9/11 - NEW BOOKLET

During this week we will be putting on the website the material which forms a new booklet called “The Contemporary Countdown to Chaos – The Ten Years Since 9/11”. The Home Page will announce when it is actually on the site. You can, however, obtain the booklet now (free) by requesting a copy (give your postal address) at mail@understandingthetimes.org.uk It’s several months since I mentioned in this column a desire to produce this; it has not been an easy process, but at last it’s here.

It takes its inspiration from a pamphlet I wrote in c. 2003 called “Countdown to Chaos”. The pamphlet was a study of what happened to Israel in the intervening years between Amos’ warning of the devastation and exile of Israel, and the fulfilment of that warning some 20 years later. The study revealed a serious deterioration in the moral, political and social life of the nation during the countdown to that cataclysmic event. I suggested it might well point to the kind of deterioration we would see in our own nation, since we ourselves have been under a severe word of warning since the turn of this new century. This new booklet examines the decade from 9/11 to see whether a similar deterioration has been taking place in our own experience. The evidence that we are on such a downward slope is overwhelming.


The scope of the booklet is actually wider that our own nation, arguing that the western world makes up a group of nations all of which are under judgement in the same way that all the nations surrounding Israel were under the same judgement that Amos declared in his day. We see the U.S.A. as the primary nation of the group, and deterioration clearly written in her history.


The biblical features of the deterioration were 1. Futile Foreign Ventures; 2. Accelerated economic and social decline; 3. Political Corruption, Incompetence and Strife. 4. The Exclusion of God and Moral Degradation. The last decade is examined in the light of these features. It is, therefore, something of an historical survey (though brief). I make no apology for that, however, since we are living at a time when it is very important that we have in one hand the Bible and in the other an account of the times in which we are living. If we do not have the latter we may well be blinded to some very important aspects of the former.


I think it is providential that this booklet has been delayed until the tenth anniversary of 9/11. That event was the defining moment of the decade and, at least in one respect, set the agenda for the decade. The booklet looks at that issue. 9/11 was one of the most devastating prophetic statements that one could ever imagine of what was to come in the U.S. and the West. The tragedy is that, whilst it was accurately seen as a defining, world-changing moment, its prophetic significance has never been either seen of acknowledged. I would like to follow up that issue next week.


Bob


To make a comment: click on word “comments” below, write your comment in the white box which appears and add your name and e mail address (if you wish), choose “select profile”, click “anonymous” and then continue.


To print this column: click on the date of this column in the archive list on the right of this page. This will give you this column on its own. Then print.

9/11 VIVIDLY RECALLED

Watching the replay this week of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers instantly brought back the unbelievable horrors of that day. Every aspect, it seems, was recorded by some camera or audio recorder. I found the impact of the re-run of the footage intensely sobering. There was no need to go looking for some new aspect of the event as the media is always inclined to do. It was important simply to see again the main story.

The human aspect of it was the most horrific and the most sobering. Four plane loads of unsuspecting passengers, having been murderously hijacked, were deliberately used as highly lethal missiles. In three of them everyone was atomised on impact. We actually saw very clearly one of those impacts taking place! Nothing was left to the imagination. The stunned horror of the watching bystanders was recorded in detail. That horror worsened as the flames isolated hundreds of people trapped in the floors above the point of impact. And then it happened all over again as the second tower was hit by another plane.

Some 200 people jumped from the top floors to avoid incarceration. Their jumps were witnessed by those on the ground; a devastating horrifying sight. It was unbelievable, surreal; a disaster movie of the most lurid kind had come to life. Yet worse was to come; something that no one anticipated. The first tower began to collapse, and collapse very quickly in a huge cloud of dust and rubble. The shock of that to onlookers was enormous. Then the second tower followed suit. There was little or no hope for those still in them. Later it was learned that over 300 fire fighters were killed inside the towers as they were seeking to rescue others. People immediately outside the towers were filmed running for their lives, enveloped in a fast moving, suffocating and toxic cloud. It later came as no surprise, though with awful force, that nearly 3,000 people had died in the towers. Only some 200 or so bodies were identifiable, and of those only a handful was recognisable.

It was a human horror story, an ultimate human tragedy. It was a tragedy indeed for those who were killed. It was also a tragedy for humanity generally in that it revealed once again just how deluded and deranged humanity itself could be in using its talents and sophistication to bring about such cynical and murderous actions, and, in watching it, actually applaud it. It had taken some two hours to unfold. It would change perspectives for a very long time to come.

