions defined by their unchangeable physical features, their statements of faith and their historic offices. I also believe that their economic existence depends on prosperous financial conditions: capitalism in other words.

In my opinion in today’s less affluent times new approaches must be tried based on different, more all-inclusive, more radical thinking.

Already there is a within the churches growing sterility, aging populations, mounting ossification, hardening of doctrinal stances, lack of flexibility, increasing concern whether “Religion” will survive the forces of decay.
I am also wondering whether church buildings are still the proper meeting places as they are often less than half full, are hard to heat, thus anti- environment, and expensive to insure. Are current confessions, the clerical offices, the well-worked out ‘statements of faith’ still needed?

When the curtain between the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies in the Jerusalem temple was torn from top to bottom when Jesus died, signifying the end of the Old Testament Hebrew Religion, and when that same Jerusalem temple was razed in the year 70 AD, reaffirming this again, so too all institutional religion will totally disappear upon Christ’s return, never to be resurrected again.

That’s the situation we have to prepare ourselves for.

So how do we go about that?

Already a lot of questioning is going on.
This past week I read a book review on THE CRISIS OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY: ROOTS, CONSEQUENCES AND RESOLUTIONS, written by Keith Sewell, Professor of History Emeritus at Dordt College, a Christian (Reformed) College in Sioux Center, Iowa.
He hits all the appropriate buttons, such as the Reformed emphasis on creational theology which the reviewer calls central to Dutch Reformed thought, while condemning the lack of this perspective in Evangelicalism where the individual ‘soul’ is all too prominent.
Long ago I bought a book entitled THE AMERICAN RELIGION. In it Harold Bloom exposes the vacuity of much what is called ‘religion’ in the USA, correctly calling it Gnostic and no longer Christian. Its most severe heresy finds its culmination in the ‘heaven belief’ that has penetrated all denominations. In my (Presbyterian) hymnbook many songs have a ‘heaven’ reference: the book needs a radical overhaul, which will not happen – it would offend too many due-paying people. Although Sewell, as far as I can conclude from the review, uses the same language I employ: “All of Life is Religion” the reviewer laments that the resolutions Sewell proposes would benefit from a few more specific examples of how all this can be applied to concrete situations.

This suggests to me – not having read the book – that Sewell fails to come up with something new. Anything radical? I doubt it.

Yes, we humans themselves are at a critical point.

That humanity is at a crucial juncture is plain from the writings of a secular Jewish historian. Yuval Noah Harari is the author of SAPIENS and HOMO DEUS, two books dealing with the future of HOMO SAPIENS – our human race as now constituted.
He claims that we will disappear in our present form within the next century replaced by a being dominated by biotechnology and artificial intelligence, making us totally different entities. Gone will be our ‘image of God’ status: the new being emerging as Homo Technicus or whatever.

In the light of current developments others too strive for solutions to the ‘worship’ problem, evident from two articles in the New York Times lately: one by Ross Douthat: CHRISTIANS IN THE HANDS OF DONALD TRUMP, another by David Brooks.
Douthat writes that “Many church leaders found ways to cast Trump as a heaven-sent figure, whose flaws and failings were no worse than those of a King David or a Constantine.”

It is all too plain that Christianity in the USA divorces God from his creation, a clear sign that GNOSTICISM is at work, which regards the earth as evil and heaven good. US Christianity also has strong apocalyptic characteristics.
Both Douthat and David Brooks extensively quote Rod Dreher whose new book THE BENEDICT OPTION is quite popular. The Benedict option refers to the 7th Century monastic movement where Christians, during those dark ages after the collapse of Rome, founded monasteries where the true believers – all men – devoted themselves to a life of true Christian living, which, in their opinion, excluded sex.

Dreher is a pessimist. He thinks that Western Christianity is predestined to all but disappear, collapsing from within even as its institutions are regulated and taxed to death by secular inquisitors. That’s why he wants to go the Medieval way of religious communities — churches, schools, families, social networks — that are more resilient, more rigorous and more capable of passing on the faith than much of Christianity today is capable of doing: hence THE BENEDICT OPTION, a community sheltered from the evils in society.
I am (re)-reading THE NAME OF THE ROSE, a book dealing with the goings on in a 14th Century abbey, a typical BENEDICT institution where, sorry to say, violence and sex are not absent.

Nevertheless Dreher states that “There can be no peace between Christianity and the sexual revolution, because they are radically opposed.”
He refers to homosexuality and the wider L.G.B.T. activism. He asserts that the struggle over gay rights is what is threatening religious liberty, putting Christian merchants out of business, threatening the tax-exempt status and accreditation of Christian schools and colleges.
The BENEDICT OPTION reminds me of the PARABLE OF THE WEEDS, related in Matthew 13. There Jesus warns against human efforts for purity, because, he says, while pulling the weed, expelling the bad guys, you may also uproot the good guys. Jesus says that in the end he will sort this out.
Jesus always was moderate in his verdicts witness his conversation with the Samaritan woman, the equivalent of Muslims today.

From personal experience I can testify that THE BENEDICT OPTION is no panacea. From 1975 to 1980 our family was part of something like THE BENEDICT OPTION, involving 5 families and lots of children. It stranded on religious differences.

I learned a lot from this. In the end we joined the local Presbyterian Church and have been a member there since.

There we were fortunate to find people who share our concerns for the earth. In these ensuing 37 years I have been involved in all facets of its church life, as well as locally in the village, initiating what is now a 128 bed Long Term Care Facility.

Since then I have become a devotee of both J.H. Bavinck and Bonhoeffer, especially the latter, because he literally lived in the last days, knowing that he would not survive under the Hitler regime. He saw the Lutheran church capitulating to a secular regime – the Nazis -for the sole purpose of maintaining its present structure.
Today is no different: the current US vice-president, Mike Pence, thinks that homosexuality is an acquired condition which is curable. The current Washington regime, with the enthusiastic approval of most churches, has scrapped all climate regulations.

Back to my two favorite theologians.

What all religious writers, including Sewell, miss is the NEW CREATION prospect for which we have to prepare ourselves NOW. That’s why Bavinck and Bonhoeffer are so needed today.

Bavinck convinced me that we cannot understand creation without the Bible and we cannot understand the Bible without creation. He made me see that the redemption of ourselves and the redemption of creation go hand in hand: you can’t have the one without the other: A RADICAL THOUGHT, that’s why the most important text in the Bible today is John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he offered the life of his son to buy creation back from the Evil One, who until Christ returns, in full charge of the earth.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a courageous thinker, toying with Religion-less Religion and living ‘etsi non daretur Deus’ living as God did not exist.
He really lived his words as is evident in the opening paragraph of his CREATION AND FALL: “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”
He called himself an ANTHROPOS TELEIOS, (Matthew 5: 48) a human being that always has the end in mind.

Back to my earlier statement that ‘in the end’ all church-affiliated matters will disappear when Christ returns. Now already we must prepare ourselves for that condition. Now already we must live the life as if the end has come, because if we do not do this, our adjustment to life eternal becomes impossible.

