Bert Hielema–Columns and Writings

“IN THESE LAST FATEFUL YEARS – IN HIS ULTIMIS ANNIS FATALIBUS”

July 24 2016

We – my wife and I – live in the country on 50 acres – 20 hectares – of mostly wetlands and trees. On the only open land I planted trees, some 4,000, except for the site where we have our buildings: our 2 storey house, with attached sunroom – shaded by two soft maples – where we spend most of our waking time (not in the winter, of course), a 2 storey guest house and a detached workshop-toolshed. And, naturally, our vegetable garden and the yard with 3 apple trees, one early – I already made applesauce from the grounded apples last week – another early fall and one late fall – a Northern Spy. Oh yes, I also have half an acre of grass to mow.
Just as our home is surrounded by trees, I am always surrounded by books: this week I re-read parts of Schumacher’s SMALL IS BEAUTIFUL, written more than 40 years ago, but still very current. He ends the book with pointing to THE KINGDOM. Here’s what he writes: “unless you seek first the Kingdom of God, (the welfare of creation, I might add) the other things which you also need, will cease to be available to you.”
We are now approaching that point in history.

There’s something scary in the air. Trump had that right, but he did not mention the Biggest Scare: Climate Change. His ‘Christian’ vice-president choice does not believe in Climate Change and also, not surprisingly, is a great advocate of unlimited gun access.

It seems that there is a universal eye-opening going on, as if we are awakening from a horrible hangover. It is not evident in our immediate surroundings. There it is quite peaceful. A few weeks ago a black bear came banging at our sun room-door, bouncing away into the bush as soon as it saw us. A pair of deer is regularly grazing in the field in front of our house. Squirrels are back after an absence of a few years, forcing me to squirrel-proof the bird feeders. I notice a greater variety of birds, although one humming bird is missing, but there is a mother turkey, surrounded by 7 little chicks parading in the yard. This morning I saw a fisher on our walkway.
Daily we thank the Lord for the beauty of the countryside where we live. The pallet factory in our village sells its leftovers, mostly good-size square blocks of clean hard wood, so we bought there enough fuel to last us 2-3 years. There’s a long waiting list for that stuff. The maple syrup harvest was good, and, thanks to a wonderful growing season and timely rains – and extra watering – the garden has never looked better, giving us this coming week the first green beans, the first new potatoes, with just one meal of last year’s crop left. Also my new hearing aids make it possible to hear the birds sing or screech – the blue jays and the woodpeckers.

I almost daily bike to the village store- 5.6 km away – on a new bike, as the old one needed new tires, extensive repair, costing more than it was worth. I love bikes and biking. Living on a busy highway, I always wear an orange shirt and peddle on the edge of the road with a mirror attached to my helmet, enabling me to spot what’s coming up behind me. Still it’s always prayer time when I am in the saddle.

Even though around our place it is a peaceable kingdom, the world at large is not at ease. More and more books and articles deal with the planet’s disintegration. Daily I study the global heat map where I often notice that the Far North in Canada and Siberia is one of the warmest places in the world, the area were the METHANE is buried in the permafrost, 20 times more dangerous for Climate Change, and ready to explode. The sins of our generation are visiting us with increasing ferocity.

Then there is the political scene. Turkey is clamping down on dissent, the USA is becoming a police state, Trump is as crazy as ever, France is frantic, Germany in jitters, Great Britain has its Brexit problems, Italy – and actually the entire world – has a serious debt problem, and in Africa famine approaches, and with it massive population movements, all trekking north toward Europe. In the USA the heat and the lack of moisture will cause food inflation, while the deluge of moneys released by central banks in the West has depressed interest rates below the zero mark. All this means that those who live from investments must pay ever more for daily food, while getting nothing back from their hard-earned money: the worst of all possible worlds.

Another personal note.

While I read non-fiction during the day (this week centering on the possible apocalypse) I read fiction in the evening. Having just finished one novel I just grabbed another book and discovered on the first few pages that THE CLOWNS OF GOD by Morris West is about a Pope who is forced to resign because he had a vision of the PAROUSIA, the return of the Lord. The Holy Father had just finished a draft of an encyclical written in the customary Latin with as title: IN HIS ULTIMIS ANNIS FATALIBUS – IN THESE LAST FATEFUL YEARS – trying to prepare the Roman Catholic Church for the return of the Lord, when his writing was leaked to the Curia, the Vatican cabinet, which wanted no part of it, and forced the Pope to resign.

I greatly believe in Providence, and picking that particular book at random signals to me that, yes, I should pursue this topic.
So what are the HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE?

Looking back, there have been total collapses before. The fall of Rome in the fifth Century is a good case, heralding the Dark Ages. Jared Diamond in his COLLAPSE has related several instances, of which the Easter Island is just one example. The peoples settling the isolated Easter Island around 900 AD engineered their own collapse after several hundred years of expanding their population and quarrying gigantic stone statues (weighing up to 270 tons) which they then moved to the perimeter of the island. They deforested the island and the surrounding waters filled with silt, while at the same time vast energies were expended on rivalries over which clan could build the biggest stone head. The first-recorded European contact with the island was on 5 April (Easter Sunday), 1722, when Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen visited it for a week and estimated a population of 2,000 to 3,000 inhabitants.
When Captain Cook arrived at the island in 1774, he found a tiny population (down perhaps from a peak of 20,000) that he described as “small, lean, timid, and miserable.” The civilization had collapsed in a cannibalistic endgame.

Collapse there was caused by population growth beyond the capacity of the land to support it, by destruction of good farmland, and the use of resources in tribal conflict and monument building. Leadership in both societies failed to respond to the handwriting on the wall. This sounds all too familiar.
As we fail to adequately address climate change and its root cause, will our society face a similar collapse? All signs point to this.

STRATFOR

Here’s what I found in STRATFOR. The name is an abbreviation of Strategic Information, one of the best- and also most expensive – news sources. When an outfit such as STRATFOR considers COLLAPSE we better take it seriously. Here’s part of it:

‘The obvious way to answer this question (of COLLAPSE) is by looking at how the various Dark Ages began and asking whether similar conditions apply today. Strikingly, in every case where we have enough evidence, we see the same five causal factors, which I like to call the Five Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

The first, which is always prominent, is mass migration, on a scale that the societies of the time cannot control. Just how many immigrants it took to destabilize borderlands and spread violence across entire empires must have varied, although DNA seems to suggest that in the wrong circumstances even a group less than one-tenth the size of the host population could bring the roof crashing in.

The second factor, often coming on the back of the first, is disease. Long-distance mass movements sometimes merged what had previously been separate disease pools, producing new infections to which hardly anyone was immune. Steppe nomads migrating across thousands of kilometers were probably the main vector for the Black Death, which killed perhaps a quarter of the world’s population between 1350 and 1400.

The third force, regularly linked to the first two, is state failure. Collapsing borders and shrinking populations often bring down governments too, and as chaos spreads, even states that have not been directly hit by invasion and plague can be sucked into the whirlpool.

Fourth, and strongly linked to the first three forces, is the collapse of trade. When failing states can no longer protect merchants, long-distance exchange networks break down, bringing starvation and yet more rounds of migration, disease and violence. Many historians think that the tipping point in the fall of the Roman Empire came when the Vandals invaded North Africa and cut off grain shipments to Italy from what is now Tunisia in 439. The city of Rome lost three-quarters of its population across the next two decades, and in 476 the Western Empire was officially declared defunct.

