For years my blog has been announced as ‘almost weekly’. As far as I can remember I haven’t once skipped a week in the years I’ve been writing my blog. But last week was an exception. I was in the United States with my wife. There, as mentioned in an earlier blog, I received an award for my work in the Adventist Church. In addition, I had appointments for a few lectures and sermons, and we had the opportunity to visit some good friends who live near Loma Linda University. However, we decided to end our trip prematurely, when my wife’s sister’s health became critical. She died three days after our return.

A death in your immediate surroundings–of a family member or a close friend–confronts us with the fragility of human existence. And regularly paying visits to a hospital, as my wife and I did for a number of weeks, has a similar effect. You see too much evidence of physical detoriation and misery! And there are also too many reports from one’s circle of family, (former) colleagues, friends, neighbors and other acquaintances about tia’s, infarcts, bypasses, artificial hips and cancer-diagnoses. You sometimes almost feel guilty if all you have so far experienced is suffering from a bit of high blood pressure and/or an elevated blood sugar level. Having said that, it is important to always remind ourselves that, fortunately, there are also many robust and healthy people, and that there are still lots of people who almost effortlessly cross the threshold of ninety years. According to recent data, there are now more than 2100 centenarians in the Netherlands!

It so happens that the Dutch version of my recent book about death, resurrection and eternal life is coming off the press this very week. It is based on the recently published book: I HAVE A FUTURE: CHRIST’S RESURRECTION AND MINE (Stanborough Press, 2019). The Dutch title is: IK HEB EEN TOEKOMST: over dood, opstanding en eeuwig leven. The Dutch version is published by the Dutch Adventist Church and can be ordered through the Service Centre of the church. The link is:

https://www.servicecentrum-adventist.nl/a-59051024/welkom/ik-heb-een-toekomst/

The price is € 12,95.

It is up to others to judge the content of the book. For me, writing it was an intense, but very positive, experience. It helped me to think through the problems of death and resurrection in a structured way. Do I really believe that there is life after death? Is there enough evidence? Is the gospel story of Jesus’ resurrection really credible? And if there is eternal life, what does it look like? I didn’t find a definitive answer to all my questions, but it was a very constructive process. I myself have the impression that this book is perhaps the best I have written so far. But maybe some readers will think differently. I am curious. In any case, I hope that my reflections will at least help a number of people in finding answers to their questions about life and death.

Let me add this: In many publications of Adventist vintage one finds very frequent quotes from the books of the most famous Adventist author, Ellen G. White. I deliberately did not follow that model. My reasoning is based on the Bible and I have consciously attempted in my use of terms and my over-all approach to ensure that also readers with a non-Adventist background will feel addressed. Whether I have succeeded will have to be seen. Any reactions from readers will be very welcome!

Nobobdy could have been more surprised than I was when last July I received a message from dr. Bernard Taylor, the president of the Charles Elliott Weniger Society for Excellence that I was one of the four persons the board of this society had chosen as the 2020 recipients of the Charles Elliott Weniger Award of Excellence.

This was what he wrote to me by way of explanation: Seminary dean, English professor, gifted public speaker, Charles Elliott Weniger influenced a generation of ministers through his classes in homiletics at the Seventh-day Adventist Seminary in the 1950s. His students remembered him for his modeling of excellence and his kindness, the two proving to be an inspiring combination. In 1974, ten years after the death of Dr Weniger, three of his friends established the society to honor his memory and the qualities of excellence that were paramount in his life. Through its annual award program, the Society seeks to identify and recognize the contributions made to the world by Adventists with similar significant traits of character.

I was informed that the 2020 awards would be given during a ceremony in Loma Linda on February 15. Besides myself, the persons to be honored are Dr. Andrea T. Luxton, president of Andrews University, Dr. Richard T. Hart, president of Loma Linda University and Dr. A Danoune Diop, director of the department of public affairs and religious liberty of the General Conference of the Adventist world church.

