Is This the Start of the End or a Prelude?

There are only a few musicians whose works can move my inner emotions in a unique way: Johann Sebastian Bach and some of the visually stunning songs of Bob Dylan. 

IIn particular, Bach’s organ Sonata No 4 in E Minor (BWV 528) and the Toccata-Adagio-Fugue reminds one of long forgotten Bach’s organ pieces which I used to listen in my thirties. 

“Listen here,” Bach seems to say, “Look over here, my fellow man, when our beloved Creator made up his mind to create the world. The horizon is totally dark for some time and then suddenly the Creator lifted his hands slowly to the horizon with these words: “Let there be light.” And this primeval time was way before man was created.”

With the creation of man, the trouble in the Heavens started. It was said that the archangel Luciel was so jealous about God’s new creation that he tried to stage a coup against the Father and was naturally evicted from Heaven.

Even since, Lucifer (his more well-known name) has been plotting and creating havoc on earth, agitating man to fulfil his tireless hunger to kill, steal and destroy. 

And here we are in 2020, the first year of a new decade. Before the year could even get going, an epidemic in China quietly morphed into a pandemic across the hemispheres within four harrowing months. 

Rarely has any year started with a heavy sense of foreboding. By April, the new IMF chief declared that the world economy will enter an unprecedented recession not experienced since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Nearly 3 million virus-related deaths and 203,922 infected cases, rising each day so says the worldometer.

This brings one to the music of JS Bach. One evening in lockdown at home, I came across by accident, a piece that hailed from my childhood in Paris: the organ version of the Adagio in D minor which Bach transcribed from Allesandro Marcello’s Oboe Concerto. This one speaks of the human emotions of sadness, love and the passage of time.

Why does the lockdown in our nation and across the silent cities of the world bring so many memories & thoughts as if they were locked up in time? 

When I drive through the deserted streets of KL with only one or two passer-by wearing face masks, anxiously rushing into a building or a corner, it reminds me of the sepia-colored paintings of surrealist Giorgio de Chirico. 

The melancholia induced from looking at these city streets and listening to Bach is strangely beautiful. As if the world has came to a stop, not from governmental edict or royal decree but from the powers of Providence. 

These deserted streets have the look of a city bereft of all residents or one where people are sheltered in their homes to escape from the coronavirus.

There is such a thing in music called a prelude. It is usually a short composition that precedes another composition that is broader in scope and of higher importance. 

So the coronavirus pandemic, in all its mysterious origins and associated conspiracy narratives, could well be a prelude to a more major event. 

In these months of lockdown, we are given time to ponder, reflect, pray and take stock of a new way of life. 

The whole crisis and official health warnings are giving one clear message to every citizen: the world is no longer safe to gather together. Every stranger, every door knob and foreigner is a potential source of infection.

All these thoughts and images resonate for me in Dylan’s 1989 classic “Ring Them Bells”, a song so filled with Biblical imagery that many verses probably sailed pass me when I was not a Christian yet in my late 20s.   

Dylan says time is running backwards and so is the bride, which is symbolic of the church ( bride of Christ in scripture). We will be taken to Heaven and reign with Christ "who will judge the many when the game is through.”

Jesus is coming soon to judge this world, which in the last verse is one of total chaos similar to the current situation: people waiting in long lines, wars and rumors of wars among nations and the distance between right and wrong being broken down. 

The last verse is so ironical and prophetic as we are now told to keep social distances.

Ring them bells, ye heathen

From the city that dreams,
Ring them bells from the sanctuaries
Cross the valleys and streams,
For they're deep and they're wide
And the world's on its side
And time is running backwards
And so is the bride.

Ring them bells St. Peter

Where the four winds blow,
Ring them bells with an iron hand
So the people will know.
Oh it's rush hour now
On the wheel and the plow
And the sun is going down
Upon the sacred cow.

Ring them bells Sweet Martha,

For the poor man's son,
Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one.
Oh the shepherd is asleep
Where the willows weep
And the mountains are filled
With lost sheep.

Ring them bells for the blind and the deaf,

Ring them bells for all of us who are left,
Ring them bells for the chosen few
Who will judge the many when the game is through.
Ring them bells, for the time that flies,
For the child that cries
When innocence dies.

