Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

SEPTEMBER 4 2016

WHERE DO YOU FIT IN THESE SIX RELIGIOUS OPTIONS?

In church last Sunday – a building that can seat some 300 people – my thoughts before the service went to the days when the structure was built in 1890, and people then filled the church with services that lasted a couple of hours and that twice on a Sunday. Since 1890 Canada’s population has grown from less than 5 million to about 35 million, yet, on a typical Sunday no more than 35 people come to our church, mostly older ones, with the service completed within the hour.
My question: have people no longer a need for Christian reflection? Is religion out of fashion? No, it has taken another form.

What is religion anyway?

Years ago, when required to fill in the Long Form of the Canadian Census I was asked to answer a question on RELIGION, which then had several subsections, such as Anglican, Baptist, Roman Catholic, Jewish, Pentecostal. Then Islam was not yet in the running.
What irked me in that questionnaire was that the designer of the census form confused RELIGION with denominational adherence. Religion is not directly tied to a certain church: there is not such a thing as an ANGLICAN or PRESBYTERIAN religion: religion is either Christianity or Judaism or Islam or Capitalism to name the most prominent.

Yet, we all are ‘religious’ persons: we all believe in something, but people rarely mean the same thing when mentioning “religion”. For early Jews and Muslims now, religion is law. DIN means law in Hebrew and religion in Arabic. For early Jews, religion was also tribal; for most Muslims it is universal. For the ancient Romans, religion was social events, rituals, and festivals –the word RELIGIO was the opposite of SUPERSTITIO.

Early Christianity, thanks to the Apostle Paul, stayed away from the law, emphasizing faith instead. Jesus did not start a “religion”. That God exists and that we can only know him in Jesus is an act of faith, that’s why faith is something essentially different from religion. Having faith in The New Creation which Christ will bring in due time, is a statement of FAITH, and is at the core of the Christian Religion.

Yes, there is an AMERICAN RELIGION which, according to Dr. Harold Bloom, the foremost literary critic in America, has ceased to be Christian. The merciless analysis of this agnostic Jew – his own words – finds that almost all of the North American denominations have succumbed to Gnosticism, an offshoot of pagan Greek philosophy. That is not very encouraging for our teetertottering preachers who, as a rule, dare not to be different, afraid to upset the faithful few with radical language. So the Christian churches slowly sink into oblivion without hardly ever touching upon the core of its faith, which centers on Jesus’ teaching of THE KINGDOM.

A view from the Netherlands.

This past week I translated an essay by a retired professor of Anthropology at the (Christian?) Free University in Amsterdam. My younger brother Drewes in the Netherlands sent this to me. Dr. Hans Feddema concluded his analysis this way:
“The current situation in most churches (most certainly, it seems, in the Dutch Protestant Church) is typified by a dualistic ideology, by an unrealistic image of the world, and an unwillingness to let go of antiquated doctrines, even though there are numerous church leaders who no longer believe in them. This causes irreparable damage to the soul.
“The Christian West, generally speaking, recognizes five God – or world views. They are:

1. THE ANCIENT, CLASSICAL VERSION

This version we can partly trace back to the Bible and to a lesser extent to Jesus who placed greater emphasis on his one-ness both with us humans and with God. In this ancient, more classical version of Christianity heaven is separated from the earth, but the events mirror each other in such a way that whatever happens ‘up there’ has repercussions ‘down here’.

2. THE MANICHEAN

In this model the divine spark or soul is too much a prisoner of matter, of body and its desires. Goodness is reserved for the soul and the earth is rather a vale of tears. This train of thought has guided the church, sorry to say, to combat its own body, and spawned the doctrine of Mary’s Immaculate Conception and celibacy.
(I might add this world-view mainly applies to the Roman Catholic Church)

3. THE MATERIAL MODEL

In this third world view there is no God, no soul, and no spiritual world, completely excluding the possibility that God is concerned about us or subtly guides us, as is the case in the fifth model. Only what we can discern with our own senses is real. This concept centers especially on the anti-god idea that emerged some centuries ago, glorifying the material. Neither the earth nor the body is inspired.
(I might add that here Capitalism is the leading religion.)

4. THE THEOLOGICAL

In this theological theme, mostly originating from Albertus Magnus and Thomas of Aquino, heaven and earth are separated. The celestial scene is regarded as supernatural, where science cannot pronounce an opinion, only theologians can. This split view of reality resembles earlier times when we reserved the Sunday for a ‘supernatural sphere’ and during the week participated in ‘earthly matters’. God sits on his throne high above the earth, judges and decides from heaven on high. He is “the Lord Beyond”.
This theological concept has been the indirect cause that humanity is seen as not being part of nature and that both our bodies and this world are bad and sinful. Connected to this image is that Christians for many centuries have lived with God, seeing him (1) as a human figure and in that capacity often (2) as a sort of father figure. As such both are understandable notions as we are eager to regard God as a person in human form and understandable too, seeing our need as adults for a father figure, something psychologists say is the case.

(I believe this has led to what I call “The Heaven Heresy”.)

5. THE INTEGRAL AND/OR MODERN-SPIRITUAL GOD –OR WORLD VIEW

Finally, in this fifth model, a new God’s view is emerging, the split between God and the world is suspended, be it so that everything has an outward and an interior dimension. The heaven aspect is then the interior side of reality. Angels, demons and souls of the dead no longer float somewhere in the air but are part and parcel of the spirit that pervades the entire universe. The universal expanse is saturated with the divine. It is ‘God within’. That also means that God is in every human being, even though many do not realize this nor do they understand that God sustains us all, united as we all are just as the sea and waves are one. Everything is in God and God is in everything. He/she shapes the heart from the exterior and guides us far more than we imagine. We, humans can experience and observe him mystically via internal guidance such as an inner voice, an intuitive knowledge, synchronicity, such as encounters and deliverances that look accidental but are not. Paul, in Galatians 2: 20, writes from a mystical intuition that: “I no longer count my own ego as important, because it is Christ who lives in me.”
(In other words): The sacred is in the world and inspires us.

All five world-views have more or less influenced contemporary thinking. But the ‘up there and down here’ is much less influential than the ‘then in, then out’, associated with that integrated spiritual world view. Scientists such as the quantum physicists can find some common ground here as well. They are of the opinion that spirit was and is the original ingredient for the material and that in essence everything is energy and/or consciousness.

Church people take their cue from aspects of all five world views, sometimes a mixture of them. The church leaders cling mostly to the fourth view, the theological view of God without questioning whether this view has perhaps not become outdated and/or too intellectual. This is a factor in the growing alienation from the church. Today, in a time of increasing consciousness where also a large switch in people’s way of thinking is occurring, the church is challenged to engage in an exercise of profound introspection.

My (Dr. Feddema continues) real loyalty is to the fifth world view….where there is for me no separation between God and the world, between God and us humans, neither between the material and the spirit, between the conscious and the unconscious. God is and reveals himself in the doings of everyday life. He the united force of whatever is and what is not. God carries all and empowers it. Holiness, in short, is in the world and we are inspired by it.

