According to the book of Revelation in the Bible, God will bring about a wholesale destruction of the environment as part of His end time judgement and wrath. In the Seven Trumpet judgements of chapter 8, John sees that “a third of the earth was burned up, a third of the trees were burned up, and all the green grass was burned up.” (v7) It goes on to say “a third of the sea turned to blood, a third of the living creatures in the sea died”.. and also “a third of the rivers and springs of waters turned bitter.” Later in the book, in the Seven Bowls judgements of chapter 16, we read “[the sea] turned into blood like that of a dead person, and every living thing in the sea died”.. and “rivers and springs of water became blood”. I don’t know about you, but this really struck me as an oddity at first. Why does God destroy the trees, the seas, rivers, and springs in order to punish for the rebellion of man against the Creator? Surely the trees haven’t done anything wrong?
To help us answer this question, let us go to Exodus. (The striking parallels between the Plagues of Egypt and the Tribulation are well known, and will not be explored here.) The first of the ten plagues was when God struck the River Nile and turned it into blood. Why did God do this? Why the River Nile? To the Egyptians, the River Nile was more than just a source of water vital for their agriculture and life. They worshipped it as a water-bearer god (Egyptologists say this Egyptian god of the Nile was called Hapi).
I believe God is striking nature and the environment because the current world worships the Earth (nature, environment, Gaia, etc.), and this must be punished, “for the LORD, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God.” (Exodus 34:14).
As I’ve been meditating on this part of God’s wrath and judgement, I’ve come to the realisation: God destroys the environment because it has become an object of worship for the people of this world. Consider the Ten Plagues of Exodus.
I must quality what I am about to say with the following: yes, as Christians, we are called to be responsible stewards of the environment, and this means we do our part in recycling and not being wasteful etc. However, as Christians we should also learn to read the times and the spirit of the world at work around us. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this world’s darkness, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” (Ephesians 6:12)
We live in an environment-obsessed world, where protecting the Earth has now become a religion. It is taboo to even discuss in a questioning tone the media narrative on Climate Change. The lives and livelihoods of man are trampled on in the name of cutting down carbon emissions. Students are openly taught in schools to consider not having any children, as it “prevents 9,441 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.” People are openly saying that “humans are like cancer disease to this planet Earth”. Other examples are not hard to find (see “Thanos did nothing wrong”, the movie “First Reformed”, the Extinction Rebellion movement, etc). In the limit, the climate cult is profoundly anti-human; at its core, the environmentalist message is a fundamentally satanic one, diametrically opposed to the Bible.
Despite the anti-biblical and anti-natalist heart of the environmentalist message, the sad truth is that the church doesn’t seem to get this. Many preachers are “playing their part” for the environmentalist cause by routinely preaching the message of the world (environmentalism) to the church, when they should be preaching the Bible to the church and proclaiming the message of the church (the Gospel) to the world. What madness.
What does the Bible present then as an alternative? I believe the answer is in the “Garden of Eden”. A garden is where nature is brought into man’s submission, planned and designed to the benefit and enjoyment of man, in accordance to God’s will. In Eden, God blessed Adam and Eve and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1:28) I believe this will be fully realised in the New Heaven and New Earth. But before that, the Earth must face the tribulations of the final day judgements. No amount of carbon emission reductions and environmental activism can change that inevitability. As Christians, let us stay awake and learn to recognise and resist the spirit of the age. “The weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the world. Instead, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We tear down arguments and every presumption set up against the knowledge of God; and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:4-5)
[1] Ten Plagues of Revelation