Ring them bells St. Catherine

From the top of the room,

Ring them from the fortress

For the lilies that bloom.

Oh the lines are long

And the fighting is strong

And they're breaking down the distance

Between right and wrong.

Why God First Created The World & The Final Timeline

While no human mind can imagine how and why God created mankind and this universe, I can only conceive through my limited mind the great awesomeness and mystery of His purposes.

Still, I think every believing Christian should, at one time or another, consider the Creator’s plan when he decided to create the world. And it is not simply a battle between good and evil.

There are five truths which I can draw upon based on my Bible knowledge. There could well be a sixth truth hinted of in the final book of Revelation and I believe it will be fully revealed in our lifetimes.

1. He created man in His image. This means man has an inner conscience and has the qualities of creativity in him. 

  

2.    He gave man Free Will: This is the most perplexing and frustrating part of his creation. If he did not give us free will, then the first man and woman would not have sinned. By giving us free will, it is as if we were being tricked by our creator. If man can be free to do as he wills, why punish him for using his free will to commit moral sins (lust, adultery, hate, rage, envy, theft, etc some of which are punishable by civil law whilst others are not) ? 

So the problem, which God himself had most probably foreseen, is that man did commit the original sin and paid the price of eternal death for it. Before we go to the third truth, let us digress a bit on this free will dilemma.

Isn’t this like some kind of unfair trick? Not exactly. It is somewhat like a chess grandmaster who invites you to play chess with him for a 100 games as he wants to train you to be a champion player. If you win, He will reward you with a grand prize the value of which is beyond anyone’s imagination. 

You know quite well that its a tough challenge and you have a choice to walk away to live a humdrum life. In this metaphor, there are three kinds of amateur chess players:

(a) Those who just play the 100 games without much enthusiasm for the game. They go about life one day at a time, year in, year  out, without asking deep questions about their purpose on earth. For them, what is is "what it is". Life is just something to experience and we are to make the best of it. (These types of people make up about 30% of the world's population)

(b) Those who take up God’s challenge to be champions. They train themselves with each game and learn their mistakes from every defeat. To them, it is not just an intellectual challenge but a moral responsibility to win the game and collect the prize. (20% of the world)

(c) Those who decide not to play at all or who give up after a few defeats. These are the ones who think that since God gave them a free will to walk away, they choose a self-made life which has little meaning (apart from their own achievements) until the day they die. They even invent their own games in which they reward themselves. (50% of the world)

Now the third group of people (atheists, agnostics or New Agers) do have a strong argument against playing according to the rules set by God. 

Despite the fact that the Creator has gently whispered to man's conscience, given His Word as set forth in the Bible over centuries telling how and why the world was created, there is still the problem of free will. We have a Hobson's choice to walk away and not accept His rules nor His invitation. 

More precisely, the argument of the non-believer posed to God is this: “How do we know it is not all a trick of Yours, that we are not mere pawns in Your game of chess, that the contest is actually between You and Satan, your arch enemy angel who was kicked out of Heaven on account of his rebellion? 

And if we won this game, how do we know the prize is as good as you promised?"

These existential questions have been asked by the most intelligent minds who are outraged and critical of God’s seeming silence in the face of not only cosmic injustice but the gross injustice of man’s cruelty towards the innocent. If God exists, how can a loving God allow massacres of helpless women and children to happen, how can He allow crimes of senseless brutality at the individual and the genocidal level? 

Does the Creator need to respond in words or does he have an ultimate answer?

In Dostoevsky's masterpiece The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan asks his younger brother Alyosha the ancient question (If God exists, whence evil?):

"If the suffering of children goes to make up the sum of suffering needed to buy truth, then I assert beforehand that the whole of truth is not worth such a price." 

3. The savior Jesus Christ: And this brings us to the greatest act of God in His creation plan. God's reply is simple and profound as encapsulated in John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whosoever believe in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."
   
  So this life is clearly not a game. There possibility of losing eternal life after death is too much to bear if it is true. 

Two thousand years ago, God brought His son Jesus Christ, supernaturally borned of a virgin, to live as a man on earth, teaching us how to live and overcome our struggles with evil and finally giving us the salvation of our souls through belief in His divinity who gave His life as a penalty for our sins.