My concern centers especially on its ideology, the church’s dogmatic stance that causes alienation. If the church fails to pursue a spirituality that empowers the soul and consciously promotes unity, an approach to the God that recognizes that Our Father and we are One, then the church’s future looks grim.”

Here endeth the concluding part of what I have translated.

MY REMARKS

So here is a learned man who has given considerable thought to the matter of church. He still attends church, unlike Harold Bloom.

I too like the FIFTH option the best, but I like to expand it to be more explicit. I see God’s creation as God’s Primary Word, his Direct Revelation, and the Scriptures God’s Secondary Word, or his Indirect Revelation.

Feddema, in the first part mentions the importance of the KINGDOM, without expanding on it. I will fill that gap by citing J. H. Bavinck who in his book BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION says:
“The concept of the Kingdom contains a number of elements that are of the highest significance for our inquiry.
In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.
This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dis¬so¬nant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality. This applies both to each individual specimen but equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation. The celestial bodies follow their orderly trajectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice. And so the stars in their courses sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water-saturated earth, their proud summits piercing the clouds; yet even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power. On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation resides only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.”

I especially emphasize that last sentence: SCRIPTURE AND CREATION FORM A UNITY, REINFORCING EACH OTHER.

That’s why I prefer a sixth possibility, call it THE KINGDOM OPTION.
I maintain that Christians must see life as a preparation for this Kingdom to come, where heaven and earth are united and God, in the person of Jesus is all and in all. That entails a new lifestyle 100 percent in accord with creation, now virtually impossible because of our energy-intensive existence, a way of living that is assuring the death of the planet.

Looking at these six different church models, it is easy to see that ever since the church started 2,000 years ago, ecclesiastical enterprises have not really kept pace with societal changes in living and thinking.

In these last days, a new model is needed that anticipates THE KINGDOM TO COME. Dr. Evan Runner’s words come to mind: ALL OF LIFE IS RELIGION.

AUGUST 28 2016

HOW NEVER-NEVER-LAND BECOMES EVER-EVER-LAND.

DEFINITION:
Never-never-land is an imaginary place where everything is pleasant or perfect in a way that is impossible to achieve in real life.

Today we live in a world where the phrase NEVER-EVER-BEFORE dominates. For almost all people it is not the ideal world as described in the definition of NEVER-NEVER-LAND, where everything is perfect. This is only the case for the so-called ONE PERCENT, that small segment of the world’s population that moves around in their own yachts and commutes from continent to continent in their private jets, accompanied by a glorious mistress here or a glamorous woman there, all beautifully surgically enhanced. When the Psalms mention these people they never fail to say that THEY HAVE HAD THEIR REWARD. For them a decade or two of extreme luxury is all they’ll ever have. Then they too will suffer from a NEVER-EVER-BEFORE event.

A NEVER-EVER-BEFORE event, what’s that?

NEVER-EVER-BEFORE is the opposite of NEVER-NEVER-LAND. Where the latter signifies perfection, the former signifies extremes in everything, including uncertainty: that’s what we are experiencing today.

Today we find ourselves in an epoch where the term NEVER-EVER-BEFORE fits perfectly. The world never-ever-before experienced a time when the temperature was as high as it is today. During the almost 16 years of this millennium every year but one has registered the highest degree of heat ever recorded, with this year experiencing the unthinkable.
This year the North Pole has never-ever-before seen the ice-cover as low as it is now. For the first time ever a large cruise ship is sailing from Alaska to Greenland and on to New York without the aid of icebreakers, but loaded with rich people who can afford the passage fees that can be as high as $120,000. That is good news for the rich, but bad news for the world.

There is website I look at called ARCTIC NEWS. It analyzes satellite pictures which measure the sea surface temperatures near the North Pole. On August 12 of this year they were as high as 18.9 degrees Celsius, more than 13.5 degrees above average. It comments that “Where seas are shallow, a surface temperature rise can quickly warm up water all the way down to the Arctic ocean seafloor, where it can destabilize methane hydrates contained in sediments. This could make that huge amounts of methane get released from the seafloor. Given that many of the seas in Arctic are very shallow, much of this methane can enter the atmosphere without getting broken down in the water, resulting in huge additional warming, especially over the Arctic.” It concludes that “This could contribute to a global temperature rise of over 10°C or 18°F by the year 2026.”

Since so far all climate predictions have proved far too optimistic, let’s hope that this is far too pessimistic. The Ice Age, a mere 10,000 years ago, was caused by a drop in temperature of 4 degrees. Imagine what will happen when it now rises by ten degrees: even today, not quite 1.5 degrees higher, we experience NEVER-EVER-BEFORE seen floods.
Why floods? Unusual heat causes more evaporation, which falls back as rain, torrents of it in Louisiana or in India or in Ethiopia. Ten degrees higher means total conflagration. Everything and everybody will burn beyond recognition.
Hmmm. Is that not what the Bible predicts? 2 Peter 3: 10 mentions that very matter.

All this could quite well mean that we have entered the era immediately before the NEVER-NEVER-LAND appears. Yes it will come. But before that ideal situation arrives there will be horrendous havoc, because we have entered the AGE OF EXTREME INSTABILITY in all possible areas: weather, of course, but also economic, political, religious, atmospheric, military as well as health- and soil related.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE.

Yes, that we have entered an era of rising instability and uncertainty is certain. There have always been times of great insecurity but instability and uncertainty are now the norm globally and occur on a world-wide scale and on an almost daily basis.

A good historical example is the 14th Century and the BLACK PLAGUE. Otto Friedrich in his book THE END OF THE WORLD writes that some 40 percent of Europe’s population died from 1347-50. Says he: “If anything had been learned during the Black Death, it was that the church and the priests were helpless in fighting the plague…..but the growth of dissenters and rebels whose impassioned demands were for a new way, ultimately burst forth in the REFORMATION”.
So, yes, there was a silver lining here, even though, citing contemporary commentators: “the survivors were not changed for the better but for the worse by this renewal of the population “

The 16th century’s era of rising prices and religious conflicts prepared the soil later for war, especially the 30 year conflict – 1618-48 – which involved all of Europe and again killed untold millions. The 18th century’s also saw violent revolutions and the resultant wars can again be traced directly to the unrest caused by spiking prices. The very day that prices for bread reached their peak in Paris, an angry mob tore down the Bastille prison, launching the French Revolution of 1789.

The 19th century welcomed a long run of stable prices which remained essentially unchanged in Britain between 1820 and 1900. That century fortunately experienced no major wars: the Crimean conflict and the Boer War were mere expeditions. However the two World Wars in the 20th century caused steadily increasing prices, even hyperinflation in Germany.

Now, in the 21st Century we have a totally different situation, a war never-ever-before waged on such a grand scale: THE WAR AGAINST CREATION, a war humanity is bound to lose, not only lose, but of which the death toll will by far exceed that of the 14th Century Black Plague and 17th Century 30 year war.

TOTAL BLINDNESS

We suffer from a collective amnesia as the consequence of an attitude that is widely shared among decision-makers that history is more or less irrelevant to the urgent problems before them. The proverbial frog in a pan of hot water comes to mind. Were this poor animal dropped in red-hot kettle it immediately would make efforts to get out, but when it is carefully placed in cold water, gradually heated, it blithely boils to death. That’s what is happening in our never-ever before situation: we are sleepwalking into disaster.