The fifth factor, always present but never in a straightforward way, is climate change. Some great collapses, such as that in the Eastern Mediterranean after 1200 B.C., coincide with rising temperatures; others, such as the Roman and Han Chinese breakdowns in the early first millennium, coincide with global cooling. The direction of climate change seems to matter less than the fact that any big change puts stress on farming, which — when everything else is already going wrong — might be enough to push people over the edge.”

So far STRATFOR.

When an important body, such as STRATFOR starts analyzing COLLAPSE then it is time to take it seriously. Take Trump. If he wins, collapse is certain. If he loses, collapse is also certain. That’s how tippy matters are.

So, are we in the last days?

IN HIS ULTIMIS ANNIS FATALIBUS – in these last fateful years- is that really true? Are we there now?

When the FLOOD came, the people then did have extensive warnings. After all, it took Noah and his clan – and they probably engaged outside help as well – many decades to gather the wood, to cut the planks to size, all with rather primitive tools, and so construct this monstrous ARK. Then the animals came, the same animals that now are disappearing at an alarming rate. Ample warning!

Jesus also gave pointers. He said, of course pointing to nature, when the trees are budding, we know that spring is near. In other words: Keep an eye on what’s going on.
When many millions are on the move, when the weather becomes weirder by the day, when the money-market goes haywire, when the TRUMP tragedy emerges out of nowhere, watch out: the last days are at hand.

Of course we will not heed the warnings. People in Noah’s days did not, and human nature is still the same.
No, we don’t know when The New Beginning is at hand. The church does not want to touch this subject, even though it is its very mission to prepare the people for The New Creation.
Does Acts 2 give us a model? Then, right after Pentecost when, in Jerusalem, thousands for the first time heard about Jesus and the Holy Spirit descended upon them, they expected Jesus to come back within their lifetime. So they pooled their resources and founded a tight community where they had everything is common.
Of course Jesus did not return then, and now, 2000 years later, he still has not come back. Yet, all the signs that our ‘civilization’ has run its course are everywhere.

Oh, yes, THE GREAT TRIBULATION!

According to Matthew 24: 21-22:”there will be great distress, unequaled, had those days not been cut short, no one would survive”.
Of course. We have built a society totally dependent on finite fossil fuel. Once it runs out, and it will, that’s the end. Electricity is fabulous; it makes this blog possible. Once is stops, so does everything: planes, trains, cars, trucks, computers. Within 2 weeks most people on the grid will be dead.

We live in the most vulnerable era in history. We have bet society on the most fragile of systems. Nobody knows when our infrastructure will collapse, but when it does….
Read the entire chapter 24 of the gospel of Matthew. It makes for the most interesting reading.

Fortunately: THE VEIL THAT HIDES THE FACE OF THE FUTURE WAS WOVEN BY THE HAND OF MERCY.

WHY 30 MINUTES OF SILENCE IN HEAVEN? (Revelation 8: 1)

But first a Rapture wrap up.

More than 50 years ago, for 6 years, from 1959-65, I served on an Ontario-wide Christian School Board with a man who became a good friend: he was the chairman and I the secretary. Fifty years is a long time and a lot can happen, and a lot did happen.
When I talked to him a few months ago he told me that he believed in Rapture and would be taken up to heaven just before the Great Tribulation would take place.
Well, the Great Tribulation is about to happen: Trump? Famine? Extreme Weather? Pandemic? Financial Collapse? All of them? Take your pick.
So will Rapture appear? Rapture is based on a single text in the New Testament book of 1 Thessalonians 4: 17, where it says that the believers still alive when the Lord returns “will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air.” That’s all. That the Lord has booked a one-way ticket back to earth is conveniently forgotten.
Nowhere else in the Bible is there any other reference to this event, and only the Pentecostals and the Southern Baptists in the USA take this as the gospel truth, as they fanatically believe in HEAVEN, a doctrine that, actually, all mainline churches, including the Roman Catholic Church, have adopted as God-given on even more flimsy evidence, but that is mostly due to Greek philosophical brainwashing (more about that later), ignorance and lack of pastoral guidance.

The sad truth is that what I call the HEAVEN HERESY is deeply ingrained in all churches. Even many hymns in the two song books I have, Presbyterian and Christian Reformed, two staunch Calvinistic churches, contain the heaven line, as in the well-known FOR THE BEAUTY OF THE EARTH, a song which praises the glory of the earth and sky, but still sees heaven as better, as is evident from the lines below.
For the joy of human love,
Brother, sister, parent, child,
FRIENDS ON EARTH AND FRIENDS ABOVE!

All oh so pious, but it is, as Bonhoeffer coins it: plain pious secularism. According to this hymn and scores of others, the earth is beautiful, but heaven beats the earth hands down. What kind of proof is there? Nobody has ever been there or has come back to boast, but still the hymns and the prayers and the cemetery sermons keep on repeating the lie.
The church is completely sold on the ’heaven’ deception, with immense consequences not only for the fate of the earth but especially for the entire gospel message. Jesus’ explicit message is to ‘first seek the kingdom’ which comprises all of creation, and once that is attempted, Christ promises that our entire life will fall into place.” (Matthew 6: 33). “Seeking the kingdom” means pursuing the welfare of God’s creation, living a life that benefits the trees, seeking the best for all waterbodies, has at its aim promoting clean air and improving the status of animal life, and I could go on. That’s far too God-honoring, so we take the easy way out, have heaven as destination, then we can pollute to our heart’s content.

That the church has robbed itself of the opportunity to preach hope to a world desperate for answers is totally forgotten, because proclaiming as our ultimate destination a renewed earth is vastly more appealing to the unconverted than going to some undefined pie in the sky heaven, wearing white robes, endlessly singing songs: totally boring!
Fact is that today the church proclaims the LIE. There is no other word for it. The TRUTH with capital letters is that “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”, now and always, into eternity. So how about the LEFT BEHIND movement? It too is pure bogus. Why is it false?
It is right there in Matthew 24: 36-39. There it relates how the people in the days of Noah had no clue what was going to happen – even though the ARK, under their very noses, was under construction for years on end. However the ruling opinion then was that Noah was a complete neurotic and was made the butt of many a joke, “until the flood came and took them all away.”
Who were taken away and who were left behind? The sinners all drowned and the righteous were LEFT BEHIND! The Rapture enthusiasts made a number of films and wrote books, called the LEFT BEHIND series. These Rapture prophets claim that the good people will be fetched into heaven, while the sinners, people like me who deny and even ridicule this entire concept, are left behind. Now, look again at Noah: Who were taken away? Who were raptured right into eternal death and drowned a miserable death? The mass of unbelievers who had made Noah and his family the center of their derision.

THE HEAVEN HERESY CONTINUED.

Rapture and going to heaven upon death are two sides of the same coin. Nowhere in the Bible is there one line that tells us that when we die we join God and his angels. Actually it is the other way around: God and his angels will join us on earth!
There still is a hymn out there with the horrible line: “Prostrate before Thy throne to lie and gaze and gaze on Thee.” I call this horrible because it totally contradicts the Bible, but, nevertheless the Billy Graham crowd swallows this as if it were a piece of cake. I remember Billy Graham, the Presidents’ pastor, being interviewed by Larry King on CNN. Skeptical Larry asked Bible Billy what would happen when he died. The ‘great’ evangelist responded: “Jesus will take me by the hand and bring me to God”, forgetting, or more likely not knowing that “God lives in inapproachable light, that nobody can see or ever has seen God” (1 Tim. 6: 16).