For that reason our entire existence must be focused, not on denominational structures, not on unity-destroying sexual orientations, not on maintaining and expanding “Christian’ organizations, but our total focus should be on the all-important text: GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD, the COSMOS the place that contains all elements God created: really the apple of his eye.

Finally ECCLESIOLA IN ECCLESIA explained.

From personal experience I, for now, reject the BENEDICT OPTION. I sense that the best way to prepare for the New Creation is the formation of what somebody once described as Ecclesiolae in Ecclesia, small churches within the larger church.
The concept dates from the year 1727 when the Hussite Unitas Fratrum or Unity of Brothers, was formed within the framework of the established Lutheran church of Saxony.

I actually see that happening in our own church where, in addition to the regular Sunday sermon-centered service, during the week a dozen people, while discussing a bible book, currently N.T. Wright comments on REVELATION, gather to discuss alternatives, something that somehow doesn’t seem to fit in a regular worship setting.

As an experiment, we’ve had a service in a riverfront park, another in a commercial greenhouse raising bedding plants, both promoting creation-orientated activities. On EARTH DAY we will again have a special service – prepared by the environmental committee – devoted to an aspect of creation: water this time.
I do believe that it is beneficial to discuss THE BENEDICT OPTION. In 2003 Father and son McNeill, both professional historians, recommended this in their book THE HUMAN WEB. Their concluding paragraph warns us:

“The most obvious alternative is collapse of the existing (human) web, which would bring radical impoverishment, catastrophic die-off, and perhaps, if humankind survived, a new start on the basis of local, broken fragments of the web. I conclude that we live on the crest of a breaking wave.”
When this happens, THE BENEDICT OPTION will be forced upon us.
An ‘ECCLESIOLA IN ECCLESIA’ offers the best opportunity to prepare for such an eventuality.

MARCH 18 2017

PROPHETS: AN IGNORED BREED

In many ways we still have a lot of 2500 year old Greek thinking in our system. Take Christianity: it is deeply influenced by Greek Pagan philosophy, the nature/grace syndrome, the Good Heaven versus Bad Earth heresy now more powerful than ever, witness US politics.

I have been called a “Cassandra”, another Greek concept, which my dictionary defines as “a person who prophesies doom or disaster.” Cassandra, daughter of King Priam of Troy, was given the gift of prophesy by Apollo, but when she spurned his advances, he ordained that her prophecies would not be believed. That’s me. Today we live in Cassandra times, when the many warnings are simply shrugged off, making prophets an ignored breed.

WE IGNORE EXPLICIT SIGNS OF LOOMING DISASTERS.

Already in 1896, more than 120 years ago, a Swedish Nobel Prize winner in chemistry, Svante Arrhenius, predicted that burning coal, oil and firewood, injects millions of tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, causing Climate Change. An early prophet, now totally ignored by the Trump appointed head of the EPA (ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY!!), who denies that CO2 causes Climate Change.

On June 23 1988 an illustrious panel of scientists, Dr. James Hansen of NASA among them, assembled on Capitol Hill in Washington. They warned a gathering of US senators that “We have only one planet. If we screw it up, we have no place to go”. Of course Al Gore’s documentary and book THE INCONVENIENT TRUTH were well received by the public, but since implementing its recommendations involved measures inconveniencing peoples’ life styles, they were and still are not taken seriously.

Another ignored prophet is Joseph Tainter. In his book “THE COLLAPSE OF COMPLEX SOCIETIES” he wrote that “The complex bureaucratic mechanisms that are created by all civilizations will ultimately doom them…… No longer can any individual nation collapse. Collapse when it comes again, will this time be global. World civilization will disintegrate as a whole.” Here’s a line applicable to Trump. He continued, ”Civilizations in decline, despite the palpable signs of decay around them, remain fixated on restoring their “greatness”. (This was, by the way, written 30 years ago, well before the illusion of Making America Great Again.) Tainter also wrote that “The forces that gave rise to modern civilization, namely technology, industrial violence and fossil fuels, are the same forces that are extinguishing it. Their leaders are trained only to serve the system, slavishly worshiping the old gods long after these gods begin to demand millions of sacrificial victims.”

Then there is Dr. James Lovelock, 93 years old. He wrote in his book THE REVENGE OF GAIA: “We have driven the Earth to a crisis state from which it may never, on a human scale, return to the lush and comfortable world we love and in which we grew up.”
Curiously Lovelock, who is not a Christian, starts his book with a quote from Jesus: “Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:24). A gnat is the tiniest of unclean animals. He refers here to political and environmental measures that are for appearances only but have no substance, while the real issue is ignored or the so-called cure has negative results. Ethanol from corn comes to mind. The Germans have a beautiful word for that symptom: Schlimmbesserung, which literally means “an improvement that makes matters worse.”

Just like smokers ignore the many warnings, we are ignoring all the dangers inherent in the use of fossil fuels.

NO WONDER PROPHETS ARE UNPOPULAR

People hate to be reminded of their addiction, reason why Prophets are unpopular. They are unpopular because they question the status quo; they are unpopular because people hate change; they are unpopular because people want to feel comfortable; they are unpopular because politicians want to avoid controversy at all cost, hate to be bringers of bad news even though they know better; they are unpopular even in the church as is evident from a cursory reading of the Old Testament prophets: all of them plainly show that leaders in organized religion in the days before Christ do not significantly differ from most of today’s principal church actors who also want to please everybody.

WHO IS A PROPHET?

The average human thinks that a prophet is a special person who speaks for God or one who foretells the future, at least that’s what my dictionary tells me, but I take issue with that explanation, because it would limit the office of prophet to crackpots, since nobody can predict the future.

As an older person I am a product of a society that since long has disappeared. In my teenage years I was part of Sunday gatherings of some 20 young men. There, after having attended two church services of at least 90 minutes in duration, we debated topics of general Christian interest, introduced by one of the members. There I learned that we as Christians have a three-fold office: that of Prophet, Priest and King. These weekly 2 hour Sunday evening gatherings in the early and the mid 1940’s shaped my outlook on life. Of course no TV in those days, not even radio in occupied Holland.

To be a Prophet, Priest and King is a core Calvinistic declaration, but one that I don’t hear much about anymore. Perhaps the words of God to Ezekiel (chapter 2: 2-5) apply to today as well: “I am sending you to a rebellious nation that is obstinate and stubborn. And whether they listen or not they will know that a prophet has been among them”.

After this introduction, I better clarify what I perceive to be a prophet’s profile.

HOW TO SPOT A PROPHET.

A prophet in the Bible they are called ‘seers’ not because they could see into the future, but because they could see the truth, could understand the deeper meaning of life and have a holistic view on events. In other words prophets do not major in minors, but grasp the true consequences of the day’s happenings. The people cited above, Svante Arrhenius, Tainter, Hansen, Lovelock, Gore, are such prophets.

A true prophet also points out societal failures. He or she is not afraid to emphasize the pain and injustices of today’s society: they connect the dots and live what they say.

Prophets are first and foremost believers, convinced that today’s new present requires new thinking and different approaches. They openly and unabashedly dare to look at what is happening ‘out there’ and warn of the consequences. They also have the courage to critically look at past decisions, including those involving doctrines, to test them on their relevance for today and tomorrow. They are persons who from their perspective on contemporary life dare to look to the future to keep creation viable for our children and grandchildren. They are believers who now already can visualize what this future will be like and thus can critically evaluate the present in the light of the glorious future that is coming.