Historically, in response to a great rise in prices of essentials, both commoners and governments debased the currency. In their day, this meant shaving the edges of coins, or debasing new coins with non-precious metals. The debasement was an attempt to increase money to counteract the rise in prices, but it failed of course. Every few decades, a new undebased coinage was released, and then the cycle of debasement began anew. We now have the same symptom with the creating out of nothing of untold trillions of dollars and yens and euros. Inflation, here we come.

Just as inflation continued in the mid-13th Century and beyond, and money wages began to lag behind, so too we see income stagnation and a disappearing middleclass on a grand scale.

There are several never-ever-before situations today. Take the spread between the very rich and the very poor: the infamous RICH ONE PERCENT now has more wealth than the remaining 99%, according to a recent Oxfam Study. Need I mention the world population, also at a peak, or the use of energy and water? Oh, yes: deficits. Not only governments, but especially pension funds have never-ever-before seen greater shortfalls.
Back to the 14th century: then too governments fell deep into debt. Oh, and crime and illegitimacy also rose.

And there you have our future, visible in the 14th, 16th and 18th century price-revolution waves. It is hubris in the extreme to think we have somehow morphed into some new kind of humanity far different from those people who tore down the Bastille in a great frustrated rage at prices for energy and bread they could no longer afford. It also is foolish to blame “speculators” for the rise in food and energy, when the human population has tripled in my lifetime and the consumption of energy and food has exploded as a result.

SO WHAT IS IN STORE FOR US?

So where does this leave us? History never repeats itself in exact terms, but we ignore the past at our peril. Our ideal living conditions will stop. Period. Today we see disparity displayed as never-ever-before. Today the Middle East situation is more explosive than ever before. Today almost all of Africa with its teeming millions suffers from drought and untold millions in Asia are losing crops and belongings due to floods. Today Europe is more divided than ever and America angrier than ever: all NEVER-EVER-BEFORE situations world-wide.

As a result we can expect:
1. Ever higher prices for what I call the FEW Essentials: food, energy and water.
2. Ever larger government deficits which end in bankruptcy/repudiation of debts/new issue of currency.
3. Rising property/violent crime and illegitimacy.
4. Rising interest rates (currently considered “impossible”).
5. Rising income inequality in favor of capital over labor.
6. Continued debasement of the currency.
7. Rising volatility of prices.
8. Rising political unrest and turmoil

Combine this with never-ever-before experienced weather phenomena and the stage is set for adjustments beyond the capacity of any political system to absorb.

All these will be world-wide events. With modern surveillance technology, satellites, ubiquitous cameras, informers everywhere, expect severe curtailing of civil liberties, and dictatorial if not despotic government as described in the book Orwell’s “1984”, or in the Bible as the rule of the ANTICHRIST.

Fortunately, not all hope is lost. The definition of NEVER-NEVER-LAND as “an imaginary place where everything is pleasant or perfect in a way that is impossible to achieve in real life” is correct to the extent that people by themselves cannot accomplish this. However the Bible, both in the Hebrew part and the Greek New Testament, repeatedly outlines such a blessed and blissful state.
Take the Old Testament, Isaiah, where he time and again points to the, indeed, ideal, time when: “The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, and dust will be the serpent’s food. They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain,” says the LORD. Isaiah 65:25. Or that farmer Amos, its last chapter: “They will plant vineyards and drink their wine, make gardens and eat their fruit, never again to be uprooted.” Or take the New Testament: “But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells”. 2 Peter 3: 13.
Righteousness means that the laws of the Lord, involving complete obedience to God’s rules in creation, now so ruthlessly discarded, will be scrupulously adhered to, for the law of the Lord will be written in the hearts of the people.

And, of course the last Bible book, REVELATION, describes the culmination of what is to come. Indeed, THE NEVER-NEVER-LAND is not a fable, is not something unachievable, is not a pipedream or pure fantasy. It is a biblical given for those who, says what Hebrew 11: 1 attests: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.”
Of what we do not yet see, but hope for and are certain that it will come is, as Revelation 21: 1 testifies: “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had ceased to exist”. Then a loud voice, audible to every human ever born will proclaim: “Now the dwelling of God (in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of humanity) will be with his people. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes…. For the old order of things has passed away”. That means that NEVER-NEVER-LAND has come.

Just as the 14th Century Black Plague ultimately spawned a religious Reformation in 1517, so too the reign of ultimate evil will give birth to the ultimate good: THE NEVER-NEVER-LAND.

That never-never land is not an imaginary place: it is a place, right on this earth, where everything is pleasant or perfect in a way that is impossible to achieve in real life. And it will last FOREVER.

THAT’S HOW NEVER-NEVER-LAND WILL BECOME EVER-EVER-LAND.

AUGUST 21 2016

EVERYTHING WILL COME OUT IN THE OPEN!

This week I do a bit of speculating both by means of TREND ANALYSIS and through BIBLICAL INTERPRETATION with the aim to fathom what is going to happen within the next decade. Tricky business, this.

I am pretty sure that the weather is signalling that we are experiencing something new. Already in some parts on our globe crops have been ruined both because of lack of rain or too much of it. Climate Change at work, even though some 40 percent of the US populace still deny this phenomenon.
Today, due to these new weather conditions, combined with increasing demands on natural resources, FEW will become a new acronym, with the three letters standing for FOOD, ENERGY AND WATER. These items, so basic to life that we tend to take them for granted, will increase in price: food because of drought, erosion and floods, energy and water because of their finiteness.

First trend indication.

Prepare for inflation, perhaps substantial. The global food supply chain is a real-world system that cannot be “fixed” with financial gimmicks. No amount of money-printing will replace crops lost to weather extremes, replenish depleted fresh-water aquifers, magically rebuild top soil lost to erosion, repair the environmental ravages of industrial pollution or increase the world’s oil supply. It’ll be about 2-3 years before this starts hurting, so, if you are smart, start growing your own now!!

Second trend indication.

Price increases are manageable as long as wages and income also go up, but I don’t think this will be the case because governments everywhere struggle with ever larger deficits, which mean that state generosity will end. There also will be increasing demands on the public purse thanks to aid to areas stricken by natural disasters, and that combined with higher police costs due to the threat of terrorism, real or imagined, don’t count on higher wages.
Also with a recession or even a depression overdue, governments on all levels will collect less tax revenue, and even face the danger of going broke and repudiating debts. This means that the standard of living will decline, perhaps drastically.
The same advise as above.

Third trend indication.

With increasing pressure on families making ends meet, an equally unpleasant development will be further family disintegration, meaning more crime, as also funds for policing and protection will be scarce or non-existent.
The next president of the USA will face immense problems. At this point, less than three months before the election, it looks that a reluctant electorate will choose Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate. It seems quite likely that the Trump followers will revolt and violence and civic disobedience will bring on a Police State, placing further demands on the economy. Looting and civil disobedience will increase.

Fourth trend indication.

