ETERNITY

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts. Ecclesiastes 3:11

We are living in difficult times and it seems as though more difficult times are to come. This week as I have been reflecting on the various joys and challenges of life, the world “eternity” dropped into my heart. The word in Hebrew is עוֹלָם transliterated as ‘ôlâm – which means: everlasting, eternity, time out of mind, continual, forever and eternal. It is a hard word to grasp in concept as it has a sense of something that is distinct or separate from time because God is outside time. God says to the prophet Isaiah that there is none like Him “declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done” (Isaiah 46:10). Our minds find this concept difficult or impossible to grasp. It is probably why Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time - was a bestseller but a book that almost no-one understood or finished.

The Book of Ecclesiastes, likely written by King Solomon, is one of the few places in the Bible where the word “eternity” is used. In Ecclesiastes 3:11, we are told “He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man's heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.” What a puzzle – God has made “everything beautiful in its time” and put eternity in our hearts – but with the apparent purpose - so that we can’t understand what He has done! It is important for us to realize that no matter what we do or seek to know, there are things about who God is and what He has done, is doing and will do, that remain out of our reach and understanding.

My thoughts on eternity were I think, a direct result of a sense of awareness of the prevailing challenges of a world system that is bent on oppression, control and ruin. There are small signs each day of the infiltration of various bureaucratic systems by an anti-God and self-destructive ideology that has gained the upper hand in all the areas of power – The 7 Mountains of Influence - that I wrote about last week in the “Sons of Issachar Newsletter”.

This week I saw an interview with a young mother who had decided to stand up against the woke ideology evident on an Australian government form, where she was asked to complete a section headed “Birthing Person” rather than “Mother”. How does such a crazy idea even gain credence in the bureaucracy and then is printed on government forms? Somehow, marginal ideas proposed by cultural Marxists find their way from the schools and universities into every area of life. Fortunately the mother concerned decided to make some noise about “birthing person” on social media and the Australian government minister responsible, took the decision to replace “birthing person” with “mother” on the relevant form.

This is a small win but the bureaucrats have more resources and time than those who oppose them and so I anticipate that “birthing person” will return on more government forms. It reminded me of the scene in the great New Zealand film, “Hunt for the Wilderpeople”  - when the two main characters meet “Psycho Sam”, who is living isolated in the bush. Sam gives Ricky Baker, the boy in the movie, a tutorial about government bureaucracy and forms -

Forms seem to be proliferating and as Psycho Sam says – then  there are more forms to fill in to get off the original forms! It does seem as though we are trapped and whichever way we look, the surveillance state is working to monitor and control us. The unique part of what we are experiencing is that the various tools – surveillance cameras, supercomputers, Big Data and databases – enable a type of surveillance and control unknown to previous generations

Thinking about government surveillance and government values, increasingly at odds with God’s values, I wondered if we are moving into a unique time of history? Who knows the answer to this question, except God, but it did make me think about the period in Germany during the 1930s during Hitler’s rise to power and the prelude to Word War 2. The story of life in Germany at that time is wonderfully documented in Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy  - the great book by Eric Metaxas. It is worthwhile reading or listening to this 544 page book which has just been republished as a 10th anniversary edition. It is significant that when I first read the book 10 years ago, it seemed clear to me that it was not only an important book for understanding the past but also a prophetic view of the future.  Metaxas notes that most of the German Lutheran church were sympathetic to Hitler and had difficulty in recognizing a type of antichrist figure whose mission was to kill and destroy. Only a small group of pastors resisted the government narrative and most supported the government, as Jews were harassed, rounded up and sent to death camps. Some, like Martin Niemöller recognized their mistake too late, when he ended up in prison. This lead to his famous quote:

“First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out,
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out,
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out,
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me,
and there was no one left to speak for me.”

During the unprecedented lockdowns by Western governments in response to COVID-19, the church generally failed in its duty to speak and act against government overreach. It did remind me of the Bonhoeffer book and the way that the mainstream church in Germany supported Hitler. Tyranny comes step-by-step and in the case of Hitler, according to Metaxas, started with Jews being denied seating on park benches, which didn’t look very serious. There needs to be resistance to tyranny at the very first step.