The heaven-destination, just like RAPTURE is of pure pagan origin, an inheritance from Greek philosophy of which Plato and Socrates were the chief proponents. When Socrates died, he welcomed death. In The Trials of Socrates, Plato depicts Socrates’ last moments before his death. Plato quotes Socrates: “I’ll no longer stay put, but will take my leave of you and depart for certain happy conditions of the blessed”.
Socrates is certain that he’s on the way to heaven, and even says a prayer to the gods after drinking the poison: “One is, I suppose, permitted to utter a prayer to the gods – and one should do so – that one’s journey from this world to the next will prove fortunate”. Socrates died to celebrate death.
Socrates gladly drank the chalice filled with deadly poison, seeing death as better than life.
Since Christianity became a global phenomenon, who has been more influential: Jesus or Socrates?
Sad to say: The Greek ‘heaven’ philosophy has blindly been assumed by Christians thanks to Socrates. That’s the reason why most of Christianity – almost every expression whether that is Roman Catholic, Pentecostal, left wing or conservative – has suffered from a form of dualism, splitting body from soul, sacred from secular. Socrates, as recorded by Plato, is the author of many ideas which are still 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’.

The Bible again.

Just as Donald Trump calls the Bible his favorite book, so do millions of Americans, who proudly carry it to church or prominently display its presence on the coffee table in the dining room, but they have no clue what’s in that book. For one thing, it never states that people go to heaven. What it does say is that death is like sleep.
Numerous Psalms simply say that death means going to the grave. Period. Jesus himself always sees death as ‘being asleep’. The last words in the Book of Daniel leave not a grain of doubt about our final destination: “As for you, go your way till the end. You will rest, and then at the end of days you will rise to receive your allotted inheritance.” Daniel, David, Isaiah, Paul, Peter, their remains are still out there, waiting for the Lord’s return.
Still unsure about heaven? Jesus direct words in that famous Chapter 3 of the Gospel of John, verse 13: “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven, the Son of Man.” Need I say more?

That same Paul, to whom the Pentecostals attribute RAPTURE, extensively writes about DEATH in 1 Corinthians 15 where he first talks about ‘those who have fallen asleep’ meaning, of course, those who have died. Their dead bodies are like seeds buried, to be resurrected when Jesus returns to judge the living and the dead. Just as a seed dies in the earth, to later appear as a tree or whatever, so the bodies of the Lord’s elect will rise in a glorified state.
The church has erred.

I am not exaggerating when I write that the FATE OF THE CHURCH hangs in balance here because escaping to Heaven either at death or in the so-called RAPTURE event really means that we have no basic commitment to the earth. The heaven heresy distorts the entire message for which Jesus came to earth and for which he died on the cross.
So what is so particular about the earth? Both J. H. Bavinck and Dietrich Bonhoeffer repeatedly say that God formed us from the earth and even named the first human in the Bible ADAM, which signifies Adamah, the earth out of which God fashioned us. Our bodies are earth, which feeds us, which provides all ingredients of life and is the place where we will sleep until the Lord wakes us. Both these theologians say that God- humanity- and the earth form an unbreakable unity.

SILENCE IN HEAVEN. WHY?

There’s something seriously wrong with the church. It is not the people. They are like those about whom Jesus, at Calvary says that “Lord, forgive them: they do not know what they are doing (Luke 23: 34).
It is the leadership that stands condemned. No surprise that James singles out the preachers: “they will be judged more strictly.” (James 3: 1).
If only the preachers had listened to Bonhoeffer, who wrote in CREATION AND FALL: “The church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things. It lives from the end, it thinks from the end, it proclaims its message from the end.”

The church of all ages has been far too preoccupied with worldly affairs, far too much involved with what ferments and foments here in the goings on in the world. The church of all ages has been too tied in with her present plight and not sufficiently geared to the final ending, not enough yearned for the completion. Heaven is waiting in vain for the church to do her thing: is waiting in vain for it to preach the coming of the Kingdom, is waiting in vain for the church to realize that it does not belong to a world ruled by the evil one, but belongs to the new earth to come.

That’s why we read in Revelation 8: “there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.” Why? I believe that Heaven is mourning the death of the church for failing to preach the Kingdom. Heaven mourns for half an hour. When we remember the millions died in the wars, we take two minutes. The angels needed 30 minutes to recall the “many billions who were called but the few who were chosen” (Matthew 20:16). During that 30 minute period of recollection also Jesus’ prophecy came to mind: “when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?” (Luke 18: 8).

Yes, the world is ready for judgement, but the church has failed to bring the message of judgment and the Good News of the Kingdom. If it only had confessed more ardently, if it only had prayed more fervently, if it only had looked forward to the coming of the King more eagerly, then it all would have fallen into place because God is capable to make all other matters come to pass. But the church has not done that, has been too preoccupied with going to heaven and has not been concerned enough for the earth. Now the SILENCE in HEAVEN signifies the death of the church.

And yet, there is the great paradox: extra ecclesiam nulla salus: outside the church there is no salvation.

HOW AND WHY GOD HAS DISAPPEARED.

“I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful” Deuteronomy 32: 20.

Trump and religion.

Of course, God is always there, somewhere, everywhere, if we believe what the Bible says. Because He has been barred from playing a role in business, politics , in society in general, and, yes, even in religion, prayer is needed more than ever.
Jesus alludes to God’s absence when, as recorded in John 17, just before going to his Father, he asks, “My prayer is that you protect them (us) from the evil one (verse 15) now that I am leaving,” indicating that the great enemy, the evil one, is in charge in the world. 1 John 5: 19 unambiguously confirms this when it says that ‘the evil one rules our world.’ If you don’t believe it, look it up if you have a Bible.

Over time the influence of the ‘evil one’ has gradually increased and now has become all pervasive.
No doubt some sort of god plays a large role in America, where he is a front-seat actor, especially in the Republican Party, which, by and large, has endorsed Donald Trump, who, in my opinion, embodies evil. He blatantly lied when he stated that the Bible is his favorite book.
What especially galls me is that when Trump met with hundreds of evangelical Christians, Dr. James Dobson, perhaps the most influential leader in the evangelical world, said that “Trump appears to be tender to things of the Spirit.”

I happen to know my Bible, and in Colossians 3: 12 “the things of the Spirit” are listed as ‘compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience”. Anyone who is following USA politics knows that not one of these attributes applies to this presidential contender: his taunts, his boastings, his uncharitable remarks on opponents, minorities, veterans, disabled, are well-known.
And then there is Jerry Falwell Jr., president of that ultra right-wing “Christian” Liberty University who expresses as his belief that “Donald Trump is God’s man to lead the nation.”
These are just two examples of “Christian” leaders endorsing a man who is the opposite of all that stands for Jesus and his teaching. Just one more quote from another influential church man, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Robert Jeffries who told his large flock that “any Christian who would sit at home and not vote for Donald Trump is motivated by pride rather than principle.”

These “men of God” as they call themselves, have totally lost touch with the God who has revealed himself in Jesus. Just imagine: these people want to do away with all environmental protection, scrap laws that protect the poor and introduce measures to make the rich richer.

