Al Gore got it wrong!
Man is involved in climate change, but not like Al Gore and global warming advocates believe. The first weather change is found in the book of Genesis. After Adam and Eve sinned Ellen White writes that “the atmosphere, once so mild and uniform in temperature” (Patriarchs & Prophets, p. 61) became “subject to marked changes” and Adam and Eve needed “garments of skins as protection from the extremes of heat and cold.” (White 62). They saw “drooping flower and falling leaf and the first signs of decay.” (ibid.) The ground began to bring forth weeds and thorns and noxious plants. The change was both immediate and severe compared to the perfect climate of Eden they had known before sin.
Since Eden the overall impact of sin on the earth has been profound. Psalm 102: 26 declares the earth is wearing old like a garment. But what causes the earth to wear down?
In Eden just one small sin changed the climate forever. Since Eden sin has been added to sin and the Bible is not silent about the effects sin has had upon the earth. Jeremiah 23: 10 declares:
“For the land is full of adulterers; for because of swearing the land mourneth; the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil, and their force is not right.”
How corrupt has the world become? Even the casual observer can see that old taboos are now gone and every imagination a wicked heart and mind can conceive is being done.
Such vileness has a tremendous impact on the earth that goes beyond just climate and weather – the entire crust of the earth seems to be groaning under what it has to endure. Rev. 7: 1- 3 points to a time of world-wide cataclysmic events that will shake the earth. As the Creator God in heaven lets go of the elements the god of this world is given more and more liberty to do as he pleases world-wide. And what does he delight in?
In Job 1 Satan brings lightning and storm to sweep away those who were not under God’s protection. Wicked men were lead to do Satan’s work and slaughtered the innocent herdsmen of Job. This has always been Satan’s work. And Satan has always tried to cover his tracks and direct the responsibility to God or other causes and this will be more so as we approach the end of time.
But God is not the cause of violent weather, earthquakes, tidal waves, volcanoes, floods, wind storms, hail, drought, severe heat or cold, plant disease and insect infestations that are destroying millions of trees in the United States. The list could go on. This is what the Bible tells us about the cause of such turmoil. In Hosea 4: 2, 3 we read this pointed commentary on our world today:
“By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood. Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.”
And in Hosea 10:1-4 we have this insight given to us:
“Israel is an empty vine, he bringeth forth fruit unto himself: … Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty: … They have spoken words, swearing falsely in making a covenant: thus judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field.”
Here again we see the cause for the land languishing. The hemlock is a particularly noxious, poisonous weed. In this passage, we see as righteousness is pushed out of the way, the poisonous hemlock is used to represent that which comes in to fill the void!!
At creation before sin we read that God saw that everything He had made was very good. Ellen White gives us this sentence about that time: “Peace brooded over the world; for the earth was in harmony with heaven.” (DA p. 281.) But when that peace was broken, the bitter, the poisonous, the noxious, all represented by the hemlock in Hosea 10: 4, came in to take the place of that lovely “brooding peace.”
This is how Ellen White explains the violent outbreaks in nature in The Great Controversy:
“Satan works through the elements also to garner his harvest of unprepared souls. He has studied the secrets of the laboratories of nature, and he uses all his power to control the elements as far as God allows. When he was suffered to afflict Job, how quickly flocks and herds, servants, houses, children, were swept away, one trouble succeeding another as in a moment. It is God that shields His creatures and hedges them in from the power of the destroyer. But the Christian world have shown contempt for the law of Jehovah; and the Lord will do just what He has declared that He would--He will withdraw His blessings from the earth and remove His protecting care from those who are rebelling against His law and teaching and forcing others to do the same. ….
“While appearing to the children of men as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hailstorms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. "The earth mourneth and fadeth away," "the haughty people . . . do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” Isaiah 24:4, 5.” (589,590)
Wicked king Ahab blamed a 3 ½ year drought on godly Elijah. But Elijah returned the charge back upon Ahab informing the king that immoral behavior such as the king and nation were involved in was the real cause of the drought that the nation was suffering from: climate change was caused by Israel’s rebellion.
Currently men like to point to human activity for the unheavals in nature. There is no interest in hearing that because of cursing, swearing, violence, immorality, lewdness, lawlessness, homosexuality, hatred towards God that is growing almost daily that the land languishes and peace is departed and the elements have become unsettled from their moorings, and violence- both human and natural- fills the land. And Satan is delighted he has the world pointing fingers while the real cause is never mentioned, never identified, and never believed. Such is the deceptive power of Satan.
From the Bible and Spirit of prophecy we know a time of trouble and climate change is coming, not from cars or coal plants, but from a worldwide rebellion against God that is so pervasive there is nothing God can do but to invite the few who will respond to come under His care, to receive His protection while the winds of strife, both human and in the natural world, are released to the control of Satan who will direct these elements as he chooses.
Some may ask about those who destroy the earth mentioned in Revelation 11: 18: “And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and that thou shouldest give reward unto thy servants the prophets… and should destroy them which destroy the earth.”
No greater example of climate change can be found than that which happened in Noah’s day. The cause of that great flood that came upon the earth has been plainly given to us in Gen. 6. It was not smoke from burning coal, or car engines that brought on the flood; but a moral corruption. In both Gen 6: 11 and 12 the word “corrupt” is used to describe the moral condition of the inhabitants of Noah’s world.
In Rev. 11: 18 the marginal reading in the JKV for “destroy the earth” is “corrupt the earth” - the same word used to describe what the inhabitants did to the earth in Noah’s day which was a moral corruption. And Jesus said, “As it was in the days of Noah… so shall it be at the end of time.” Luke 17: 26, 28- 30
We are headed for one perfect storm! Politicians can’t solve this problem. We can close all coal plants and turn off all our cars; severe weather is not going away and in the end the world will be engulfed in weather disorder that will only grow inintensity until this planetis completely destroyed during the 7 last plagues that end with the glorious appearing of Jesus.
Do you remember the words of Jesus spoken to Jerusalem? “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I would have gathered your children together, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not (come).” Matt. 23: 37. Jesus knew what was coming on Jerusalem- how it would be destroyed. But they would not come. Being independent- minded they would not submit to the authority of Jesus and come in repentance and obedience under the shelter of His care.
Looking past that terrible event that happened in 70 A.D. Jesus saw the whole world caught up in a terrible world-wide destruction in a time of trouble never seen or imagined. That trouble is certainly man-made, but not as presented by Al Gore. It is the result of rebellion against God, against His law, His authority. It is caused by world-wide lawlessness and immorality, by a people who want to call good evil and evil good.
The world has no idea what is coming or why. But the wise can see the causes of what is now coming on the world. The storm clouds are gathering, the tempest in numerous ways, has already broken over us and will keep coming in more severe outbursts of fury until Jesus comes. We are almost to the end now. Now is the time to seek that shelter under God’s protective covering- to have our storm gear on- and be found ready and waiting as the end of all things comes crashing in around us.
Douglas Carlson is a retired SDA pastor from the Michigan Conference now living in Arizona.