The awards have now been given for some 45 years and many leader and scholars in the church have been honored with this ‘award of excellence’. Among them are such eminent men and women as Jan Paulsen, Bert B. Beach, Nils-Erik Andreasen, Ella Simmons, Lyn Behrens, Roy Branson, William Johnsson, Richard Rice, and Fritz Guy—just to name some of them.

The program for the Award ceremonies on February 15 will begin at 4.30 pm and will be held in the Loma Linda University Church. It will be streamed via the LLBN (Loma Linda Broadcasting Network). For those interested, the link is: https://www.llbn.tv/home. Note that 4.30 pm is the local time in California, which is 1.30 am Dutch time and 2.30 am UK time.

As I write this blog, more than 400 people in China have succumbed to the Coronavirus and over 20,000 cases of infection have been diagnosed. The virus has not yet surfaced in the Netherlands, but today it was announced that one of the Belgians, who were evacuated from Wuhan, is infected. The World Health Organization is taking the matter extremely seriously, and it is widely anticipated that the disease will spread and cause numerous casualties worldwide.

Many readers of the Gospel of Matthew will almost automatically think of the words of Jesus in the twenty-fourth chapter, in which the Lord predicts that all kinds of disasters will happen before the Second Coming. As one of the disasters, the seventeenth-century Dutch Bible translation mentions ‘pestilences’ (verse 7). The Revised version of this Bible translation renders this as ‘infectious diseases’. In more recent Dutch Bible translations this aspect of the so-called ‘signs of the times’ is not mentioned separately. The King James Version also mentions the ‘pestilences’ that will come, while more recent English translations do not explicitly mention this facet either. My knowledge of New Testament Greek is still adequate enough to check in my Greek New Testament that the newer translations are correct.

But, in any case, the coronavirus is a serious problem, and because of the enormous globalization the danger of a worldwide spreading has, of course, greatly increased. But is it a sign of the imminent end?

And what about the Brexit? Is that a fulfilment of the last phase of the prophecy of the image King Nebuchadnezzar saw in his dream? Can we see before our eyes that the ‘kingdoms’ that emerged on the territory of the Roman Empire will not form a lasting unity, as the prophecy foretold? And what to say of the political tensions and the many wars, and of the threat of war that is constantly being felt? And what to make of the many earthquakes that occur? I am not so much thinking of the repeated tremors in the Dutch province of Groningen, however annoying they may be, but of quakes that go beyond seven on the Richter scale.

Are they all ‘signs of the times’? For some, no doubt they are. When they see these things, they are more than ever convinced the coming of Christ is at the door, perhaps even during their lifetime! Others are not so sure and point out that terrible disasters have always happened. In the last few days I have repeatedly heard the comparison between the Coronavirus in the Spanish flu. At least twenty million people died from that epidemic in the years 1918-1919. Some historians think that there were even about a hundred million casualties.

It is important to put all this in a proper biblical perspective. The New Testament shows that the ‘time of the end’ is the period between the first and second coming of Christ. And throughout that period there are ‘signs’ that constantly remind us that history is going to come to an end. We are in the final phase. In Greek the word ‘semeion’ is used. This is generally translated as ‘sign’. However, it is not a miracullous sign. The Greek has another word for that. Perhaps the word ‘signal’ is the best rendering. There have always been signals that time is not always going to continue. Those signals occur also in our day and age, and it is important that we recognize them as such.

Some will say: But this end-time has now been going on for about two thousand years. How can that be? Yes, it seems to be very long, at least if we date the beginning of this world in a relatively recent past, maybe some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. For those (and I include myself in that category) who see the beginning, when God set his creation in motion, as probably much further in the past, an end-time of 2,000 years is a relatively short period–certainly from a divine perspective. But in whatever way we think about this, the ‘signals’ keep reminding us that the end is definitely coming, and that the promise of a new world will come true.