The root cause of world-wide unrest may well be globalization, a force destructive for everybody, Western as much as any other. Globalization glorifies the wasteful Western Way of Life everywhere and exploits lax pollution controls and labor laws world-wide. This means that some seven billion plus of ever more greedy consumers must share the ever diminishing FEW = food, energy and water. This will leave not enough for everybody, causing wide-spread conflicts, creating ever more dissatisfied people, more rebellious, more on edge, fighting for the leftovers.

Combine these four trends with extreme weather conditions and APOCALYPSE is the next step because the situation I have outlined also correspond with what the BIBLE tells is in its last book known by the Greek name of APOCALYPSE.

ENTER THE BIBLE

I know that APOCALYPSE is usually connected with something awful, something terrible, something to be avoided, but in reality the BIBLE book by this name emphasizes one concept in particular: EVERYTHING BECOMES WHAT IT IS: our true nature and that of all matters will be revealed. That is something to be welcomed: don’t we all really want to be what we are and see what life is all about? True, it will involve some hardship, but all is well that ends well.
We find this situation in the very last chapter of the Bible: Revelation 22: 11, where it says:
“Let those who do wrong, do wrong even more, let them who do vile, continue to do more so; let those who do right continue to do right; and let those who are holy continue to be holy.”
That indicates that everything and everybody reverts back to their true essence: the bad people become worse, the good improve.
We now live in a masked world, a world in disguise. Matters are not what they seem: they are much worse. That’s the secret that the politicians so carefully want to conceal.

THE GREAT UNRAVELING

So what do I see happening in the not too distant future?
We are now approaching the Great Unraveling. For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear the true nature of our world will be laid bare.
In 1919 Keats, after experiencing the devastation of World War I, wrote the following:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Now, after almost 100 years, these words are becoming true because, with the relevance of the church virtually vanished, the Satan, that immense moving power behind the world’s happenings holds humanity in his/her clutches. He/she has convinced us that God is dead, is a product of the past, some self-satisfied sugar uncle, totally irrelevant for the age of the Internet and space travel. The Satan has sold humanity on the notion that men and women everywhere are now fully in charge.
And they are.

With God out of the picture the Satan, that devilish beast, that horrible creature, is dominating this last phase of human history. Watch out!
Already the world, which the Bible calls “Babylon”, that once glorious Babylon, has lost its infinite charm in spite of alluring travel brochures. Today the entire planet presents a pathetic picture.

Babylon – our present world – simply cannot endure because it is no longer vested in God. Outside God nothing is safe, outside God everything, however beautiful it may seem and however great it may appear, in essence is nothing other than vanity. That’s the reason why matters are not what they are and why they must be exposed. Soon – and the process has already started – this entire masquerade will end and every mask will be removed. That is the meaning of everything that has happened and will happen, and that is what the last things are all about.

REVELATION AT LAST

This ripping away of the camouflage is the ultimate meaning of this astonishing book of REVELATION that John has seen and has described. Eventually the most profound reality must penetrate through all the pores of the ultimate illusion and the TRUTH will triumph. In its last BIBLE chapter this thought is poignantly expressed as, and I repeat: “Let those who do wrong, do wrong even more, let them who do vile, continue to do more so; let those who do right continue to do right; and let those who are holy continue to be holy.” (Rev. 22: 11). That hits the nail on the head. The mask has to go, the secret must be unveiled: everything in the end must become what it always has been already.

Several factors are involved in this de-masking process. John gives insight into these from the point of view of divine judgment. That so carefully constructed and properly propped up house of cards of human pride has already started to crumble under the hammer blows of the divine judgments.
These judgments are cosmic in character as the totality of the universe is connected to this. It seems to me that CLIMATE CHANGE fits that bill.
In these last days humanity will be hit exactly there where it imagines itself to be the strongest, in its technical knowhow and in its mastery over nature. Already hacking has imperiled that beautiful tool of THE INTERNET, making it highly vulnerable. Our computer driven economy totally depends on electricity, another highly vulnerable link.

The book of REVELATION paints an immensely frightening picture. It describes how NATURE will fall upon the human race as a provoked lion: NATURE will breach all the constrains humanity has laid upon it, and will explode into extraordinary catastrophes, earthquakes, floods, failed harvests, pandemics. All these will be more severe than ever. And as part of all this comes the dissolution of human society. Wars will come of an intensity and severity never before experienced, causing incalculable confusion. This will result in the coming of the kingdom of the one world-tyrant, the beast with his abhorrent body, arising out of the ocean of the community of nations.
Again for a short spell the human throne will be established. Humanity has not turned to God, has only become more outspoken in its resistance, more spiteful in its hatred, more determined in its powerless hate, more relentless in its rage against God’s children. Indeed, those who are unjust will commit even more injustice; those who are vile, more vileness will follow. The masks will fall off.

SIN

Apparently that is the total purpose of this biblical picture. In the last empire, all motives, which have dominated the world’s history from times immemorial, all these will come to their unrestrained revelation. Sin will appear in the full sense of the word, in its breathtaking hubris, in its self-elevation to God’s throne, in its all-out discarding of everything that stands in the way of this brazen effort. Human vilest intentions will rise to the surface. All veneer will vanish and melt away in the heat of the last days. Humanity, not as single persons but as humanity in its totality, as collective species, will rise up in its dream of the totalitarian world empire, lauding its greatness, its power. It now only has the one idol, but the idol carries the same bizarre and distorted feature that it itself has. This idol is its own image, magnified into infinity. That is the Antichrist, the culmination of the world’s history.

All this initially has to reach a certain level of maturity, must first take on a definite final shape before all that for which the believers of all ages so fervently have hoped can come about. Then, in the end, the new Kingdom, the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the New Jerusalem will dawn.
Actually, expressed in the language of John, this is not strange at all. At last everything in the world becomes what it should have been all along.

Nature has no independent existence, but is an instrument in God’s hand and is part of God’s plan and does what God wants. She does not become that: she is that. And we humans, we who revolted against God, we who in the depth of our striving are the great fugitive from God, and always rebel against him, we grimly keep on embracing this world because this is our last and only refuge.

That world still is God’s primary Word. The Bible, God’s written and secondary Word is no longer read or is misunderstood. So God is speaking through his Created Word, loud and clear, through heat and drought and floods and earthquakes, saying beyond a grain of doubt that we have forgotten those lines in THE LORD’S PRAYER that ask ‘forgive us our trespasses’ which lately have centered on our environmental sins.
There’s another matter that is easily forgotten, also by the church: JUDGEMENT DAY.
Sinning against God`s wonderful creation is still sin, because our Capitalistic Society, in its hubris and our eager compliance, has fashioned a society where SIN against creation occurs inevitably, is so ingrained in the way we live that we all take it for granted.

If there ever was a generation that needs forgiveness, it is ours.

LORD HAVE MERCY.

August 14 2016

THE TRUMP CARD

Even before he became an international disaster I immensely disliked the man: his phony hair, his boasting, the flaunting of his riches, the pursuit of the perfect female body resulting in a succession of marriages. I hardly ever look at TV so I had never seen his show, but even for an oddball like me, I could not miss seeing him or reading about him, and my disgust simply grew.

Yet, some thirty five percent of the US electorate sees Trump as a potential savior. That either makes me look stupid or relegates a large portion of the American public to the category of nitwits.

