When God told Noah about the Flood, it was by faith [that] Noah, being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen, in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household. By this he condemned the world and became an heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. (Heb. 11:7 ESV) The world was condemned not in ignorance, but in unbelief. Heard about the warning, they were all inundated by the lack of faith. Most radical environmentalists today may not necessarily believe in Noah’s story, but they act just like a modern-day Noah would: spreading the warning of a doomsday by global flood with religious zeal, and pronouncing judgment to all unbelievers. It is a good thing to protect the environment, treasure God’s creation, save energy, and live a simple life, we ought to do that. But are we as Christians obligated to join the radical environmentalists for a crusade to build another ark to save men and animals from the coming environmental end day disaster?
All who believe in Jesus Christ are already safe inside an ark. We all share Noah’s faith by believing in the Son of God, and have our lives protected by him from the coming judgment day. So should we heed the bad news of environment doomsday and listen to the gospel of salvation through carbon reduction and enter this ark? Maybe we can find a way of boarding both arks at the same time: to save souls in the ark of Jesus Christ and to save bodies in the ark of environmentalism. Then we can keep our feet dry from both floods and kill two birds with one stone.
If someone has no hope of bodily resurrection, he has not known the abundance of salvation in Jesus Christ, which covers from our body to our soul. There has never been a shortage of disasters, natural or man-made, and there will never be. And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:12 ESV) Not in other religions or saviors, not even in the name of science. Radical environmentalists equate science to ultimate truth and scientific predictions as prophecy from God. By this they force scientists into the role of modern-day priests. They forgot that science is entirely based upon observations of the physical world. Confidence in scientific conclusions is not static but evolves with time, with much more confidence in explaining a phenomenon than in predicting one. Any scientific conclusion must always humbly subject itself to scientific scrutiny whenever new observations become available. These last few days, atmospheric scientists all over the world are watching the development of Antarctic ozone hole, because this year it suddenly went through an unusual shrinkage. Now everyone is watching closely and seeking an explanation. If Earth’s atmosphere is still full of surprises for atmospheric scientists, with a much larger spacial and temporal scales to work on, there will be even more surprises for climatologists. Science has indeed contributed a lot to human civilization, but we must admit it also brought disasters to human beings. If we insist its authoritative role in predicting and mitigating end day disasters, and we do not tolerate anyone in questioning its legitimacy, we raise science to the level of theology and set it up as a religion. You can find such an idolatry even in the church today.
When Jesus fed the crowd with five loaves of bread and two fish, and when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” (Jn. 6:12 ESV) And Apostle Paul taught us, But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. (1 Tim. 6:8 ESV) Before the rise of environmentalism, Christians are taught to live a simple and frugal lifestyle. When the world glorifies luxury lifestyle, we live simple; when the world flips and glorifies simple lifestyle as a new gospel, we still live simple, and still believe the same old gospel. This world is doomed in corruption and will be consumed in a disaster. The cause comes less from physical pollution, more from the pollution of human hearts. The church has been warning the world for the past two thousand years and proclaiming the only Savior. For this we received the royal priesthood and have only one gospel to preach for this dying world.
Prayer: O Lord! May You keep your church from walking according to the age of this world, but walking in righteousness and proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ and hope of a new heaven and a new earth!
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