It reminds me of an episode that ties in with this. I noticed it in THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV, Dostoevsky’s last book. It’s called “The Grand Inquisitor”. It’s a story that Ivan, the atheist Karamazov brother, has composed and recounts to his younger brother Alyosha, the aspiring priest. In it Jesus returns to the earth during the Spanish Inquisition. Ivan says: “It is fifteen centuries since signs from heaven were seen. And now the deity appears once more among the people.” Everyone recognizes him, because a blind man sees and a dead child rises. But the old cardinal, in charge of the Inquisition, takes Jesus to prison and tells him that: “You have no right to add anything to what you have said…. Why have you come to hinder us?” Ivan explains that this is a fundamental feature of the Church that God cannot ‘meddle’ now because “all has been given by you to the Pope. The Church is the authority now.”
The Grand Inquisitor then tells Jesus that he erred when he resisted the devil’s three temptations in the wilderness, where the devil offered him miracle, mystery and might, which the Church has accepted. Jesus, however, wanted them to have freedom of choice. But, says the clergyman, freedom is too difficult and frightful for the masses and so the Church has taken the three awesome gifts for them. The Inquisitor concludes: “We are not working with you, but with the devil– that is our mystery.” Jesus, still not speaking, kisses him on the lips. “That was all his answer.” The Grand Inquisitor opens the cell door and says, “Go, and come no more, never, never.” And the divine visitor leaves.
“Freedom is too difficult for the masses” says the cardinal, but that is an important part of Jesus’ teaching: “The Truth shall set you free”. The church of his day and of today rather not gives the people a free hand.

Is the result of this the following?
“Whenever God erects a house of prayer
The Devil builds a chapel there;
And ‘twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.”
Daniel Defoe in The True-born Englishman

By and large (of course there are exceptions that confirm the rule) the devil has taken over much of the instituted church. I greatly admire Pope Francis, but he is stuck in a system that is beyond reforming.

In many ways the Christian religion, as practiCed in North America, differs very little from Islam where the existence of the one and only god forms the cornerstone of this entire belief system. There Allah alone is the all-powerful authority. “We are not working with you, but with the devil– that is our mystery” is true of Islam and equally true of the American evangelical movement, which is owned by the Republican Party, abhors any environmental regulation, wants food stamps abolished and fully endorses the Rapture heresy.
No wonder these two “religions” hate each other: they are two sides of the same coin.

Jesus gave us two important rules for life.

Jesus gave a few directives in his brief sojourn on earth. One of them was “Love God above anything else”. Tell me: how possibly can say that we love great artists if we despise their works of art? When we say we love God and treat creation as totally expendable, then our attachment to God is completely phony.
The other direct rule Jesus gave us is in the Sermon on the Mount: “Seek first the Kingdom of God and its righteousness”. The Kingdom of God is his creation, this simply means that we always and everywhere must strive to improve creation and obey the laws that govern it. Show me a church where this is the case. Show me a person who does that. Our collective failure to pursue the aims of the Kingdom indicates our total lack to implement God’s intentions, which shows up in our willful neglect to preach and practise love for creation (John 3: 16), and is proof that we has not grasped the essence of the gospel.
This essentially means that we have eliminated God from society. God’s disappearance is our doing.

It all started long ago.

Of course Christianity has immensely influenced the Western world, witness the Roman Catholic Church and its long history. There the first Pope emerged 1700 years ago in the year 312 when the Emperor Constantin exchanged the Roman Eagle for the Christian cross. Ever since then the Roman Catholic Church has been fashioned along Roman Imperial lines, with the Pope resembling the Emperor, the Cardinals acting as consuls, while all the way down the line the priests have taken the place of the centurions.
All this has been a far cry from the simple instructions of Jesus when he wandered the earth, teaching his small group of followers of the kingdom to come.

Jacques Ellul. Ever heard of him?

Jacques Ellul is another of my favorite authors. He was a professor of law at the University of Bordeaux, France, and a member of the Resistance during the war. In his book – one of many I have – HOPE IN TIME OF ABANDONMENT, in its preface, he writes “The decisive importance of the promise, the approach of the Second Coming, the Eschaton, which is at our doorsteps, is the only hope we have. It is the only hope now that God has abandoned us.”
Why was Ellul so convinced that God has abandoned us?
Here are a few quotes from his book: “The glory of God cannot be made present by means of words (preaching alone, I might add, is totally inadequate)…..Paul tells us that the whole creation witnesses to his glory (Rom. 11: 38).. It is of the utmost importance to maintain this creation to the glory of God…..It is not only we humans who must live to God’s glory: it is the whole of creation! That’s why God has disappeared: it is no longer his creation.
“We no longer live in a natural universe. The things surrounding us are no longer the things of creation…..Where the things of creation are destined to manifest the glory of God, technological products express the glory of the human race…..
“When the light of the world becomes a darkened light, when the rainbow is reduced to the physical phenomenon, when the Ark of the Covenant is eaten by termites, the empty tomb is filled with our hermeneutics, when the kingdom of God is a political product, when the life in Christ is a mere symbol, when the dethroned King takes refuge in speeches, then the dead of night has won the heart and darkened the eyes. The dead of night is now”.
Enough of Ellul.

So what really set off God’s disappearance today?

God’s disappearance vastly accelerated with the universal use of fossil fuels, with the mass production of goods, setting the stage for the consumer society. Geert Mak, a Dutch writer, depicted this quite accurately in his HOW GOD DISAPPEARED FROM JORWERD.
In that book he described how a small town in the Frisian province of the Netherlands changed from a tightknit community to a bedroom town for city dwellers. He traced how the impact of the automobile and the rise of supermarkets in the larger cities killed off the small-town merchants, and emptied the churches, while cheap fuel and large farm machinery eliminated the need for farm laborers.

That phenomenon happened everywhere in the Western world. My own father, catering to small bakeshops in the North of Holland, became a victim of this development. It also fueled the Dutch large-scale emigration to Canada, where I was among those seeking new opportunities.
We now experience the great falling apart, of which Brexit is just a beginning.
All this reminds me of that children’s nursery rhyme: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

A Brutal choice.

Now the fuel revolution which started some 70 years ago has run its course. We are faced with the brutal choice: either quit fossil fuels or perish, an impossible dilemma because we have built our entire existence on cheap fuels. If we quit the carbon addiction, society must go back to the era before 1830, before the Industrial Revolution, when the world had some 1.5 billion people, when present day Germany consisted of 372 different regions, ruled by kings and dukes and princes, when Small was Beautiful. If we don’t quit, and that will happen, given the vested interests, everything will fall apart.

I started out with a Bible text.
“I shall hide my face from them. I shall see what their end will be, for they are a perverse generation, children who are unfaithful” Deuteronomy 32: 20.
That is God speaking, giving us power to rule his world, perfectly well knowing what the result will be.

It reminds me of Psalm 14 which has as its heading: THE FOOLS.

Here it is:
The fools have said in their hearts: There is no God above.
Their deeds are corrupt, depraved; not a good one is left.

From heaven the Lord looks down on the children of men
To see if any are wise, if any seek God.

All have left the right path, depraved every one;
There is not a good one left, no not even one.

See how they tremble with fear without cause for fear.
For God is with the just, whose refuge is in the Lord.