I see prophets as believers who by regarding Scripture as a lamp for their feet and a light for their path in God’s wonderful creation, know that Christ, as the Son of Man, the Ben-Adam, the Son of the Soil, will return to make all things new. That’s why all prophets, in spite of all the sin and evil in this world, look to the future with full confidence.

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

America became the globe’s largest economy and the envy of the world in the 20th Century because of some fortunate circumstances: where Europe and the rest of the world suffered ruinous wars, North American industrial hinterlands were not only spared destruction, but benefited immensely as producers of war materials and the providers of the black gold in Texas and elsewhere in its territory.
It is easily forgotten that the United States in the 20th Century produced more petroleum than all the other countries on Earth put together. The USA floated to victory on these oceans of oil in the two World Wars. But OIL also shaped its societal make-up, created its subdivided cities, and its divided society, and so sowed the seeds for its current destruction, now evident in its unsustainable energy use – twice that of Europe – and its deep societal divide.

Today’s out-datedness of the USA is evident in its lack of universal healthcare, its unequal education system, its clinging to the cumbersome imperial system of miles and Fahrenheit, and its trends toward human ‘whiteness’ and individualism.
It is especially evident in its form of worship which has ceased to be CHRISTIAN. The churches there have not seen a Reformation, still clinging to RAPTURE and the HAL LINDSEY’s views of THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH, portraying creation as evil.
The oil- fracking industry today is a desperate attempt to regain oil supremacy, at the expense of such essentials as water, soil, and air, all in efforts to extend the enslaving of creation where each person has at its beck and call 24/7/365 a hundred carbon slaves. Trump’s ill-conceived plan to renege on all environmental regulations will simply speed up America’s demise.

The Western age of abundance has caused nothing else but a tremendous acceleration of human history. During my life time I have seen the more than tripling of the number of humans, just one example of the speeding up of everything, including the Coming of the Christ.

A PROPHETIC VIEW.

A realistic look at what’s happening around us – witness the political turmoil everywhere – makes plain that the period of unprecedented prosperity, extraordinary extravagance and gigantic growth, is ending. That means that society has to relearn the lessons of more normal and less unusual times, times where we are given the opportunity to truly and purposely honor creation.
That’s what Peter alludes to in 2 Peter 3: 11-12 when he asked us “to live holy and godly lives as we look forward to the Day of God and speed its coming.”

That is right in line with the teachings of Jesus, whose main message was and is “Seek first the Kingdom”, the welfare of God’s creation.
In that so abused “The Lord’s Prayer” he taught us to pursue “Your Kingdom Come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” (a direct appeal for the speedy coming of The New Creation), and he repeated this request in the next line: “Give us this day our daily bread,” which has nothing to do with us asking for food.

In a thousand Page book: A HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, THE FIRST 3000 YEARS, on page 89 I read that “The Greek word epiousios, translated as ‘daily’ does not mean ‘daily.’ It points to the new time of the coming kingdom. Professor Dr. Herman Ridderbos, in his THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM also says that ‘daily’ is incorrect and means “belonging to the coming kingdom.”
Thus this fits in with the preceding line in THE LORD’S PRAYER, asking for YOUR KINGDOM (to) COME. The wrongly translated “Give us this day our daily bread”, should be read as “Give us the wherewithal to prepare ourselves for the Coming of the Kingdom,” something, I might add, the church rather not emphasize.

LOOKING AHEAD

The re-election of politicians depends on ‘perpetual growth.’ They look to yesterday for answers to cope with tomorrow’s problems. Attempt after attempt to cure economic stagnation by expanding credit have only generated a series of destructive speculative bubbles and crashes while destroying creation. Efforts to maintain an inflated standard of living in the face of a contracting real economy have only caused mountains of debts.

Today’s policy makers are driven by a two-pronged faith commitment: (1) that policies that failed last year will succeed next year, and (2) that the pursuit of ever newer and ever more expensive technological tools will assure an even grander future.

A new course should be taken, based on simple technologies, locally based, more resilient, sustainable and creation friendly, but that will not happen because that means concentrating on negative growth.

Galbraith in 1954, wrote at the end of his book, THE GREAT CRASH 1929,
“Inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future.”
We are in that ‘deep trouble future’ now.

The warnings in the Bible and by the modern-day Cassandras are being ignored. People will go there worried way till the End, when the Lord returns to straighten out the situation once and for all.

Be part of that restoration process.

MARCH 11 2017.

AN ALL-ENCOMPASSING CRASH COMING?

We live in interesting times, so interesting that they are truly in tune with the Chinese curse: may you live in ‘interesting times’.

Every day we hear or see or read another ominous news item. David Stockman, former budget director under Donald Reagan, predicts that March 15, just a few days away, will be the beginning of the end, because on that day the DEBT CEILING of TWENTY TRILLION (USA) DOLLARS will be reached. After that the USA Government is no longer allowed to borrow and thus will soon run out of cash.

Yes, AMERICA is living far beyond its means, going into hock, adding DEBT to the tune of more than $75 Billion each month. We in Canada worry that its Federal Government has a $30 Billion annual deficit and, as its economy is one-tenth the size of its southerly neighbor, its shortfall is proportionally a third of the enormous USA one: $300 Billion versus $900 Billion. The Republicans in the USA have been clamoring for a balanced budget – which means either much higher taxes – which they don’t want – or cut programs, which will harm voters. Deeply divided by this dilemma, politicians might just refuse to add to its $20 Trillion debt.
This means that in a few months everything may grind to a halt: interesting times, indeed.

Then there is Janet Yellen, the chair of the Federal Bank in Washington. She wants repeated interest rate hikes, now at a historic low. Any increase there, makes the debt more expensive. But inflation is on the rise, soon exceeding the low return on money.

The banks love debt because they are the ones who benefit. If I were to buy a house for, say $1 million (now quite common apparently), the bank is eager to give a $900,000 mortgage, which it creates out of nothing. At the current 3% it makes a gross profit of $27,000 per year.
But suppose that house prices drop. Suppose that interest go up and house prices go down – as they always do when the cost of money increases – what will happen to the economy?

So let me take a look at conditions in 1929. 1929?

I have this book in front of me: THE GREAT CRASH 1929 by the well-known Canadian born, Harvard professor, John Kenneth Galbraith.
We may remember that the Great Crash of 1929 was followed by the GREAT DEPRESSION of the 1930’s.
President Trump ran on the slogan: MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and many believed him, especially those for whom the last 20 years have meant hardship. Thanks to automation millions of jobs have disappeared and Americans, facing reduced income, have borrowed money at extremely low cost to continue their highly polluting lifestyle. Sooner than later the bill comes due, and that bill will involve much more than money.

Yes, another CRASH is coming. The only question is “What form will it take?”

Let me start by saying that we should never trust a politician or an economist. As the summer of 1929 drew to a close – just before THE GREAT CRASH – the celebrated Yale university economist Irving Fisher wrote in the New York Times that “Stock markets have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.”

