Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

DECEMBER 31 2017

LESS THAN TEN YEARS?

2016 was a real ‘news’ year, with Brexit and Trump and lots of hot weather. How about 2017? To me it looks like the same, even more so. While ‘no news’ signals good news, signals the old and trusted way of life, ‘news’ usually means uncertainty, insecurity, unpredictability.
In store is Change, Change with a Capital C: in 2016, the engine of change got cranked up. In 2017 change will speed up: change and more change will shift in high gear, which means that the future will be much, much more different.

Much of that acceleration is due from what we have wrought on both Poles where the real WEATHER makers are. The ARCTIC NEWS website shows that the ice in the Far North is disappearing beyond the wildest prediction. Last week it was 30 degrees Celsius – 50 Fahrenheit –there above normal, and that happening in December when there is perpetual darkness at the North Pole, 24/7.
The website states that: “The situation is dire. If no action is taken on climate change, the earth faces a potential temperature rise of more than 10°C or 18°F by 2026.”

Ten years, a blink of the eye. Is that all we’ve got? One more decade? Of course, of course no action will be taken: so it’s almost sure that we will experience a sudden, unexpected, as lightning in a blue sky, a beyond extraordinary event, totally fatal for all of us: a jump in the world-wide temperature of some 10 degrees Celsius, 18 Fahrenheit.

What’s behind all this?

ARCTIC NEWS last week featured a closer look at LAKE BAIKAL, in Siberia, within the Arctic Circle, the depository of 20 percent of the world’s accessible drinking water. It’s deep, some 1600 meters, with a bottom temperature of 3.5°C. Underneath that huge lake lies 425 Giga tons of methane. Compare that to the 5 Giga tons currently in the atmosphere. Methane can be up to 100 times more devastating than CO2, our car exhausts.
Now remember that our entire world is screaming for water – used mostly for irrigation of agriculture, fracking and obtaining synthetic oil from tar sands.

Take a look at the Aral Sea, a similar water body, further to the west in Asia: it disappeared almost overnight because of climate change and irrigation. If this were to happen to Lake Baikal it could release 85 times the methane now in the atmosphere, which would increase the world temperature by 10 C, spelling the end of the world: we all would burn to crisps.
That is only one place. The Arctic Ocean is shallow: 50-100 meters deep. There many more Giga tons of methane are buried. The same is true in the Arctic Tundra, both in Canada and Siberia, where melting permafrost is already unlocking much more deadly methane.

If 30°C above normal in the Arctic is shrugged off as a blip, what if this blip turns out to be a harbinger of what is in store for all of us: sudden death.

I find it difficult to fathom my true feelings, but the extraordinary weather events lately, the deviation from the norm, the irrationality of political events, the extremely vulnerable state of the economy, the callousness and shallowness of the religious situation, the total lack of vision of politicians whose quest for economic growth is absurd, the exponential rate of drug overdose deaths by mostly young people, all serve to increase my sense of foreboding.

Suppose, suppose that the Lord comes back and nobody really expects him?

The BIG ONE?

Revelation 16: 18 is just one of the many Bible books that predict an earthquake. There it says: “Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred … “

Now almost every day a new earthquake causes upsets somewhere in the world. Does this passage point to the US-Canadian Pacific Rim where some 100 million people live?

I try to do my little thing to prepare me for eternity. Frankly it is always on my mind while I venture – not very successfully – to emulate a lifestyle of eternity, difficult to do in a carbon-saturated environment.

I know, this is not the most encouraging start of a new year, but when I look ahead to 2017, I see elections in Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands all having the potential to destroy the European Union.

And then there is TRUMP.

Does he account for the inexplicable restlessness in me, the afore-mentioned feeling of foreboding, fostered mainly by his irrational utterances and his creation-destroying appointments? I see the USA as a disaster in waiting in the Trump presidency. Society has become so complex that a simpleton like he may have no clue how to deal with the different political and bureaucratic entities which may resist him all the way. Enough to drive him even more crazy.

So where are the hopeful signs? Are there any?

I sometimes feel like that old man Simeon, who suddenly pops up in Luke 2. He was told by the Holy Spirit that he, in his lifetime, would meet Jesus Christ. And he did: he held the baby Jesus in his arms. What a feeling would that have been! It made him exclaim “My eyes have seen your salvation”.

True, the Holy Spirit has not talked to me directly, yet I must trust my gut feelings. Then Simeon was the very exception, something I feel as well. Israel then had only one wish: to be freed from Roman tyranny. That desire dominated Jesus’ disciples even until his Ascension.

Today is no different: we want Economic Growth at all cost: job security, prosperity. There is hardly any real desire for the Lord to return because, unlike Simeon who saw salvation and eternal life on the earth, we have utopian ideas of human-induced peace. Forget it. It’s impossible. Always has been. Frankly I see the Lord’s return as the only hopeful sign.

Are we due for tremendous change?

Every 500 years or so the world undergoes a mega-metamorphosis. In the year 1,000 before Christ, the Davidic kingdom saw its start. Five hundred years later Buddhism emerged and the Jewish exile to Babylon took place. The Christian era had its beginning 2000 years ago while Islam’s inception was between the years 500-600. One thousand years ago, starting in 1096, there were the Crusades, a Europe-wide event to wrest Jerusalem from the forces of the prophet Mohammed. This year, 2017, it is exactly 500 years ago -1517 – that Martin Luther started the Reformation, causing immense friction in Europe.

We now are at a crucial point in history where everything has an expiry date: globalization, nature, religion, potable water, the use of paper money, democracy, stable weather, ice on the North Pole, and the list goes on. Yes, the very fate of the human race is at stake. It looks more and more that the Earth too has an expiry date.

Is that the reason why I am so uneasy?

All this reminds me of Jesus.

Jesus was convicted by the religious rulers of his day for saying that he would break down the Temple, the very symbol of THE GARDEN OF EDEN, representing the unspoiled creation. Jesus, the first-born of creation, the maker of heaven and earth, was accused of ‘the sin against creation’, the very sin that is the most offensive of all sins because it’s directly aimed at God’s majesty.

Jesus was accused for ridiculing God’s Paradise on earth, accused of saying that he himself would create a new temple, a new Paradise. That was his sin. The church then convicted Jesus for committing the original sin.

Actually, that’s what we have been doing right from the start! We always have been busy, right until now and into the Day of Christ, breaking down the Holy Temple, God’s so beloved creation, replacing it with our own culture, our arts and sciences, our music and literature, our films and television, all in an effort to build a new paradise. We have not respected The Tree of Life, and so assured our death.

The great irony of all ages is that the church of Jesus’ day killed him because he was accused of the very crime we are daily engaged in: he, the sinless one, took our sin, our very own creation-defiling sin, upon his shoulders.

And the church today?

Don’t get me going. The US church elected a person who is the exponent of all that offends creation. Watch 2017 take revenge in unprecedented ways, or should I spell that as UNPRESIDENTED ways?

This brings me to Nietzsche.

