Brave New World
“Brave New World” is a science fiction novel by the British novelist Aldous Huxley. Wikipedia says about it: “The science fiction novel describes a future world that is controlled entirely by technology and rationalism. The people are healthy and happy, they know neither war nor poverty. Traditional values like love, faithfulness, family life, art and religion no longer exist, just like the free choice to live an individual life.Society is based on consumerism and instantaneous satisfaction of needs and mass production. People are considered to constantly be in touch with others, being alone is not done. The freely available drug ‘soma’ gives a feeling of constant bliss. People who do not want to use ‘soma’ are mistrusted. For entertainment there are television, electronic sports and games, and “feelies”, usually erotic films that stimulate the emotional senses.”
“Although the novel is situated in the future, Huxley mainly described the techniques he saw being developed. Huxley understood very well the social and scientific changes that were implemented all over the world. Especially in the year 1920, technology advanced and machines started to replace many labourers. A good example of this was Henry Ford. The father of the assembly line was now able to start mass production of motorcars that could be afforded by his own employees. Huxley amongst others visited the advanced chemical factory “Brunner and Mond” where plastics are produced for all kinds of applications.”
“When Huxley started writing “Brave New World” in 1931 the worldwide Great Depression had just started, sparked by the panic on the American stock exchange in 1929. People lost their savings and there was massive unemployment. The so-called capitalistic system based on mass consumption burst like an air bubble. Furthermore a general fear for Americanizing dominated Europe.”
Huxley could be rightfully called a secularized prophet, or a prophet of secularism!
The new Europe advances in the name of man. The unimaginable worldwide disasters of the last century, with two World Wars, left behind a scourged Europe even a scourged world. But now a Phoenix rises from its ashes. A shiny firebird. A breath-taking “Brave New World”. A new kind of humanism arises, sometimes intertwined with a religious sense and sensitivity like that of the “New Age”- concepts that are floating around. Even the Pope could not prevent that in the new constitution of Europe there will not be any reference to God, or to the Jewish-Christian traditions and values that shaped and hallmarked Europe. The New Europe on the rise is a Europe as fruit of the slogans of the French Revolution: freedom, equality and brotherhood – no God and no master. Man on the throne, who deep inside thinks he is a god, divine himself. Part of a divine Universe, like in Hinduism. God in all, and all in God.
But man is a fallen man. The rebellion against God is in his blood. And the powers of darkness are ready to add more to that instinctively felt opposition against God and His will. Satan has become the grandmaster in the background. The slave-master who relentlessly drives forward mankind, inciting his lust for unbound independency, freedom of choice and ethics, playing man’s religious feelings as a grand piano-player with low and high tones in their hearts. But regardless of all the great slogans of the new age for a new world the moral decline is setting in very rapidly and the end will be horrific. Rivers of blood were the end of the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and the Third Reich of the National Socialist Revolution. Especially rivers of Jewish blood during the Nazi-regime.
The new spirit of humanism looks very much like that of the old Hellenism that was spread worldwide by the Greeks and especially by Alexander the Great and his descendants. And although finally Rome crushed the Greek Empire military and politically: in a sense Greek philosophy, culture and civilization conquered Rome. Once upon a time this spirit of Hellenism, of Greek humanism, vigorously and violently clashed with the God of Israel. One of the generals who were assigned a part of the Greek empire after Alexander’s death was Selecus. He got the area Northeast of Israel. Ptolemy, another Greek general, got Egypt, Southwest of Israel. And those two (and their descendants) pitched into each other regularly to dispute their territories. With Israel in between!
When finally Antiochus Epiphanies (one of the “Seleucids”) had to recoil from Egypt with a bloody head, he cooled his anger on hated Israel. He forbade Jewish circumcision, to maim and mutilate the beautiful male body a barbaric abhorrence for an true Hellene who believed in a healthy spirit in a healthy body and great sports-events like Olympic Games with beautiful “perfect” well-muscled male bodies, performed by athletes in the nude.
Ultimately Antiochus Epiphanes forbade all Jewish practises, also to keep the Sabbath. A statue of Zeus was erected in the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Pigs, the most unclean animal for Jews, were slaughtered on the altar in the Temple. And whoever wanted to keep to serve the God of Israel in the way He wants to be served, was punishable to death.
Finally all of this led to the revolt of the Maccabees. And lo and behold: this small band of orthodox Jewish fighters who took to the arms ultimately defeated the Greeks and their Hellenism/humanism and Antiochus had to go home with a bloody nose. Then the Temple was cleansed and inaugurated again so that the God of Israel could be served in the way He wants to be served. The Jews still celebrate this great event during the Feast of Hanukkah, in our month of December. The collision between natural man, Hellenistic/humanistic man that lives by his own standards and rules, who considers himself to be a god deep inside, and people who want to live according the rules and revelation of the One and only God was settled in favour of the latter.
