The Green Cross

"We desperately need to recognize that we are the guests not the masters of nature and adopt a new paradigm for development, based on the costs and benefits to all people, and bound by the limits of nature herself rather than the limits of technology and consumerism." Mikhail Gorbachev, Chairman of the Board, Green Cross International

"No sane person seeks a world divided between billions of excluded people living in absolute deprivation and a tiny elite guarding their wealth and luxury behind fortress walls. No one rejoices at the prospect of a life in a world of collapsing social and ecological systems. Yet we continue to place human civilization and even the survival of our species at risk mainly to allow a million or so people to accumulate money beyond any conceivable need. We continue to go boldly where no one wants to go." (David C. Korten, "When Corporations Rule the World")

"The nations were angry, and Your wrath has come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged. And that You should reward Your servants the prophets and the saints, and those who fear Your name, small and great, and should destroy those who destroy the earth." Revelation 11:18

THE RUSSIANS WERE FLABBERGASTED

We swerved in and out of the two-lane streets of the Presidio next to San Francisco Bay. Our little group of Russian tourists had no idea where I was taking them—they simply thought we were heading for an underside view of the Golden Gate Bridge. Little did they realize they would shortly stand aghast at the small two-story gambrel cottage where the International Green Cross headquarters, headed by the deposed President Mikhail Gorbachev, stood in obscure testimony to the once mighty colossus of the Soviet Union.

I was amused. More than reluctantly these Russian coal miners, now in 1994, were coaxed by me to get out of our large van and literally enter into this unbelievable sight—a military facility donated by the US to Mikhail Gorbachev’s fledgling, altruistic ideal at earthly redemption: The International Green Cross.

Sight seeing is one thing—peering into "how are the mighty fallen" is quite another! "How could this have happened? Gorbachev winding up in this hole in the wall underneath the Golden Gate Bridge in an old US Coast Guard facility huddled amongst warehouses and rickety old buildings of little import?" The surreal scene of it all was altogether bizarre, eerie, and even prophetic in its condescension. My Russian guests, most from Siberia, left this esoteric experience flabbergasted, embarrassed, and even angered that their once dynamic, articulate, and feared leader of the world’s largest communist empire had embraced such a humiliating conclusion to his ignoble career. Alas! President Vladimir Putin this month bemoaned the Soviet Union’s demise: "The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century."

WHAT ON EARTH IS GOING ON HERE? . . . "THE GLOBAL ETHIC"

Lee Penn in his article A Case Against the United Religions Initiative (URI) exposes the soft underbelly of Gorbachev’s real agenda. How on earth (no pun intended) did folks like Mikhail Gorbachev, former California Senator Alan Cranston, George Schultz, et al, get behind this slogan: Give Humanity a Chance, give the Earth a future?

"I believe in the cosmos. All of us are linked to the cosmos. Look at the sun. If there is no sun, then we cannot exist. So nature is my god. To me, nature is sacred. Trees are my temples and forests are my cathedrals" (an interview with Gorbachev).

Penn deliberates on the New Age religion of Maurice Strong, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the likes of Ted Turner, who like Episcopal Bishop William Swing (founder of URI), back the new "Global Ethic" and its "Declaration of Human Responsibilities" in their new "Earth Charter." Gorbachev calls the Earth Charter, the new religion of Ecology (a.k.a., the GREEN CROSS) . . .

". . . a kind of Ten Commandments, a ‘Sermon on the Mount,’ that provides a guide for human behavior toward the environment in the next century and beyond . . . the protection of the Biosphere, as the Common Interest of Humanity, must not be subservient to the rules of state sovereignty, demands of the free market or individual rights" (The Earth Charter: The Green Cross Philosophy).

The religious philosophy behind the Green Cross, epitomized in Bishop Swing’s URI, is strongly supported by dissident Catholics like Hans Küng, who like Gorbachev, wish to use government power to create a world utopia by ridding the earth of what the Bible terms "The Merchants of the Earth" who clearly represent that "million" mentioned by David C. Korten, whose greed and avarice are Biblically denounced in the Almighty’s ultimate judgment upon those who "destroy the earth!"

Now, how can I say all this in one breath? It appears that I concur with the underlying assumption of both Korten and Gorbachev that somehow we must stop the ecological madness imposed upon and corrupting the earth. Those who "destroy the earth" are naught but conniving exploiters of earth’s resources whose ultimate judgment the Almighty holds in special contempt!