Friedrich Nietzsche always told us ‘to remain true to the earth.’ He, the offspring of generations of clergymen from both parents, a brilliant man, a sharp observer, a devout Christian, lost his mind when he saw one of God’s creatures, a poor horse, whipped to death.
We, insensitive as we are, find it normal to be active participants in the death of 60 percent of all mammals. Nietzsche revolted against a Christianity that sought escape in heaven, an idea now so entrenched that many of the hymns we sing have lines slandering and depreciating this world, together with the praise and exaltation of a heaven to come, drawing odious comparisons between the things of this earth and the blessings of heaven. Current church practice gushes in a very unsportsmanlike manner over an imaginary beyond, to the detriment and disadvantage of a “here,” of this earth, of this life. That turned Nietzsche off so much that he lost his mind.

Another year lies ahead, another year mostly lived without God and disregard of his creation. We simply cannot expect God to be with us when we intensify our efforts to despoil creation.
Jesus was killed because he bore the sin against creation, which he did not commit but which we do every day of the entire year. We cannot escape it. We have it built into our way of life.

So, the age-old question pops up again. How then shall we live in the coming year, which, who knows, may be among our last?

The perennial question.

It seems to me that we must slowly retreat from the system that perpetuates the sin of Adam, the sin against creation. How that is to be done is a question that confronts each of us in a different way. What it boils down to is that, as Bonhoeffer has observed, we must look at the `telos`, the end and work back from there.

Again the opening lines of Bonhoeffer’s CREATION AND FALL come to mind:
“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 then quotes Jesus: “Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing,” as recorded in Isaiah 43: 18-19.

Don’t expect the church to do this. The church only lives for the church. So, it’s up to us, as church members.

That’s our mandate for 2017, as it has been for every year, but now more urgent and necessary than ever. The old things have brought us where we are: at the edge of destruction. The world’s answers are failing and, as true fanatics, their leaders are redoubling their efforts.
Expect more of the same, even more so: more destruction, more war, more empty rhetoric, more irrelevant political and religious banter.

We must quietly feel our way to eternity, perhaps alone, perhaps in a small group. We must pray a lot, try to walk or bike the road to life everlasting. Take on the burden of Christ, for (Matthew 11: 30) “his yoke is easy and his burden is light.”
Perhaps that also means that we must travel light: the less we own and the less we are engaged in worldly matters, the easier it is to travel on the path of Christ.

DECEMBER 25 2016

WHY WAS JESUS BORN?

So, it is Christmas, the day in which we hear about Jesus the Christ, who, in popular understanding, forever remains a baby, because as an adult he became too outspoken and controversial. That he died (see John 3: 16, the most important text in the Bible today) to forever restore creation and the human race to a pristine and sinless state, is almost never mentioned: not one preacher in 10,000 will tell you that. Amor Mundi, love for our fragile world, is needed now more than ever. That’s why Christ came: he personified that love by his death.
Yes, Amor Mundi, love for the world was the exact reason why Jesus came to earth! He came to give us eternal life on an earth that sorely needed total renewal.
No wonder Bonhoeffer and Bavinck are unpopular when they express the perfect Biblical truth that the redemption of you and me and the redemption of the cosmos – the world we occupy – go hand in hand: you can’t have one without the other!!

Yes, you read that correctly. If you say you love Jesus but have no qualms about polluting the atmosphere, then something indispensable is missing. The saving of sinners and the restoration of creation are two sides of the same coin. That’s why we daily must ask ‘to forgive us our trespasses’ involving God’s Holy Cosmos. That also means that a renewed earth is our eternal destination and not heaven where God lives in inapproachable light, whom nobody can see or ever has seen. (1 Tim: 6: 16).

THAT HEAVEN THING AGAIN

Somehow the HEAVEN HERESY reminds me of my very early youth when my parents read me stories from “De kinder Bijbel”, our beautifully illustrated Children’s Bible. I can recall how I was told of Lazarus, the brother of Mary and Martha, who suddenly fell ill and died.
John 11 relates the story. Just as we, when sickness strikes, rush to the hospital, so his two sisters right away sent a messenger to the great healer, Jesus, their best friend. The chapter relates how Jesus ‘loved’ (‘agape’ in Greek) that family, yet when the news reached him he waited a couple of days before meeting with his grieving friends, but by that time Lazarus had been buried. When Jesus arrived, he said that Lazarus was asleep which made Martha say the remarkable words (verse 24) “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day”.

It is exactly these words that the church seems to have forgotten, extolling instead the supposed benefits of heaven of which John 3: 13 says that nobody has ever gone there, except Jesus who came from there.

As a kid I was so brainwashed about heaven that, when the story was read to me I remember wondering “why would Jesus call Lazarus back from that so beautiful heaven?” My parents ignored my query.

The root of our Environmental COLLAPSE.

I call it ‘COLLAPSE’ when we have killed 58% of all vertebrate wildlife just between 1970 and 2012, and at a rate of 2% per year we will have massacred close to 70% of it by 2020, barely 4 years from now.
It is my considerate opinion that belief in heaven is at the root of our environmental crisis, which has culminated in the paganist heresy of RAPTURE, that great untruth that has poisoned modern Christianity as thoroughly as the snake in the Garden of Eden.
Blame Hal Lindsey and his unbiblical book THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH which led to the LEFT BEHIND SERIES.
His tale spinning purely relies on his imagination, and not on biblical givens. I have no idea why Hal Lindsey had such an intense interest in Israel, evident from page 32 of The Late Great Planet Earth. There he asserts, without presenting any evidence: “Sometime in the future there will be a seven-year period climaxed by the visible return of Jesus Christ in Israel.”

What we face here is the old dispensationalist notion of the seven-year kingdom. Lindsey arrived at the figure of seven years by adding up the 42 months and 1260 days of Revelation 11:2-3. Lindsey claims that the age of the church will end when the believers are taken up to Christ. That event will mark the beginning of the seven-year period, a period in which the state of Israel will play a major role and World War III will begin.
He claims – again without proof – that during that period, more people will turn to Christ in faith. Through the work of 144,000 Jewish evangelists, there will be a great revival among the Jews. That must be the reason why Lindsey is so interested in the development of the modern state of Israel: still all pure speculation.

He also asserts that when the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem is near it will be time for the “Rapture.” The believers will be taken up to Christ in the air, but the world will go right on turning and life will continue. Everywhere people will disappear suddenly—from athletic fields, from lecture halls, from offices, from churches. That’s why we read on bumper stickers: “If the driver disappears, grab the wheel!”

Let’s test all this on Scripture.

The word RAPTURE does not appear in the bible at all but it has a curious pedigree: both RAPTURE and RAPE come from the Latin verb RAPIO of which the passive form is RAPTUS, meaning “seized”. In essence they mean the same thing: RAPE is the violent seizing of sex, and RAPTURE the violent raping of creation.
Matthew 24: 39 explicitly says that “the sinners are taken away” and not the believers, but many gullible Christians haven’t got a clue what the Bible really teaches, and are easy victims for anything, including the TRUMP tragedy, the most perfect Devil’s ploy since the Garden of Eden.

Back to the Lindsey lies.

