You Just Can't Get There From Here!

Close your eyes. What do you feel? Distress? Worry? Anxiety? Those are feelings that we commonly feel these days. It takes a saint to be happy in these times, especially if you read and watch the news every day! Swine flu. North Korea threatening the world with nuclear war. Iran developing nuclear weapons so that it can threaten the world. An economic depression that approaches the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In some ways the situation of the world is like the insurance salesman from Des Moines on a drive throughout the country side without a map or GPS. He gets lost. Seeing a farmer on his tractor plowing his field, the insurance salesman pulls over his late model Mercedes and hails the farmer. The farmer turns off his tractor to hear. The city slicker from Des Moines asks the way back to the city. The farmer sits back in his seat, rubs his chin with his hand while chewing a blade of grass. "Well, seems to me, you just can't get there from here."

How much that is like us! We want to get back home but seems like we just can't get there from here! At least the Insurance salesman knew where he wanted to go. For us, we can never go back to better times. We have to go forward to a place we have never been before. That's really scary.

So, where are we and where do we want to go? What are the times asking from us and what are the opportunities that await us?

There are some who believe that 2012 marks the end of history, possibly the end of the world. I do not believe that the world will end or that our daily lives will change that much by 2012. But I do believe that we will experience a gigantic turning point in history. Especially two events will take place of monumental importance.

First, the Islamic nations of the Middle East will embrace democracy. President Obama's Cairo speech marked the beginning of a new era between the USA and Islamic nations. The recent protest demonstrations against the hijacking of a democratic election in Iran indicate an undercurrent of support for democracy in the Middle East. Iraq, on June 30th, celebrated a day of national liberation.

Iraq will experience many ups and downs in their democratic life. Democracy is messy. It is the worst form of government, except for all the rest. My money is on democracy, Islamic democracy, winning in Iraq over radical Islamic terrorism. They are walking a path pioneered by India. India recently held the largest democratic election in history with Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Jew and Christian participating. If only Gandhi's efforts had succeeded in keeping Pakistan within Indian sovereignty we would have an even greater example of democracy among many religions.

Second, North Korea will collapse under the weight of the United Nations resistance to its nuclear terrorism. Korea will be united by the end of 2012 not by the force of North Korean nuclear weapons but through a collapse of their already bankrupt financial system. A tyrant can afford to starve his people as long as he feeds the military and arms them. North Korea is facing an immediate future without an inflow of supplies or money from other nations. That is the reason for the insane threatening of the world with nuclear war. They are dying, the regime is crumbling on the eve of the installation of Kim Jong-il's son.

So, where will we be on New Year's 2013? Rest assured, we will wake up and see the dawn of another day! The world will not end and our daily lives will continue. But we will have entered a new era, an era of building peaceful relations among the nations. Islamic nations will have crossed the threshold into democratic Islam. Korea will be reunited and posed to help East Asia and Southeast Asia enter a golden age.

Our generation and the next generation will have a tremendous responsibility to take the next step. Religious leaders, saints, and lay persons in every religion will have the great responsibility to live the teachings of their religions, to create a parliament of world religions. The generations following will have the task of creating one world community governed by a new world Constitution and government.

This would truly be impossible if we relied upon our own talents and abilities. The task lay beyond our talents and abilities. But God and the Heavenly Hosts have always helped us in the past and they will in the present and the future. We are moving toward the Kingdom of God on earth, the fulfillment of every religious person's dreams and hopes.

So, maybe we can't get back home from here. That's good. Because the new place where we are going together, the place we will create together, is much, much, much better.

All You Need Is Love

North Korea tested a nuclear bomb and a few missiles. They revoked the truce in place since 1953. Nuclear war on the Korean peninsula is looming. Pakistan has counter attacked the Taliban, holding them off for the time being from conquering Islamabad and capturing its nuclear arsenal. Iran marches steadily and rapidly toward creating its own nuclear missiles. Israel has pledged to strike before that happens. Sure sounds like Armageddon to me.

The nuclear drama is taking place with the backdrop of a world wide global depression. The world's governments have been acting quickly to avert a complete meltdown of the financial institutions. Whether we will or not remains to be seen.

The Swine Flu has sent fear through the world's communities. WHO rang the alarm bell. It had the appearance of a false alarm, bringing criticism upon its leaders who assure us a pandemic will happen.

What in the world is happening? Are we witnessing the end of the world? No. Just the approach of the end of history. Many have designated 2012 as the year history ends.

What does that mean, the end of history? It sure sounds a lot like the end of the world. The end of history denotes a monumental turning point in our communal life on the earth. Some have called it dooms day and others the beginning of the Kingdom of God.

In either case, the end of history is a turning point. We face several enormous challenges before 2012. How we deal with them will determine whether we experience an apocalypse or a step over the threshold into the kingdom of God.

The central challenge is whether or not we can love one another. I know, that sounds a lot like the hippie slogan of the 1960s. Yet it really does come down to that. Can we love, forgive, and embrace one another? Can we live in peace in mutual prosperity, community, and mutual love?