What’s going on in America? That’s what fascinates me. What even more intrigues me is that a good segment of those who call themselves “Christians” endorse him, a man divorced three times. Christ is pretty straightforward on divorce, saying that even the remarriage of the innocent party constitutes adultery. (Luke 16: 18). This makes Trump a three time sinner. Actually the divorce rate among the American Christians is at least equal to that among the non-church people.
Then there is the money angle. Trump’s wealth or income is derived from casinos where “The lust for money” is the main motive of going there. That Paul once wrote to his dear friend Timothy (1 Timothy 6: 10) “for the love of money is the root of all evil” is conveniently forgotten.
It seems that Trump’s trump card is ignorance on the part of his devotees.
Then there is abortion. Harold Bloom in his THE AMERICAN RELIGION wrote that the American Christian core belief centers on THE FLAG AND THE FETUS. The FLAG is obvious: America rules the world, at the expense of domestic matters. On the fetus Bloom comments: “The fetus must not be aborted, but whether the infant starves or not seems a very secondary matter.” Family support costs a lot and these same anti-abortion Republicans have continuously voted against tax money going to needy parents and children, because that means tax increases and taxes are seen as a sign of the devil.

All this is totally inconsistent and also a most Un-Christian thing to do for a nation that calls itself Christian. No wonder most Western nations just shake their heads. Yet this behavior is doing immense harm to the concept of true Christianity.
I can only conclude that ignorance of what Christianity really means is Trump’s trump card.

Oh yes, the FLAG.

Part of the Trump attraction is his catering to THE AMERICAN FLAG, symbolized by the so-revered Armed Forces. Again THE AMERICA RELIGION has no inkling of what Christ really teaches concerning war. Christ taught us to LOVE THE ENEMY, to TURN THE OTHER CHEEK, warning that those who use the sword or gun will perish by the sword or gun.
Again Trump’s trump card is religious ignorance.
Nevertheless ignorance has a deep anti-religious root. The Bible repeatedly tells us that THE FEAR OF THE LORD IS THE BEGINNING OF WISDOM. Fear of the Lord means being awed by the greatness, the beauty, the intricacy, the harmony of God’s creation. When we lack that characteristic then THE FEAR OF THE LORD becomes impossible. That means that a religious expression that does not deeply cherish God’s creation is a false religion.

The Trump voters have no real clue about themselves, what they believe and what TIME it is in the world. They have never heard of the difference between KAIROS and CHRONOS. Chronos indicates the year we live in: 2016. Kairos is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment. The minute you confess that Christ is the Creator and Lord of Life indicates a KAIROS moment. That we see all of life from the perspective of the Kingdom, the future New EDEN that Christ has promised, that is a KAIROS inspiration, something totally lacking in the American Religion.

The TRUMP followers do not look forward to the New Creation, no, they look back to the 1970s and 1980s.

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la,
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days.

“Those were the days, my friend: we wished they’d never end”. Well, they have ended, never to return.

What were those days? Those were the days when America was populated by the white race, males of course, preferably of West European lineage, and, of course, unabashedly heterosexuals. In the glorious Seventies and early Eighties there was a Reagan in charge of the nation, not a black President now occupying the White House, whom they see as not really a true American.
Those were the days, my friend, when the churches were full and young people came in droves to listen to Billy Graham. Then the people had moral fiber, knew what was really important. Now much of the church has become irrelevant.

Look what happened in France:

There an 84 year old priest was killed, Father Hamel. It happened in an almost empty church, two parishioners, three nuns, an old priest, a perfect illustration of the condition of the faith in Western Europe. Indeed a dying church.
And look at Europe in general. There the broader liberal order is also showing signs of strain. The European Union, a great dream when Father Hamel was ordained a priest in 1958, is now a creaking and unpopular bureaucracy, threatened by nationalism from within and struggling to assimilate immigrants from cultures that never made the liberal leap.

No, they hark back to the Seventies. Those were the days, my friend, when well-paying jobs were plentiful, when Detroit was the place to go to with its set-for-life-union jobs at The Big Three.

Even the US military hegemony is gone. As Paul Kennedy in his THE RISE AND FALL OF GREAT POWERS has shown, all of these military nations sooner or later must face economic reality. Budget deficits are increasing and if the USA would try to come even close to a balanced budget drastic cuts for the Pentagon are needed. Both presidential candidates promise more benefits and extra billions for the military TO MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, without ever mentioning the true reality, because the US economic domination too is gone, and soon the deficit will run into trillions.
Again Trump’s trump card is ignorance, ignorance how the real economy works and what the future will be.
All signs, in the economy, in the state of nature, in the minds of the young people, point to the sad fact that the good days are gone. Political promises are as empty as the water bins in California.

And Hillary is no better than Trump.

The naked truth is that we live in a new world, a world that has an EXPIRY DATE. We see it everywhere, not only on all food products. Our WAY OF LIFE also has an expiry date. By WAY OF LIFE I mean our energy-rich, wasteful, the sky-is-the-limit mode of modernity.
CLIMATE CHANGE
While I am writing this, August 12, the outside temperature is 37 degrees Celsius, some 100 degrees Fahrenheit, until now an unheard-of high reading, but this year just one of the many record heat days.

Heat and drought are closely allied. In California, in Siberia, actually in all the world’s forested areas trees are dying due to lack of rain, giving Climate Change a double boost as dead trees add Carbon to the air while these same trees no longer absorb the man-made CO2 that causes Global Warming.
But the real hot spot – where the temperatures have really skyrocketed – is the Arctic. If the current trend there continues a temperature rise of more than 10 degrees Celsius could be recorded by the year 2026. That would spell the end of the world.

Yes, you read it correctly. According to responsible people the world’s expiry date could be as early as 2026.

Trump’s trump card is a Joker. Ignorance may be bliss, but, in reality, it spells doom.

Hillary’s financial plan too is equally hilarious, because both people aspiring to become president, base their claims on INFINITE GROWTH, simply impossible in a Finite World.
The financial problems that the world is now encountering will eventually resolve badly. This seems to be how the Peak Oil – Peak Water – Peak Debt – story will finally play out. Without rising energy per capita, the world economy tends to shrink. Without economic growth, it becomes very difficult to repay debt with interest. Wealth disparity becomes more and more of a problem and it becomes increasingly difficult for governments to collect enough revenue to support their needs. Our problems begin to look more and more like those of earlier economies that hit resource limits: they all collapsed.

THE REAL CULPRIT

Last week the New York Times reported that neither candidate ever mentioned how they will deal with the poor, a growing segment in US society. It reminds me of some texts in the Bible book of Jeremiah where is says that:
He defended the cause of the poor and the needy; and so it went well.
Is this not what it means to know me? declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 22: 16, NIV.)

Just imagine! Care for the vulnerable, the poor and needy, gives people “knowledge of God.” If there is one country that deals harshly with the vulnerable, this is the USA. “Help yourself, so helps you God” is seen as a biblical given of the utmost priority, yet this so-called Bible text nowhere appears in the Scriptures. It effectively negates what Jeremiah tries to tell us. And that is that dismissal of God and disregard of neighbor leads to disaster. This happened to Israel time and again, and it will happen to the USA where increasingly the poor section is neglected and suffers as especially the Republican Party advocates abolishing food stamps and cutting back on Medical support. No wonder the poor revolt. No wonder they listen to a false Prophet who will make matters worse.

