Global Warning
by Pastor Matthew E. Walker, 28 February 2007

“And the Oscar goes to….” Because of our entertainment-soaked culture, just about every American and many around the world are familiar with that phrase. The beautiful and glamorous of Hollywood come dressed-to-the-nines (and in some cases dressed very strangely!) to see who will win the coveted motion picture honors at the annual Academy Awards. Last week’s awards show was no different though the main attraction was not an actor but a politician. Former Vice President Albert Gore won an Oscar for his documentary on global warming called Inconvenient Truth. It is a video version of a PowerPoint presentation that has now become the most profitable release for Paramount Pictures of all time!

That is a stunning fact since the subject of the documentary is a fairly boring science lesson on the mechanics of global warming: that our use of fossil fuels is causing greenhouse gasses which trap heat on the earth and radically alter weather patterns; that animals and plants are threatened from these changes in the weather; and that ultimately, our total way of life is in danger of changing. The conclusions of most climate change scientists are that our earth is warming up and that something needs to be done now or irrevocable damage will be inflicted on the environment. News reports stream in daily of unusual weather phenomena, species endangered by a changing habitat, and media elitists proclaiming “something must be done…now.” The public has become increasingly uneasy about the future and some are beginning to question the long-term viability of the human race. Infomercials like Inconvenient Truth only serve to heighten the fears of the direction our world is headed.

Consider some of Vice President Gore’s dire assertions: heat waves more frequent and intense; deaths related to global warming will double in twenty-five years to three hundred thousand people a year; more than one million species may be driven to extinction within fifty years; sea levels might rise as much as twenty feet; and the Arctic Ocean may be ice free threatening the habitat of animals like the polar bear.

As a Christian, our hope is not in scientists or politicians but in God. The Apostle Paul writes in Romans 15:4 that God’s Word engenders hope within the heart of every believer. With scientific warnings about climate change, what hope do the Scriptures give us?

Beginning in Genesis, we find the “inconvenient truth” that if an impending global disaster did take place, it would not be the first. Nearly two thousand years after Creation, God chose to destroy the world through a global flood. It was a flood so deep that the highest mountain peaks were covered by more than twenty-three feet of water. Yet in that great disaster God graciously preserved Noah and his family in a ship that He had commanded Noah to build. The forty days of rain and the breaking up of the “fountains of the deep” must have had an incredible and permanent effect on the earth’s ecosystems. Some creation scientists believe that the dinosaurs—all of them—died out in the flood. Not any of Vice President Gore’s prediction go that far.

There are two amazing ironies entwined within the climate change debate. The first is that sinful, God-rejecting man did not believe Noah in his day whereas Vice President Gore, our modern, secular Noah, is trusted by virtually everyone. The major difference between the two seems only to be that Noah’s message was from God whereas Gore’s message is not. As a former theology student, Vice President Gore knows his Bible well yet he chooses not to believe it. His faith-based conclusions are founded on another source—scientism. His climate change position begins with the presupposition that there is no God, hence the complete acceptance of Darwin’s evolutionary theories of human origin. His political action on the issue reveals his idolatrous worship of the creation and not the Creator. Romans 1 provides a comprehensive examination of the godlessness of modern day scientism.

The second irony is that Vice President Gore’s disaster theories are way off; not because they are over the top, but because they are too conservative. The Apostle John speaks of certain climate change in Revelation 6-16, specifically in 16:8—“and the fourth angel poured out his vial upon the sun; and power was given unto him to scorch men with fire.” This particular judgment is in the last seven of twenty one judgments in the second half of the Great Tribulation. The global warming is so intense that men were scorched by it. By this point in the Tribulation billions of people will have died; one third of the trees and fish will die; one third of earth’s water will become polluted; the night will be extended eight hours longer; and major rivers will either have their water turned to blood or dry up completely. Add to this the earthquakes, lightning, and thunder prophesied and this is much worse than anything Hollywood or environmentalists left have ever dreamed up.

Until that time, man is incapable of destroying the world. It is impossible for mankind to destroy what he does not control. God’s promise to Noah in the book of Genesis is that “while earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.” Those terms do not leave room for a major man-made climate change disaster. Nearly every book in the Bible teaches that God sustains the universe, not scientists or the politically elite. Hebrews 1:3 says that God is “upholding all things by the word of His power.” What can man do aid or destroy something held in the hand of Almighty God?

The lesson of climate change for Christians today is that we have a commission, like Noah, to warn people of the coming judgment. 2 Peter 2:5 commends Noah as “a preacher of righteousness….” How similar is his work to our own Commission: “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you…” Matthew 28:19-20. Moreover, there is another Academy Awards that is coming, a celestial one. 2 Corinthians 5:10 “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” Someday we hope to hear Him say: “and the crown goes to….” Nothing is more important than that.