By: Shafer Parker

If you’ve been paying attention, you know that around the world people are suffering a crisis of confidence. “Is life worth living?” they wonder, and to a rapidly growing demographic the answer appears to be a hard “No.” “What’s scaring them?” you ask. But you already know the answer. Or answers. Climate change is perhaps the biggest monster in the closet of our fears, expressed in a litany of psychoses including climate nihilism, climate grief, climate melancholia, and eco-anxiety. A global survey published in the New York Times last year found that more than half of respondents between the ages of 16 and 25 “felt sad, anxious, angry, powerless, helpless, and guilty” about the direction they believe climate change is going. According to the survey they believe “humanity is doomed.” No wonder young adults aren’t marrying, having children, pursuing careers, buying property, or doing anything else people do when they believe life is worth living.

It isn’t just the possibility of climate catastrophe scaring the life out of so many. A widespread fear of science, as expressed in the latest advances in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and nuclear war also saps what hope remains. Nor has it helped that so many have begun to realize the so-called vaccines, supposedly science’s answer to the COVID crisis, may in fact be weakening, if not killing those who’ve taken them. No wonder fewer and fewer people trust anything or anyone, anymore. No wonder government-provided suicide options are being excused, or worse, embraced by the wider public.

But for me, the mystery is why Christians are not loud in our denunciation of this damaging loss of hope? Why are we not shouting our hope in Christ? Why is it that, instead of speaking of God’s promises and God’s faithfulness, we often join the dismal chorus, echoing the worst of the lugubrious mutterings of the eternally hopeless?

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Here’s why. For several generations, the most influential Christian writers and speakers have themselves lost hope. Consider the works of Hal Lindsey, the father of a vast chorus of Christian doomsayers that sprang up after the publishing success of his 1970 work, The Late Great Planet Earth, still the tenth bestselling Christian book of all time. I won’t bother to name many of the rest, but, in addition to Lindsey’s many sequels, best selling copycats have included Grant Jeffrey’s Final Warning, William R. Goetz’s Apocalypse Next, a list of apocalypse-related titles from Israel-enthusiast Joel Rosenberg, the books-of-the-month emanating from the fertile pens of John Hagee and David Jeremiah—or their ghost writers—and, of course, the 16 bestsellers that make up the Left Behind series jointly authored by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. Even Billy Graham got into the act while he lived, with titles such as World Aflame, Till Armageddon and Approaching Hoofbeats: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

“It’s the end of the world,” these writers insist, “and there’s nothing to be done about it.” The only hope they offer lies in the “rapture,” which, according to all the books, has been imminent (impending) for at least 150 years. Nothing is said about the Bible’s promise that indicates Christ’s victory over sin and death will result in worldwide gospel conquest (Ps. 22:27; Is. 11:9; Micah 4:2-4; Heb. 10:12-14), and summed up in the words of an old hymn: “from vict’ry unto vict’ry/His army shall He lead/till ev’ry foe is vanquished/and Christ is Lord indeed!” If you believe the scriptures listed above, and the great hymn just quoted, you will never lose hope for the future history of earth.

Instead, too many Christians are dedicated to the worldly idea of an apocalyptic ending. Little, if anything, is ever said about the Bible promise that climate change can never become “catastrophic,” that it can never render our planet uninhabitable.

Consider God’s post-flood promise to Noah, given through him to the world in Genesis 8:20-22. Don’t forget to pay special attention to the last sentence.

Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the Lord smelt the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth. Neither will I ever again strike down every living creature as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease.” (emphasis added)

How are we to apply this passage to the world of today? Consider the following seven items, all based upon Gen. 8:20-22.

1. The book of Genesis is emphatic; this is God’s world. He made it. He shepherds it according to the plan He laid down before the creation of the world. He curses and He blesses, and no one can stop Him from either (Num. 23:8,20). This means we can trust God to preserve the earth so that mankind is free to live out His purposes.

2. God caused the flood, but after the flood He promised to never again “strike down every living creature.” Based on the permanence of the universe (see Jeremiah 33:19-21) God has made a covenant promise with mankind to hold Himself responsible for the regular return of the seasons throughout time.

3. In the light of New Covenant promises (Jer. 31:31-37), it must be accepted that God’s ultimate plan is that spiritually, over the long-haul, man will grow in His knowledge and experience with God and that things will only get better. See (Ps. 22:27; Is. 11:9; Micah 4:2-4; Heb. 10:12-14).

4. The New Creation that is the inevitable result of the New Covenant is described in Isaiah 65:17ff in such a way as to preclude the possibility that this is the eternal state. No, this is the growth of the gospel, the triumph of the Kingdom—not perfect, people still die—but better than anything we can imagine today. Faithful believers will die, but only after many hundreds, or perhaps even thousands of years. This is the world’s future, and though it is yet to be realized, as God’s people we need to live that hope and shout it to the world.

5. It is possible, if not probable, that the progression of seasons was a new thing after the flood. Previously Noah and his sons had never known a time when the sun was not warm, and the earth was not well watered. It is the duty of believers to remind the world that God’s promises remain true, through drought and flood, through famine and plenty, through war and peace, and even through climate change and the eco-apocalypse.

6. God has personally taken the responsibility upon Himself to preserve and maintain the earth so that none of its regularities cease until the appropriate time, a time He has set and that mere human beings cannot alter.

7. With God so predisposed to bless the earth, our great need is not a focus on carbon-free living, which is a pipedream anyway, but rather on righteous living.

As Louis DeBoer states in an article entitled “The Fundamental Biblical Tactic for Resisting Tyranny,” “When God’s law is forsaken and His covenant cast aside, when every man does that which is right in his own sight, then liberty departs and is replaced with oppression, spoilation, tyranny and foreign domination.” Are these the things we see around us? They are? Then who do we blame, God, evil men, or our apathetic, worldly selves? How, then, do we fix the world? By renewing our hope in God and calling the world to that same hope. God help us.

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