However, embedded within the Global Ethic of the Left is a fervent and repulsive hatred of the Cross of Christ and its defining demarcation against all for which it stands. Indeed, listen to the beguiling words of Bishop Swing:

"The time comes, though, when common language and a common purpose for all religions and spiritual movements must be discerned and agreed upon. Merely respecting and understanding other religions is not enough . . . the nature of the United Religious would be to focus on: 1) the whole human family; 2) the whole health of our planet; and 3) the whole realm of living species, and to offer the unique gifts of religions . . . there will have to be a godly cease-fire, a temporary truce where the absolute exclusive claims of each (religion) will be honored but an agreed upon neutrality will be exercised in terms of proselytizing, condemning, murdering, or dominating. These will not be tolerated in the United Religions zone" (A Case Against the URI).

The survivability of the URI or Gorbachev’s International Green Cross is of no concern . . . the "religious philosophy" behind the Left’s efforts is . . . "We can’t afford fundamentalists in a world this small" (Paul Chafee; transcribed by Lee Penn from URI-provided tape of URI forum at Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, held on 2/2/97).

BATTLE OF THE CROSSES

A convergence of political and religious interests from the Left has coalesced around the Green Cross, juxtaposed to their antithesis: The Religious Right.

Amazing how religion, especially the Christian religion—its use or lack thereof—is manipulated by Left and Right. While traveling through Kentucky, and throughout the Midwest of the USA, several years back, and shortly after 9/11, I witnessed a most remarkable sight blazoned on the double doors of country churches and atop church steeples . . . and, since a picture’s worth a thousand words . . .

Can I ask you . . . has not the Cross of Christ been politicized by both the Christian Right and by the Religious Left? Come on now . . . just who’s using the Cross for their own agenda? The truth of the matter is altogether clear . . . politics and religion (be it from Left or Right) fully understands the dynamic of religious support for their political agenda and visa versa (i.e., religion realizes its need for political support)).

THE WORLD FORUM

Former U. S. Senator Alan Cranston was not only the co-organizer of The World Forum but acted as the chairman of the Gorbachev Foundation (the funding mechanism behind the International Green Cross). The Cranston/Gorbachev alliance was/is straightforward:

"First discuss the state of the world, what might be done about it, what the options are and what practical steps might be taken. Issues include how to get weapons under control, mediating disputes, protecting the environment and creating a climate for rational development."

However, without the "religious component" under girding the political designs to change the environment, the goals and aspirations of organizations like the World Forum and the International Green Cross, are doomed to irrelevance and political solitude. Thus, those who embrace the Green Cross and who "rediscover a reverence for all life and respect for the sacredness of the whole of Planet Earth" must get clergy and laity to accept the gradual development of their New Religion by "retooling" both clergy and lay religious leaders in the philosophy of "spiritual ecology."

SPIRITUAL DYNAMIC YES, BUT WHICH ONE?

Korten has hit on something . . . something utterly profound, when he states:

"Our spiritual awakening may be integral to our political awakening. Alienation from our spiritual nature has left us exposed to manipulation by both the advertisers who turn our longing for spiritual connection into an insatiable quest for money and the political demagogues who connect this quest with the corporate interest. . .

Once again, however, to "channel" that spiritual dimension through the embrace of the Green Cross is, at its very best, a utopian discard, though it wholly acknowledges the innate greed decrepit within the heart of fallen humanity. To champion diversity and unity through a Christless Cross are precisely the aspirations of the finest that Babylon can conjure.

The same "cosmos" worshipped and embraced by Gorbachev, is the same "system" which the Bible declares lies wholly within the grasp of the Evil One!

"The whole world (Grk. kosmos) lies under the sway of the wicked one" (I John 5:19b).

Indeed, the same utopians who despise the "fundamentalist" who ascribe vindictive upon the "god of this world" (Grk. Kŏsmŏkratŏr), do themselves deceptive injustice to circumvent the true Cross of Christ by attempting to pick the world up by their own bootstraps without the Grace of God, and thereby enshrine the "good" of the Tree of the Knowledge of "Good and Evil" doing despite to the Tree of Life which they purport to follow! Simply put: The efforts of those who destroy the earth will not be dismantled nor their philosophies dissuaded until their desecrations are eliminated by this chorus of worshipers upon their thrones:

"We give You thanks, O Lord God Almighty, the One who is and who was and who is to come, because You have taken Your great power and reigned" (Revelations 11:17) . . . this verse immediately supercedes the judgment upon "those who destroy the earth" (Revelation 11:18b).

Our belief does not provide solace or justification on behalf of those who lead in the destruction of the earth’s resources by their exploitation of its wealth— absolutely not. Nor do we shrug our responsible shoulders at those who attempt to stem the tide of ecological disaster upon our earthly shores. It does, however, declare that supernatural intervention in the Person Whose Cross alone, without any earthly interference, wholly ameliorates the disparity of wealth and resources now held hostage by the Kosmocrater, the "god of this world."

Likewise, Christians who can somehow justify wrapping themselves in the American flag in order to validate their abundance and "prosperity" as indicative of the Lord’s "blessings" upon their lives—individually and nationally—are committing a similar disgrace to the sacred Cross by discoloring and compromising its crimson red with political tricolors: Red, white, and blue!