Everything that once was, all that happened on a smaller scale in the past, will be happening again – but this time on a world-wide scale. The political systems of this world and the religious systems of man himself will join hands together, more and more. An increasingly menacing situation for pious Jews and Bible believing Christians. Finally all nations will go up to Jerusalem for the final and decisive battle. To teach that last adversary of the shining new age and hated antagonists some good manners, and make them follow suit by force. Because this brave new world that is on its way is the only hope for mankind as a whole, the new ideology teaches. Everybody has to participate! If they don’t see the new light, we will first try to ‘re-educate’ them. If they still don’t want to see the new truth, we have to eliminate them. Bad news for observant Jews and bible-believing Christians.
Maybe a number of those who do not want to play along, will have a small change to survive at the fringes of society. But buying or selling without the sign on your hand or forehead is practically impossible, especially when cash payments are marginal. And your plastic card with fingerprint, or a chip built in somewhere in your body, or your “Privium-eye-iris-identification” can only be obtained when you are politically and religiously correct, and part of the world-wide system.
The incredible administrative computer systems will be able to keep track of everything. There is no way to escape. But then, finally, the Lord will take action and He will intervene. The outcome will be completely different from what the believers in the brave new world have in their mind. Finally ‘Babylon’- the city of man’ will fall, and ‘Jerusalem’- the city of God’ will remain and fill the earth. The God of Israel will show Himself as the Holy Only, the Everlasting God. The God of Israel, who is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
So: be warned, peoples of Europe and in the rest of the world! You are – just like the statue of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2 – only a giant on clay feet. Think three times about what your political decisions regarding Israel are going to imply. Because one day He will call you to account, when He comes as the “rock” to pulverize the entire statue and to establish His Kingdom worldwide. This also regards the attitude that the Church will take towards Israel in our final days. Are we shoulder to shoulder next to our elderly Jewish brother? Or do we run with the hare and hunt with the hounds of public opinion? May the Lord help us to quietly and faithfully continue in our prayers and our commitment for the Jewish people and Israel despite of all threats. Until He comes to make all things new!
Jan-zonder-hart (Dutch) – John-without-a-heart
Rotterdam. The city with Ossip Zadkine’s statue: John-without-a-heart, officially: “The Razed City” (1953). The bronze statue of a man with his arms helplessly thrown up, the heart pulled out, a gaping hole. Rotterdam. The centre of the city was bombarded by the German airplanes in the beginning of WWII. Completely left in ruins during the Second World War. The beating heart snatched away, leaving the body behind dying.
Today Europe is in a similar state. The heart snatched away. From the Netherlands 105,000 Jews disappeared. Snatched away and never returned. In the whole of Europe millions of Jews together with Christians and other opponents to the Nazi-regime snatched away. And with that Europe allowed its heart to be snatched away, leaving the body to die. Europe was broken. The nourishing root, source of the Jewish-Christian values, spiritual source of the Western civilisation was practically totally cut off. Leaving a spiritual vacuum behind. And today this spiritual vacuum is being filled with other “sources of inspiration”. As if God is saying: you did not like My people? Then I will send you other strangers with another god, and see how much you like that.
The Church is an engrafted branch into the noble olive tree, fed by its nourishing root, Paul teaches us in Romains 11. But what happens when we cut the root? Then the grafted branches will wither and finally they will die. In the early history of the Church the spiritual ties with Israel and Judaism were cut off. And century after century “Israel” was subsequently scoffed, mocked, slandered, beaten, boycotted, plundered, flogged and finally murdered. Again and again and again.
But what will happen to the branches if you cut the root? What is left of Christianity today in Europe? It is as good as dead. Here and there are still some small spots with pockets of light and hope. And fortunately not all Jews have left for Israel yet. It seems to me that there is a deep spiritual connection between the presence of the synagogue in the nations of the world and the spreading of the Gospel by the Church to the nations of the world. The good news to proclaim the salvation of man and mankind by our Jewish Redeemer Jesus Christ/Yeshua HaMashiach in the world of Gentiles with their many religious practises and their polytheism.
In order that the worship of the One and only true and invisible God could and can replace that. Worshipping the Creator of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of Israel. And the Ten Commandments as a guideline towards a real and truly happy life for individual people and for the nations as well. Proclaiming a Kingdom to come when one-day, when from Jerusalem peace and righteousness will fill the earth and the nations will walk in the light that radiates from the God of Israel, the Creator of heaven and earth and of His Christ.