Confronted with this narrative, the intellect of man may or may not accept it wholeheartedly. 

It is a logical and awesome story but the full weight of this truth is in the power of the Holy Spirit to convict a man’s inner being, to spiritually awaken us to see the truth of Jesus as our saviour and redeemer of our fallen souls.

But how do people get convicted? It is different for each person: most are convicted through a tragic or traumatic event, others are convicted by the reading of the Word or the power of a sermon.

For me personally, I have always sought for the meaning of life and this search through philosophy, books and religion prepared me for my conversion in my late 30s. There were clearly people who prayed for me along the way and finally my wife who was a Christian brought me to Christ.

4.   The battle for man’s soul heats up in the End times: We are now in the endgame as the world is beset by great chaos created by pandemics, economic turmoil and geopolitical tensions that raise the prospects for a third world war. 

 This is the end of the timeline of the world when everything reaches a climax in the return of Christ to judge the world, separating the good from the wicked. It is a time of great tribulation as the enemy of both God and man makes his final stand to battle for our souls that we be condemned and evade the salvation offered by God.

According to the book of Revelation, this battle will finally end with Satan ending up in the lake of fire. But his modus operandi of destroying man is like a self-mutating computer program that evolves with increasing complexity and cunning. 

Despite his cunning, his intellectual flaw is he is an amateur con-man philosopher: he has nothing to offer mankind beyond this life except damnation. So he attracts only those who are drawn to darkness, to the hedonistic pleasures that cause countless pain to others. In effect, he draws the spiritually lost in man.   

But it seems that the ordinary Christian, myself included, is not totally spiritually prepared for this end time even though we mentally know we are living in this stage of God’s timeline.  

The toughest part of being a Christian is to be sanctified, totally dedicated to the will of God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. For though our spirits are redeemed, our flesh and soul are not completed redeemed. 

We need to continually be separated from all worldliness, from the occupations of the mind and rely completely on the Lord, hearing His voice and spending time with Him.

5.  The Rapture of the Bride: Just as the Creator gave a way of escape from the sins of the world by giving us His Son as a the Truth, the Way and the Life, God will also offer a way out of the darkest part of the tribulation when the Anti-Christ comes to rule the world and enforce his system of control. And I believe the escape plan is the Rapture, the catching away of the Bride, the remnant marked by God to be taken out of the earth.

So in conclusion, when we look at these five truths in God’s creation agenda, the question still remains: why is it so important for the Creator to allow mankind to go through these events? Is God so demanding that He puts us in harm’s way, faced with the evil of the Anti-Christ, who has yet to emerge on the world scene but is said to be waiting in the wings?

As I said earlier, this is a test of faith and spiritual strength. 

It will be the toughest test we shall ever have to take and we all have to go through it, like gold being melted in the furnace to bring out its purity. 

Everything else does not matter except that we are pure in the sight of God. And why does he want us to be Holy as Jesus is holy? The answer is that we are to be betrothed to Jesus, our bridegroom.

And this brings us to the pandemic virus that has shaken the world since January 2020. Some say it was released in a bio lab in China or originally created in America, others say it came from bats or from sea creatures. 

Whatever the origins, it is clear to me that God allowed the pandemic as a warning, a wake-up call to stop the cycle of sin in our lives and among nations. 

We are to be woken up from spiritual slumber and be prepared for greater upheavals. We shall soon know as the events of the year continue to shake our lives.

How are we to respond to what the prophets say about this year, that everything that can be shaken by God will be shaken? 

From the limited knowledge that we can gather from God's creation purposes, we can only respond by preparing ourselves to His calling, keeping our eyes on the heavenly crown and the highly anticipated marriage to the Lamb of God. 

Perhaps that will be the sixth truth that we shall only know either in the thick of the battle or in the aftermath. The winner will ultimately be the Creator Himself and we, his cherished soldiers, shall decide how well we battle along with Him.

A Tale of Two Kings in the Year of the Pandemic

To resolve one of the great mysteries of 2020, let's do a thought experiment from ancient times (paraphrasing a true incident):

There was once a king who seduced the beautiful wife of his own general and had him killed by "accident" in a battle.