Today is no different. Trump boasts that, thanks to him, the stock market is setting new highs. Well……… what goes up can also go down. Look what happened then, almost 90 years ago.

By June 1932, in three short years, the New York stock exchange saw repeated losses in amounts so great that the stock market had lost 90% of its value and the world had changed utterly.

The Great Crash was followed by the Great Depression, the biggest setback to the global economy since the dawn of the modern industrial age in the middle of the 18th century. In three short years a quarter of America’s working population was unemployed and desperate. Galbraith put it this way, “Some people were hungry in 1930 and 1931 and 1932. Others were tortured by the fear that they might go hungry.”

Germany.

Across the Atlantic, Germany was suffering its second economic calamity in less than a decade. In 1923, the vindictive Versailles peace terms had created hyperinflation, when one dollar could be exchanged for 4.2 trillion marks, and cigarettes were used as money. I remember being in Germany in 1947 when cigarettes again were the best currency: I bought a glass of tepid beer for one cigarette, tax-free, fresh from England where I had come from sailing to Sweden through the Kieler Canal.

In 1932 more than 40% of Germany’s industrial workers were idle and Nazi brown-shirts were fighting communists for control of the streets, preparing the way for Adolf Hitler who needs no introduction, I believe, a direct consequence of the 1930’s Depression.

Let me quote Galbraith and his THE GREAT CRASH 1929.

Writes Galbraith, “We do not know why a great speculative orgy occurred in 1928 and 1929. The long accepted explanation that credit was easy and so people were impelled to borrow money to buy common stocks on margin is obviously nonsense……..Far more important than rate of interest and the supply of money is the mood. Speculation on a large scale requires a pervasive sense of confidence and optimism and conviction that ordinary people were meant to be rich.”
In those days, as Professor Dice observed, “The common folks believed in their leaders….such feeling of trust is essential for a boom.”

Yes, there are similarities between today and the 1930’s. Then and now the mood is upbeat. Then and now empires were crumbling, then the British, today the USA. Today Trump’s priority is America First, becoming isolationist, sealing the borders, building the wall, expelling millions and putting up a Border Tax, measures its citizens see as positive for now.

Governments in 1929, rather than running deficits and so pump extra money into the economy and creating jobs, aimed for balanced budgets, aggravating the situation. Only when World War II called for tanks and guns and warships and airplanes, and mobilized millions of men, full employment was restored.

Not too long ago – 2008 – the financial world too had a real scare. Thanks to the lessons learned from the Great Depression, borrowing costs were slashed, interest rates were cut to barely above zero; money was created through the process known as QE, Quantitative Easing, and banks were bailed out.

Yes, the governments, in their wisdom, rescued the banks, gave them trillions of dollars to compensate for their bad loans, but did nothing to relieve the indebtedness of its long-suffering citizens. They were hung out to cope with increasing debts, growing unemployment, and stagnant incomes.

Thanks to this shortsightedness we now have popular revolts reflected in Brexit, the Trump ascent and the growing rise of unrest in Continental Europe.

It is now clear that ‘this rescue the banks’ policy was only a partial success. Low interest rates and quantitative easing have averted Great Depression 2.0 by flooding economies with cheap money. This has driven up the prices of assets – shares, bonds and houses – to the benefit of those who are rich or comfortably off.
The rich always get their brakes, while the poor perish. The current healthcare politics in the USA confirms this. As for debt: Governments don’t change their policies: they always push the problem ahead in an (vain) effort to engender GROWTH.
That’s what Galbraith wrote in 1954, at the end of his book,
“Inaction will be advocated in the present even though it means deep trouble in the future.”
That future is now!! Troubles have accumulated to the point where the bills are due.

DEEP TROUBLE ON THE WAY

Deep trouble is now upon us. Trump, during his campaign did manage to say something that was true: “America is in deep trouble”, but what followed was his biggest lie ever: “Only I can fix it.” Sorry Donald: “You are not God”.

So far his actions have not been encouraging. He will stand and fall with his promises, of which two are major ones: “Create 25 million new jobs, and give everybody excellent healthcare at a fraction of the current cost.”
Both promises are impossible to implement.

That will cause trouble. I sense the onset of a general physical depression for millions of Americans. The current optimism will soon turn sour and result in anger and rioting.

As noted before, the mood in 1928 was one of confidence and optimism and conviction that ordinary people were meant to be rich. Then too the common folks believed in their leaders, as many still do in Trump.

True, cheap money has fueled the stock market and in Ontario, at least, increased house prices, but what goes up, can and will go down, as happened in the early 1930’s when stock prices decreased by 90 percent, wages went down, unemployment rose, and people starved, literally.

Then many still had a rural connection, as urban population was a fraction of what it is now. Then those in need of food could go back to their roots, the simple ‘grow your own’ economy still in existence, but no longer now.

Today even the exurban crowd is totally dependent on the faraway grocery store, a place itself only having a one to three day supply.

The old rule still holds: what cannot continue will not: sooner than later reality will be revealed.

The naked facts are that we cannot have perpetual growth in a finite world.

This time when the CRASH comes, it will not be confined to mere money, or limited to stocks and bonds and falling real estate. Finance is only one segment of the economy: there also are numerous other factors that will put a stop to the craziness that is our current society, where once in a millennium events are becoming common place, especially in the weather.

We, in our hubris, in our overweening pride, have not learned the fundamental lesson that creation cannot be ignored.

When, in Paradise, in the Garden of Eden, in that perfectly ideal situation, God showed humanity around, he pointed to the fruit trees, describing them as “beautiful to look at and good for food” (Genesis 2: 9), emphasizing that the aesthetic has priority over the economic.

Sadly this reminder was soon ignored. In the next chapter, Genesis 3: 6, a greedy human eye saw the tree as “Good for food and pleasing to the eye”.

Greed, unchecked desire, the lust for more at the expense of creation, is now backfiring so badly, that all of creation, the totality of what we call nature, is in uproar, is agitating against the actions of the planet’s tormentors. Guess who or what will come out on top.

We are in a losing battle. Yes, one of the consequences will be in the monetary section because, as Paul, the apostle, told his protégé Timothy, “The lust for money is the root of all evil” (1 Timothy 6: 10). Thanks to our love for money we have sucked the fish from the seas, paved the planet, killed the elephants, eroded the soils, felled the forests, are wasting away the waters, so that all we have left are our toys, our oversized houses and cars, our unmanageable debts, our multiple electronic devices, all poor substitutes for reality.

Another crash? Multiple crashes.

Already the real rich are fleeing. A recent article in the NEW YORKER tells us that they are buying places in New Zealand and other far away countries with stable and homogeneous populations. Their jets are ready, including the families of the pilots.

When, not if, the crash comes, it will come sudden, just as in 1929. But its magnitude will be many times more horrendous because it will be multi-dimensional, include earthquakes, hurricanes, hell-like heat, polar cold, extremes all around.

It reminds me of Malachi 3: 2: “But who can endure the Day of his coming? And who can stand when he appears?”

God is no patsy. He will not forever let his precious creation be abused.