Jesus is blatantly clear regarding the "kingdoms of this world" -- "My kingdom is NOT of this world (Grk. "kosmos" or "cosmos"); if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight . . . but now is my kingdom not from hence" (John 18:36). I hasten to add that our Lord’s response was to the immediate gentile ruler of Judea, Pilate, who inquired of Jesus whether or not He was an "earthly" king (undoubtedly, like unto Caesar).

Believers who aspire from "hence" convolute the Scriptures to such an extent as to propose that through the passion, death, resurrection, ascension and heavenly enthronement of Christ, He now "rules and reigns" on "spiritually" on the earth through the Church and that the manifestation of His Kingdom is NOW from "hence!" The transgression of this "theology" needs little exposure from history. The recent film, "The Kingdom of Heaven," glaringly decries the worldly seizure of this manifestation with its Knights Templar interspersed with Christian symbols having utterly nothing to do with the true Kingdom of Heaven.

LIBERATION THEOLOGY OR ULTIMATE BONDAGE?

"Class warfare," embodied within the doctrine of Liberation Theology, is not a new twist in "Christian" efforts to manifest the Kingdom of Heaven upon this earthly clod. Our articles relative to this topic bestirred the rage of a goodly number of utopians who allegedly champion the cause of the poor in their struggle with the greedy "Merchants of the earth" and their alliance of convenience with the wealth and prosperity gospel of both evangelicals and Roman Catholics (please see my previous article on Liberation Theology and the consequences of Christian Socialism).

The attraction of Premillenarians (those who affirm the future manifestation of Messiah’s Kingdom on earth through divine intervention) to deviant forms of Christian Socialism (be they isolationist Protestant utopians like Jim Jones and David Koresh or grandiose pundits and practitioners like Bartolomé de Las Casas, Antonio de Montesinos, Antonio Vieira, Gustavo Gutiérrez, or Brother Caneca among the Catholics of Latin America) are not new.

Sincere, but sorely deceived Christians, have for centuries attempted to orchestrate through governmental and/or "community" adjustment, the manifestation of the Kingdom of Heaven upon this earth. The extremities of their failures are legendary—everything from the Peasants’ War during the early stages of the German Reformation to the obscurity of those seeking relief from today’s Babylon proper (a.k.a., America) by fleeing to New Zealand or the "wilderness" of Canada; only to find, "that wherever you go, there you are."

What starts out as an altruistic premise that "fleeing Babylon" and "waging spiritual warfare" on behalf of the "Republic" (juxtaposed to the "Empire") inevitably winds up elitist and ipso facto "this worldly" to the extent that in practice a distorted "Kingdom Now" theology is inevitably embraced (notwithstanding all the theological protestations to the contrary).

WISHFUL THINKING OR FALSE HOPE

The "new twist" in today’s efforts at Christian Socialism is pronounced within the Green Cross—the so-called "Ecological Revolution" and its New Age religious twist embodied in the pronouncements of the United Religious Initiative. The Green Revolution sweeping Europe and the American Left—with or without Christian symbolism—extends a whole host of utopian alterations, suggestions, and activism capable of lifting the global community from its tendency toward utter imbalance and disparity of wealth to "community consciousness" and utopia.

These "secular" proponents of the new economic religion site the fall of the Berlin Wall, the demise of the Soviet Union, the initial signing in 1993 of the Israeli/Palestinian peace accord, and the election in 1994 of Nelson Mandela as milestones of hope—precursors to a much better world through popular uprisings against the inequities which abound around the globe.

In 1995 David Korten, in his book, "When Corporations Rule the World," outlined a plethora of utopian prognostications well-deserving of noble consideration and effort. In deference to Korten’s fine analyses of the present persistence of the "Merchants of the Earth" and of their insatiable hegemonic goals of economic dominance through the "corporate model," I am, nevertheless, Biblically convinced that no matter how sincere are his proposals and predictions, the weight of history and eschatology lament their fulfillment.

Korten conjectured that by 2001 the following sample possibilities could present themselves:

(1) International arms sales will be banned and the world’s major armies dismantled in favor of a small unified UN peace-keeping command.

(2) Japan, the United States, Canada, Germany, and a number of other European countries will levy a 50 percent tax on advertising to finance consumer education on the merits of frugality and research on how to eliminate the growth imperative from the national economy.

(3) Current national income accounting systems based on returns to business enterprises will be replaced by systems that measure economic performance on the basis of human needs met and the enhancement or depletion of a country’s human, social, and natural capital stock.

(4) Massive agrarian reform initiatives will break up corporate and other large agricultural holdings nearly everywhere and convert them into family farms serving local markets, using bio-intensive agricultural methods and recycling organic wastes.