And this was in New York, New York on what began as a normal working day. This was the capital of the world’s greatest superpower! Separated from the rest of the world by two vast oceans, it was the dominating, invulnerable, proud new empire of the turn of the century. The iconic centre of the trade on which it was built had been demolished in what was virtually a moment of time.

And the whole world watched it as it was actually happening on television screens. This was a truly horrifying aspect. One is tempted to say this aspect was unique, but unfortunately this is not strictly true. The world’s disasters, of whatever kind, are all now watched instantly. We are not told about them, we see them. And there have been many of them now.

Utterly sobering; that is my reaction. By that I mean, you just have to stop and think hard and deep about it. You just have to wrestle with the hard questions that arise. You can’t really go back to the old round of giddy pleasures burying your head at such a reminder of human vulnerability. We have to ask, “What am I doing with my life?”, “Am I accountable for my life?” It’s a very foolish thing to write off questions of life after death merely on the basis of materialistic ideology. For us, life now has to go on, of course, despite the horror, but it is so desperately important to wrestle with the question of what life is about, and why these things happen. Not just at the human level but at the divine level. What was God saying through this? Where was God in this? There’s certainly far more to this than the story of evil people against the good, even if that may be part of it.

Bob

To make a comment: click on word “comments” below, write your comment in the white box which appears and add your name and e mail address (if you wish), choose “select profile”, click “anonymous” and then continue.

FURIOUS PLANET

There will be a great many Americans who will be giving God sincere thanks for the deliverance from a full scale disaster from Hurricane Irene. There will be many petitions, too, for the many for whom the hurricane did spell disaster. The pictures were distressing to watch, very reminiscent of the Tsunami scenes. None the less, there was a deliverance – the wholesale flooding of Manhattan does not bear thinking about; it would have made the New Orleans’ tragedy seem small. But it was a close shave. The vulnerability of the U.S. continues to be highlighted, even though the grace of God stilled the fury of the storm.


We live on a very dangerous planet. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, not to mention asteroids, all make it at best uncertain, at worst terrifying. God made it that way! Why? By contrast, the new creation will be very different; for one thing, as Revelation tells us, “There will be no more sea”. That removes a great source of danger, something that has taken untold numbers of lives – it was the danger New York faced! The fireball of the sun will be replaced by the light of God Himself. That removes the fire element that still burns dangerously at the heart of our planet. So why do we live with such danger now? Why is the planet like it is, a dangerous place?


I have often reflected on that issue, and I have come to the conclusion that in the great wisdom of God the very planet itself (and even the universe) was made in such a way as to remind a sinful race of the appalling dangers spiritually that surrounds it. When a redeemed race comes to populate a new creation such reminders will not be necessary, and the new creation will not have them. Put another way, there will be no need for the new creation to reflect in anyway the danger of the anger of God since it will be a place with people who have come to a full redemption through the work of Jesus. If it doesn’t have to reflect the anger of God big changes can take place.


Take the sea again. From one perspective it is a phenomenon of great beauty, and it speaks of the vastness and power of its creator. From another perspective it can be seen, as one writer put it, as “The Cruel Sea”. It is merciless and destructive. It can be whipped up into a fury. Humanity cannot survive in it. More than that, it is referred to in Scripture as the “abyss”, a term for hell itself. The very creatures that live in its depths are gruesome and grotesque, not to say ferocious and devouring. They reflect the denizens of hell. This is a picture in creation itself of something very real, but something to be aware of and avoid. It has a clear spiritual message for humanity in its present sinful predicament – it is surrounded by the appalling danger of a spiritual abyss.


Or take the sun. Again it speaks of the glory of God; it provides us with light and life. But at the same time it is highly dangerous to humanity if treated without respect. It’s the sun’s rays that control the weather and create the storms that bring distress. Those rays can bring a powerful message, if required, about the spiritual condition of humanity and its rejection of God. In fact the very structure of the creation brings us warnings from all directions, warnings that have been verbalised in the written revelation to the effect that we need to make peace with our Creator.


That is why the lessening of the hurricane into a storm as it neared New York needs to be seen as a mark of the grace of God; it was precisely measured to spare, yet to warn of the need to get back to the ways of God



Bob

To make a comment: click on word “comments” below, write your comment in the white box which appears and add your name and e mail address (if you wish), choose “select profile”, click “anonymous” and then continue.