According to Lindsey’s book – which for a while outsold the Bible – after the Rapture, the seven-year period will begin. For 3 1/2 years, the two witnesses, whom Lindsey calls “Jesus freaks,” will go about their work. After that the Antichrist will bare his fangs and the persecution (the Great Tribulation) will begin. At about that time, the inferno of World War III will break out, with Jerusalem at the center of events. Once those seven frightening years are over, Jesus will return and the millennial kingdom will begin. That kingdom, in turn, will be followed by judgment and, finally, ultimate glory.

THE HEAVEN MYTH

The title of the book THE LATE GREAT PLANET EARTH says it all. It implies that the world we live in will disappear, will be gone, will somehow evaporate or melt away.
That, in itself, is an admission that God has failed, that God was imperfect, because the world which he created and called `good` after each phase of creation and `very good` when God surveyed the ultimate result, has been a mistake: why else would it have to fade away?

It is an admission that the old GNOSTIC heresy that creation is a work of the DEVIL is alive and well. In Lindsey`s notion, we can abuse and pollute and exploit the earth at our heart`s content, because it is evil to start with.

According to this false statement the birth of Christ, which we celebrate today, is only significant because he has come to save human souls of which some will be raptured up to heaven. His birth, life, death, and resurrection has nothing to do with the rest of creation, which makes the teaching of RAPTURE a LIE.

I have said it before and will say it again: John 3: 16 portrays the heart of the gospel: GOD SO LOVED THE COSMOS. It does not say, as most churchgoers believe: God so loved the human race. Of course he loves us, but the Greek is quite explicit here. The word COSMOS indicates all created matter. True, humans occupy an important place in creation, but God equally cares for lions and elephants and whales and dolphins and polar bears, not to forget trees and the flowers in the field.

The earth and we humans, belong together.

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 was formed. 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.

Where does the HEAVEN NOTION originate?

It all goes back to Plato and Socrates.
Socrates was condemned to die because he had been a bad influence on the Greek youth. Jesus died because he was a bad influence on the church of his day. Socrates gladly drank the chalice filled with deadly poison, seeing death as better than life. Jesus saw death as the ultimate enemy.
Both did not leave any personal writings: Socrates’ teachings were meticulously recorded by Plato, while we know about Jesus from the four Gospels.
Since Christianity became a global phenomenon, who has been more influential: Jesus or Socrates?

Sad to say: The Greek –pagan -philosophy of heaven as the Christian’s eternal habitat has triumphed, thanks to Socrates. That’s the reason why most of Christianity – almost every expression whether that is Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, or every other denominational wing – has suffered from a form of dualism, splitting body from soul, sacred from secular.
Originating in Socrates, as recorded by Plato, many ideas which were long regarded and accepted as the pure unadulterated essence of Christianity, such as the doctrine of an immortal soul, a self-denying attitude towards matters involving our body, and the view of sexuality as in itself ‘the sinful lust of the flesh’, are deeply rooted in Platonic thought.
It is evident everywhere. Look no further than the hymns we sing in church: in most of them there is a ‘heaven’ reference, and salvation only applies to men and women, never to ‘nature’, the whole creation, as plainly outlined in Romans 8: 22.
I like the current Pope, but when I see him in his white robe, escorted by all male companions also immaculately dressed in identical pure habits, I see dualism at work: the church separate from society, as the priestly class represents God and his angels. Just as Jesus is supposed to be sexless so these men are supposed to be that too. We know that reality is different. We cannot separate sex from life: denying the presence of sex is akin to denying creation.

Why does this lie linger on?

The HEAVEN lie lingers on because it is much more convenient. We can live our leisurely lives – at least we Westerners – and not pay any attention to ‘the suffering of Creation’, forgetting that Christ came to earth, lived there depending on charity, and died as a criminal, to redeem Creation, the Cosmos, us as her inhabitants, but also every single species, which, at one time formed a total harmonious totality.

The TRUMP tragedy is resting on the false notion that creation is there to be exploited, to be stripped of everything possible to enrich the One Percent.

That everything exists for SERVICE of which Jesus was the prime example, witness his very own words as expressed in Matthew 20: 28: “The Son of man did not come to be served but to serve”, is not understood.

That ‘service’ was and today still is primarily aimed at restoring his now totally despoiled creation to its original state. John 3: 16 explicitly states that those – and only those – who love creation as Christ did, will have eternal life. That is the radical emphasis in today’s Good News.

So do away with that pious Christmas mentality and focus on the real task the Church is charged with: love the cosmos as Jesus did.

DECEMBER 18 2016

OUR DISASTROUS DATE WITH THE DEVIL.

“And there was war in heaven……The devil, Satan, who leads the whole world astray, was hurled to the earth, and his angels with him.
Revelation 12: 7, 9

After the mighty Michael and his army of fighting angels had defeated the Satan cohort, the Devil and those loyal to him, all rebels who had challenged God’s authority were kicked out of heaven.

Who says that heaven is a peaceful place?

That’s how we, right here, ended up with the world’s newest and most dangerous refugees, thrown out of God’s presence and landing, feet first, on Planet Earth. The unexpected does happen: the world, our world, got new rulers who, fueled by ferocious revenge, are now frantically intending to hit God where it hurts the most: destroying God’s most precious planet.

Yes, the location has changed. Heaven is cleared of the rebels, but the victory of Michael and his angels over the demonic army way up there has made matters worse exactly where you and I live. Now the struggle continues and is being fought directly on our doorsteps. So expect the totally unexpected, because Satan, the Father of Lies, has personally arranged for a true believer, his avowed ally, to be installed in the White House, the very seat of power in the world.

History is repeating itself. Just as the High Priest and his cabinet, the Sanhedrin, condemned God’s Son to death because he agitated against the seat of organized religion, so Trump and his mainly ‘Christian’ cabinet are condemning God’s creation to death, refusing to respond to her anguished cries: Romans 8: 22 “We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.”

The Good News: it will hasten Christ’s coming!

You say “of course that’s that gloomy blogger again.” Well, the signs are all there: unrestricted evil, disappearing species, political turmoil, out of control debt, wacky weather, lies, lies, lies, all indicating THE LAST OF DAYS.

The issue of the Last Days is a recurring theme in the Bible. The entire New Testament has been written in the expectation of Christ’s speedy return. In Acts 2, when the church had its modern beginning, we read that people sold all their possessions and shared what they had, anticipating Jesus’ Second Coming.

Of course all Bible readers know that the day and the hour are unknown. That restriction means very little. I compare it to the birth of a child. There we know the approximate date, but not the ‘day or the hour.’ We know that after a 9 months period more or less, new life will come, but even when labor pains start the actual time of birth cannot be accurately predicted.
Therefore we simply cannot say that on October 31 2017 at 8.22 p.m. we will see Christ’s glorious re-entry. The Bible is quite emphatic on this point: the Lord repeats it twice in Matthew 24 stating that not even the angels or the Son of Man know the exact date and time.

Yet the Lord tells us to keep watch, because there will be definite indications. Jesus points to the fig tree and how it, at a certain time, will change in appearance, signaling summer. That Christ’s return will be preceded by disasters is certain: Matthew 24 signals that and so does much of Revelation.