The fools in this Psalm are not stupid: they are agnostics who have their values all wrong.
So, why has God disappeared?
With 200 energy slaves at our disposal 24/7, with heat/cool at our fingertips, with 200 horsepower to transport us everywhere in total comfort, we have become little gods, no longer
needing the God Creator.

Of course this will not end well. The first stages of un-creation are becoming visible: signalling sickness, death, destruction: hell on earth.

P.S.
Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, has published three books I have translated from the Dutch: THE ECONOMICS OF HONOR, by Dr. Roelf Haan, BETWEEN THE BEGINNING AND THE END, A RADICAL KINGDOM VISION, by Dr. J. H. Bavinck, and just of the press THE RIDDLE OF LIFE, also by Bavinck.
A fourth book on REVELATION, again by Bavinck, will be published next year.

The RIDDLE OF LIFE is highly recommended by John Bolt of Calvin Seminary, calling it “A perfect gift for college-age students or others wrestling with the deepest questions of life.”
Order them at your bookstore or buy them online.

JULY 3 2016.

AN APPROACH MORE DIFFERENT.

On July 4 1951 my younger brother and I entered Canada in Fort Erie, Ontario, on the train from New York City where we had landed early that day having sailed on the luxury liner Veendam from Rotterdam, a 10 day journey.
Today, exactly 65 years later, we both have been success stories, both looking back upon decades of service to the communities we found ourselves in and both humbly seeing our children and grandchildren all doing extremely well. Amazing, simply astounding.

Yes, my blog is back on a new computer. The breakdown of my old one gave me an excuse to stop writing for a while. During these four weeks I used my fingers, not to type but to pull weeds, and used my knees not to hold my laptop but to crawl in the dirt and used my hands to push my electric – sun-powered – lawnmower and rototiller. Ah, my garden this year: practically no mosquitoes, few potato bugs, lots of heat and regular rain! Can’t wait to eat my beets and cabbages and potatoes and beans. Nothing better than home-grown stuff!

So why do I pick up this blog-business again?

Well, as a kid I always wanted to become a missionary in what was then the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia. That sort of desire is still in me, and since the only world-wide medium is the Internet, that’s where I see my calling. This may sound, and perhaps is presumptuous, but I feel that I have a perspective on matters religious that is different, different from what the churches teach and different from the generally accepted wisdom of the world, but that’s how I feel.
Here’s what I did in my 4 weeks of computer drought. Besides weeding I did a lot of reading. I reread Paul Kennedy’s PREPARING FOR THE 21ST CENTURY. I also went back to my Bonhoeffer’s books and more carefully studied the writings of J.H. Bavinck.

Paul Kennedy – a Yale history professor – wrote that book in 1989. He was correct on Climate Change but entirely missed Japan’s stagnation and the rise of China. Generally his pessimistic view has been born out.
Bavinck taught me a new word: Entgötterung. It contains the word “Gott” which is German for God. The “Ent” there means ‘deprived of’, so the German expression –and the Germans have created a lot of words that are untranslatable – means ‘living as if God does not exist”. In that connection T. S. Eliot got it right when he said that, “Men have left God not for other gods but for no God, and this has never happened before.”

I rediscovered that Bavinck wrote that the created Word is as important as the written Word, the Scriptures. That was more than 50 years ago, as he died in 1965. Now the cries of creation have become louder and louder, clamoring for greater emphasis on the created Word. Can the church, that old wineskin, absorb and preach this new wine, this new message of the growing importance and suffering of creation? Can the church shift from the three S’s: singing, sermons, and supplication, its business model for 2000 years, and give a more than prominent place to creation loving, God’s primary Word?

Let’s face it: God is gone.
God is barred from public intercourse. Religious consciousness has practically disappeared. For almost everybody God is dead. He has become the great irrelevant. The only mention of God is in the now so popular OMG – Oh My God. Whenever I hear that now so current expression I am inclined to ask: “Who and where is that God of yours?”, but I am afraid that I won’t get a reply.

Look at today.

There is no doubt that a world without God is a frightening world. The political system is not working: whoever you vote for, the same people win, the ones who control the money. Political funding ensures that parties have to listen to the rustle of notes before the bustle of votes, a line George Monbiot gave me. These problems are compounded by electoral systems that ensure most votes don’t count. This is why a referendum – as in Britain – is almost the only means by which people can be heard. Welcome to BREXIT and as in all revolutions – including the TRUMP mania – more confusion is guaranteed.

Our culture is no longer working. Look what’s happening everywhere: all that is left is a globalized shopping culture. Now that the SHOP TILL YOU DROP attitude has ceased to dominate it is torpedoing an economy that depends on it. We are sunk.
So what must we do? What must CHRISTIANS do?

I mentioned that both my brother and I look back upon decades of service to the communities we found ourselves in. As Dutch immigrants from a strict Reformed background we both were soon involved in what we then called KINGDOM BUILDING. My brother became a minister in the Christian Reformed Church, the favorite destination of Dutch immigrants, and I within a year was self-employed, giving me the freedom to sit on boards of various organizations, including church councils, helping to build schools, colleges, universities. We were instrumental in the building of a full range of Christian educational institutions, also branching out in such fields such as publications, mental health, labor, you name it.

What I suspect now is that we – the Dutch immigrants – have identified ourselves too much with these institutions: Look Lord what we have done! We have arrived!
But we never arrive, not until the Lord returns.

I also read a long article in a Christian College periodical by a man whose opinion I value, also because we have a first name in common “Egbert” and are both from the North of the Netherlands.
I am referring to Egbert Schuurman, P. Eng, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of Reformational Philosophy at several state universities in the Netherlands. His presentation had as aim to help Christians in politics to acquire a better vision in a rapidly changing culture. The speech was given in 2011, thus 5 years ago, and, I believe, it already is out-of-date in that short time.
Let me mention the positives. Schuurman is a great proponent of the Kingdom idea, something I also have stressed repeatedly. He categorically states that “The Kingdom of Christ is not of this world. But even as creation sighs and groans, Christ’s Kingdom will triumph!” In tune with both J. H. Bavinck and Bonhoeffer he states the “Christ is the meaning of history……Christ Kingdom will only come in its fullness beyond the horizon of earthly time.” I fully agree.

Yes, we have not, we can never build, THE KINGDOM. That is Christ’s doing.

However, in these five short years since he wrote this article, history has accelerated beyond anything previously. In my long life I have seen culture go from the horse and buggy stage to supersonic flight, from small organic farming to large destructive agricultural practices, totally ignoring the holiness of creation.

I agree with the other Egbert that: “The Reformation- in 1517 – did so to the glory of God, the Renaissance for the glory of man. In the eighteenth century the movement of the Enlightenment linked up with the latter, radicalizing and popularizing it.” ….”With the further radicalization of the Enlightenment in our own day, however, we seem to have gotten stuck.”

We are stuck.

There’s where we are now: we are stuck, witness Brexit, witness the rise of Trump. When people feel their world is vanishing, they are an easy prey for magical thinking and demagogues who blame immigrants. Fact is that people are feeling deeply anxious. It’s the story of our time: the pace of change in technology, globalization and climate have started to outrun the ability of our political systems to build the social, educational, community, workplace and political innovations needed for many citizens to keep up. We have globalized trade and manufacturing, and we have introduced robots and artificial intelligence systems. It’s left a lot of people dizzy and dislocated.
Especially in Climate Change the heat is on, setting the stage for massive world-wide food shortages. Already in China pollution from factory farms has wrought havoc in the air and water, so China has begun a push away from a meat-centered diet to a return to small-scale, organic farming and a switch to vegetarian diets, but the trouble is that a seven billion plus world population can only survive on an oil-based, factory-farmed meal ticket, insuring the death of creation.
Schuurman is also right when he writes that “The scientific-technical domination of the entire world, reinforced by one-sided economic development not only restricts humans in their freedom but threatens to deplete natural resources, pollute the environment, and destroys nature.”

