AUGUST 25 2018
THE TWO WITNESSES,
CATASTROPHIC CLIMATE CHANGE, and
NEAR TERM EXTINCTION
Revelation 11 has this strange story about two witnesses who appear out of nowhere, get a pretty good reception at first, then are killed, their bodies publicly displayed to the great delight of the crowd, then miraculously resurrected, and fetched up to heaven, followed by an enormous earthquake. Curiously during the past week there were 144 earthquakes in The Ring Of Fire, magnitude 4.3 or more. Is the Big One on the West Coast next?
J.H. Bavinck, in his EN VOORTWENTELEN DE EEUWEN, dealing with REVELATION, the last Bible book – which I have translated, 85,000 words, and gave the provisional title of AND ON AND ON THE AGES ROLL – describes this ‘witness’ episode in detail.
Here are some excerpts.
“At the same time these two witnesses will raise their voices in the world. The time for missionary work has past. Come and gone. The good news has done its job in the world. We now live in a time of apostasy, of chaos, and dissolution. Amidst this witless and disoriented generation these two persons, operating separately, will arise in the name of God.
“Their words will be seen and heard and read throughout the world thanks to the Internet. These two witnesses will appear in the midst of the utmost insanity of a world swiftly speeding to complete collapse. Millions will monitor their message. Are they the ones who can give new hope to a generation that is so tired and has lost its foothold? Do they have a new message for a world that is dying from uncertainty and insecurity?
“Again they will hold high the age-old message that only Jesus Christ is Lord, and that only in returning to him there is salvation. And when they proclaim this, the word will sound as something new, as something fresh, as something that deals with all the problems of the then living generation. Nothing stale, nothing withered, nothing that sound like platitudes or lack fire in their delivery, no, every word will sparkle with spirit and expressed with extraordinary eloquence. Even the most unrepentant unbeliever will realize that this pair knows what they are talking about and what they say is not some old-wife tale, but is the bruising reality.
“Will that mean that a general conversion will come about? Will these two really generate a following? There will be moments when it will look that this would actually happen, especially when, in their blind hate, some of them will try to kill them, and find out that this is impossible because they are authorized by God. That especially will force many to openly consider to follow these two witnesses and to accept their words.
“But still, their performance will not lead to universal conversion. The people of those days cannot really accept them as sent by God. Their message is too old-fashioned, too opposed to their deepest and most secret thoughts. After all they say things that has been heard from time immemorial and already then rejected as useless. They bring something to the fore that has, for centuries, been repeated ad nauseam and already then seen as something impossible for the modernity to embrace.
“These two witnesses, the carriers of the very last exhortation on behalf of God, will perish in the end, as so many other prophets and apostles before them. But that will still have to wait because of the then current universal confusion and disintegration. But eventually censure will halt the spread of the news and the film in the TV cameras will be destroyed. Forcefully the authorities will suppress all gossip related to it. These two witnesses are now old news. They were clever operators, but their time is up. We now must look ahead. Forget about the nonsense of these old fashioned preachers.”
So far Bavinck’s prophetic words.
My comments.
All this sounds pretty up-to-date. It is so true that the church is beyond repair. The current news about the Roman Catholic Church confirms that: only when Pope Francis issues an edict that from now on priests are allowed to marry or openly live with homosexual partners, and simultaneously give nuns the priestly status, will that church be saved.
Hans Küng, a now retired Catholic theologian, once said that it is within the power of the pontiff to abolish celibacy, and he informed Pope Francis of this, but, I believe, this will cause the CURIA to ask the Mafia to place a contract on the Pope.
More on the church as institute: it has too much baggage, too many buildings, far too much hierarchy, Pope, Cardinals, Archbishops, Bishops, Priests, all eager for more power.
Once the church abandoned house-churches and went into the building business, it sealed its doom.
Back to Bavinck:
“But apart from blaming the church there is another factor that acts as a delaying agent, something which now slowly is becoming visible. The very end can come only when the world has first degenerated into a condition where, in the most radical sense, the entire earth has become rebellious, godless, chaotic and lawless. Sin must become public, sin must be revealed what it in the most explicit sense really is and always has been.”
I believe that moment has now come, personified in the devilish appearance of Donald Trump. His ascent fits in precisely with the basic meaning of the Book of Revelation, which Bavinck describes as:
“Everything must become what they are. That is one of the dominating motifs of this remarkable book of the Bible, a motif that only at the very end of time comes to us in its naked reality: “Let they who do wrong let them continue to do wrong; let they who are vile, continue to do vile; let they who are right, continue to do right; let they who are holy, continue to be holy”. (Rev. 22:11).
“Right now his world is covered by a haze of untruthfulness: all things seem different than they are. The devil disguises himself as an angel of light, while the children of God often poorly reflect God’s image in their daily walk of life. Everything is unclear, unreal and non-transparent.