So then, are signs of the ‘fig tree’ apparent today? Most definitely.

Primary Productivity, for instance, indicates that almost half of the world’s basic energy, vested in plants, trees, animals, has been used for the benefit of the human race, but in such a way that once it is used, it cannot be restored. It now stands close to 50, witness depleted and acidifying oceans, soil degradation, tree loss, death of species, debased human nature and Climate Change, none of them can be re-created by human technology.

Revelation 11: 2 says that “they will trample on the holy city for 42 months.” The Holy City is God’s creation. Revelation 13: 5 repeats that: “The beast was given a mouth to utter proud words and blasphemies and to exercise authority for 42 months.”

There is significance in the number of 42 months, which is 3.5 years, exactly half of that perfect number ‘7’. Matthew 24: 21-22 says that “For there will be great distress, unequaled from the beginning of the world until now – and never to be equaled again. If those days had not been cut short, no one would survive, but for the sake of the elect, those days will be shortened.”

Allow me a brief detour by means of a riddle illustrating the nature of exponential growth. A lily pond contains a single leaf. Each day the number of leaves doubles – two leaves the second day, four the third, eight the four, and so on. “If the pond is full on the thirtieth day,” the question goes, “at what point is it half full?” Answer: “On the twenty-ninth day.”

It is my contention that we are quite close to both the 3.5 year mark and the number of Primary Productivity, which also stands close to the half: both fit into the Day 29 mark! I believe that the Lord will not return on Day 30, but on Day 29 for the sake of the elect, when, seemingly, the glass is still half full. Then the trumpet will sound and, all will be changed, in a flash, in the twinkling of the eye.
Of course I realize that this is purely my imagination at work…..yet…

The words of Peter come to mind: “Since everything here today might well be gone tomorrow, do you see how essential it is to live a holy life? Daily expect the Day of God, eager for its arrival. The galaxies will burn up and the elements melt down that day – but we’ll hardly notice. We’ll be looking the other way, ready for the promised new heavens and the promised new earth, all landscaped with righteousness.” (The Message, 2 Peter 3.)

So, what constitutes a Holy Life?

That this has to do with creation is beyond question, which makes me think of Matthew 5:48: “Be perfect.” The Greek word there is ‘teleioos,’ best translated as ‘holistic’ (Al Wolters) derived from ‘telos’, (as in ‘tele-phone, tele-pathy’) which suggests that we always have to keep the faraway goal – telos- in mind, which is our final destination, the New Earth.

But before this event, trouble, big trouble, which is contrary to what we would expect. We all figured that Christ’s great triumph – his death on the cross – would result in increasing peace and prosperity here on earth as well. That’s why we sing, a bit prematurely, I believe:
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia!
The strife is o’er, the battle done,
the victory of life is won;
the song of triumph has begun.
Alleluia!

The battle is done? Forget it. We now discover that the opposite is true: the world is becoming demonic in the fullest sense of the word. Verse 12 of Revelation 12 says: “But woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! Filled with fury, because he knows that the time is short.”

That’s what the angels sing. This means that the demonic armies have thrown themselves onto our world with such unbridled ferocity and furious hate for God, that it can only have the most terrible results for creation and us.
With Satan being kicked out of heaven, a combination of evil powers emerges, a frightening mass of such a highly disturbing magnitude that it will seem that the bells have tolled for humanity, banning all peace and quietness forever.

Yes, I sincerely believe that the Demonic Era has arrived.

Satan descending to earth means that from now on world events will be grimmer, more frightening, accelerating with breathtaking speed, continuously assuming more ghastly proportions, dragging millions along in a maddening ‘danse macabre’, undermining all old established morals, speeding relentlessly to chaos and social upheaval.

This world, indeed, has now truly become possessed. All factors that somehow acted as brakes to stall this development are pushed aside; once this process is in motion it will speed up disastrously, and nothing can stop it. With Satan’s descent history has become madness. Woe to those who are sucked into this whirlpool of evil.

John, the author of REVELATION, sees it all happening in a prophetic dream. He also realizes that something is the matter here that is beyond human grasp, because in principle, Satan’s influential position should naturally come to an end as well, as, it seems, his defeat is final and can only mean his total destruction.

But God has a reason for this delay, has a reason why the demonic powers are allowed space to pursue their relentless opposition; there is a reason why God has allowed a certain period for this, a time-frame in which life on earth goes on as if not Satan but Michael and his angels have suffered defeat.

It is here where we are confronted with the history of the world. It is in this extremely remarkable phenomenon that matters are not yet what they are, that everything still looks different than it is in reality. The haze of untruthfulness hovers like a curse over the world and in that fog of uncertainty history marches on.

Look at the last 500 years. Since the 1500’s the entire world has seen a very traumatic transformation, rapidly accelerating in the last century. That period saw deeply penetrating social changes, urbanization, and bloody revolutions. It also witnessed the birth of a global mechanical, physical science- dominated world with all its consequences. All too evident also are the erosion of old moral principles. All too well-known are the World Wars, affecting and upsetting all that lives.

Never before in the history of the world has so much in such a short time been demolished and radically changed, as in the last five centuries. These immense changes were not confined to Europe and the USA, but now involve all people everywhere, imperiling the existence of all these countries and regions and increasingly cause unrest and confusion.

It almost seems as if God for centuries has blindfolded humanity to prevent them from seeing all the planetary powers and possibilities and then suddenly he ripped away the blindfold in our days so that the one perspective after the other opens up.

This wild, unrestrained progress of human thought and discovery comes not only with both a good dose of triumph but also with visions of frightening nightmares. Nerves are constantly at an edge, the pace of life is ever more hectic, undefined feelings of anxiety dominate the millions. We are confronted with situations, internally, spiritually, and morally which make it impossible to cope, which make us feel helpless, and which give us the unnerving notion that we are racing toward indescribable confusion and degeneration.

Is that what is meant when John laments in these harrowing words:
“Woe to the earth and the sea, because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury, because he knows that his time is short”. (verse 12).

Have we humans, more than ever before in these last centuries, embraced these demonic powers which sweep us along in its breathtaking course? Are these the demons whose terrible presence we more and more sense in our day and age?

All our dismay and bewilderment cannot erase the overriding fact that the demonic forces in reality have suffered defeat and that’s why their fury is merely a symptom of their defeat. They are fully aware that they have ‘little time’: they have already been banned from heaven and their influence on earth is approaching its inevitable finish.

The Demonic Age will end.

That “woe on earth and sea” may be accompanied with feelings of untold anguish, yet they fully rest on the unbelievable sounds of jubilation coming from on high: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ.” “He has come!” Above the screaming hurricanes, emerges the over-riding call to joy beyond measure. It resounds like a loud trumpet blast penetrating to the utmost parts of the universe. It also echoes in our hearts, filled with anxiety and fear.

December 11 2016

ANARCHY

Curiously the SEPTUAGINT, the Greek translation of the (Hebrew) Old Testament by 70 (Septuagint in Greek) Jewish rabbis starts with almost identical words “EN ARCHE”, which means: In the beginning, the first words of the Bible in Genesis 1.