So what does he see as the solution?
Schuurman consistently points to the Kingdom and its coming, which should be the aim of all Christians, especially for politicians of which he was one, having been a senator in the Dutch
parliament for 28 years.

However……………….

I disagree when he writes that ”God does not allow humans in their conceitedness to disrupt everything to the bitter end….Sometimes disasters can put humans back on track.”
That’s not how I read Revelation when the rule of the Antichrist will encompass the entire world. Climate Change, a direct result of technology, affects everybody and everything. It is simply too late to mend the current situation.

HERE’S WHERE I AM DIFFERENT.

For one thing I live in the country, where I use some mechanical tools – all solar powered – to aid in my growing a substantial portion of what we eat. People in the city cannot function without technology, yet, in the final analysis all technology depends on highly polluting fossil fuels, even the manufacture of solar panels and windmills totally relies on these sinful substances.
I also missed in Schuurman’s essay the mention of the HOLINESS OF CREATION, which I call God’s primary word.
Jesus, in his prayer, as recorded in John 17, especially asks his father to empower his followers who, with him gone to heaven, are on their own in an evil world, because, as 1 John 5: 19 indicates “We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one.” That evil is now universal.
Since Schuurman’s presentation in 2011 a lot has changed. In my opinion, in view of that “Entgötterung” symptom, people no longer are able to grasp what Christianity is all about, having acquired a completely different mindset. Also, by and large, the churches no longer preach or understand the Kingdom Message, basically making them obsolete. No wonder people are voting with their feet.

So what do I suggest?

Just as the Old Testament writings were basically organized during the Great Exile in the 6th Century before Christ when some 12,000 of the Israel elite were transported to Babylon, and there in isolation were able to organize what we now know as the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, so now too we must go into some sort of exile from the world to prepare for the New Creation. A couple of Scripture passages point to that: Jeremiah 51: 45 and especially Revelation 18: 4. Both texts urge us to abandon our sinful, godforsaken society “so that we will not share in her sins.”

Ouch. That hurts. Fact is that we all, Christian and non-Christian, in these last days, depend for our comfort in life and death on the energy derived from fossil-fuels. We now see this result in the global cancer that affects the climate everywhere, where even the most pessimistic predictions prove far too optimistic.
Perhaps my wife and I, living amidst an abundance of trees, always aware how pests and weeds daily remind us of the curse the occupants of the Garden of Eden brought on us, has given us a taste for a different eternity, more in line with the Paradise expectations.

Does that make me DIFFERENT? Is my notion that we go into some voluntary exile really something that needs to be explored? Or is it an escape from a collapsing economy?
My suggestion does mean a drastic departure from a society that is rapidly becoming impossible to maintain and has largely abandoned any notion about God and the Coming of the Kingdom, the promised New Creation.

May 22

PRO TRUMP? ANTI CHRIST.
SICK BODIES, SICK MINDS

Last week I wrote that the disappearance of trees deprives the people in the world of the power to combat the polluting pests that invade our respiratory systems, our lungs and throats, and mold us for a multitude of maladies.
No wonder ill health is now a global issue. That America is in the throes of a systemic health crisis can no longer be denied. According to the U.S. Department of Health And Human Services, more than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are overweight or obese. (Overweight is typically defined as a body-mass index (BMI) of 25 or higher. A BMI of 24.9 is not exactly featherweight; I would have to add 20 pounds to reach a BMI of 24.9. )
The health risks of being overweight or obese include:
• type 2 diabetes
• heart disease
• high blood pressure
• nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (excess fat and inflammation in the liver of people who drink little or no alcohol)
• osteoarthritis (a health problem causing pain, swelling, and stiffness in one or more joints)
• some types of cancer: breast, colon, endometrial (related to the uterine lining), and kidney
• stroke
It’s even worse elsewhere. According to the influential medical magazine THE LANCET, 90 percent of the world population already suffers from some sort of disease.
Yes, the general overall health is poor.

I blame the use of carbon-based products. There is not a person in the world free of chemical contaminants, due to the universal presence of airborne particles originating from automobile exhausts, electricity generating stations, pesticides and fertilizers. Yes, the tens of thousands of compounds originating mostly from our oil-based industrialization have invaded the very essence of humanity. I expect that, once a PANDEMIC has a foothold, the onslaught will be unimaginably fierce and deadly.

Body and mind are intimately connected. There is a Latin stating that MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO, which means that a “sound mind and a sound body go together”. The opposite is true as well: an unhealthy body leads to a deranged mind: sick bodies, sick minds.

That’s what we have today: a lot of deranged minds. It does not take a great number of them to create a lot of havoc. I taught high school for a few years – wasn’t very good at it – and discovered that a few bad elements can throw the entire class in disarray. The same is true wherever. Anger, frustration, and plain stupidity are poisoning society. They are roiling the ranks also of the educated and people you would normally think of as the protected class.

Take the USA, a good example of SICK BODIES, SICK MINDS. Donald Trump comes along and says he understands and sympathizes with average Americans; and he’s the one who expresses that frustration in terms that a majority of the unprotected can understand. Other candidates may sympathize, too, but what comes out of their mouths sounds like conventional political yak-yak. Whatever you want to say about Donald Trump, when you hear him speak he doesn’t sound like a normal politician.

What is true on the political scene also applies to the economy. There too the old investment models no longer work as the underlying tectonic plates are shifting under our feet, making our old models spit out unreliable predictions. So it’s time to seriously think about throwing out our patterns for political predictions, because we’re in the middle of what is likely to be an epic generational shift in voting procedures. There too past performance is not indicative of future results.
Regular readers know that I am not very optimistic about the fate of us humans: we have created a society that is rushing to the abyss. The problem is that we see ourselves as gods, and have assumed infinity as our hallmark and live accordingly. We have forgotten about the GOD who really is infinite. We have ridiculed this GOD: worse have ignored him and so have lost the wisdom that comes from fearing the true GOD.
With us as gods there is no place anymore for the real God. So God has abandoned us. The rebellion we see in the voting public really is rebellion against God. Pro
Trump? Anti-Christ!

That has been especially evident in our treatment of creation, GOD’s crown jewel, the very object of God’s love.
Not everybody undergoes a true conversion, a life-shaking experience. I did in 1972-3. Then two books then changed my outlook on life: a Dutch book questioning heaven as the destination for Christians and pointing to the new Creation as our eternal habitat, and LIMITS TO GROWTH by Dennis Meadows. Realizing that not heaven but a renewed earth is where I will dwell forever and ever, caused me overnight to become an ardent earth-lover, reasoning that when our ultimate destination is this very earth, then I must now live that life of eternity. Meadows convinced me of the FINITENESS of all earth’s resources. These books two have changed my life: a true conversion.