In the West, church leaders should have been aware of government moves towards totalitarianism when churches were closed in the name of “biosecurity”. Church pastors then became government “agents”, enforcing QR codes for surveillance, insisting on masks, promoting dangerous vaccinations and of course, taking millions of government dollars of taxpayer funds that the government used to buy them off. It is a national and international scandal and those church leaders involved should repent and resign from their roles. There are few pastors like Matthew Trewhella in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who spoke out clearly and fiercely against the government overreach and COVID-19 vaccines, in the early days of the SARS-CoV2 virus. He alerted people to the plan for global control by “evil and wicked men” using vaccination. Here are audio links to two of his sermons from April 2020 and April 2021 which are worthwhile listening to:

Trewhella notes that in the past, the church barred entry of the state coming into the church but now the state bars entrance to the church by church members and the churchmen comply. These are symptoms of church failure and like in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the forerunner of a state sponsored (and therefore satanic) church. We are living now in a period where we need to wake up and realize that as Trewhella says that “there is a delusion among the people that the government has their best interests at heart”. He attributes this to the rise of “statism”, which he defines as “the state being the corrector of every wrong and the fixer of every ill. People look to the State as Father rather than to the Lord Himself”.

So – we need to raise our eyes to God above and free ourselves from the delusion that the State will save us. Trewhella reports a quote attributed to William Penn that “if men will not be governed by God, then they will be governed by tyrants”. The truth of this quote can be verified by looking at 20th century history and tyrants such as Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro. As I wrote last week, we need to remove the “scales from our eyes” and look clearly to what is ahead. Like previous generations, harder times are coming and we need to repent (turn around) and lift our eyes to eternity.

As I reflected on all these challenges and what has been happening and is coming (spoiler alert – things are going to get worse!), I thought of the remarkable story of Mr. Eternity – a remarkable man and remarkable story from Sydney, Australia from the last century.

Mr. Eternity is the name that was given to Arthur Stace, a man who wrote the word ETERNITY – with copperplate writing in yellow chalk on the streets of Sydney, probably hundreds of thousands of times between the 1930s and 1960s. I knew something about this man because he had come to faith in Jesus in the church, St Barnabas Broadway in the inner city of Sydney, where I also had come to faith.

St Barnabas Broadway in the 1900s

This week, having been reminded of Mr. Eternity, I read a great biography of Arthur Stace, called Mr Eternity, written by Roy Williams and Elizabeth Myers in 2017.

The story of Mr Eternity begins with his birth into a struggling family in the inner city of Sydney in 1885. His father William came from a well-to-do English family but alcoholism and poverty led the Staces downhill and Arthur Stace’s  childhood is described as “a nightmare world of hunger and want, cruelty and neglect”. Arthur and his siblings scavenged and stole food and even developed a taste for liquor. When Arthur was only 7 years old, his father abandoned the family and his mother put the children into permanent foster care. From there Arthur spent time in a foster home in Goulburn, an inland city about 200km southwest of Sydney before finding his first paid job in 1900, aged 15, in a coal mine. From that age, excessive drinking became a regular habit for Arthur and he was often taken off to jail, drunk. He moved from job to job, town to town and frequently ended up in jail. Arthur’s sister, Minnie, ran a brothel and Arthur was employed as a lookout for police. He lost his job with the Sydney City Council and is described as having “abandoned himself to the underworld … where he was known to and knew the criminal population of Sydney.”

The First World War intervened in his downhill journey and resulted in Arthur volunteering for the army and he ended up as a stretcher-bearer in France. Lung injuries from an explosion resulted in him spending the second half of 1917 until the end of the war in 1918 in England. He returned to Sydney in 1919 and was homeless and drunk most of the time after this. By 1930, Arthur had reached rock bottom but on August 6th (the same month that the two arches of the Sydney Harbour Bridge were joined together), he came with a few friends to the regular Thursday night men’s meetings held by the Rev R.B.S. Hammond at St Barnabas Anglican Church in Broadway.

Arthur recounted this experience some years late: “There were 300 of us down and outs in the hall, and six people on the front seat, all decent and clean and dressed properly. I said to the bloke next to me, ‘Who are they?’ He said, ‘They’re Christians.’ I said: ‘Well, look at them and look at us. I’m having a go at what they’ve got.”

Rev Hammond preached a sermon and said “if any of you men are sick of the lives you are living, there is One who loves you and will set you free and His name is Jesus.”

The message must have had a major impact on Arthur because he said he “came under strong conviction of sin’ and desired ‘to be delivered from its bondage.’ He also ‘realised that Christ was stronger than strong drink.’ After drinking his tea and eating his rock cake, he left the hall alone, crossed Broadway, and walked into Victoria Park (adjacent to Sydney University). There, under a large fig tree, in the dark and out of sight, he knelt down and wept. Then he cried out a simple prayer: ‘God, God be merciful to me a sinner!’”