(5) Ninety percent of the debts of low-income countries will be repudiated or forgiven, and long-term international borrowing will be sharply curtailed.

(6) A drastically downsized World Bank will be converted into a technical assistance agency.

(7) The IMF/GATT and the WTO will be replaced by UN agencies under the authority and supervision of the UN’s Economic and Social Council and will be engaged in rewriting international finance and trade policies to support economic localization within a framework of global cooperation.

(8) Several thousand indigenous cultures previously on the verge of extinction will be revived and flourishing.

(9) The industrial countries will reduce their per capita consumption of nonrenewable energy by 50 percent, and sales of new gasoline-powered automobiles will fall in the industrial countries by 75 percent with the phase-in of solar conversion and the redesign of urban habitats to facilitate walking, bicycling, and public transit.

(10) The world’s major fisheries will be well on their way to recovery under regimes of sustainable management carried out by resource management cooperatives made up of small-scale family fishing enterprises.

(11) A number of national and international business organizations representing many of the world’s largest corporations will voluntarily accept codes of conduct that include capping executive salaries at a level no greater than twenty times that of the lowest paid worker anywhere within a firm’s global production network.

(12) Most countries will eliminate taxes on incomes and basic consumption up to the levels required for a comfortable subsistence in favor of taxes on resource extraction, international movements of money, luxury consumption, upper-level incomes, and inheritances.

(13) More than half of the world’s countries will have policies that covert the productivity gains of mechanization and automation into a twenty-hour workweek and a guaranteed income.

(14) Most exclusionary fundamentalist religious sects preaching fear and intolerance will fall into obscurity in the face of an ecumenical movement born of the widespread inner spiritual awakening to the unity of life and consciousness.

(15) Most women and men will be sharing equally in household and voluntary community duties.

(16) All but 500,000 of the world’s refugees will be permanently and peacefully resettled—most in their countries of origin.

(17) Most of the world will embrace the norm of the two-child family, with the endorsement of the Catholic Church and other major religious bodies.

(18) Political party structures will be realigned in most countries, and grassroots political movements born of concern for democratic accountability, social justice, and environmental sustainability will be flourishing—with many people from ordinary walks of life contesting and winning election to both local and national office.

David C. Korten, "When Corporations Rule the World," 1995, pp. 303-305

Wait a minute! Korten preempts your reaching for stones to cast at false prophets by injecting the thought: "Is it any more preposterous to suggest that this event may occur by the year 2001 than it would have been to suggest the possibility of any of the events (aforementioned events like the fall of the Berlin Wall) happening even as little as three years before their actual occurrence?"

Yet, the world of 2005 vs. Korten’s predictive world of 2001 is a far cry from paradise. The truth of the matter is that 9/11 changed all that and more. This world is now careening out of control faster than anyone could have predicted. Corporate greed and avarice are at an all-time high and militarism is absolutely rampant. Virtually every item on Korten’s wish list has gone into reverse—even the way of the Do-Do Bird: Extinct! The disparity of wealth is more pronounced today than at any time in civilization!

Search for a silver living behind this real cloud of despair and I will show you sand occupied by the head of an ostrich! Unfortunately for Korten, the real world of 2005 is the antithesis of his Ecological Revolution—a world which repulses him (i.e., the world of the fundamentalist Christian or "Old Testament Jew")—and its apocalyptic predictions--is precisely what we witness today. This "other worldly" is without his reach, for he, like the utopian Christian, wants his heavenly Kingdom Now.

WE PREACH CHRIST CRUCIFIED

I leave you with the uncompromising and defining message of the Cross of Christ. We preach not the Ecology Christ, nor the Prosperity Christ, but CHRIST CRUCIFIED! Ours is not a "Gospel of Green" – earth’s wealth exploited or conserved – but Christ alone! There neither is nor ever will be economic equilibrium or balance without the foolishness of this preaching:

"For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.’ Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe. For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God . . . because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men" (I Corinthians 1:18-21-25).

The complete article/links/graphics can be found on the www at http://www.the-tribulation-network.com/dougkrieger/green_cross.htm

Doug is a member of the "LastDaysNetwork" . . . a group of evangelical writers committed to presenting news analysis of major events as they relate to Religion in Politics. Christianity's immediate impact upon the American body politic is more profound today than it has been since the formation of the "experiment." To discard the impact that religion, in particular, the Christian religion, has upon American politics is utterly absurd . . . to "speak from the inside" of American evangelicalism and its resurgence upon the political scene during the last ten years, is a unique perspective that Doug, Dene McGriff, and other writers within the Tribulation Network/Last Days Network possess . . . you'll enjoy their perspectives immensely whether you agree or disagree; for one thing, you will see a side of this equation that is absolutely different from most you observe . . . and, NO, you won't be "Left Behind!

THE GREEN CROSS
Complete article of THE GREEN CROSS with graphics/links/