That ‘beginning’ was marked by ANARCHY, in Biblical language called CHAOS, which, like ANARCHY, means: leaderless, without a specific goal, empty, undefined, having no real substance.

That is how I see the next four years in the Western world shaping up, exactly the opposite of what is needed, because these years will determine the fate of the world.

Yes, ANARCHY is in the cards: authoritarianism is on the march as well, violence is in the air, awaiting a spark. Most people are ‘against’, without being able to define their opposition. Everything is up for grabs: military alliances, trade pacts, political integration and legal framework. Dictators everywhere exult in the sudden surge of the unpredictable Donald who has 666 written all over him, who wants to make America great again, and will accomplish the exact opposite.

No wonder I feel depressed, for me an entirely new sensation. Gone will be any climatic moderation. Gone will be any fiscal frugality. Gone will be Christian charity, welcoming the down-and-out of this world.

This new cruel harshness, this pitiless approach to the international refugees will create tremendous hardships and severe suffering: brace yourself for strict laws to forbid TV crews to broadcast these heartrending scenes.

Jobs? Forget it. Robots, Artificial Intelligence, technological relentless advance will doom many more millions of angry young men to become surplus, and, with no meaningful work to fill their time, violence will increase as “idleness is the root of all evil.”

So Trump promised economic growth. He also boasted to provide health care ‘at a fraction of the current cost!’ Those gullible American voters! They are in for a rude awakening. Healthcare costs are skyrocketing. More old people, the fastest growing segment of the population, will require more of all that makes healthcare so necessary and so expensive.

So Trump promised economic growth. This too shows his ignorance. There is an ocean of difference between a promise and a fact. Facts are Trump’s stumbling block, and will be his direct downfall. Too bad that his speedy demise will increase anarchy, something he will advocate, blaming everybody but himself.

Why is economic growth no longer possible?

Well, history is a good guide. It has been said that the further forward you want to forecast, the further back you have to look.

So let me go back a while. According to the historian Angus Maddison the annual rate of growth in the western world from AD 1 to AD 1820 was a mere 0.06 per cent per year, or 6 per cent per century. Almost everyone lived on the modern equivalent of $400 to $600 a year, just above the subsistence level.

Then—just a couple of hundred years ago—people started getting richer, and richer and richer still from, say 1820, first thanks to coal.

Growth accelerated even more after the US Civil War in 1860, when other countries too made stupendous progress. Western Europe and Japan largely caught up to the US in the second half of the 20th century, and China and other emerging nations are well on their way, but that single 100-year period, the “special century,” from 1870-1970 was more important to economic progress than any other so far.

Then, some 50 years ago, growth slowed.
And now growth is stalling altogether.

Back to history.

A child born in 1820 entered a world that was almost medieval: lit by candlelight, in which folk remedies treated health problems and travel was no faster than hoof or sail. Three great inventions of that next half century—the railroad, steamship, and telegraph—set the stage for more rapid progress. The Civil War showcased these advances when northern trains sped Yankee troops to the front and steamships blockaded supplies to the South. Compare that to the War of 1812, when news still travelled so slowly that the Battle of New Orleans was fought three weeks after a treaty had been signed to end that war. But by the time of the Civil War, daily newspapers published the outcomes of battles mere hours after they occurred.

Let me point out why it is now impossible to repeat the aspects of the post-1870 economic revolution.

In 1870, rural and urban working-class North Americans bathed in a large tub in the kitchen after pumping water from outside in pails and warming it over an open hearth. All this was such a nuisance that some people bathed once a month. Similarly, heating in every room was once a distant dream—yet it became a daily reality in the decades between 1890 and 1940.

The flood of inventions that followed the Civil War transformed life. When electricity made illumination possible with the flick of a switch, the process of creating light was changed forever. When lifts allowed buildings to extend vertically instead of horizontally, the nature of land use was changed, and urban density was created. When small electric machines replaced huge, heavy steam boilers, the scope for replacing human labor with machines broadened beyond recognition.

So it was with transport. When cars and other ‘auto-mobile’ vehicles replaced horses, the quarter of agricultural land devoted to feeding those animals was freed up. Progress in transport has been stunning; it took little more than a century from the first primitive railroads which began replacing the stagecoach in the 1830s to the Boeing 707 flying near the speed of sound in 1958.

The transition of the food supply from medieval to modern also occurred during this century. The Mason jar, invented in 1859, made it possible to preserve food at home. The first canned meats were fed to Northern troops in the Civil War, and during the late 19th century a vast array of processed foods, from Kellogg’s cornflakes and Borden’s condensed milk to Jell-O, entered American homes. Clarence Birdseye invented a method for freezing food in 1916, although it took until the 1950s before people had domestic freezers. In 1870, shoes and men’s clothing were bought from shops but women’s clothing was made at home, and the sewing machine had only recently reached the mass market.

By the 1920s, most women’s clothing was bought from retail outlets that did not exist in 1870—namely, the great urban department stores and, for rural customers, mail-order catalogues.

Many – I among them – now worry that there will no longer be work for an increasing share of able-bodied adults.

Yes, the remarkable period between 1900 and 1970 was indeed exceptional. My mother was born at the turn of the 20th century at a farm with no electricity, and died in the late-1970s in the city. Over her adult lifetime she saw the flush toilet, electricity for lighting and central heating go from being luxuries enjoyed by a quarter or less of the population to becoming universal. She saw radio come into being and then be supplanted by black-and-white and ultimately color television. She saw air-conditioning, washing machines, dryers and refrigerators go from non-existent to universal. Over her lifetime, transportation went from meaning walking, riding a horse or taking some kind of train to being primarily based on cars and planes. When she had my oldest brother in 1924, infant mortality was 75 per 1000 and large families could expect to suffer an infant or childhood death. When her youngest grandchild was born in the 1970s, infant mortality was below 20 per 1000 and life expectancy had risen by more than a decades.

It is striking to contrast the changes during my mother’s lifetime with those during mine. Microwaves have become universal in kitchens. Automotive air-conditioning has gone from common to universal. A much wider range of TV programs are now available and with a much sharper picture. There is a wider array of healthy foods. And even though I refuse to carry a smartphone, most others keep connected all the times.
But….all these changes in my lifetime are purely cosmetic. Still I can easily claim that my generation, those born between 1920 and 1970, are also the most fortunate generation.

Certain kinds of progress can happen only once. Living in a controlled climate, having access to indoor plumbing, largely eliminating child mortality, controlling infectious disease, and being able to communicate immediately in the absence of physical presence are all examples of transformations that can be built on and improved but are impossible to replicate.

We should not forget that all this happened thanks to CARBON FUELS, or should I say CARBON CARNAGE.

Our profligate production of perfidious petroleum products has prompted the all-pervasive poisoning of our precious planet.

Yes, our legacy is largely illegitimate; it is the direct opposite of creational justice. This total act of exploitation of the earth’s treasures, such as air, soil, water, just to name the three elements all of life depends on, will serve as a tremendous drag on economic growth, may probably cause negative growth, making the potential for total chaos and complete anarchy universal. We have squandered our inheritance and no political party in the world can restore the damage done.