THE BIBLE AND CLIMATE CHANGE

Not only the lack of care for the most vulnerable in society leads to severe judgment: lack of faithfulness, lack of love, lack of acknowledging that God is the creator, leads to Climate Change. I read this in Hosea in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, the book that follows Daniel.
There is only cursing, lying and murder, stealing and adultery; they break all bounds, and bloodshed follows bloodshed. Because of this the land mourns and all who live in it waste away; the beasts of the field and the birds in the air and the fish of the sea are dying. Hosea 4: 2-3.

Those are words we do not hear on the campaign trail by either candidate. What they say are mostly lies, are empty promises. It looks that Hillary will win, and when she does, the murder and stealing will only accelerate and a police state is guaranteed.
The same is true also in Europe where disparity too, the difference between rich and poor is increasing. The welfare state will collapse because it is based on perpetual growth. Once it stops, and this might already be the case now, the entire welfare pyramid will prove to be built on illusions and false assumptions. It now is being financed by adding debt upon debt, but the trouble with debt is that it must be repaid. And if it is not repaid, then debt will go bad and banks and governments will default and crash the entire system.

We live in very perilous times. Beware.

August 7 2016

BOMBS: THE PLANET’S POSSIBLE BATTLE PLAN

But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you. Job 12:8

Even the stork in the heavens knows her times, and the turtledove, swallow, and crane keep the time of their coming, but my people know not the rules of the LORD. Jeremiah 8: 7

We are smart in some ways, and dumb, very dumb in others. Actually technology has made us quite stupid. Anybody can learn how to drive a car or finger a computer, but handling a team of horses is a different matter. It means that we have to read their minds, get in touch with the horses’ inner voices, and relate to them on their level. There is a reason why there is an expression: horse sense. Our love for machines, for the artificial, for the man-made stuff, has alienated us from God’s Primary Word, his creation.

Question: Have you spoken to the earth lately, except, perhaps in curses? “Speak to the earth” Scripture advises us. That really means that we engage in dialogue, study its ways, ask questions, show deep concern, but considering what’s happening out there, it is apparent that, rather than treating the earth as an equal we are downright discriminating against it.

Treat the earth as an equal? What sort of nonsense is that?

In Genesis 9 it is recorded that God, the creator, made a COVENANT with the earth. You know what that means? It means that God made the earth AN EQUAL PARTNER.

No wonder Nietzsche wrote that: “Sin against creation is the greatest sin.” A sin against creation is a direct affront to the CREATOR. When we say we love God but treat Creation with utter disdain and neglect, even abuse it continuously, our love for God is highly questionable. It is high time to acquire an acute earth-awareness. That mammals disappear because of our actions, that fish vanish through overfishing, that more birds die through insecticides to promote Monsanto poison, that we further and further remove ourselves from touching base with our fellow creatures, not only humans, but trees and plants as well, all this is a direct slap on the face of the Maker of it all.

Our fascination with matters mechanical stems from the notion that we are to dominate creation, from high-functioning animals down to the lowly amoebas. I don’t want to downplay progress. But the fact is that it has come at the expense of everything and everybody, and all this has spurred our spiritual insanity.

PROGRESS

For most of human history, economic progress moved at a crawl. According to the economic historian Bradford DeLong, from the first rock tools used by humanoids three million years ago, to the earliest cities ten thousand years ago, through the Middle Ages, to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution around 1800, living standards doubled (with a growth of 0.00002 percent per year). Another doubling took place over the subsequent period to 1870. Then, according to standard calculations, the world economy took off, thanks to the use of carbon fuels.
From 1870 to 1970 growth skyrocketed thanks to carbon fuels. According to (Dr.) J. R. McNeill in his AN ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY OF THE TWENTIETH-CENTURY WORLD: “No other century in human history can compare with the 20th for its growth in energy use…. My very rough calculation suggests that the world in the 20th Century used 10 times as much energy as the 1000 years before 1900.”
In the first stage of THE PLANET’S BATTLE PLAN we only have experienced the opening salvos. Much, much worse is yet to come.

RAIN BOMBS

Rain bombs are a new breed of severe storms. Ten to fifteen cm of precipitation, or even more, pours down in a mere hour. Such storms can destroy infrastructure in a matter of minutes. This happened in several place across the globe. In the US, Texas and other southern states suffer from never-before-seen flooding. The west of the country is soaring in heat. The east coast of Australia has been repeatedly hit by rain bombs, while Tasmania had to deal with never seen flooding. Everybody has seen the pictures of flooded streets in Paris. The Loire region got six weeks of rain in three days. In Germany the region of Baden Wurttemberg was been hit by torrential rains.
This is what we have done by burning Carbon fuels in untold quantities: we now have overwhelmed the climate by overloading our poor planet with a gigantic growth of untold trillions of tons of energy calories. Not even a total stop of all carbon-based energy use will now stop the destruction of God’s precious earth.

WIND BOMBS

We also experience more and more tornadoes, which are WIND BOMBS. They suddenly form in the sky and traverse with nuclear force on unsuspecting and unprepared regions. There is no antidote for these angry utterances who no longer are sporadic but ravage the earth with increasing ferocity.

POLITICAL BOMBS

Then there are POLITICAL BOMBS. Donald Trump is an excellent example of this new political expression, the man who can’t say SORRY, who, seeing already that he’s not going to become President, now says the game is rigged, a man spoiled from infancy, who simply cannot cope with a degree of adversity, upset by a baby crying. Cry-baby himself.
In Britain nobody expected that a majority would vote for Great Britain to leave the European Union. Other elections are coming up in Europe, which might further detonate the status quo.

STUPIDITY BOMBS

Not for nothing Television is called THE BOOB TUBE. Neil Postman in his AMUSING OURSELVES TO DEATH has been very prophetic there. Television not only leads to intellectual stupor, but physical death as well.
Gone is any commonsense; gone is a mature opinion on matters religious, political, natural or material. It now is becoming plain that a world out of kilter through distorting the climate also has infected our minds.
The entire world is a unity: with one part in chaos, everything else and everybody else has become contaminated. Polluted air and polluted water leads to polluted minds.
Proverbs 29: 18 hits it on the nose: WHERE THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH. Harold Bloom in his THE AMERICAN RELIGION calls the Fundamentalists the KNOW-NOTHING Christians. That in the USA education is funded locally, where poor areas are deprived of decent schools and qualified teachers, has caused entire regions to suffer from a mental deficit and has seen a large segment of the population flock to TRUMP, taken in by his demagoguery, a man who even praises his adherents for their lack of mental skills. Unbelievable!

YES, WE LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES THANKS TO CLIMATE CHANGE.

Sociologists call it implicatory denial. The reason why Republicans never ever uttered the word CLIMATE CHANGE during their convention (which I watched from the beginning to the end, and where my loathing for that party increased exponentially) was that uttering the word CLIMATE would imply that something be done about it. That would mean government action – taboo for the TRUMP Party – so the word CLIMATE was banned from the vocabulary.