Forty years later Dennis Meadows, in January 2013, was interviewed by the German weekly DER SPIEGEL, published in English, at the 40th anniversary of that book. In that interview Dennis Meadows said more clearly than ever that HUMANITY IS STILL ON THE WAY TO DESTROYING ITSELF.
Meadows makes a perhaps somewhat confusing distinction between universal and global problems. His words:
“You see, there are two kinds of big problems. One I call universal problems, the other I call global problems. They both affect everybody. The difference is: Universal problems can be solved by small groups of people because they don’t have to wait for others. You can clean up the air in Hanover without having to wait for Beijing or Mexico City to do the same.

“Global problems, however, cannot be solved in a single place. There’s no way Hanover can solve climate change or stop the spread of nuclear weapons. For that to happen, people in China, the US and Russia must also do something. But on the global problems, we will make no progress.”
So how do we deal with problems that are global? It’s deceptively simple: We don’t.
His core message remains valid today: Humanity is ruthlessly exploiting global resources and is on the way to destroying itself.
When asked whether he believes that the ultimate collapse of our economic system can still be avoided he answered:
“The problem that faces our societies is that we have developed industries and policies that were appropriate at a certain moment, but now start to reduce human welfare, like for example the oil and car industry. Their political and financial power is so great and they can prevent change. It is my expectation that they will succeed. This means that we are going to evolve through crisis, not through proactive change. Even if we want to – and I am one who wants to – we no longer can change the way we live.”

Dr. Meadows is entirely correct. Except for an occasional couple, very few takes Climate Change seriously. TV has as its main source of income the automobile industry, urging people to purchase their polluting products. Oh, yes, governments talk big and perhaps even try to influence people somewhat – not too much because that might backfire – but gradual change will never solve our real big problems. The bitter truth is that we simply will continue what we are doing until we are in the midst of a full-blown crisis. Nothing can avoid that.

The ultimate outcome is the end of the world as we know it: and I say GOOD RIDDANCE. A TRUMP victory – very likely – and Britain leaving the European Union, the so-called BREXIT – also very likely – will only increase the tempo of deterioration, simply because the MENS SANA IN CORPORE SANO is no longer the deciding criterion in our day.

My brother in the Netherlands sent me an item about Isaac Newton. On 22 February 2003, the Daily Telegraph (London, England) published a front-page story announcing Isaac Newton’s prediction that the world would end in 2060. Then people thought that 400 years in the future would be the same as an eternity. Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician, most famous for his law of gravitation. He was the man who, in the 17th century, started the scientific revolution. Of course he then could not have possibly imagined today’s conditions, with a carbon-based industry, nuclear bombs, and a world population increasing from some 500 million then to more than 7 billion now. And Climate Change!

Admit it: we have painted ourselves into a corner. We no longer can change course to prevent ourselves from hitting boundaries. We hit the wall face first, and only then do we pick up the pieces and take it from there.
Jacques Cousteau, a French naturalist, was also quite blunt about it:
The road to the future leads us smack into the wall. We simply ricochet off the alternatives that destiny offers: a demographic explosion that triggers social chaos and spreads death, nuclear delirium and the quasi-annihilation of the species… Our survival is no more than a question of 25, 50 or perhaps 100 years.

We see it all too clearly in the weather. Climate Change is not increasing in a linear way but exponentially. Actually everything is on an exponential path. Since Newton in the 17th century, and especially since the Industrial Revolution world population, industrialization and resource depletion have grown exponentially, while our answers to them go only linearly.
True, today we live longer, but we are in many ways much weaker than our ancestors, kept alive by drugs and oil-based conveniences. We have become so dependent, as modern western men and women, on the blessings of our energy surplus and technology that 9 out of 10 of us wouldn’t survive if we had to do without them.
There is a more or less general recognition that we face three global problems/crises: finance, energy and climate change. Climate change should really be seen as part of the larger overall pollution problem. As such, it is closely linked to the energy problem in that both problems are direct consequences of the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
When we use energy, we produce waste; use more energy and we produce more waste. And there is a point where we can use too much, and not be able to survive in the waste we ourselves have produced.
So we change a light bulb and get a hybrid car. That’s perhaps an answer to the universal problem, and only perhaps, but it in no way answers the global one. With a growing population and a growing average per capita consumption, both energy demand and pollution keep rising inexorably. And the best we can do is pay lip service. Sure, we sign up for less CO2 and less waste of energy, but we draw the line at losing global competitiveness.

Small changes won’t do it.

The bottom line is that we may have good intentions, but we utterly fail when it comes to solutions. And if we fail with regards to energy, we fail when it comes to the climate and our broader living environment, also known as the earth.
We can only solve our climate/pollution problem if we use a whole lot less energy resources. Not just individually, but as a world population. Since that population is growing, those of us that use most energy will need to shrink our consumption more every passing day. And every day we don’t do that leads to more poisoned rivers, empty seas and oceans, barren and infertile soil. But we refuse to even properly define the problem, let alone – even try to – solve it.
Almost all people in the world now experience a sense of dread. And they have valid reasons. Sick minds rule. No wonder people are in a state of panic because they sense that the old ways have not worked, so perhaps, perhaps, voting for Trump or Sanders and for Brexit will do the trick. Of course it will not: it will make it worse. There are no answers anymore: that is the predicament we are in.

Let me rephrase that. In John 17 Jesus’ prayer is recorded. There, in verse 14 he states that those who believe in him do not belong to a world of which Satan has taken possession, where God has left us to our devices. There Jesus asks the Father to protect those who live for and look for the New World to come: His Kingdom.

There’s where we are at, there’s our answer: ora et labora, pray and prepare.

MAY 15 2016

THE PAWNBROKER

So, who is this PAWNBROKER? Wait, not so fast.

First some general stuff. We all know that pawnbrokers do not have a good name. They exploit people whose access to ready cash is non-existent, and, in order to raise money, they pawn a precious item, such as a wedding ring or another piece of jewelry, something valuable and not something needed for day-to-day survival. When they want that treasure back, they can redeem it by paying the advanced money plus, of course, interest. If it is not bought back within a certain time, the pawnbroker may sell it.

Pawning was popular at one time. In Britain in the late 19th century and early 20th century, there were nearly as many pawnbrokers as pubs, lending money on anything from bed linen and cutlery to father’s ‘Sunday best’ suit. Margaret Atwood, in her book on PAYBACK: DEBT AND THE SHADOW SIDE OF WEALTH recalls how her parents, respectable middle class people, then living in Montreal, pawned an item to pay for a hospital bill. That was during the Depression 1929-39 when cash was in short supply and banks were loath or even unable to lend.

Let me be a bit more specific.
Suppose that I have a very precious item, a real large diamond, and in order to live the life of riley and enjoy the world’s pleasures to the full, I pawn that highly valuable item so that I can party and visit all the world’s dream locations.
Heard that story before? Look no further than the parable of the PRODIGAL SON. He cashed in his inheritance and boozed and gambled it away. In the end, of course, the Reckoning comes, as was the case with this young fellow about whom Jesus tells this story as related in Luke 15: 11- 32. There this spendthrift ended up in hell and, utterly broke, made his way back to his paternal home.
Not quite a pawnbroker story, but close, as he pawned his future to live in the presence.

I believe we are doing something quite similar.

But what about that PAWNBROKER?

