Many will assume that the business started with a mind to environmental concerns, and that is true. In fact, early in 2008, we ordered in the first biodiesel powered push mower in Canada (as far as we know). The HUGR (helping U.S. grow responsibly) mower, powered off of recycled grease, was supposed to last forever. Sadly, my former ineptness in mechanics and maintenance, brought it’s demise a short two years later.

The dense trees of eastern South Africa quickly give way to almost treeless mountains, and then into the barren highlands of Lesotho. My journey in southern Africa ends there, with a message to men about the ‘sustainable earth’. In those parts, it could be easier to think that the earth is sustainable: clean air, mountain water, and closer to a subsistence kind of lifestyle. But we brought as our anchor the much more ancient and wise source of the Bible, which attests itself to be the words of God… something special revealed to men, without which we would be groping in the dark. The Bible begins and ends in the setting of ‘earth’:

Both of these are amazing, glorious, and full of purpose and meaning. What happens in between, reveals why humanity courses along in instability, fears of various kinds, and ultimately death. Humanity follows the course of being removed from the life and family of the Creator. Yes, the Bible reveals much more than a distant, all powerful, and transcendent God. As a son, Adam was given a kingdom to rule over, by walking hand in hand with his Father.

But, through only one act of disobedience in the first creation, “In Adam all die”. This shows us the high standards of the God of Scripture. He is the law-giver and judge, and His standard is impeccable perfection: “whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles in one, he has become guilty of all” (James 2:10).

Being severed from God’s family has never dissolved the moral responsibility of man before his Creator “God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil” (Eccl. 12:14)

Further to Adam’s wrong, the Bible reveals a very unsustainable path for the world, now in the hands of a rebel race. The situation unfolded in well over a thousand years, and led to a wholesale destruction in the days of Noah.

The Lord saves eight, Noah and his family. No one of us has ever come close to witnessing what was unleashed on the world, over the period of about one year. All life was lost, in which was the breath of life: men, women and children, and all the animals.

Two Canadians, one whom I’ve known personally, and the other through his writings, shed some other light through their research. David Herbert makes this observation:

“there are 220 flood narratives from every major civilization of the world. By comparing these narratives, scholars have found: 95% stated that the flood was global; 88% stated that there was a favoured family; 9% stated that 8 persons were saved” ¹ emphasis added

Don Richardson, who spent many years living with the Sawi tribe in New Guinea, gives this as part of his account:

“The Sawi account of an ancient flood.. most of the indigenous peoples left in the jungles and deserts of the world have a tradition there was an incredible flood; they all are not surprised that the Bible talks about a flood that covered everything. In the Sawi version, the people were warned that waters, rain was going to fall from the sky in incredible torrents, and the rain would cover everything, and they had to prepare to survive… they were also warned, in addition to the rain, rocks were going to fall from the sky..”²

The renewed world which followed the flood, marked the same descent into disobedience, in the greater human family that sprang up. It came together in an effort to build a city and a tower. Charles Vogan comments on the path of humanity at that point: “(it was) a spiritual wasteland, morally impoverished… the city that they wanted to build wasn’t just an innocent effort … it was meant all along to be the site of complete lawlessness and a deliberate offence against a holy God … The first design change that God introduced to the world was to ‘confound their languages.’ Suddenly people couldn’t understand each other, and therefore couldn’t work together … To this day we have different cultures, different ethical systems, and different goals and standards. All that brings distrust, envy and jealousy, friction and warfare, pride and disdain.”³

God had in mind, even from the beginning, a Solution to the problem of sin and death. Through a man named Abraham, God would start a new family with the goal of a permanent Solution.

When God chose and called Abraham to a new land, he gave him the terms of what would eventually be called in the Bible, the Gospel- the good news:

• the land
• a great nation
• a son
• the blessing

Though Abraham’s family would inherit the whole area that God called Abraham to, the Bible explains how Abraham was looking to the final and lasting inheritance of heaven itself- the new earth:

“By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:9-10).

“in you all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:3)

As the heir of the covenant, the one who first received it from God, He opened up to Abraham it’s riches. The birth of Isaac, and the start of the nation, as God provided a wife for Isaac, was only the start of a miraculous story. That story would culminate well over a thousand years later, in a particular Son of Abraham, through whom would come the blessing of eternal life. And by faith, Abraham himself, saw that promise. Speaking to some Jewish religious leaders, Jesus said:

The amazing testimony of Scripture, is that, by legal genealogy, Jesus was descended from Abraham. In real terms, He is the eternal Son, born into this world of a virgin, almighty God came in the flesh.

What could be achieved by the eternal Son, who came fully as a man? He could achieve everything that had been written before by the prophets about Him. He could live the perfect life the Father had always desired to see. And, finally, He could offer that life as a willing sacrifice- as a substitute- as a perfect ‘lamb’. As a substitute, this amazing act would be effective to ‘take away the sin of the world’ (John 1:29).

Another local author, Nathanael Reed, speaks poignantly about the grace of God:

“…grace: the unmerited, unearned love of God. Grace has been described as the most important concept taught in the Bible” ⁴

And Jesus was resurrected from the dead: He was heard, he was saved out of death, which could have no lasting power because of His perfect record of obedience before His Father.

As a result of these completed works of God, the Bible now speaks of the gospel being proclaimed- to all the world. It’s the good news of eternal life in Jesus Christ the Son. And so, God calls all men, to repent of their sins before Him, and believe in the gospel. It’s centred right on the work of Jesus himself.