We are at a turning point, a decisive moment of history. We have in our hands the power to turn the earth into a cinder or into a Garden of Eden. We have the ability to herald the angels of peace or the angels of destruction. Everything is in our hands. Love. "All you need is love" as the Beatles sang.

Who are the children of peace? The children of peace are the children of God. Who are the children of God? The children of God are the followers of Krishna, Buddha, Confucius, Lao-tzu, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, the Baihai Báb, Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, and on and on. All true religious leaders teach love of God and love of each other. We have teachings enough to live in peace if each of us takes the religious teachings we hold dear and live them.

North Korea poses an especially difficult challenge. A communist atheistic totalitarian dictatorship on the verge of possessing a quiver full of nuclear arrows, love may not be enough to disarm them. The united world community may have to devastate North Korea before it harms its neighbors.

One way or another, when we celebrate the new year 2012, we will have crossed the threshold of a new history, the era of cooperation among the nations and religions of the world. That will not come automatically. We will have decades of struggle to see a coming together of the children of God of all stripes. God and the angelic world will help. They have decided that there is no turning back. We will see the Kingdom of God on the earth, even if we have to experience nuclear war, plague, and famine along the way.

I. Quest for Peace: Peace Cities

Quest for Peace: Peace Cities

I. Peace City

II. Spiritual Quest

III. America

IV. Community

V. Kibbutz Sasa
VI. Jesus Christ Superstar
VII. Christian
VIII. Kingdom in Israel
  IX. The Second Coming

Finding a way for us to live together peacefully is a big subject for me. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, I faced that issue while attending the University of Washington in Seattle. The world looked bleak then, at least to me.

The USA fought a bloody and unpopular war in Vietnam, democracy in a life and death battle with communism. Two of my brothers fought in Vietnam, with the 1st Air Calvary and the 3rd Marines. I belonged to the National Guard manning Nike Hercules missiles in the suburbs of Seattle. Our missiles had been tipped with atomic warheads in a desperate attempt to bring down Soviet ICBM's on their way to targets throughout the USA.

That opened the possibility of another, potentially catastrophic event. Doom's Day. The Nuclear Winter. The end of life on our planet through an exchange of nuclear weapons. I had the job of arming the atomic warheads, which gave me pause as veterans in the missile pits talked about the inevitability of our blowing up the world.

In addition to the struggle between communism and democracy/capitalism and the very real probability of our destroying the earth with nuclear weapons, environmentalists prophetically predicted an end of the world from over population and the destruction of our environment.


That was in 1971. Much has changed and much remains the same nearly forty years later. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. Communist nations fell like dominoes. The Soviet Union fragmented, Eastern Europe regained it's freedom, China adopted "rich is beautiful" as their guiding star slogan. Only isolated North Korea and Cuba carry the banner for communism today. North Korea is building nuclear weapons and delivery systems hoping to scare the world into life-giving concessions for their dying totalitarian state.

Many nuclear weapons have been dismantled by Russia, USA, Europe, and China. Yet the nuclear club has been growing. Along with North Korea, Iran is building the ultimate weapon. We are still not out of the woods with nuclear weapons. We still have the prospect of nuclear exchanges, and nuclear terrorism, that could devastate much of or all of the world.

We are still in a dangerous place with the environment. The need to replace fossil fuel with fuels harmonious with the environment is obvious. Over population in Africa, India, China, South America is increasing exponentially. Forty years later, we are struggling to save irreplaceable rain forests, protect natural habitat for species threatened with extinction, while attempting to create jobs for people whose livelihood destroys those treasures.

The collapse of communism beginning in 1989 has given way to another, even more dangerous struggle. Islam has stepped into the void left by Communism's demise. Islam, like Christianity, seeks to convert the world. The clash between Islam and Christianity is as old as both those religions. What makes the clash new is nuclear weapons.

Radical Islamic fundamentalists have determined to spread their faith by terrorism, including atomic, biological, and nuclear terrorism if possible. Unstable Pakistan houses nuclear weapons highly coveted by the Taliban. The Taliban has a cozy partnership with Osama bin Ladin and al Qaeda. Iran would make it's weapons available to anyone attacking the democratic world, including Chavez and Kim Jung Il.

So, in this troubling situation, on the eve of 2012, let's consider a new way of life. Enter Peace cities.

Peace cities. A grand ideal. Cities like Walt Disney envisioned when he conceived and created EPCOT (Experimental Prototype of the City of Tomorrow). Walt created EPCOT in Orlando, Florida during the race strife in the inner cities of America. He wanted to employ technology to create a safe, clean, healthy, efficient way of living together in the city of tomorrow. The section of EPCOT that hosts nations in a semi-circle around a lake displayed Walt's hope for a world of harmony among the nations and races and cultures of the world. "It's a small world isn't it" captures the dream vividly, as well.

Can we create peace cities from technological advances and cultural appreciation alone? No. Respect and appreciation are important, even necessary. But that in itself is not enough. We need to join in genuine community with others whose hearts are right with God. We will only find genuine peace with each other when we have God in our hearts. As John Wesley said: "If your heart is right with God, as my heart is right with God, then give me your hand." Peace only comes when we each know God.

Continued