We are now experiencing the Age of Aging, not only of the population, cancelling the continuation of universal healthcare because of lack of economic growth, but we also are witnessing ”The Aging of the Planet”. We live in a world where problems are piling up and so-called solutions – fracking, more coal, pipelines, and Trump’s tirades – are making matters worse.

ANARCHY and EN ARCHE, CHAOS and COSMOS.

“In the beginning (en arche) God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty.” God spoke and it came to be. Genesis 1: 1-2.

Yes, the world started in chaos. Out of that chaos God created cosmos, the well-ordered world, where each species had a specific place, forming a perfectly harmonious totality. John, the fourth gospel after Matthew, Mark, and Luke, starts on an identical note: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” That suggests to me that the world, cosmos, and God, are one. To sin against creation is to sin against God. No wonder there is increasing chaos and anarchy.

We now are un-doing God, un-creating Creation: Anarchy everywhere is the result.

Trump and his followers may assert that they will restore that greatness that was evident during that golden age of 1870-1970, but that glorious growth century was an anomaly, powered by poisonous particles, now emerging everywhere and choking off all that lives and moves and has a being. Trump will speed up the process of disintegration and so bring on more chaos.

So what are we to do? What am I to do?

I believe that I must start by acknowledging the true situation, by confessing that we live in a world where matters have run stuck. There no longer are solutions to the world-wide chaos we have created. Our helplessness is causing and accelerating anarchy.

We must realize that, as Jesus prayed in John 17, “we are in this world, but want no part of a world that now is dominated by ”The Evil One”, as is evident from various Scripture passages, such as 1 John 5: 19.

Jesus’ followers belong to the New World to come, of which the Bible speaks in glorious terms. Isaiah 65: 25 pictures such a scene, where current enemies such as the wolf and the lamb will feed together, and where nobody will do or cause harm on God’s Holy Mountain, something we now do continually.

Jesus, God’s precious Son, died to wrest back God’s beloved cosmos out of the clutches of The Evil One. That’s what John 3: 16 is all about.

When Jesus returns, and we in these coming weeks celebrate this, he will do away with all religion. Bonhoeffer writes: ”Jesus takes possession of the world come of age”, initiating a Religion-less Christianity (See Revelation 21:22). Jesus does not call us to a new religion but to LIFE.

That LIFE will be lived to the fullest extent in the New Creation.
To get away from Anarchy we have to start a New Beginning, from CHAOS TO COSMOS.

As always: our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth.

DECEMBER 4 2016

“IT IS ONLY OUT OF THE FUTURE THAT THE PRESENT CAN BE LIVED.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

When I look through our patio door I see that enormous oak tree just a few meters from our house. It must be 250 to 300 years old and, somehow, has survived the fate most other trees there suffered: lost to the axe that cleared the land to the south of us.
In that same stretch of woods – where a bear ducked away not too long ago – there also are some mature sugar maple trees, trees I will tap in a few months for their sap.

But that oak tree is the more fascinating: it’s the king of the forest. It dominates all other trees on our property, entrusted to us for safe keeping. By all accounts it will outlast us, and, as matters accelerate in the atmosphere, of which there are a lot of indications, it will witness the coming of the Lord in all his glory. That tree too looks forward to the ultimate event because before that happens, that majestic specimen also will go through a time of severe suffering. Does it already sense this?

I think so. Trees are more than just inert wood and some green growth: they are living creatures, with feelings and emotions. The sense of dread now pervading the world with the ascent of Trump and accelerating Climate Change, is also shared by trees, especially this oak, because it has a long memory, a memory as far back as the Napoleonic wars when thousands of trees were prematurely cut to be used for the Royal Navy, mostly oak, the most sturdy of woods, the most lasting of materials. It fears WAR more than anything else. And today it’s all- out war against creation and trees in particular. Just as we are emotionally vulnerable in these days of die-offs, of universal tension, of rapid extinctions, of drought and famine, trees too are suffering immensely.

Below are some excerpts from an excellent article in the NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS, discussing Fiona Stafford’s The Long, Long Life of Trees.
“All trees are threatened by a pair of lethal diseases from Asia. Fifty years ago we lost most of our elm trees to a fungus from China, spread by a beetle laying infected eggs under the bark, unjustly called “Dutch” elm disease. Today new enemies—sudden oak death, acute oak decline, beech wilt, sweet chestnut blight, and so on—are decimating our parks and forests.”

I believe that “As trees go, so go we.”

“The trees are life. Already contaminated air has weakened them and so has drought, sickening trees everywhere. In Europe the most immediate problem is Chalara, a fungus that leads to dieback—the death of leaves and branches—in ash trees, believed to have been introduced in the 1990s from Asia on infected crates or pallet wood. In Denmark 80 percent of the European ashes have already died. The plague has now reached Britain and Ireland and is expected to be just as devastating there.

“We, in North America, must cope with an even more pitiless Asian enemy behind Chalara—the emerald ash borer, Agrilus planipennis, a bright green Chinese beetle that has already devastated many forests in North America.
“In her chapter on oaks, Stafford explores the tangled history of Britain’s infatuation with the species. The oak was a symbol of power and strength from classical times. It was the tree of Zeus, king of the gods. It was the oracular tree at Dodona in Greece, meaning that it could predict the future. Augustus Caesar, ever conscious of his image, faced the Roman public wearing a civic crown of oak leaves. The tree’s “manly” virtues made it a choice as a symbol for any country, like Britain, seeking to impress its neighbors. Effortlessly it became the national tree of Britain, although the claim was not uncontested. The oak: “Sturdy, stalwart and stubborn,” Stafford writes, “The oak has always been admired for its staying power…. No other tree is so self-possessed, so evidently at one with the world. Unlike the beech, horse chestnut or sycamore, whose branches reach up towards the sky, the solid, craggy trunk of a mature oak spreads out, as if with open arms, to create a vast hemisphere of thick, clotted leaves.
“A great oak is a world in itself. “This is the King of the Trees,” Stafford writes exultantly, “the head, heart and habitat of an entire civilisation.”

“IT IS ONLY OUT OF THE FUTURE THAT THE PRESENT CAN BE LIVED.”

Just as trees are dying, so are we. The U.S. Forest Service has identified an additional 36 million dead trees across California since its last aerial survey in May 2016. This brings the total number of dead trees since 2010 to over 102 million on 7.7 million acres of California’s drought stricken forests. In 2016 alone, 62 million trees have died, representing more than a 100 percent increase in dead trees across the state from 2015. Millions of additional trees are weakened and expected to die in the coming months and years.

We are rushing to the end.