MARCH 4 2017

A VERY WEIRD WEDDING TALE

Occasionally my 8 years of post-primary schooling come back to haunt me. During that time – 1941-1949 – I had every school day – 6 days per week in those days – one 50 minute period of Latin, Yet, thanks to them certain Latin phrases readily pop up my mind, such as “CONCORDIA PARVAE RES CRESCUNT, DISCORDIA MAXIMAE DILABUNTUR, translated as: “Concordia – a meeting of minds – causes small matters to blossom while Discordia – mixed-up emotions – destroys great causes.

That’s what’s happening today: Discordia is ruining the Western world to the extent that we now have entered a new, utterly destructive phase.

We all have heard the word “Enlightenment”. It was coined by intellectuals in the 17th and 18th Centuries celebrating the powers of human reason, the promotion of religious tolerance and the desire to have governments free of tyranny: then there was unbridled optimism.

Now there is a new word perfectly fitting for today’s somber mood: ”the Endarkenment”.

Yes, the lights are dimming. This fading away of mental, spiritual and even physical illumination reminds me of a parable Jesus spoke, as recorded in Matthew 25.

A TIMELY PARABLE BUT A WEIRD TALE

In that parable Jesus continues his outline on the End of the World, as related in the previous chapter, a time when suddenly everything goes haywire, by referring to that event with three simple words: “at that time.”

“At that time”, just before the trumpet sounds to announce the Coming of the Lord, everything seems perfectly normal. The future looks so bright that people marry. There’s no inkling that time is up. The wedding takes place just before the terrible end of the world which is so vividly described in Matthew 24, where it says that “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light.”

Perhaps that alludes to today! Already in many places on earth the stars have become invisible. Also it is now quite common in many cities that, because of air pollution, neither sun nor moon can be seen.

The parable centers on ten bridesmaids, five wise and five foolish. What is their significance?

Here’s where the real weirdness comes in. Picture them.
If I were to film this scene I would see ten excited young women, each having done her best to look pretty. To me all these ten young ladies would look equally qualified. But somehow Jesus makes a definite distinction: five he calls foolish, five he calls wise.

That’s one thing I found questionable because the foolish were labeled that way because they had not taken extra oil along.

Think back 2000 years. Look at these containers! These oil jugs weren’t like the metal or plastic ones we have today, no, they were frail, cumbersome and heavy. Suppose that this heavy jug would break and spill its contents all over the new dress. Mother was right: just to carry a lamp with a full tank would be enough.

And then there are the presents: where one hand is needed to carry the light and another for the extra oil, how to manage all this? I agree with the so-called foolish maidens. Their action made perfect sense.

What would you have done? Use your common sense. Say the wedding is at three o’clock, the party is somewhat later, but certainly it’s all over before midnight, because tomorrow is another busy day. The lights are needed for that short trip to the wedding hall, so, until that time the lamps are trimmed low. With a full tank there’ll be plenty of oil, with fuel to spare. After all, the Bridegroom is known to be a punctual man, so why take along extra jars of that heavy and precious oil?

“But,” says Jesus, “five wise women took the trouble of lugging these clumsy jars with them.” Why would they do this? How could they properly attend to their task preparing the bride, and also carrying the extra wine and food? That greasy stuff could easily mix with these provisions! Nothing could be more impractical. Those who Jesus called ‘wise’ do things totally beyond the call of duty, needlessly complicating their lives. To me the foolish make much more sense.

What had Jesus in mind when he called the practical teens foolish and the overcautious wise?

Let me give an example. Take being a church member. We all know that going there for one hour on Sunday is just a small part of a larger commitment: that’s why so few want to do that. It’s the way of life, that counts. The super-cautious-oil bottle-bearing women are called wise because they look beyond the immediate, take the long view, see life in terms of eternity. That became clear when the Bridegroom took long in coming. That really weird, isn’t it: the groom late for his own wedding! No wonder the church is leaking members!

But that’s what we are experiencing now! The End times are upon us. The earth has to go full circle, from chaos to chaos. We have to be prepared for the unexpected. Yes, even look like a fool for still going to church.

That is plain from the context of this parable, which is set after Matthew 24, which has as its heading, “Sign of the End of Age” and “The Day and Hour of Jesus’ Return Unknown.”

Jesus, after a long sermon on the final days of humanity, spoke this parable. He began, “At this particular moment, at the End of Days”. That means ‘Now.’

Today too there are two kinds of people: foolish and wise, people who think that science will save us, or that RAPTURE will occur, and those who expect Jesus to come, as the groom, as ‘humanity personified’, to marry humanity with the earth, make us finally perfectly united with creation!

Ah, I see some divine humor here!

Jesus knew that at the End of Days oil would be a key element in the world. Jesus has a perfect overview of history from the embryo beginnings to our pollution- saturated end. In the parable and in our real world today, he has delayed his coming, with the result that the young girls, exhausted after extending their teenage chatter well beyond their usual bedtime, turned the wedding feast into a slumber party, just as we are asleep at the wheel.

Then, finally, at midnight, there was a cry, “There comes the Bridegroom. Wake up to meet him.”

The parable portrays the practical reality of life: the unexpected does happen. It happens all the time. Fish stocks collapse; Climate Change occurs; the Trump Presidency scares people like me; Arctic ice is receding at a record rate; the North Pole is 30 degrees above normal.

Suddenly the doomsters have substantial evidence for their message. The unexpected does happen. Before you realize the Lord is there, so sudden that he’s there while we slumber the time away.

“Then all the maidens rose and trimmed their lamps.” They straightened out their dresses, quickly combed their rumpled hair, turned to their lamps and five of them discovered that they have practically run out of oil. They are no longer ready to welcome the Bridegroom.

All the wick-trimming in the world, all the shaking and trying is useless: their lights are dead: the oil-age is over: darkness dawns, Endarkenment is here. The always reliable, punctual bridegroom was late for his own party.

What does this all mean?

Well, listen to the rest of the parable.
“And the foolish said to the wise, “Give as some of your oil, for our lights are going out.” But the wise replied, “Perhaps there will not be enough for us and you. Go to the fuel dealer and buy some.”

Another weird happening. How is that for a Christian answer? Aren’t we supposed to share things with others? Try to buy some fuel at midnight!

For a long time I really did not know what to think of that rather snotty reply. Now I think the time has come that we have to shrug our shoulders and go our own way. “There is a time for everything, a time to be born and a time to die,” says Ecclesiastes, “a time to share and a time to refrain from sharing” I might add.

The parable suggests that it is now too late to reform society: too late to turn the ecological balance in the world, too late to reform the ecclesiastical situation, too late to revamp the economic structures, too late to change the political system. Now matters everywhere have their own inevitable momentum, leading to total chaos and anarchy and to Jesus’ return. The present discord, including our war with creation, threatens to destroy everything.

Again something weird.

It’s on that note that the parable ends. “While they went to buy, the Bridegroom came, and those who had the extra oil went with him into the marriage feast and the door was shut. When the others came, knocked and said, ‘Lord, open up,’ he said, ‘Sorry, I don’t know you.”

