Categories
Politics and Society today

Winding down 2022

As this year draws to a close, what do I think of the worldwide events over the past twelves months and where we seem to be going next? I don’t really know. I’m winding down 2022. How about you?

I was hoping Jesus would have returned. 

Someone asked me today, “Do you think there is going to be World War III?” Now, soon, ever?

I replied, “I don’t know — but it looks like we will burn up ourselves, somehow, sometime.”


I forgot to ask the other person’s thoughts. Why? I suppose because it really doesn’t matter what we think. I long ago learned: to offer an opinion is fruitless and even pointless. I attempt to put that into practice as a lifestyle (albeit with some lapses). What is better than opinion? The Truth that sets us free: Jesus!

As we close the curtains on 2022, we are on the brink of nuclear war and worldwide famine. Violence is on the streets across this nation and most others it seems, people are poorer than a year ago or ten, and disease (real or manufactured) is a constant threat. How can we live “as normal”?

I focus on Jesus, not the storm

There are facts and there are conspiracy theories. I recall hearing a flip comment about psychosis many years ago that went something like this: “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you!”

Conspiracy theories do seem to surround us. But just because there is a claim of conspiracy doesn’t mean there isn’t an actual threat, does it? I ask because there are two sides to every story, and this seems to include whether or not to lock down, whether or not to wear a mask, and whether to or not to take the vaccine. 

Whether the topic is the pandemic, global warming, war, or cancel culture, the war in the West is not so much between the Ukraine and Russia as it is between conservative values and wokism. Our culture, values, freedom of speech seems to be debated or simply cancelled based largely (in the UK at least) on the basis of a document called The Equalities Act, 2010 which deliberately or inadvertently has fostered a despising of anything white, male and/or middle class: past, present and future. Everyone is equal except those who are in the majority.

When will Jesus return?

Romans chapter 1 focuses upon the erosion of society when GOD is forgotten. Certainly in the West, we are now reaping what we have been sowing for a long time: A world without GOD.

Jesus says in Matthew 24 that he will return before total calamity, which is also destined to take place.  Our children are being targeted in various ways, to be brainwashed into thinking against Judea-Christian values through indoctrination of extremes of one kind or another; our humanity is being tempted toward a uniting with Artificial Intelligence… I for one hope things don’t deteriorate much more. 

But eventually, things will deteriorate even more. The Restrainer: the Holy Spirit, will be lifted, will be removed from the earth one day. And at that time, I hope I am no longer here. Jesus left after his resurrection to allow the Comforter — Holy Spirit — to come (John 14). So, I seems as the Holy Spirit leaves, Jesus will return. In between, we hope — we even expect that Jesus will come for His bride and we will be extracted to Heaven. Meanwhile, as we experience our society implode through its own self-centred expression, as people’s thinking becomes confused and nonsensical, I pray for revelation and release from the Enemy — now.

In Jesus’ name, 

Amen.

Categories
Politics and Society today

Coronavirus: Earth’s response to Mankind’s excesses

And can it be, after centuries of abuse, that the earth is responding to our over-use of the planet? Is Earth, in its generous and good nature, giving back to mankind something that is only marginally deadly but yet sends a clear and strong response to our excesses? 

We have abused Earth with our carbon-spewing cars and machinery and factories; we have abused Earth with our over-farming; we have abused Earth with the general destruction of natural resources: trees, animals, and our incessant digging into the earth for precious jewels, precious metals, precious oil reserves.

Could Coronavirus be Earth’s response to mankind? 

We’ve had flooding, earthquakes, all sorts of natural disasters. Mankind has cleaned up and carried on. Now, on a global scale, we are being forced to STOP our shopping, our socialisation, our travel, all in an effort to curb the overall human death rate. Factories closed in China first — arguably the greatest emitter of carbon fuel waste. Streets around Europe are bereft of people, certainly the epicentre of the international bustling economy. New York has effectively shut down: New York City the 24/7 city of excess. Why? Because man is desperately holding on to the one thing more important than money: life itself.

How many times when there is loss do we say, “Well, we have our health at least.” Now our health, on a global scale, is under threat. And so we do all we can to protect humanity’s most precious asset: life itself.

In centuries long past, Greta Thornberg would be burnt as a witch, if authorities thought she’d cast a spell to create Coronavirus. Or the Jews would be blamed because their superior cleanliness would have protected them, yielding a death toll lower than the average (apparently there are some absurd murmurings even today that are attempting to blame the Jews for global economic chaos). But centuries ago, Earth was not bereft, raped, its natural beauty and purity stripped and abused, as it has been on every continent today.

Today we have conspiracy theories, speculations as to how Coronavirus was started. Did the Chinese do this on purpose, to distract the world from its stagnating economy? Have wealthy entrepreneurs and big business caused this deliberately to manipulate the stock market? Have phoney philanthropists caused this to curb the escalating world population?

Or quite simply, has Earth responded to centuries of abuse, to wake up mankind to its dereliction of duty, which has always been to protect and preserve it?

Man was created and given Earth as a responsibility

“Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” (Genesis 2:15)

Is this chaos ultimately GOD’s fault, a punishment for our abuse?

Or, in the sage words of the American young poet Max Ehrmann, who lost his right to copyright by sharing his Desiderata of hope during the disastrous Depression (1929-1939), perhaps

“the universe is unfolding as it should.”