I have stood under that very fig tree and Arthur’s conversion is a powerful story of hopelessness turning into hope. He turned his back on alcohol and turned his life around with two “secrets of success in the Christian life – prayer and obedience.”

The Rev Hammond put Arthur in charge of a 5 bedroom hostel that helped to rehabilitate alcoholics. Hammond had a heart for the broken down and destitute and founded a number of “Hammond Hotels” to help care for destitute men. By this stage it was the Depression years and in 1932 an evening public meeting at the Burton Street Baptist City Tabernacle, in the Sydney inner-city, drew Arthur to hear the famous evangelist, John G. Ridley speaking on “Few There Be That Find It – Why?” Ridley spoke that night on “Echoes of Eternity” to more than 400 people, based on this verse from Isaiah 57:15

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite.”

The Rev Ridley said the eternity was the “lifetime of God”. “It was the domain of the necessary Supreme Being, the Creator, the one true God who had always existed and would always exist. For human beings, Ridley went on, eternity meant ‘the life to come’, the ‘endless future’ after physical death – and the nature of that eternity, terrible or sublime, would be determined by God for each individual. ‘You have got to face it; you have got to face it,” said Ridley. He spoke about Eternity as “God’s consolation in the conflicts of life” and that “the Cross echoes eternity”. Then Ridley reached the zenith of his message and explained that “the whole of your endless future depends on Jesus who governs Eternity”. Finally, it is reported that he raised his voice louder and said:

 “Eternity! Eternity! I wish that I could sound, or shout, that word to everyone on the streets of Sydney. Eternity! Friends, you have got to meet it. Where will you spend Eternity?”.

Roy Williams then recounts what happened next in Arthur’s  own words: “Eternity went ringing through my brain and suddenly I began crying and felt a powerful call from the Lord to write ‘Eternity’. I had a piece of chalk in my pocket and, outside the church, I bent down right there and wrote it.” To his astonishment, the word came out smoothly in perfect copperplate: Eternity. Over the next 35 years Arthur Stace felt the call to write his one word sermon on the footpaths of Sydney and he had a ministry to down and out men.

Representation of Arthur Stace writing “Eternity” on the streets of Sydney

Remarkably, the pagan City of Sydney chose to put the Eternity sign in the copperplate writing ablaze on the top of the Sydney Harbour Bridge on 31 December 1999 to usher in the New Year in 2000. This short 8 min clip on Australian television was broadcast in 2017 when the book about Mr Eternity was launched:

So, as we are faced with the daily challenges of life and the increasing threats to our freedom, we can feel depressed by the forces of evil set against us. We can’t know how close we are to the end of the age and the return of Jesus but we can put our faith in Him. In St Paul’s letter to Titus, written at a time when there was persecution and hardship, he said:

“we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.” (Titus 2:12-14)

It is important for each of us to be “zealous for good works” and in the midst of our difficulties to have the perspective of Eternity.

We can seek friendship with God and put our trust in the one who inhabits Eternity or we can put our trust in ourselves. As Ridley said – “we all face Eternity – terrible or sublime… Friends, you have got to meet it. Where will you spend Eternity?

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WORLD NEWS ROUNDUP

A Summary of Some Significant Events Around the World in the Last Week

USA

Joe Biden and now his wife Dr Jill, have approval ratings that continue to plummet. Biden’s advisors appear to have decided that the way to improve his ratings is to announce a series of executive orders relating to climate change. A number of commentators are anticipating that Biden announces a “climate emergency”, which would then allow him to take executive and draconian action. It seems likely that whatever action Biden takes, it will be subject to legal challenge.

Biden has been out of action with COVID-19 despite being vaccinated at least four times but is said to be “working in the White House residence”. One wonders what that work is? It may be that he is being lined up to sign new Executive Orders to further cripple the US oil and gas industry.

The January 6 Committee of the US House of Representatives has been working hard on a narrative that “Trump promoted an insurrection” at the US Capitol Building on 6 January 2020. The Committee is so partisan in its actions that it is hard to believe that anyone would take it seriously but most of the media organizations are running with the narrative that has come out of the stacked congressional committee. This week I watched an excellent documentary produced by The Epoch Times - and found it provided a good overview of events that day. The filmmaker had interview with a number of key players at the January 6th protests and it became clear from the film that Washington authorities may well have provoked the actions at the Capitol but also had paid provocateurs to enable a “false flag” operation . This is going to be an ongoing issue as it is believed that the now highly politicized US Justice Department will bring criminal charges against President Trump, following the partisan work of the House Select Committee.