Isn’t that a weird reply? The Lord doesn’t say, “I have never called you, or I have never loved you.” No, he says, “Listen, you have never bothered to get to know me. You never really took it seriously that my coming would be delayed, finding you unprepared when I did come. You really did not bother to accept my ultimate promise, thus failing to really know me. That’s why I now reject you.”

Isn’t that harsh, far too harsh?

It’s difficult to learn about God’s Kingdom/Creation. In this age of instant solutions, instant heating and cooling, we expect instant salvation and an instant Jesus.

Life doesn’t work that way: a marriage, a faith, a friendship, one’s life in Christ takes a long time maturing. Jesus has come late to give us more opportunity to see what is good and what is bad in this world, so that we can avoid errors later. After all, our marriage with creation is for eternity.

In this late hour of our present civilization, the remaining time is of the utmost essence. How do I utilize this last hour before entering the wedding hall?

There is a curious word in the last verse of Matthew 5. The Greek word there is teleios, which is translated as ‘perfect: “Be perfect as my Father is perfect.”
Of course, we can’t be perfect. But we can be ‘teleios’, of which a better translation is ‘all inclusive’, ‘holistic’, keeping the ‘telos’ (the Greek word for End) in mind. In everything we do we must contemplate its final destination: will it pollute and so help Satan who wants to destroy creation, or will it help the coming of the Kingdom, the New Creation.

Somehow we must be different now that the age of ENDARKENMENT has arrived. The parable shows that the End times are different for Christians, requiring a different view on life. We must – the church must- explore ways to understand the creation-killing life style we are engaged in – and which leads to death for all – and try alternatives, so that we can prepare ourselves for Life Eternal.

It is curious that this parable deals with oil. There’s unholy oil, the very substance that is destroying the world today and there is holy oil, life-enhancing oil. In Leviticus 8: 12 Moses pours oil on Aaron’s head to make him holy. Jesus’ feet were anointed with oil by his good woman friend.
Unholy oil has an expiry date, just as everything today: our political system, the Euro, the welfare state, the ice near the North Pole, our capitalistic system, stable and productive weather, wild life, topsoil, potable water: yes, the age of ENDARKENMENT is upon us.

Father and son McNeill, both historians, jointly wrote a book on world history: THE HUMAN WEB. The concluding paragraph warns us:
“The most obvious alternative is collapse of the existing (human) web, which would bring radical impoverishment, catastrophic die-off, and perhaps, if humankind survived, a new start on the basis of local, broken fragments of the web. I conclude that we live on the crest of a breaking wave.”

Christians believe that the real Wedding Feast comes when Christ returns to bring his new creation. Today all signs point to its imminent but totally unexpected coming, initiating a very weird wedding feast because it comes totally unannounced.
But then Christianity itself is a very weird concept. Saved by grace!

FEBRUARY 25 2017

THE GREAT BETRAYAL

I am sure that sooner than later we will experience an economic COLLAPSE. It seems to me that we live in a world that now resembles a house of cards. Everything is racing to its ultimate demise at neck-breaking speed.

Our population increase is well known.

The world population slowly increased until there were about 1 billion of mainly self-sufficient human beings around the year 1800. Then, thanks to coal-fired mechanization the next billion only took about 120 years, and accelerated from 2 billion in 1920 to the present 7.5 billion of ever more greedy customers today. A graph would show an almost vertical line up.
The same is true, of course, in energy consumption: it too climbed steeply and with it the pollution in the air we breathe, coupled with rising global temperature. ARCTIC NEWS on February 15 2017, less than two weeks ago, signaled that the global annual land surface temperature for 2016 was 1.43°C (2.57°F) above the 20th century average, surpassing the previous record of 2015 by 0.11°C (0.19°F). When we compare this to the year 1800, thus prior to the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION, it is closer to 2°C higher, a goal that the UN hoped we might never reach!

While I am writing this the outside temperature is about 10 degrees warmer than the average for late February. Last week I hung out my maple syrup buckets before I left for a weekend family reunion in Canada’s Big City. When we returned late Sunday February 19, I checked the buckets and they were full: the earliest I have seen it ever.

Does this early heat spell doom for the harvest year?

This year so far has seen a constant rise in natural disasters and the year has barely begun. We have entered a period where the risks we face are becoming potentially far more extreme in their impacts, more probable in their likelihood, and potentially irreversible in their duration.

That we live on an edge of new times is becoming clearer by the day and will increasingly be part of our experience whether we admit to them or not. It so happens that the longer this state of freakish weather persists, the greater also the dangers of total collapse.

Next month the TRUMP administration will come up with a new budget which always contains economic growth projections. Since 2008 we have seen only tiny annual increases there. To make all the projection for expected revenues fit, the new government will need 3-4% annual growth, something not experienced since early 1970. The arrests up of illegal immigrants there remind me of my war years in Holland when the Nazis rounded up Jews and all males over 18 in a similar way. This cruel act will have very negative effects on the US economy.

That’s why, rather than growth, COLLAPSE is much more likely. All government expenditure is based on continuous increase in GDP, now needed more than ever to be able to pay for an aging population, their pensions and the inevitable increase in medical costs. Yet the opposite looms, negative growth, and vastly decreased tax receipts which spell doom.

A number of factors make COLLAPSE more likely to happen of which the environmental element is the most prominent. Sad to say but we, the inhabitants of North America, have the dubious honor of being the largest per capita polluters in the world, and also are in denial of this condition. Because of our lack of ecological awareness we deserve to be more inflicted by the forces of nature than any other part of the earth because we are like the cancer patient who ignores all symptoms until it is too late.

Some 200 years ago around the year 1800 when our planet supported some 1 billion people, the world was somewhat in balance. Food was grown and consumed locally, which had its risks as local inclement weather could then temporary jeopardize the harvest outcome.
How have circumstances changed! Today our food is a global affair: just imagine: we airfreight watery lettuce across the entire American Continent so that it takes 100 calories of fuel energy to bring just ONE food calorie of these green leaves from California to Ontario where I live!! Today everything is international, meaning that the average food calorie requires a minimum of 10 energy calories. A quick look at a typical dinner table will show that the green lettuce comes from California, the avocado from Mexico, the potatoes from Prince Edward Island, the meat perhaps from Alberta, the wine from may be as far away as Australia: and the list goes on.

In 1800 there was plenty of work, because all energy, except for wind to sail the ships and make the arms of the windmills move, came from muscle power, either human or animal.

Gail Tverberg in her latest blog of OUR FINITE WORLD makes the point that non-elite workers–that is, workers without advanced education or supervisory responsibilities–play a special role in our economy, because there are millions of them, many of them unemployed. TRUMP referred to them when he promised 25,000,000 (Twenty Five Million) new jobs.

Fat chance.

The overwhelming majority of the prime-age men in this un-working army generally don’t “do civil society” (charitable work, religious activities, volunteering), or for that matter much in the way of child care or help for others in the home either, despite the abundance of time on their hands. Their routine, instead, typically centers on watching—watching TV, DVDs, Internet, hand-held devices, etc.—and indeed watching for an average of 2,000 hours a year, as if it were a full-time job, a mind-dulling occupation.