I see a similar situation in the church, where the KINGDOM concept too is avoided, because making it a priority – as Jesus recommended in SEEK FIRST THE KINGDOM – means that we must deal with its root-meaning.

Actually the two concepts: CLIMATE CHANGE AND KINGDOM SEEKING are intimately connected.
But ask the animals, and they will teach you,
or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you;
or speak to the earth, and it will teach you,
or let the fish in the sea inform you. Job 12:8

Ever heard a sermon on that passage?

There is a close correlation between the disappearance of animals – birds, mammals, fish – the warming of the earth and the seas and Gospel preaching. God, when he created the cosmos, made a perfect world. He gave the seas the exactly correct temperature, the right size of forests, the perfect CO2 count in the air. But in the last 200 years – with the excessive use of oil and coal – matters changed and with it the human perspective. J. R. McNeill, in the book I mentioned above gave it the subtitle: SOMETHING NEW UNDER THE SUN. There is indeed something new that has not happened before in history: massive die-off of species and massive temperature change. Somehow the church has failed to see creation as GOD’S PRIMARY OR DIRECT WORD, while the Scriptures, the church’s sole interest, is GOD’S SECONDARY OR INDIRECT WORD. No wonder matters are screwed up.

THE WAR IS HEATING UP: LITERALLY

And that is just the beginning. The stage is set for all sorts of long vanished diseases to suddenly emerge and for which all resistance is long gone. All these and more are:

THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF THE CARBON AGE

Five weeks ago, thunderheads exploded into the skies, raining more than 330,000 bolts of lightning down upon the European continent in the course of just 8 hours. The blasts hammered a wide region stretching from Portugal through France and the UK, into the Alps, Italy, Germany and Denmark and on through south western Poland.
BROILING OCEANS
Ocean surface temperatures over a zone stretching from the Equator to Alaska now range between 1 and 6 C above late 20th Century values. A gigantic blob of hot water in the Pacific is feeding the growth of a powerful atmospheric wave. This will lead to new record hot temperatures to explode all over the US West coast and Canada. Of course, extreme events do happen from time to time. Such storms are supposed to happen once every 500 years or so, not in fast succession.
Don’t for a minute think that Climate Change will ever stop.

METHANE IS THE PLANET’S NUCLEAR THREAT.

We may complain about the heat in North America. It is well-known that overall we are experiencing the hottest year so far ever! Yet, this is nothing compared to the increase in overall temperature in and near the Arctic. Widespread Arctic melting means that potentially dangerous amounts of methane are pouring into an already toasty atmosphere. Permafrost stores about double the carbon that the atmosphere does. The better the bacteria there do, the more carbon joins the sky, the warmer earth becomes. We call that for some reason ‘positive feedback’: the process feeds on itself.
A heatwave that hit Siberia this summer has unleashed a horde of long-frozen bacteria that now threatens the entire world. An outbreak of anthrax in western Siberia has so far claimed the lives of 1,500 reindeer and made scores of people sick. There frozen carcasses defrosted and released the long-dormant bacteria. Siberia and Northern Canada, the entire region around the Arctic is a powder keg.

Where is the methane coming from?

Take China, with its massive methane belching coal mines and coal burning facilities. Or try Mongolia and Russia, with their leaky gas fields. Then there is the Middle East and Europe which burns high-methane brown coal. Indonesia also, where tropical forests are burning down, as well as the Amazon and the US where fracking has greatly increased methane emissions, and especially the Arctic where the permafrost spreading over many millions of square km is thawing.
But the real threat comes from the Arctic. In total, more than 1.300 billion tons of carbon is locked away in the permafrost soils. Much of this carbon is in the form of the frozen ice-methane called hydrate. That is now coming on stream. It’s like nuclear bombs exploding everywhere.
There was a warning, outlined in Deuteronomy 30: 15-17:

“Now I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord, to walk in his ways… then you will live and the Lord will bless you.” In other words, treat the earth as an equal.

“But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn to other gods-money, economic exploitation and growth- you will certainly be destroyed.”

JULY 31 12016

B & B and another B

Bombast & Baloney? Bed & Breakfast? Bach & Beethoven?

Yes, the B & B stands for two people whose names start with “B”: not Bach and the other guy, but Bonhoeffer, Dietrich and Bavinck, Johan Herman.
Both Bonhoeffer and Bavinck have given me new insights which I want to share with you because we live in an age of acrimonious agitation and obdurate obfuscation, making it difficult for people to find the TRUTH.

Fact is that we all must rely on others to find out what is really important in this day, where confusion is so common and where even those in authority in state and church, simply do not know where to go and what to do. That’s the problem with the approaching END TIMES, where the status quo has expired and the terrible new has not yet come.
I trust these men. They speak eternal truths, are literally down to earth and have the right perspective for the future.
The lives of these two “Bs” overlapped: Bavinck was born in 1895 in the Netherlands and died there in 1964. Bonhoeffer was born in 1906 in East Germany, now Poland, but lived most of his life in Berlin. He was hanged by the Nazi Regime in 1945 after about a year in prison.
They did not know of each other, yet their thoughts on Christianity, their views on the Kingdom and the earth, their ideas on eternity were strikingly similar.
Why have these two persons played such an important role for me? What’s so significant that they shaped my life?

They made me feel fully human. They gave me a view of eternity that moved me to tears. They gave me back my personhood. That was necessary because I was raised in a very ‘heaven-oriented’ family and church. Both men taught me not to look up, but to stay firmly with my feet on the ground.
Bonhoeffer writes that “The Kingdom of God is a purely eschatological concept.”
What does that mean? This means that the Kingdom of God will come after the ‘eschaton’, when this world has run its course, when we humans have almost succeeded in destroying this planet, and Christ returns and brings with him The Kingdom, the New Creation.

Here’s something that brings tears to my eyes. Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes that “It is only out of the future (from the perspective of the coming of the Kingdom) that the present can be lived…We are children of the future.” In other words: “We don’t belong to the world dominated by evil (1 John 5: 19).”
Bonhoeffer was much younger than J. H. Bavinck when he made his most significant statements. I think that he realized that his life would be cut short. Also he was not an official in the church, so he could be – and was – much more radical. He said: “we have fallen into secularism, and by secularism I mean pious, Christian secularism. Not the godlessness of atheism or cultural bolshevism, but the Christian renunciation of God as the Lord of the earth…. This pious secularism also makes it possible to preach and to say nice things…..The function of the church is to witness to the power of God in the new creation. …. Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from the world to other worlds beyond; rather he gives us back to the earth as its loyal children”. That is truly revolutionary.

When Bonhoeffer wrote this he was in his twenties. By that time he had a double doctorate. When World War II broke out – in 1939 – he was 33, was in the USA and was offered a position of professor there, but he decided to return to Germany, fully well knowing that, because he was fiercely against Hitler, he probably would not survive.
J.H. Bavinck was a churchman, an ordained minister, a professor specializing in missions. As such he worked in Indonesia, then a Dutch colony, known as the Dutch East Indies and later taught at the Amsterdam Free University.