“Under the force of constant hammer blows, still raining upon this pseudo world, humanity finally becomes the humanity it was meant to be in the most detestable sense of the word, the real human, that is the rebel, the prisoner, the doubting, and the unconverted. World history, stripped bare from all pretenses, is not simply a record of events: it is nothing else than that through all these happenings, through prosperity and adversity, through wars and peace, through increase in knowledge and culture, through all this and more, in the end everything becomes what it always has been. That’s why the Kingdom of Jesus Christ, the reign of him who calls himself the Son of man, can only come when the Kingdom of the Beast has the entire world in his grasping hands.”
That is my introduction.
Here comes my speculation.
The church, as Bavinck points out, no longer can generate enough credibility to speak to the world in convincing terms. I already mentioned the Roman Catholic Church, with her priest problem. Look at the Pentecostals and the Southern Baptists with their heaven and rapture fakery. Look at the church that is following Trump. Today the entire word “Christian” has become a no/no word.
So my approach is totally different.
In my opinion two witnesses HAVE arisen. They unabashedly speak their mind and we better listen to them. Both can be found on YouTube.
Dr. Guy McPherson was a professor of Ecology and Nature Studies at the University of Arizona, for 20 years, when he resigned voluntarily before being pushed out by his department because of his views.
So what are his views? Based on his observations – which can be found in the ARCTIC NEWS website – he shows, conclusively in my opinion, that abrupt Climate Change is about to happen leading to extinction of all that lives, including us humans, hence the new acronym : NTE or Near Term Extinction.
He basically says that, “What happens in the Arctic doesn’t stay in the Arctic. By upsetting the energy balance of the planet we are changing the temperature gradient between the equator and the pole. This in turn sets in motion major re-organizations of the flow patterns of the atmosphere and ocean.” This is confirmed by Chris Rapley, professor of climate science at University College London. “The consequences are emerging and they are disruptive, and likely to become even more profoundly so”.
When you view his many videos on YouTube, you will see that Dr. McPherson is afraid that next season, 2019-20, will be decisive as by then the entire Arctic will be ice-free, which, according to him, confirmed by Sauli Niinistö, the Finnish Prime Minister, will mean the End of the World.
Here’s why.
Once the Arctic heats up, the Giga-tons of METHANE, a gas 100 times more lethal that CO2 Carbon Dioxide, will be released in the atmosphere, and cause a temperature rise of TEN DEGREES CELSIUS, high enough to burn us all. It reminds me of 2 Peter 3: 12, “That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.”
McPherson often says that a doctor, asked by a patient how long he or she will live, never gives an exact time-frame. McPherson does the same. It reminds me of Jesus’ words in Matthew 24: 36, “”But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father”. This to me suggests that we can perhaps pinpoint the year but that’s it.
I see this man as one of the witnesses, telling us to be ready, and emotionally and spiritually prepare ourselves to meet our Maker.
Then there is Dr. Jordan Peterson, witness Number Two.
He now is quite famous. He wrote “THE 12 RULES FOR LIFE, an antidote to Chaos”, which sold more than 2 million copies.
In this book he ashamedly professes that life is suffering, that human nature is sinful, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. Repeatedly he quotes the Bible and sees it as foundational for life. God ‘spoke’ and he sees the LOGOS as the ultimate wisdom, referring to Christ as the perfect human, and resurrection as a given.
To quote Bavinck again, “And when they proclaim this, the Word will sound as something new, as something fresh, as something that deals with all the problems of the then living generation. Nothing stale, nothing withered, nothing that sounds like platitudes or lack fire in their delivery, no, every word will sparkle with spirit and expressed with extraordinary eloquence.”
Dr. Peterson is like that, witness his many presentations on YouTube, especially when interviewed by Paul VanderKlay, a Christian Reformed minister.
I see both these men as the Two Witnesses as described in Revelation 11, the 21st Century version.
Fact is that the church no longer can play its original role, constrained as it is by historical development. It usefulness is gone even though it will remain till the end, functioning in its historical capacity as the public face of religion. Bonhoeffer’s statement that “the church of Christ witnesses to the end of all things, it lives from the end, it acts from the end, it proclaims its message from the end,” is almost always ignored.
All this is fully in line with Jesus’ statement that THE END will come like a thief in the night. (Revelation 3: 3).
My topic this week is indeed very controversial. Many will disagree. Jesus, in Matthew 24:33, said: “Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near. Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door.”
In today’s parlor, this means, “As soon as you read about the Sixth Extinction, and the ice disappearing in the Arctic, and people like Guy McPherson warning about the positive feedback of Methane, and Jordan Peterson making the Bible relevant again to young and old, you better take the words of Matthew 24 to heart: time is rushing to the END.