It so happens that the US economy can only grow if these disappeared workers earn a living wage and so can afford to buy the goods, the cars, the houses, that are being produced or built. If these workers find fewer jobs available, or if these jobs don’t pay sufficiently well, the economy collapses. It’s as simple as that.

Today the TRUMP revolution was fueled by these same people who trusted Trump. I call it THE GREAT BETRAYAL because jobs are disappearing thanks to automation, a process that will simply accelerate.

President Trump also promised to replace the Affordable Care Act with something that is better, is cheaper and covers more people.
Scratch that too.

Republican leaders in the House and Mr. Trump’s secretary of health and human services released a plan last week that would provide insurance that is far inferior to OBAMA care, shifts more medical costs onto families and covers far fewer people. One of my daughters, living in New Mexico, told me last week that they pay $900 per month for healthcare for a family of 4, with large deductibles.

The Middle East is a good example of what will happen here as well.

The countries there, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Iran were food independent back in the 1950s, but now they are importing ¾ of their food. Yes, blame CLIMATE CHANGE.

This means these countries have to export a lot to pay for it. Fortunately these Middle East countries had oil and this provided the money to feed the landless millions. But now, thanks to more efficient machinery, and stagnating wages in the Western world, there is a peaking in the word oil production, while the price is too low to exploit new resources. Yes, we have ECONOMIC PEAK OIL.

DEBT

Another exponential graph is evident in DEBT.
While income growth has been lagging, since the year 2000 DEBT has increased exponentially. Debt is a product of Credit which in turn is based on FAITH. Credit comes from the Latin word CREDO, which means I BELIEVE. Belief in God has almost disappeared, so now we believe in anything and anybody – witness the TRUMP tragedy. Once we fail to believe in CREDIT, the entire world collapses. The trigger may be set off when the Trump regime backfires, because the current regime in Washington does not inspire confidence. We haven’t had a recession since 2008, so one is overdue. Also inflation is on the rise, which means that interest rates will have to go up. The current ‘boom’ is simply due to historically low interests. Once the price of money goes up, a lot of loans will bite the dust.

Freakish weather will play havoc with food prices, and cause more natural disasters. There is a definite link between food prices and social unrest: when food prices rise, first you cut on some leisure expanses (meals out, movies, etc.); but as they keep rising you cut on core goods, such as medicine. And in a poor country, a food crisis can rapidly have terrible results.

Yes, there is an increasing probability of system breakdown. This past weekend I spent in the big city of Toronto. I cruised through its central part below the 401, that 6-8 lane Highway that bisects the more or less downtown part of the city from its suburban section.
While I was driving throughout this immense metropolitan expanse I wondered what would happen when the economy, our total system, breaks down as happened in the Middle East. There’s no doubt in my mind that the longer the system is going, the greater the impact and the more severe the outcome.

Trump and Brexit are signs of desperation.

I believe that a pervasive fear is gripping the world: a sense of insecurity, feeling of dread, an undefined anxiety that works paralyzing and causes all sorts of mental and also physical illnesses. There are no real solutions to the problems we have created, which are made worse because we are failing to acknowledge them. To open up to them means to admit that we have chosen the wrong path: in that sense we all are like TRUMP who also never admits that he has ever been wrong. Yes, there is the growing feeling that we have a permanent crisis on our hands.

We now see the craziest of conditions. We now know that the ice in the Arctic is vanishing fast: all gone by 2030. To combat this scientists propose to install enormous fans there to regenerate the ice at a cost of $500 billion. Of course that will never happen. In retrospect, the USA wasted untold trillions on useless wars in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, while neglecting its own infrastructure and proper training for its citizens. Because events now are moving faster than ever, while society also is much more integrated, COLLAPSE, when it comes will also be fast and furious.

The Great Betrayal will hit the underclass the most, those who live from paycheck to paycheck, and have no reserves whatsoever.

And then there is the threat of a major epidemic disease. In the 14th Century Black Plague took months and years to travel through Europe, originating in the Far East, probably China. Today it would come very quickly because of air transportation. Right now there is Bird Flu in China – more lethal than the Spanish Flu that killed between 50-75 million people in 1918 when there were less than 2 billion on the planet. Now with 7.5 billion the toll could run into the hundreds of millions. I also believe that the general health, world-wide, is poorer than a century ago.
By all indications the 21st Century is off to a poor start.

The real lack today is WISDOM. As long as my wife and I have been married – almost 64 years – every morning we have read a Psalm or a portion thereof. Last week – February 21 – we read Psalm 111 of which the last line is: ”To fear the Lord is the first stage of wisdom; all who do so prove themselves wise.”

To fear the Lord means also, perhaps primarily, to cherish his creation, to do anything to enhance it, to be in awe of its beauty and coherence and to always keep its fragility and holiness in mind.

That basic wisdom is lost and this entails that from now on we will experience what that beautiful hymn prays:
Abide with us, fast falls the eventide.
The darkness deepens, Lord with me abide.
Change and decay in all around I see
But Thou who changes not, abide with me.

FEBRUARY 18 2017

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.

“What is TRUTH?” Pilate wondered when Jesus stood in front of him to be sentenced to death. Jesus remained silent.

Today the matter of ‘truth’ and ‘fake’ is very much an open question.

Here’s a quote:

“The things in this world are really not what they are in the final analysis. Everything in our world is fake, carries a mask, is disguised; everything is different than it is.”

That sounds pretty post-modern. Who said this?

Actually these words are from Johan Herman Bavinck in the book he wrote on REVELATION (translation is mine). In the book the apostle John, the author, saw what was going to happen in the last days, and in bold strokes outlined what will happen before the world we live in will come to an end.

One of the signs of the approaching end is when the actions of humans will reveal their true nature: when all masks will be torn off, all hidden motives come out in the open. That is now increasingly becoming the case. Modern technology is a definite factor there with cameras everywhere.
There’s a striking text in the very last chapter of Revelation: “Those who do wrong will keep on doing wrong, and those who do right continue to do so, and those who are holy will remain holy”.

That’s the situation today: peoples’ minds are made up. All the preaching in the world will have little effect, including my writings here, which is more like preaching anyway. That also applies to the world’s economic situation which no longer can be reversed. High levels of unemployment or under-employment; falling incomes; housing crises and obscene levels of inequality have led to the rise of counter-movements in all the leading economies. These anarchist agitations – Trump and Brexit – threaten to further undermine an already enfeebled Western democracy. At the same time, the inability of democracy and our financial system to respond to the threat of climate change, imperils the very future of the ecosystem and therefore of humanity. Our world is dangerously disordered, and so-called remedies make it worse. Welcome to a post-modern or perhaps better a pre-collapse planet.

Is there HOPE?

Yes. What is happening in these Last Days is that out of all the chaos and disintegration at long last the Truth will emerge, all fakeness will vanish, all camouflage will be torn away and everything will finally show the true character that corresponds with its ultimate essence. That is the melody of the Last Bible book, the Revelation of John. This anthem vibrates through the entire book which makes it such an engaging and encouraging prophesy.