Bavinck is more explicit when he describes how the KINGDOM will be when it comes. He writes: “In the first place we must realize that God’s Kingdom has a cosmic character, which means that it comprises the entire world as we have come to know it. Not only are we humans part of that Kingdom, but it also includes the worlds of animals and plants. Yes, even the angels are part of this wider context: they too have a place in the harmonious totality of God’s Kingdom.
“This implies that all parts of the world are attuned to each other. Nowhere is there a false note, a dis¬so¬nant that disturbs the unity, as everything fits harmoniously into the greater scheme of the totality. This applies both to each individual specimen but equally to the various circles or spheres found in creation. The celestial bodies follow their orderly tra¬jectories and do so according to God’s royal will, obeying his voice. And so the stars in their courses sound a melodious note in the great concert in which all creatures participate. The mountains rise up high above the water-saturated earth, their proud summits piercing the clouds; yet even these mountains are nothing but servants of Him who has planted and secured them by his power. On every page the Bible makes plain that the meaning of creation resides only in the one overarching motif: the motif of God’s Kingdom. That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds: they always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.”
Yes, that resounds with me. Perfection in a perfect world is what awaits us in eternity. It seems to me that in the short spell we live under the regime of evil (1 John 5: 19 is unambiguous there: “the whole world is under the control of the evil one”) maybe 90 years if we live carefully, makes our sinful life now the proving ground for the New Creation.
Both these men have identical views on the Kingdom which is to come, simply following Jesus’ command “Seek first the Kingdom”, so prominent in Jesus’ teaching and so missing in the church.
What other similarities are there? They both have identical views on the earth.

Bonhoeffer first.

The direct quote I found in his essay DEIN REICH KOMME, Your Kingdom Come. There he writes: “Christ does not lead us in a religious flight from this world to other world beyond (no heaven destination for him, I might add); rather he gives us back to the earth as his loyal children.”

The first book published by Bonhoeffer was a commentary on Genesis 1-3, not surprisingly called CREATION AND FALL. The book actually was a series of lectures at the university where he taught at the tender age of 25. There he elaborates on the matter of THE EARTH. Here are some quotes.
“Technology is the power with which the earth grips people and subdues them. The earth is, therefore, no longer OUR earth (The automobile is a good example), and thus we become strangers to the earth………Without God, without our brother and sister, we lose the earth….. God, brother and sister and the earth belong together”

This leads me to conclude that
BLESSED ARE THEY WHO HAVE LIVED THAT WAY BEFORE THEY DIE: THEIRS IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.

Why? Says Bonhoeffer: “I completely belong to this world. It bears me, it nurtures me, it holds me. The soil and the animals are the world in which I live, without which I cease to be.”
Bavinck uses almost the exact words in his book BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, a Radical Kingdom Vision. Noting that ‘hanging’, as on the cross, is such a cursed matter as it separates us from the earth, he writes: “Contact with the earth is an essential element of life. We are taken from the earth, we belong to the earth, and we live through the earth. Our bond with the earth is so strong that we cannot for a moment imagine existing apart from the earth, and hanging (as Jesus did) breaks the contact with the earth.”

Further elaborating on the significance of the EARTH he writes: “The word ADAM reminded the Israelite immediately of the first Adam who was taken from the dust of the earth. That made the word eminently suitable to typify the human race in its unbreakable unity. The Israelite here sensed some-thing of the fact that humans are earth-bound. A human being, ADAM, belongs to ADAMAH, the life bearing earth. With every sinew of his exis-tence he is tied to the earth, which bears him and feeds him.”

Bavinck further explains what the KINGDOM means when he writes:
“The nature of the Kingdom of God was not intended to be static but dynamic. It was not destined to continue for ever and ever in the same shape and form. On the contrary, from its very inception the Kingdom contained an incentive to develop, perfect and unfold all its potentials and powers contained in it. This means that from its very beginning the concept of history was entailed in the idea of the Kingdom. When we say Kingdom we say history. The total reality of the Kingdom could only become manifest in history. From the very first day of creation the Kingdom had the full range of powerful options. It contained possibilities that would require a slow process to come to full fruition. The entire process, however, was subject to God’s will.”

So what does the NORTH AMERICAN CHURCH teach about these two essential elements, KINGDOM and EARTH?

For this I rely on another “B”, the Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University, Dr. Harold Bloom, who calls himself an agnostic Jew.
He writes that in North American churches Gnosticism rules. The word comes from the Greek word ‘gnosis’ which means “knowledge”. Harold Bloom, America’s foremost literary critic in his book THE AMERICAN RELIGION claims “The United States of America is a religion-mad and religion-soaked country. We think we are Christian. But we are not. The American Religion is post-Christian, despite its protestations, and even in that it has begun to abandon Protestant modes of thought and feeling.”

Bloom argues in his book that the American Religion masks itself as Protestant Christianity, yet has ceased to be Christian.

Dr. Bloom laments: “we are, alas, the most religious of countries, and finally only varieties of the American Religion will flourish among us, whether its devotees call it Mormonism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, or what-ever-you-will. And the American Religion, for its two centuries of existence, seems to me irretrievably Gnostic. It is a knowing, by and of an uncreated self, or self-within-the-self, and the knowledge (gnosis) leads to freedom, a dangerous and doom-eager freedom, from nature, time, history, and community.”

Dr. Bloom coined a new word. Where the word EVANGELICAL has its root in the Greek word EU-ANGELOS, the Good Message, he calls THE AMERICAN RELIGION “KAK-ANGELOS, THE BAD NEWS”.
That BAD NEWS has spawned The Late, Great Planet Earth.

THE LATE, GREAT PLANET EARTH is another good example of American religious thinking. The book outsold the Bible there. Dualistic America sees the earth, God’s pride and joy, as evil. No wonder Republican politicians, the Christian people’s representatives, have no regard for the environment and pursue warlike policies, anything that will destroy the earth and bring on Armageddon. The churches there are consumed by a premillennial eschatology. They read in the Bible that the Rapture will take place when all believers will be taken up into heaven before the great tribulation and Christ Second Coming, to establish a Thousand Year Kingdom on Earth.

The word “RAPTURE” comes from the Latin verb ‘RAPIO’ which means ‘to seize in order to keep’. (Rapio, rapere, rapui= I have seized, raptum= I have been seized). Our word ‘RAPE’ has the same root. How peculiarly appropriate that RAPE and RAPTURE has a common root. Supposedly ‘rapture’ means that God will seize people in order to keep them in his kingdom.” Nothing is further from the TRUTH.

Because we have failed to see the EARTH as God’s earth, our eternal dwelling place, now and in eternity, we are on the brink of extinction. It is generally acknowledged that humanity is entering a new, dangerous and ultimately fatal condition. It is no longer a matter of one civilization falling, to be replaced by another, such as happened when Europe arose after the collapse of the Roman Empire. Now all civilizations are endangered and none can survive as autonomous, independent entities as in the past. It is in this sense that we are now moving to a historical stage that is beyond civilization.

The sad thing for many and at the same time the exhilarating TRUTH for others is that THE KINGDOM IS AT HAND. Both Bonhoeffer and Bavinck have prepared us for this situation.