Creation Care

Creation Care: The Earth is the LORD’S, and the Fulness Thereof

March 19th, 2007 by David Dansker

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up. And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed. And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter.

(The Revelation 8:7-11)

There is coming a time when the Gospel of the Grace of God will cease.[i] The ambassadors[ii] who are now preaching this gospel of reconciliation between man and God through Jesus Christ[iii] will be called home to their far country.[iv] The work of their ministry continues now for a short space to turn “strangers and foreigners into fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God.”[v] The end of this gospel will come suddenly when this class of ambassadors will be called away so quickly and unexpectedly that the action is described in the Bible as taking place in the twinkling of an eye, and as if it were accomplished by a thief in the night.[vi] The reason explained to them for seizing them away from this world is twofold: “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.”[vii]

The time of this hour will be at least seven years long, and it will be marked by cataclysmic environmental changes brought about by such things as supernatural meteor showers, huge asteroids and comets impacting the earth, and changes in our sun’s solar radiation. The effects of these catastrophes with include the incineration of entire forests, or deforestation on a scale here before unimagined. Famine will be widespread due to the earth’s crops being consumed while they are even yet green by the intense inferno sweeping the planet. Air quality over large areas of the world will be unfit to support human life, and there will be few safe harbors to flee to for safety. The earth’s waters will become so polluted by the poisonous gases and boiling temperatures from the fiery impacts that a third of all sea life will perish. The superheated currents of the oceans will alter their courses, and stagnation and putrid decomposition will be common for beach resorts and shorelines

Because they will have nothing else to drink but the poisoned water from earth’s streams and rivers, a large part of the human population left to undergo these tribulations will die from water poisoning. Many more will suffocate from the heavy, noxious, bitter asteroid gases that will spread out over the surface of the earth like a blanket poisoning multitudes. During this time men, even though they remain unrepentant, will recognize God’s hand in their tribulation; and their despair will cause them to say to the mountains: “Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?”[viii]

So today these ambassadors fervently preach the gospel of grace to save men; not only from this pending judgment to fall upon the inhabitants of the earth, wherein some will still be saved who are to pass through it, but more importantly to save them from an even worse final judgment determined for those who die without accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior. They will be judged by the law, or by works of the law, and none will be found righteous by that standard.[ix] Their fate is Hell, and then the Lake of Fire for all eternity.[x] All of this is a serious enough circumstance, and an appreciable prompt, for preaching the gospel of grace.

There be some, however, that possess a puerile understanding of Christian doctrine, and who preach another gospel. They prompt with a blasphemous question that reduces Christ to a mere consumer shopping for an energy efficient automobile, and ask: “What Would Jesus Drive?”[xi] They have named their gospel “creation care,”[xii] and belong to groups like the Evangelical Environmental Network. According to its founder Reverend Jim Ball, their environmental religion is one in which they “are called to be ministers of reconciliation, and that means caring for all things.”[xiii] These things would ostensibly include the rain forests, and caring for them would be evidenced by adhering to a religious behavior dictated by faith in the theory of global warming,[xiv] a theory that posits that humans will cause widespread environmental devastation on biblical proportions by, among other things, burning fossil fuels.

The Green Evangelicals have neither the knowledge of scripture, nor of human history, that even a first century Pharisee named Gamaliel had.[xv] A doctor of the law, Gamaliel could recognize the alignment of events to the scriptures and the futility of denying them.

In regards to their contradiction of the gospel of grace ambassadors, he would certainly say to the creation care disciples today: “Refrain from these men, and let them alone: for if this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought: But if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; lest haply ye be found even to fight against God.”[xvi]

Gamaliel’s original counsel at the time he gave it was to prevent religious leaders from slaying the Apostle Peter and other Apostles. He knew enough of history and prophetic scripture to know that these Apostles could very well be telling the truth as to Jesus being the Christ. Of course, Gamaliel was right, and more scripture comprising the New Testament was penned for us by these and other Apostles. It is from these same scriptures that this article’s epigraph is taken, and which say for a certainty that these heretical creation care preachers will be found as a blade of grass facing a blast furnace.

That is the answer to the question of their environmentalist gospel if they choose to wait for it. If they hear the answer from the gospel of grace now, they will no longer be found to fight against God; instead, they will be found in His Son Jesus Christ to escape the wrath which is to come.[xvii] The answer to enquiring as to Christ Jesus’ will for mankind is made possible by rephrasing the question for accuracy: What Would Jesus Have Driven?

Jesus would have driven, by Roman soldiers, three nails, or spikes, through his hands and feet to hang on a cross, and have the sins of the entire world laid upon him.[xviii] He would have it that he would hang there until he died an excruciating, substitutionary death; for all who would believe on him, and accept the salvation he made possible by His once and forever sacrifice, “not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.”[xix] While His payment also reclaimed the title deed to the whole earth,[xx] which man forfeited at the fall, He didn’t do it for the rain forests.

“The earth is the LORD’S, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods” (Psa 24:1-2). He will do with it as He pleases, and it has pleased Him to warn us, and make a way to save us. The Green Gospel can’t save you, but God’s Grace can. Which gospel have you staked your life on?

Notes:

[i] Acts 20:24

[ii] 2Cor. 5:20

[iii] 2Cor.5:19; Heb. 2:17

[iv] Heb. 11:13-16 1Pet. 2:11

[v] Eph. 2:19

[vi] 1Cor. 15:52, Rev. 3:3; 1Thess. 4:13–5:2

[vii] Rev. 3:10; see, Isa. 13:9-11

[viii] Rev 6:16-17

[ix] Gal. 2:16

[x] Rev. 20:11-15

[xi] Laurie Goodstein, “Living Day to Day by a Gospel of Green,” The New York Times, nytimes.com, March 8, 2007.