Today we see glimpses of that truth emerging. Curiously the LIAR in CHIEF, the current president of the USA, occupies an important position here: I have no doubt that he will be dethroned, that the political powers in Washington will pull the plug on him and send him home, wherever that is. But he will not go peaceably. He is so insecure that he can never admit being wrong. In his own eyes he is perfect, is always right: he simply does not commit sin.

So far his followers have stuck with him: see him as their last hope. Well, they have nothing to lose. When he is stripped of his office – the politicians there will finally see his true character – he will incite the ‘disillusioned’ to take up arms and physically battle the establishment. The failure of his campaign promises to create 25 million new jobs and give everybody full medical coverage ‘at a fraction of the cost’ he will blame on the Supreme Court, Congress and the Media, all conspiring to prevent him from implementing his political goals.

Thus will Trump, the pretender, speed up the coming of that glorious future by first bringing in the Age of Lawlessness, and the reign of the Devil.

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.

Jesus said that “the truth will set you free’, as recorded in John 8: 32. To be free does not mean free of all rules, free of all regulations. That is anarchy. Jesus tells us that the TRUTH is present when we follow Jesus in all our actions, unencumbered by convention, by tradition, by family custom, by life-long habits. Today it also and perhaps especially means to be free of addiction!!

Addiction?

Let me focus on that aspect. Let’s face it: we all are, without exception, addicted to carbon fuels: we all are carboholics.

Last Sunday, February, 12 part of our church’s readings were from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ famous rules for life. I was struck by one line: “if your eye causes you to sin, gouge it out because it is better to lose one part than your whole body”.

That line made me think of our addiction to creation-destroying, God-cursing carbon fuel that now is causing unbelievable changes in “our Father’s World”. It focused my attention on our carbon-culture which is ruining our world. Jesus, with his typical no nonsense approach to sin would have said today: “If your carbon use causes you to sin against my creation, cut out driving, stop heating your house with natural gas and electricity, don’t eat food trucked in from California.”

Hmmm. Gouge out an eye? Deprive ourselves of automotive wheels? Freeze in the dark? Go hungry? For Jesus’ sake?

Let’s be honest. Our industrial world will remain shackled to fossil fuels for most of its energy and all of its transportation fuel, for the simple reason that no other energy source can provide the abundant, concentrated, and power source that’s needed to keep our current lifestyles going.

The Christian alternative today ought to be a deliberate downshifting out of the excruciating extravagance of normal lifestyles in the industrial world. We must be willing to accept more restricted ways of living in order to prepare for the better world to come.

“Many are called, few are chosen” said Jesus, because by all indications very few people will be willing to accept that alternative. Can anybody in the Western world live ‘clean’?

Let’s face it: the only way to stop human induced climate change in its tracks is to stop pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Doing that would require the world to ground its airlines, turn its highways over to bicycles and horse-and-buggies and to shut down every other technology that won’t be economically viable if it has to depend on the unreliable energy available from renewable sources.

Of course no administration will enact this. Trump most certainly not. Yet for the TRUTH to set us free we must face the harsh truth about ourselves.

Today there’s much talk about the great divide in the world, the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. However the real difference is not a monetary one or an educational one: it’s between those who persist in their creation-destroying conduct and those who try to do God’s will, and even for these few this is almost an impossible task, because today the Devil is in full charge of the world.

THE DEVIL: is he still out there?

Yes, now more than ever. He deserves a closer look.

It is safe to say that the devil or Satan appears in the Bible under two personas. He is in the first place the great seducer who tempted humanity right from its very start in Paradise. In chapter 12 of the Revelation of John he is still called the Satan “who seduces the entire world, (verse 9) and was hurled out of heaven”. Just imagine: Satan! Hurled! Kicked out! Expelled!

And where did he land? Feet first, right here on Planet Earth!

Jesus depicts him as the ultimate deceiver, the “father of lies” (John 8: 44). He twists human thought in the web of delusion; he conjures before the human eye the mirage of salvation and grandeur and drags the people, caught in the grip of falsehoods as an easy prey to their perdition. He is the king of conceit, the royal champion in mind bewilderment. Trump is a perfect example of this description.
But before he was sent packing, the Bible depicts this same Satan as the terrible informer, who accuses the helpless, disoriented humans before God’s throne. That’s how he, as a prosecutor, appears in the first chapter of the book of Job in the meeting of ‘the children of God’. There, scoffing cynically, he hisses his poisonous accusation: “Does Job fear God for nothing?”
He dissects the disintegrating human life, he picks it apart, he grinds it to pieces, until there’s nothing left but ruin and garbage, and then he triumphantly brings all this to God’s throne to show God that everything in this world has gone to pieces.
Imagine! He confronts God. Satan again: “This world, God, your own world, over which you at one time have pronounced that it was ‘very good’, now this world, this same world, is, in my possession, distorted into dire destruction, everything in her is in pieces, is poisoned, is on the verge of collapse.”

That’s why the Satan is the tireless accuser of all God’s servants. He is the one that carries the title of “the great accuser of all our brothers and sisters”. So, in that capacity, as the accuser of the human being, he has access to the heavenly realms. That’s the case because there is so much truth in his accusations, because, as a matter of fact, he has us in his grip, witness our Carbon Addiction. Satan has, to tell the bitter truth, truth on his side. The facts show that, indeed, we humans are completely corrupt. God is in no position to deny him that truth; God simply cannot ignore this as pure fiction.

But Jesus made the difference.

Thanks to Jesus the situation has totally changed: he has deprived the Satan of his status in heaven. Since the shout of triumph has sounded on Golgotha, the place of God’s children has become different as well. They are justified in Jesus Christ, they have become new creatures.
Now that Christ has emerged as the victor, no longer can the Satan lodge any accusations against the woman and against the people of God, because every charge comes to nothing thanks to the great redeeming work of Jesus Christ.

No longer may Satan appear in the meeting of the angels with his sneering face, his sarcastic mockery, his taunts aimed at the believers. For “in all this we are more than conquerors through Him who has loved us”. Because we know that Jesus Christ is there, who died – more than that, who was raised to life, is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen?” (Rom. 8: 33).

So, what is the role of the Devil in all this?

Today the Law of the Lord has been discarded, abandoned, forgotten. But once law is abandoned for raw power, everyone is exposed. That’s what we see now!

All around the world, authoritarian regimes are questioning, even dismantling the rule of law. We see it in the Philippines, justified as a war against drug dealers and users. We see it in Turkey, justified by a coup attempt. We see it in Hungary and Poland, justified as a rebuilding of national pride and the elimination of threats attributed to refugees and minorities. We see it in Russia, justified by a desire to return to national glory and influence.

And now we see it in the USA.

And the people? Have they still got the gumption to defend the law, to fight for what is right?

THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE.

The truth is spoken by Jesus. “”Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. That is the first and greatest commandment” (Matthew 22: 37-38).

That simply means – and is confirmed in John 3: 16 – that we must love everything God in his wisdom has created. We love great artists through carefully examining their works of art. The greatest work of art is God’s creation – there’s nothing that even remotely equals it.
We must unconditionally love God’s creation in all its manifestations, even when this leaves us at odds with everybody else. Only that TRUTH will set us free in a world now dominated by EVIL.