Unfortunately US politics seems to be getting more and more polarized and rather than follow the facts, the “facts” are engineered to meet the narrative. This is particularly true when looking at the January 6th Committee hearings. Ever since President Trump was elected in 2016 (and even before), the Democrats and their media acolytes have promoted a view that “Trump is destroying America and democracy”. Then have the tried to engineer events to fit this view and this is what resulted in the fake news of  “Trump as a Russian agent” and then a claim that he was involved in insurrection, which cannot be supported by any facts. I have no doubt that the attacks on Trump will continue and even ramp up, as the Democrats see this as the best course to sustain a weak and failing President Biden. The Democrat party is controlled by a group of anti-God, radical Marxists intent in bringing down the US Constitution and creating chaos. Their own polling must indicate the high likelihood of a rout in the mid-terms in November and so we can anticipate “false flag operations”, contrived incidents to fuel narratives around racism, and social unrest, to distract the public. Expect more turmoil leading up to the mid-term elections.

United Kingdom & Europe

Holiday makers in the UK have been stuck in various locations on the English coast trying to gain entry to France will French passport inspectors show their disdain by opening up limited number of inspection booths. This has sparked a war of words between French and English officials.  French officials have blamed Brexit and said that more inspections are necessary. French bureaucracy is a class all of its own and with the majority of people in France employed by the State in some form, it seems to result in an increase in the arrogance:ability ratio of bureaucrats. There is no way to win with French bureaucrats and you are best to just comply and take a beating. Javier Pascual Salcedo gave one of the best definitions of bureaucracy when he said “bureaucracy is the art of making the possible impossible”.

The English also are expert bureaucrats and exported bureaucracy around the world in the days of the British Empire. The bureaucrats are busy at work today throughout Africa and the Indian subcontinent as well as Australia, New Zealand and Canada. This is one of the legacies of Empire and I have always enjoyed this clip from the UK series Yes Prime Minister about the “proper function of government”, that provides insight about civil servants and government.

With this background, it will be interesting to see what the new UK Prime Minister – either Rishi Sunak, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer or Liz Truss, the Foreign Minister, does about an estimated 90,000 civil servants whom Boris Johnson was planning to axe.

Although the 2 candidates propose various policies that they will enact as Prime Minister, it is the large army of bureaucrats that controls what actually gets done, which is why it has been so difficult for the UK to leave the European Union - the bureaucrats thought that the electorate had made the wrong choice. Most polls now indicate that Liz Truss is preferred by around 2/3rds of Conservative Party members ahead of Rishi Sunak and so Liz is likely to become Prime Minister.

It is interesting that in Boris Johnson’s farewell speech as Prime Minister to Parliament, which currently is on a summer break, he ended by saying “Hasta la vista, baby!”. Boris is a classicist and it is surprising to hear him with a Spanish phrase, which is variously translated as “goodbye” or “see you later” and was popularized in The Terminator 2. Some commentators think that it was Boris’ way of saying “I’ll be back”

Boris’ return may be less dramatic than The Terminator, but I do anticipate that he will be back. In his farewell speech Boris did give some advice to his successor, which I thought was succinct and had many good points:

“Number one: stay close to the Americans, stick up for the Ukrainians, stick up for freedom and democracy everywhere. Cut taxes and de-regulation wherever you can and make this the greatest place to live and invest, which it is. I love the Treasury but remember that if we’d always listened to the Treasury we wouldn’t have built the M25 or the Channel Tunnel. Focus on the road ahead, but always remember to check the rear-view mirror. And remember above all it’s not Twitter that counts, it’s the people who sent us here.” This clarity of thinking and ability to express himself is why a large number of Conservative Party members still love Boris and would like to see him return as Prime Minister. Who knows and as they always say: a week is a long time in politics!

For those dubious about a communist conspiracy in international groups, a minor story this week demonstrated the extraordinary influence of communists in global governance. The World Health Organization (WHO), clearly under the direction and influence of the Chinese Communisty Party, has appointed a UK Professor  - Susan Michie, a long-term card-carrying Communist, to a key role in a key technical WHO advisory group. She has said that she supports wearing of masks and social distancing “forever”! The old saying of “never trust a Communist” seems to have been replaced with a new mantra: “look how cool we are to have a Communist on our committee”!

