Climate Change: Is it a Sign of End of the World?

Human beings are sceptical about climate changes that have found a stress factor on our planet over a decade ago. The increase in large tons of Greenhouse Gases diffusion into the atmosphere due to the burning of fossil fuels for energy consumption worldwide has led to Global Warming and subsequent effects in earth surface temperature levels, rainfall patterns, droughts, rising sea levels, earthquakes, etc. These inexorable challenges turned itself as a burden for the heads of states; largely because it has put limits on man's aspirations and desire to live extravagantly. Therefore, it did not take much time to spin a tug of war between developed and developing countries. Nevertheless, evangelical groups in the United States have denied climate change fact vigorously which led media to find that these groups had influenced President Donald Trump to withdraw from the ‘Paris climate Agreement’ 2015 on climate change which subsequently triggered heated debates. In contrast, the notion of ‘Greening of Christianity’ with respect to environmentalism has gained prominence in Europe and Australia
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But no matter what science says and politics does; above of these flawed scientific empiricisms and hypotheses, the Bible explicitly depicts the evolution and end of the earth system and ample evidence on what are the incidents that might occur in its lifespan. The foremost evidence for this was when God found that the people in Noah’s generation were wicked and unclean before His virtue, thereby he directly retorted to His people by showering heavy rainfall and flood; that is terrifying in our eyes (Genesis 6: 13, Psalms 135: 6-7). It clearly emphasize that, God can make destruction on the earth through heavy rainfall or hurricanes due to the sin of the people (Jeremiah 10:13). We may think, that it is contrary to God’s covenant to his people that he will never destroy all life anymore by flood, but it certainly does not mean that God will not cause flood on the earth, rather it’s an honour to his people that they will be safe even if there is a flood, but we should definitely be in his ark. Secondly, God will make you aware through the prophets about his plans in advance to keep ourselves secure. 

Likely there was a drought which enormously devastated the Jews (Israel) in Jerusalem. “For there was no rain in the earth” (Jeremiah 14:1-6). Father, Lord immensely denounced that the land became dirty with the iniquity and wickedness of his people and found two major sin “they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). It extensively demonstrates that the people of Israel have rejected the God who extricated their ancestors from slavery, thereby failed to drink from the living water. Consequently, the destruction of their land and its fertility was God’s plan to place them in such complexities to realize and understand who the Lord is. Though, the people of current generation fortunate enough to understand the value of living water “whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life”(John 4:14 ). Put ourselves in it, unlike these Israel, we are favoured through the sacrifices of Jesus Christ and privileged to drink from this living water and ensure eternal life; so think how much we should be sincere on his path and be acquiescence for his kingdom. 

For scientists, earthquakes and other natural disasters are driven by climatic changes whereas Bible enhances it was something new from God to Korah and others who go down alive into the realm of death in the era of Moses (Numbers 16:30-35, Isaiah 24:19, Jeremiah 4:24). This has become a series of event in our century and reminds that we cannot close our eyes towards the prophecy throughout our ancestor's history. At the end, “the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up” (2 Peters 3: 10). It is exactly parallel with scientist’s assertion on global warming. On the one hand, God will burn the earth at last and on the other hand, the greed of the people is to live an everlasting life on the earth. For this, they have been consuming all fossil fuels which bear hot chemical reactions; this spontaneously synchronizes with the will of God that to destroy the earth under fire (Isaiah 24:6, 24:1). Eventually, the sun will turn dark and moon to blood before the awesome coming day of our living God (Joel 2:31, Malachi 4:1, Revelation 6:12). Do we need to worry about these dreadful changes and calamities either as God’s anger or plan to the world especially on people who still follow sin? I assume climate change to be a means for the gradual destruction of the world steadily. However, we have nothing to worry about it but subjected to confess and reconcile ourselves before God for our soul. We became habituated to pray for the climate system whenever natural calamities take place; it reveals that we are concerned about God’s creation that we live in and our security too. Obviously, it cannot be treated as our love or affection to the world but we should always be confident that we should not fail to save our soul in Jesus Christ until his second coming, like the tree planted in the shores of the river which shall always be green and fruitful even in the years of drought.  ----

NISHA SUBASH. 

(Nisha has completed her MPhil.and is pursuing Phd.in   …….. from  JNU.)