The election of Trump has caused the race to go into overdrive, is rocketing the earth toward its ultimate demise.
The future looks deadly and we have become incapable to change the future. Still we must strive for change and for this to happen we must imagine what the real future looks like, because it is only out of the future that the present can be lived, which brings me, of course, to the last Bible chapter: Revelation 22, where it says that:

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

Let me start with ‘nations.’ When in Matthew 28: 19 Jesus gives us the Great Commission, the same word ‘nations’ is used. It actually does not refer to individual countries, but to everything connected to people, such as races, sexes, ethnic and faith communities, economic classes, families, and tribes. Thus “the leaves of the trees are for the healing of all humans in the world”, and that healing also applies to the world itself, because humans and earth are one.
The last two chapters of the bible, Revelation 21 and 22, picture a world where, as yet, no humans are present. But there are trees, lots of them.

The Garden of Eden had an identical development: everything there had to be in perfect shape before humans could appear. It is my argument that prior to the saints’ arrival in the new creation, the presence of trees will be instrumental for them to enter a virginal, pristine, unpolluted planet.

I believe that the earth must first go through a recuperating process with trees as the primary agents of healing, because, basically, there is nothing wrong with God’s world that time – and the absence of sinful humans – cannot heal. It’s not the fault of creation that it is dying. Time, of course, is immaterial for the Lord for whom a day is as a thousand years.

Forest fires.

We know about forest fires: they are a natural phenomenon, needed to rejuvenate forests, because a fire will kill the old and sick and bring to life the buried seeds. Peter was right about the all-consuming fire (2 Peter 3). For the new creation to come, our worn-out world needs a total conflagration to reveal the new to come, and trees play an enormous role in this process.

For that purpose a closer examination of what trees do is necessary.

We all know that trees are the lungs of the world. For humans to have one hundred percent pure air and ‘live forever’ a totally clean environment is required: hence the need for the new world to be fully filled with forests of trees.
But trees are more than oxygen providers. The tree’s underground system is as important as its foliage: the roots and its capillaries are just as essential for the welfare of the earth as the more visible branches, because a tree stands in its own decomposition. Much of the tree sheds its own weight many times over to earth and air, eventually becoming grass, fungus, and promoting the life of insects, birds and mammals. It is the cooperation of these many ‘by-products’ that make a tree so rich – they exist because of the tree, belong with it and function as part of it. Birds nest, squirrels burrow and eat fungus, and insects prune and assist in decomposing the surplus leaves and activate essential soil bacteria. Animals are messengers to the tree and trees act as a garden for animals. This is an excellent example of life depending on life. A tree is a total being that involves minerals, plants, animals, debris and life. All of these elements make up the ‘tree cooperative’. All this has to be in place before the saints are coming home.

That’s why: “The leaves of the trees are for the healing of the human population and for the earth itself.”

The leaves absorb the CO2 that has now made our weather so unpredictable and even deadly. The new earth, covered with healthy trees will completely heal the earth and clean the air, making it the perfect place for the ‘redeemed of the Lord, who will enter singing’ (Isaiah 35: 10) on the way to embrace their new abode.

So what about these leaves? Leaves have twice the specific heat capacity as soil, meaning plants can be about 9 degrees Celsius warmer than their surrounding environment. Consequently trees moderate extreme temperatures and humidity so it is tolerable enough to accommodate life. The leaves catch the rain, some of which the tree absorbs, and the remainder returns to the air through evaporation. Any rain that falls through the canopy has, on its way down, collected plant cells and nutrients and is much richer than regular rainwater. This through-fall is then directed to shallow roots, and serves all the needs of growth in that forest. Therefore trees use, collect, enrich and properly direct water so it can best be used in the forest system without human intervention.

Trees are not just here to convert carbon dioxide to oxygen for us to breathe. Their purpose reaches much farther. Trees fight drought, prevent soil erosion, stabilize earth, shade us from sun, are key in the conservation of water, provide us with heat, control the effects of wind, provide shelter for animals and encourage biodiversity and nutrients for soil. God created trees because the trees are life: No trees, no life; sick trees, sick lives.

Yes, the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Trees are not only for the earth: the seas too benefit as do the inland streams. Revelation 22: 2 again: “at each side of the river stood the Tree of Life.” Decades ago, Katsuhiko Matsunaga, a marine chemist at Hokkaido University in Japan, discovered that when tree leaves decompose, they leach acids into the ocean that help fertilize plankton. When plankton thrives, so does the rest of the food chain. Fishermen have planted trees along coasts and rivers to bring back fish and oyster stocks. And they have returned.
Before the humans return to paradise, trees have to clean it for them. Trees are nature’s water filters, capable of soaking up the most toxic wastes, including explosives, solvents and organic wastes, largely through a dense community of microbes around the tree’s roots that clean water in exchange for nutrients, a process known as phyto-remediation. Tree leaves also filter air pollution: indeed the leaves of the tree are cosmic healers!

So it makes perfect sense that the Bible starts with the Tree of Life, ends with the Tree of Life and has at its centre the Tree of Golgotha where our eternal life was assured. These three ‘trees’ are symbols of all trees explaining that simple sentence in the last chapter of the Bible which says:

“The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.”

How then shall we live?

That is the question that is new for every age. For us, in these last days, it all has to do with trees, which feature prominently in our future.
It’s only out of that future that the present can be lived. Treat trees with the utmost love because our life depends in it, including eternal life.

NOVEMBER 27 2016

WHO IS IN CHARGE OF THIS WORLD?

A Time for Everything

1 There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven—
2 A time to give birth and a time to die;
A time to plant and a time to uproot what is planted.
3 A time to kill and a time to heal;
A time to tear down and a time to build up.
4 A time to weep and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn and a time to dance.
5 A time to throw stones and a time to gather stones;
A time to embrace and a time to shun embracing.
6 A time to search and a time to give up as lost;
A time to keep and a time to throw away.
7 A time to tear apart and a time to sew together;
A time to be silent and a time to speak.
8 A time to love and a time to hate;
A time for war and a time for peace.
9. I could add:
A time for the world to begin; A time for the world to end.
A time to pray, but there never is a time for not praying.

“Pray without ceasing” the Bible tells us, and Jesus was a good example.

Picture Jesus, praying perhaps on his knees, praying perhaps lying down, praying perhaps standing up, with his hands raised to heaven, the seat of his father, completely absorbed in this activity.
John 17 sets the scene.

So what is Jesus saying here in his prayer to his Father?

I find it fascinating that we can follow Jesus in his farewell address, when he is getting ready to depart from this world and speaks words of encouragement to those who now have to fend for themselves.

It’s all there, in verse 11, where Jesus tells us that he is leaving his followers. He prays that they now are on their own, totally depending on God’s help for the protection against The Evil One who now calls the shots! Jesus also tells his followers that they no longer belong to this world dominated by God’s great adversary, that they – we – are pilgrims here: preparing to live in our real home: the new earth to come!

Yes, we are on our own: God help us.

Have we really understood this?
Jesus plainly says that the world which Jesus is leaving, is no longer God’s world, but is under the control of the evil one, which, of course, is also clear from John 3: 16, where we are told that his death was the price Jesus paid for buying back the earth from “The Evil One.”
That The Evil One is now in charge is again confirmed in 1 John 5: 19: “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.”

Oh, that text: John 3: 16! It’s so central to the entire Scriptures! “God so loved the world”. The least we can do is try to love it too!