Russia and Ukraine

As the war in Ukraine continues, President Zelensky continues to show his public relations mastery. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has presented Zelensky with the Winston Churchill Leadership Award - and then Zelensky and his wife have had a cover shoot for Vogue magazine. The Breitbart story had a quote that summarized the situation well:

“Zelensky is ‘fighting for his life’ in Ukraine but has time to meet with Hollywood celebrities and corrupt politicians, preach about the need to transition to ‘green energy,’ and appear in Vogue magazine,” another wrote. “Put the war on hold while I pose for photoshoots. It’s always been a scam.”

Russia has announced that Gazprom, the largest state oil and gas exporter, will cut gas deliveries to Europe by 80% . As Europe looks at the coming winter, Russia holds all the cards, no matter how many awards the West gives to Zelensky.

China vs The West

A report from the US Senate  - has shown that China has been trying to subvert the Federal Reserve since 2013 (and probably well before that). The West has governments that come and go but China has the apparatus to progress its aim of global domination and step by step, to achieve its goal. There are many Federal Reserve employees who have close ties to the People’s Bank of China, the Chinese central bank. Links also were found between Federal Reserve employees and academic organizations, including links to China’s Thousands Talents Program - where academics are recruited from the West to advance China’s scientific capability.

The planned call by Joe Biden to President Xi (held on Thursday US time) has been touted in the press as Biden “getting tough” with China. Given Biden’s mental acuity, it is hard to believe that President Xi has taken this call seriously and essentially is theatre for a US audience that still has any remaining faith in Biden (now less than 30% of the population). The US National Security Advisor indicated that Biden will target “excessive maritime claims” in the South China Sea. Given that the Biden family is compromised because of what has been discovered (and suppressed) on the Hunter Biden laptop, I don’t think that there will be any fear at the top of the China Politburo.

Most analysts believe that at some stage China will invade Taiwan. There was an interesting article this week in the UK Daily Telegraph documenting training with the Taiwanese resistance who are preparing for future guerilla warfare. There is a quote from General Lee His-min, a former chief of staff of Taiwan’s armed forces, who makes that point that simply the will to resist by the general population will be important if there is war. With the West being preoccupied in Ukraine and its economies in tatters, it is difficult to see that there will be significant Western intervention if China invades Taiwan or even stages as blockade.

One of the interesting podcasts I listened to this week was The President’s Daily Brief -

a podcast by former intelligence agent, Bryan Dean Wright. He pointed out that China’s State Council recently announced a new billion dollar investment in coal-fired power stations and an increase in coal output by 300 million tonnes. China is increasing its purchase of coal from North Korea and Russia. So, as the West tries to eliminate power from coal, China is increasing its investment. China is well aware of the limitations to solar and wind energy but the West keeps trying to believe that all will be well. China realizes that as Wright says – “it would be economic death to put the entirety of your nation on a renewable energy grid”. The US and Europe together produce less emissions than China by itself and so it does look as though the West is on a suicide mission.

Israel

The decision by the Russian government to ban the Jewish Agency, which facilitates immigration of Jews to Israel, will have a huge impact on relationships between Russia and Israel . The outcome will be the 160,000 Jews left in Russia, being prevented from leaving. This seems directly related to the recent alliance between Turkey, Russia and Iran.

Israel’s secret service Mossad, is actively at work in Iran and recently kidnapped and interrogated a senior Revolutionary Guard officer and then released him. The Iranians are ramping up its operations against Israel via Hezbollah. Amir Tsafarti has provided an update  about current events in Israel – which is worthwhile viewing:

It does feel to me as though Israel is sitting on a power keg and it would not take much to ignite the powder.

Summary

There is extraordinary instability in the world and even the countries that have supposed stable democracies, such as the US and UK face uncertainty and leadership difficulties. New alliances (the BRICS group; Iran-Turkey-Russia) are re-organizing the international order and there are clear attempts to displace the US$ from the global reserve currency. In most countries there is a shift to the political left and a commitment to a globalist perspective and a “new world order”. The circumstances are in alignment for global government in due course. As food shortages develop from forced agricultural shutdowns and gas and oil supplies dwindle from imposed “green” legislation, chaos and social unrest seem likely to occur. This will be the ideal time for a charismatic leader, the “son of perdition” to emerge to “save us”.