A Biblical Response to Climate Change

Super Storm Sandy, Katrina, western drought, northern snow records, have all been supposed evidence of global climate change. With every troubling weather event we are informed with dire assertions and breathless prophetic assurances that surely, we are seeing the hand of omnipotent nature slapping us again for our infractions against the planet. Have we angered Gaia? Has evolution brought us to our diminishing demise as we pollute our way into oblivion? Will our species die as the planet is throttled by man’s strings of environmental malfeasance? The ice packs are melting and the oceans are rising and, still, here we go winding up those weed eaters and rolling down the freeways in our SUVs.

CLIMATE CHANGE AS END TIMES THEOLOGY

The humanists scorn evangelicals for their wild pronouncements about the soon end of the world. Yet, the irreligious mockers struggle mightily to gain acceptance of their own apocalyptic visions. While the premillenial version of the end brings the saints to glory, the humanist version has no future hope to encourage anybody’s soul. For them, everything ends in the ruin of the planet and the death of man as he disappears into the blackness of a fading universe. You have to agree, the humanists have a compelling drama as their eschatology. It may be hopeless, but it can be provender for endless death-of-the-planet movies. Also, it demonstrates again how the supposedly non-religious scientific crowd does in fact have a complete theology. They may not use Christian theological terms, but they do have well laid out opposing ideas. The doctrines of climate change are a visible example of a humanist theology raising its tenets in our midst.

GOD CONTROLS THE WEATHER

This conversation has been going on now for a few decades. First it was global cooling, then global warming, and now just general (and entirely indefinable) climate change before which we are supposed to quake. What concerns me is how little has been discussed within the church-pew crowd concerning a Biblical response to this contending theology. Many of our brethren have accepted the premises of our philosophical, read theological, opponents. We have agreed with the humanists that earth’s climate may primarily be controlled by man. We have agreed with them that God’s promise in Genesis 8:22, “While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night, shall not cease” is untennable.

Remember this promise was made to Noah concerning life after the flood. That would be the flood that was the biggest climate change event in earth’s history. The current narrative among the climate change crowd is that the Atlantic storm surge from Super Storm Sandy was increased by an extra four inches, of the fourteen foot surge, that flooded part of New York City. This is really nothing compared to what an angry God did 4,400 years ago involving Noah, which reminds me…

WEATHER AS JUDGMENT

In Deuteronomy 28:12 the Lord promises blessings to faithful covenant people pledging, “The Lord will open for you His good storehouse, the heavens, to give rain to your land in its season and to bless all the work of your hand…” Hence we see God using rain to curse or rain to bless depending on His good pleasure as He punishes disobedience and rewards faithfulness. God often warns that He will use harsh weather conditions to punish those nations that pursue evil or break covenant with Him. Exodus 9:18 records for us God’s words to Pharaoh of a coming judgment, “ Behold, about this time tomorrow, I  will send a very heavy hail, such as has not been seen in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.” At Ezekiel 13:13 God promises, “Therefore, thus says the Lord God, I will make a violent wind to break out in My wrath. There will also be in My anger a flooding rain and hailstones to consume it in wrath.” Now, that is a promise for climate change, and it has nothing to do with too much carbon dioxide or any man-made contrivance to control the wind and waves. Psalm 78 reminds us that the Lord, “destroyed their vines with hailstones and their sycamore trees with frost” speaking of the Egyptians and warned that, “He sent upon them His burning anger, fury, and indignation, and trouble, a band of destroying angels.”

We have been taught by the teachers of the prevailing culture that man is the creator of weather. It is his infallible words that set the heavens toward their courses and establish the rains and snow in their season – or so they suppose. This then, is a false claim. It is God who predestines not only our lives but the planets in their orbits, the seas in their basins, and the rain, hail, snow, heat, and cold according to His mighty will. It is His infallible word, His infallible decree that establishes the heavens and sets all things in their course. Man tries to predestine by formulating endless laws, statutes to effect the weather desired. God predestines according to His unyielding will. Man is a liar and a usurper who seeks to rule all creation according to his own will and his own law. Hence, he decrees how we shall determine the weather according to man’s wisdom.

BELIEVE GOD NOT HUMANIST DOGMA CONCERNING GOD

Not withstanding the inflated claims of the humanist pseudo-science elite, it is God who determines the weather. Men may pollute or perhaps act better, but in all cases it is the God of heaven Who decides when and how hard the wind will blow, and the rains will fall. He promises good crops for the righteous nation but storms and 100 pound hailstones (Revelation 16:21) for His enemies. The most dangerous gas faithful nations may detect may be the gaseous emissions from clueless humanists. While they focus on evil smokes and gases or black rain, fearing the skies, the righteous look for manna. Do we need to be good stewards of the earth? Yes we do. But, we do not tremble before the humanist god’s science so-called or their faithless pronouncement of dire destruction. They are false prophets of a false religion.

Regardless of their claims, the Lord still rules from the heavens. The earth turns on its axis by His unstoppable will. He defeats the hubris of unredeemed men. Weather is not necessarily global but it is always God-ordained. Nothing can snatch the righteous from His hand. By faith our forbears pleased God, and by faith we may please Him now. The unredeemed believe the voices of their dead gods. Their weather forecasters are becoming priests of the climate change religion. We have a wiser High Priest.  We have the Spirit of the living God whose wind carries us into His eternal kingdom. May we be found living in right faith at our final day.

For Christian Culture,

Don Schanzenbach  3-2-13

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