This is something the church still has not fully grasped. Last week I saw an article in the (British) Guardian, asking us to mourn the lost species, animals and plants that have become extinct. We, the human race, have claimed close to half of all that lives and moves and have a being, leaving little room for others, forgetting that God, in addition to loving us, also loves every plant, every animal that ever existed. I am sure God mourns that the Pigeon Dove is lost forever and the Dodo and millions of other creatures, all part of the Grand Harmony that God created ‘in the beginning’.

Proponents of the Heaven Heresy have used Jesus’ prayer in John 17 as proof that “we are not of this world, but will inherit heaven above”, not realizing that Jesus, by sacrificing his life, cancelled out Satan’s claim on the world and restored it to God’s ownership, with Christ taking full possession when he returns.

Yes: “God so loved the world” – John 3: 16 – forms the heart of the gospel. Does God really want us to abandon that world, bought with the blood of Christ, by us going to heaven? That makes no sense whatsoever.

Paul writes – and he should know – “God lives in inapproachable light who nobody has seen or can see,” (1 Tim. 6: 16), or John 3: 13, where it says black on white: “Nobody has gone to heaven except he – Jesus – who came from there.”

But no, the heaven myth persists: the greatest LIE Satan has sold to the church.

So when I ask: “Who is in charge of this world”, the unequivocal answer today is THE EVIL ONE. That’s why those who belong to Christ with heart, mind and soul, do not belong to that world, but look forward to the world to come.

Now more than ever EVIL is rearing its hideous head. And one of the symptoms is Donald Trump, a man who successfully tapped into the anger of white voters and appealed to the lowest inclinations of people in a manner that would have probably impressed Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels himself.

Trump: the man of lawlessness.

2 Thess. 2 describes this man Trump. The heading of that chapter is “The Man of Lawlessness”. Take verse 4 of that chapter: “He will exalt himself over everything that is called God.”

That to me suggests that Trump has elevated himself above Creation, above the law. Now that much of the US church has aligned itself with this man, all restraint is gone and evil has free play.

Events are moving fast and furious in this world.

Here is what also happened on November 8.

On the same day that the American people – actually only 17 percent of the total population – elected Trump as president, November 8, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported that the past five years were the hottest on record. It reported rising sea levels, soon to increase as a result of the unexpectedly rapid melting of polar ice, most ominously the huge Antarctic glaciers. Already, Arctic sea ice over the past five years is 28 percent below the average of the previous 29 years, not only raising sea levels, but also reducing the cooling effect of polar ice reflection of solar rays, thereby accelerating the grim effects of global warming.

With the Republican Party controlling the Executive, Congress, and the Supreme Court, it has become the most dangerous organization in world history, because it denies the existence of Climate Change.

There is no historical precedent for such a stand.

The winning candidate, now the president-elect, calls for rapid increase in use of fossil fuels, including coal; dismantling of regulations; rejection of help to developing countries that are seeking to move to sustainable energy; and in general, racing to the cliff as fast as possible. This is exactly what The Evil One would want, because his sole aim is to destroy God’s precious earth, for which He gave his son as a sacrifice.

Trump has already taken steps to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) by placing in charge of the EPA transition a notorious (and proud) climate change denier, Myron Ebell. Trump’s top adviser on energy, billionaire oil executive Harold Hamm, a fracking friend, announced his expectations, which were predictable: dismantling regulations, tax cuts for the industry (and the wealthy and corporate sector generally), more fossil fuel production, lifting Obama’s temporary block on the Dakota Access pipeline.

Evil is now emerging stronger than ever. “He will exalt himself over everything that is called God.” It’s Trump against creation!
Guess who will win. Prepare yourself for catastrophic events.
One of the difficulties in raising public concern over the very severe threats of global warming is that 40 percent of the US population does not see why it is a problem, since Christ is returning in a few decades.

There are definite similarities to Brexit, and also to the rise of the ultranationalist far-right parties in Europe — whose leaders were quick to congratulate Trump on his victory, perceiving him as one of their own: [Nigel] Farage, [Marine] Le Pen, [Viktor] Orban, [Geert] Wilders and others like them. And these developments are quite frightening. A look at the polls in Austria and Germany — Austria and Germany! — cannot fail to evoke unpleasant memories for those familiar with the 1930s, even more so for those who watched directly, as I did as a child. I can still recall listening to Hitler’s speeches, not understanding the words, though the tone and audience reaction were chilling enough.

The RIGHT is now in charge, just as it was in Nazi Germany. Be afraid, be very much afraid. With the Republicans in the White House, but also controlling both houses and the future shape of the Supreme Court, what will the US look like for at least the next four years?

The Supreme Court will be in the hands of reactionaries for many years, with predictable consequences. If Trump follows through on his Paul Ryan-style fiscal programs, there will be huge benefits for the very rich — estimated by the Tax Policy Center as a tax cut of over 14 percent for the top 0.1 percent and a substantial cut more generally at the upper end of the income scale, but with virtually no tax relief for others, who will also face major new burdens.

A time to love and a time to hate,
A time for war and a time for peace.

What this passage of Ecclesiastes is suggesting is that there are ups and downs, times of prosperity and time of great need.
That fits in with the times we live in: We’ve had the fat years, plucked the low-hanging fruits, took the easy to grab treasures, and now, now it is time to forget about love and prepare for hate, forget about peace and prepare for war. By ‘hate’ I don’t mean that we start hating people. No, never, as the old Christian adage goes: we hate sin but love the sinner. And the war? It’s full-out against creation.

This ‘time’ thing reminds me of a book I have: THE FOURTH TURNING. It points to a phenomenon where history runs into cycles of 80 -100 years, divided into four equal periods. Each time the Grey Champion appeared marked the arrival of a moment of “darkness, and adversity, and peril,” the climax of the Fourth Turning of the saeculum.
Is that Grey Champion Donald Trump?

Today, in 2016, it was 80 years ago, 1936, that was the depth of the Depression. Another 80 years before that, 1856, was the time of the terrible US Civic War: both Fourth Turning events.
Here’s what the FOURTH TURNING said (page 330): “The next Fourth Turning (and that is now!) could mark the end of man. It could be an omnicidal Armageddon, destroying everything, leaving nothing.” (That’s what ‘omnicidal’ means.)

The two writers of the book, William Strauss and Neil Howe, published the book in 1997, thus 20 years ago, not having knowledge of, say, the state of the Arctic today, where even in November, this month!!, when there is almost total darkness there, the region is 20 degrees C above normal. That signals death. The part ‘cidal’ in omnicidal means ‘death’ as in ‘suicidal’, something which we, as a human race, are stupidly engaged in, knowing full-well that in the Far North are buried billions of tons of methane, waiting for stupid people like us, to unlock and unleash them on us, making us the last generation of humanity.

There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.
A time to live, a time to die;
A time to act wisely; a time to act stupidly;
A time of birth and a time of death.
A time for the world to begin; a time for the world to end.

Who is in charge of this world?

Today, more than ever, it is the evil one who is in charge, whose sole aim is to destroy God’s creation.
Fortunately the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, has paid the ransom and God, the Father, has guaranteed that a new earth under a new heaven is the result.