First some more ancient history. When God formed the earth the potential for enhanced beautification was built into the structure. I gather this from a text I quoted last week – Genesis 2: 9. There it says that God made all kinds of trees, “beautiful (most important) to look at and good for food (of secondary ranking).”
Then God, generous to a fault, gave creation to us to beautify it, to make it even more marvelous and eye catching and fabulous. Where do I get that idea? Well, simple, in the text the beauty aspect comes first. That to me suggests that our primary task in life is to enhance creation, is to promote the arts, to make and write beautiful music, paint marvelous pictures, build pleasing structures, and make great gardens.

Has that been the case?

No, I don’t have to elaborate here: the newscasts repeat it ad nauseam. Just one line. Thomas L. Friedman, in last week’s New York Times column wrote: “U.S. foreign policy now is all about containing disorder and messes.” That’s the world today: global unrest and disasters.

Back to way back, when all things started in the Garden of Eden: the good and the bad. There the Devil made humanity look at the tree again. THE TREE. Why the tree? There is no more precious item in creation, apart from us humans, than THE TREE.

As soon as I had bought the parcel where I built our house in 1975, I planted 4000 trees. I had read in THE NEXT ONE HUNDRED YEARS by Jonathan Weiner, how Greg Marland of the US Department of Energy had calculated the number of trees needed to counterbalance the C02 we pump into the air. He came to 4500 new trees for a typical North American, much less, of course, for people in Africa, India and China. I figured that being careful, having solar energy, building a solar passive house, well insulated, growing food, bike wherever possible, our burden on the atmosphere would not exceed 2000 trees. What are the highest users of oxygen? CARS. With their combustion engines they cannot operate without a constant supply of oxygen.
Fortunately we – my wife and I- live among trees: to the north and east there is a lot of old growth, both hardwood, such as oak and maple but mostly pine, and to the west we planted those 4000.

Diane Beresford-Kroeger, in her book THE GLOBAL FOREST describes how trees are our lungs and absorb our pollution. She writes: “A healthy tree with a wide canopy around a house will significantly reduce particulate pollution. Urban forests and forested areas in our neighborhoods, parks and cities have the same effect on the urban environment. Global forests do this on a planetary scale. They form a living wall for health and a basic barrier to the pillage of pollution.”

The opposite is also true: creating conditions – as we have done – where forests go up in flames, increases the occurrence of PANDEMICS, because the harm we do to our trees, we do to ourselves. Now with untold millions of trees going up in smoke, not only depriving us of precious sources of CO2 absorbance, but also creating millions of tons of Carbon Dioxide in the process, we are losing the battle of Climate Change in an accelerated fashion. Don’t for a minute think that we can avoid the effects of Global Warming: it will speed up beyond the most pessimistic estimates.

Wendell Berry in his THE UNSETTLING OF AMERICA connects it all to religion. “Agriculture means cultivation of land. And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of ‘culture’ and ‘cult’. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in ‘culture’.”

Of course. As I so often have said: the earth is holy. Working in the earth is a religious act. I feel that especially now, in the spring time. That means that working in the garden where I use a spade to make beds and a rake to smooth them out is an act of worship. When doing that I thank the Lord for allowing me to till his holy earth and so grow our food. I have a feeling of elation when I work the soil, a sense of holiness. Writes Berry: “To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle”.

Both Dietrich Bonhoeffer and J. H. Bavinck have said that “God, we and the earth are one.” I fully sense that. Once we forego ‘being true to the earth’ faith is no longer possible. That is a radical statement, I know. The Belgic confession comes to mind again which asks the basic question: HOW DO WE KNOW GOD?, and answers it by pointing to creation as God’s Primary Word. Writes J. H. Bavinck: “That is why Scripture and Creation are never at odds. They always form a unity where the one reinforces the other.” Psalm 119: 105 unambiguously says: “Your word – the Scriptures – is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path (in creation).

TREES are so precious and personify creation: every tree symbolizes the planet. I believe that with that in mind God planted some special trees in the Garden of Eden: the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
We now are starting to see that we cannot live without trees. Yet, thanks to our disastrous living habits, wantonly altering the weather, causing drought and heat, we are killing THE TREE OF LIFE and with it ALL OF LIFE. We now also are discovering what is good and what is evil. Good means fidelity to the natural world. Evil means exploiting the natural world for our own purposes and greed. It seems to me that natural life centers on trees.

John in his book REVELATION in Chapter 12 sees a dragon. There he did not think of all sorts of monsters such as they appear in the Babylonian and Egyptian myths, but was primarily focused on what is described in Genesis 3. This dragon is not the primeval ocean, not some sort of mythic monster, not the personification of the chaotic powers in the cosmos, but he is the ‘ancient snake’, the ‘devil and Satan’ who ‘has seduced the entire world.’
That he is depicted in Revelation 12 as ‘the great red dragon’ must indicate that he is as red as flames as if he wants to destroy the entire cosmos in his roaring rage and frightening fires. There is only one dragon, one mind-killing monster which throughout all the ages, especially today, has only one goal: death and destruction.

That process of death and destruction is now in full swing.

The fires we see burning in the northern forest, especially in Canada and Siberian Russia, are unstoppable until the winter sets in – if there will be a winter. This past January there were forest fires in Alaska, and we know how far north that is. Last winter, at times, it was warmer on the North Pole than in much of the USA. This essentially means that global fires could burn all year.

All this finally brings me to THE PAWNBROKER.

God created the earth. He then gave it to us and this precious possession we PAWNED it because we wanted to speed matters up, reluctant to go the slow, organic way. We wanted to be able to act like gods, just like the Prodigal Son, and Satan offered us that very possibility on condition that we transferred the ownership of earth to him, which we did, so he gave us carte blanche to pursue our desire.
Just as that young fellow in Jesus’ parable, we squandered our inheritance. We now see the earth’s treasures diminish in value, exactly what the great PAWNBROKER had in mind, because his intent was not to make a profit, but his payment came in the form of REVENGE: the destruction of the cosmos which God called ‘good’ seven times.

Today we are, whether we like it or not, aiding the Devil in his aim. This year 2016 is already the warmest ever. More extreme heat will accelerate fires, already at their worst. When Noah’s flood had subsided, God promised never to initiate a world-wide disaster again. Now we have become like gods and are capable to destroy the world all by ourselves.

What or who will redeem this world out of the clutches of the PAWNBROKER? Today this is not a simple case of expensive jewelry, that, with a bit of luck, or perhaps, from the proceeds of an inheritance, can easily be redeemed.
What is at stake now is the very survival of the planet: the lives of billions of people are at risk, plus all the animals, the plants, and, of course, the trees.
But there is HOPE. Through these disasters God is bringing his Kingdom.

The central point of the Gospel is not us, poor humans and our pain and suffering; rather, its entire focus is aimed at the unique and powerful reality that God wants to reinstate his Kingdom.

It is God’s intention to unite all fractured parts of his creation into one overarching harmony. The goal of our life can only be that we again become part of the wider context of the Kingdom of God, where all things are again unified under the one and only all-wise will of him who lives and rules forever.
Christ on the cross paid the price, including principal and interest, to buy creation back from THE PAWNBROKER, who in that curious interval between making the ‘real estate’ deal final, and taking possession, is out to destroy as much of creation as possible, with, sad to say, us as his unwilling, or mostly willing, allies.

All this makes John 3: 16 the most important text in the Bible. It has everything to do with the redemption of creation, buying it back from THE PAWNBROKER and restoring it to its former pristine condition.
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