His old mentor knew about it and one fine day asked him: "O wise king, how  would you judge a rich man who stole a poor man's farm because he liked the apple tree in the man's garden? He also plotted to have the man arrested and die in prison.

The king got up in a rage and said "I would have that scoundrel hanged. Where is he? Bring him to me!"

The mentor changed his expression and said sternly," God told me that man is none other than you. You stole an innocent man's wife and had him killed. You shall pay a dear price as you yourself have passed judgement on this matter."

The king was shocked and on that very night, his only child died. He tore his clothes and collapsed in grief. That king was king David, a good hearted and wise king who truly repented of his sin.

Among lesser kings, they would have the mentor imprisoned or banished for speaking out.

In the same way,  we, citizens of the world, faced with the tragedy and daily threat of the coronavirus, can apply the same test on two powerful kings:  the Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping.

Let us put these two men in front of world television and, on the pretext of interviewing their life philosophy, suddenly ask this question out of the blue:

"Assuming your officers have found the criminal who leaked the bat virus to kill thousands worldwide, what would you personally do to that man or woman?"

Now listen to each of their replies carefully and watch how each of them respond when caught off guard.

President Trump replies without skipping a beat:

"When I find the son of a #%@ I would personally feed him to the lions.....you ll need many law enforcers to restrain me from getting him."

President Xi, also without much hesitation, says:

"First, I would make sure he is indeed the criminal. He'll have to confess to the world what, why and how he did this awful thing. 

Then I would send him to be charged in the international tribunal in cooperation with other affected governments. 

Finally, China will take measures to prevent this type of people from plotting  and endangering our peaceful society. "

What a contrast between the two characters: one an intuitive extrovert and the other a rational introvert. But personalities rarely reveal a person's ethics except under tremendous pressure.

So there you have the riddle 50% solved  by their very words.  After listening to their voices and looking deep into their faces, you may probably, with luck and without a lie detector, solve the other half of the mystery.

Now we must keep in mind, that while King David was a man of passion who really fell in love with Bathsheba (the woman he seduced and later married), the two modern day kings are presently leaders of the world's two largest nations.

And in a geopolitical contest to be top superpower, they would not hesitate to try all ways to beat the other nation into a weaker place.

So while the world is just starting to breath a sigh of relief that the worst of the pandemic may be over, we will have to deal with the after-effects of economic costs in terms of unemployment and recessions for the next six months at least.

But the underlying mystery remains with conspiracy theories ranging from complex geopolitical schemes to simple cover up. Yet, the blame game between the two nations currently at play seems a futile exercise. 

There may never be any hard evidence as the masterminds would have wiped away all traces. (Hard evidence will be tough to find and may take years like the JFK murder or 9/11).

So in this existential dilemma, the only true test is one of human behavioural analysis with a thought experiment. 

A Fistful of Lessons For A Troubled Nation

1. When I kept silent in the midst injustice, the crooks took over my world

2. When we were too busy to care where our lives were heading, now we are locked down by law or fear in our very homes.

3. When our friends were beaten up and threatened in the streets of Hong Kong, we stood aside and shook our heads at their brazen protests. Now their turmoil is strangely passed on to the world: as the China mystery virus whispers from the Forbidden City gates.

4. When we shouted against the injustice of our government but condoned the greater cruelties of another foreign government, how can our hypocrisy not be repaid? See who is ruling over us now.

5. When we closed one eye on an old leader who insulted any nation he disliked, now we are trying to mend broken bridges with our former foes. Should they trust us now?

6. When we celebrated our democratic change of government but forgot our core ideals, why be surprised when the opposition quietly brokered hidden deals to kick out the incumbent?

7. When we accept and digest every lie and myth of the new emerging empire soon to fall into the trap that has been awaiting us.

8. When we demand proof and logic to rationalise the human heart, trusting in the good of mankind, why cant we imagine it takes only 1% of people to destroy humanity with their evil schemes.

9. So now that our currency and paper wealth has crashed with a future as bleak as an empty street, have we learnt our lessons well ?

10. When the cities are besieged by the silence of fear and the news channels are filled with nothing but sad statistics and lies. 

The only recourse is to walk alone to the mountains and be refreshed by the silent beauty of nature.