What is the content of the ‘eternal gospel’? It is the proclamation on God’s behalf for everyone who has chosen for this world of the ‘beasts’ even while this world is disappearing.1 And don’t you not see everywhere around you that it is disappearing now, already? Animal species and plant species are becoming extinct at an ever-increasing rate. Raw materials are starting to run out, and the most important supplies of energy will be used up before the middle of the twenty-first century.
The economy is directed towards growth, the aim is to have more and more, so producing and consuming take place at an ever-increasing rate. Every minute one hectare of rainforest is being cut down—that is an area the size of Austria each year. At this rate there will be no rainforest left in fifty years’ time. There is climate change and the degradation of the ozone layer, and pollution by the enormous discharge of sulphur dioxide (from the chimneys of houses, power stations and factories), nitrogen dioxide (from traffic) and ammonia (from fertilizers), air, surface, ground and underground water pollution. An intensive cattle breeding requires a reduction in the number of livestock, but is this economically viable? There is waste, chemical materials, pollution, plastic ‘soup’ in the oceans, and so forth, choking and destroying life everywhere.
World population is growing at an explosive rate. Many are living with an after-us-the-deluge mentality – “Grab what you can, before the bomb drops.” Science and technology and people of goodwill will pull us through anyway—that is what many are hoping, even though they know better. The earth has been exploited, and Creation polluted.
‘Planet earth’ is looking like a spaceship where food supplies are starting to run out, the air to breathe is becoming stale, the fuel for the absolutely essential motors and machines is starting to run short and the members of the crew are at each other’s throats, trying to get hold of the last few remaining supplies. And then this voice sounds: “Fear God and give Him glory, you sinful human race, because the hour of His judgment has come. The great Creator of all things, He who has Created Heaven and earth and all that are in them, is going to call you to account. The great judgment of mankind has come: Weighed in the scales and found wanting.”2 In the midst of the noise of a tremendous feast, of laughter and drunkenness, at which even the golden vessels stolen from the Temple in Jerusalem was used to toast the idols, the fingers of a human hand appear writing a message on the wall. A message in Hebrew. The Dutch painter Rembrandt has caught in one of his paintings how King Belshazzar turns round full of fear and sees it happen. “Suddenly the fingers of a man’s hand emerged and began writing opposite the lampstand on the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace, and the king saw the back of the hand that did the writing. Then the king’s face grew pale and his thoughts alarmed him, and his hip joints went slack and his knees began knocking together.”2 Daniel reads it and says: “But the God in whose hand are your life-breath and all your ways, you have not glorified. Then the hand was sent from Him and this inscription was written out. “Now this is the inscription that was written out: ‘MENĒ, MENĒ, TEKĒL, UPHARSIN.’ This is the interpretation of the message: ‘MENE’—God has numbered your kingdom and put an end to it. ‘TEKĒL’— you have been weighed on the scales and found deficient. ‘PERĒS’—your kingdom has been divided and given over to the Medes and Persians.” King Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans (Babylonians) was killed the same night.2
He who made the earth, the sea and the water sources3—His Creation—is about to judge. Is repentance possible? We hope so and wish it to be so—just as after the earthquake in Jerusalem. “And in that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city [Jerusalem] fell; seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of Heaven.”4 But whether that will happen again, all over the world, at this stage in the end-times, is not very likely. What will be the result of this final proclamation now? You can find the answer in Revelation 9:20-21 and 16:9-11: “The rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship demons, and the idols of gold and of silver and of brass and of stone and of wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk… and they gnawed their tongues because of pain, and they blasphemed the God of Heaven because of their pains and their sores; and they did not repent of their deeds..”. This is the final proclamation of the eternal Creator and Judge. Divine honour, which the ‘dragon’ and the ‘beasts’ claim for themselves, is to the Creator only. Soli Deo Gloria: to God alone be the glory!
• God created the earth as a dwelling place.5 Man was allowed to be its steward, to manage, farm, plant and develop that Creation on His behalf and take care of it with respect.6 Man’s rebellion against God brought ‘death’ in all sizes and forms into the world. It became even the ‘principle’ that started to rule Creation, earth and the Universe, a principle of ‘death’,7 ‘entropy’. A downward line, ‘devolution’, not ‘evolution’ as an upward line that many would have us to believe.
• A final message of the Creator’s justice, along with a call to honour, fear and worship Him, will therefore not have much effect in our end-times days. Evolutionary thinking has penetrated the minds of the people of the world. It is the leading principle and the philosophical pre-supposition that dominates the teachings in practically all faculties at Colleges and Universities.
• The ‘theory of evolution’ is claimed by many of its advocates to be well established fact and scientifically proven. They ridicule those who trust the reliability of the Bible and the facts of Creation recorded in the Word of God. They scoff at the idea of the existence of God – “Don’t make me laugh,” end- time man says.
• Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606–4 October 1669) was a Dutch painter. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Especially his Biblical paintings are impressive, showing his Christian faith.
Bible References:
1.1 Corinthians 7:31 2.Daniel 5 3.Comp. the same order of events in Revelation 8:7–12, 16:2–9 4.Revelation 11:13 5.Isaiah 45:18 6.Genesis 1:28 7.Genesis 3:17–19; Romans 8:20-22
