feast: The Religion of Climate Change


Mike Ford
Given 21-Oct-16; Sermon #FT16-05B; 38 minutes

Description: (show)

Environmentalism has morphed into the fastest growing religion in the world. Proponents of this bogus religion claim that, if we can control our output of carbon dioxide, regulate bovine flatulence, and drive electric cars, we can prevent the oceans from rising, the polar ice-caps from melting, hurricanes from forming, and drought from spreading. President Obama proclaimed climate change the biggest danger on the earth, far greater than ISIS and the threat of nuclear war. Michael Bloomberg blamed climate change for Hurricane Sandy while Hillary Clinton attributes Hurricane Matthew to climate change. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and failed Presidential candidate Al Gore have called for stiff fines and imprisonments for climate change deniers, using techniques of harassment and intimidation not unlike the Spanish Inquisition. None of the dire warnings made by Al Gore have ever materialized; as a matter of fact, a large segment of the scientific community fear global cooling and a new ice age. Climate always changes over time, but human contribution to this change is negligible. Being good stewards of the earth should not lead to the imbalanced practice of making mother-earth our goddess. God, the inventor of climate and weather patterns, is sovereign over the climate and weather; He knows a few more things about it than Al Gore, Barack Obama, or Michael Bloomberg. The nation that obeys God will have favorable weather and climate; the nations that disobeys God will not. Worshiping the earth and rejecting its Creator will bring about disappointing results.




There is an old joke that goes: “Everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.” Well, now people think that they can do something about the weather.

Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says: “Global warming [or climate change] has become a religion. A surprisingly large number of people seem to have concluded that all that gives meaning to their lives is the belief that they are saving the planet by paying attention to their carbon footprint.” I could not have said it any better myself.

This new religion is rife with lies and half truths, false or manipulated data, and with people so impressed with themselves that their pretentiousness knows no bounds.

President Obama (our Alarmer-in-Chief) wrote this, in his 2015 Earth Day proclamation, “Today our planet faces new challenges, but none pose a greater threat to future generations than climate change.” Now to me this is hyperbole, it is a statement not meant to be taken literally. But I really do think this man truly believes this and the followers of this new religion imagine this to be truth. Forget Isis, Russia, China, the entire Middle East problem, the $20 trillion we are in debt, if we will just drive an electric car we will never suffer from anything bad.

If you are a non-believer, you are called a “climate denier.” In a speech in March 2015, Al Gore said that, “Climate deniers should be punished politically and economically.” I am thinking he should be punished! Since 1997, nothing that he has predicted has come true. Since 1997 the rising global temperatures has been negligible, the oceans have not risen, and we have not burned to a crisp. In fact Russian climatologists are now predicting a mini ice age.

However, this climate religion is growing. Are these people misguided? Or are they being led by those with an agenda who themselves have been manipulated by a superior being?

Let us talk a moment about the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Now we all know that the United Nations is a model citizen and a leader in truth and justice and the IPCC is a brilliant body of scientists interested only in the truth. Nothing could be further from the truth! The UN is a corrupt bloated bureaucracy propped up by our tax dollars and the IPCC is frankly a running joke. The former head of the IPCC, Rajendra K. Pachauri, resigned last year due to allegations of sexual harassment. And that is a whole other topic. I would like to point out though that Pachauri’s doctorate is in railway engineering, but nonetheless he managed to become the UN’s top climate scientist.

This is a quote from his farewell letter: “The protection of Planet Earth, the survival of all species and sustainability of our ecosystems is more than a mission, it is my religion and my dharma.” Now Dharma is the Hindu and Buddhist principal of cosmic order, in case you wondered.

Professor Judith Curry, head of climate science at Georgia Institute of Technology was formerly in lockstep with the IPCC, so much so that she had been called the high priestess of global warming. But no more. On her website she has an article entitled “Heresy and the Creation of Monsters” and I want to quote a bit of that article. She says,

Wikipedia defines heresy as ‘a controversial or novel change to system of beliefs, especially a religion that conflicts with established dogma.’ The definition of dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, ideology or any kind of organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from. If the IPCC is dogma, then count me in as a heretic.

August 2013, a local London newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, ran an article headlined “Record Return of Arctic Ice Cap as Top Scientists Warn of Global COOLING.” The article pointed out that arctic ice has had a massive rebound in 2013 from its 2012 record low. The ice sheet grew 920,000 square miles in a year. Now facts are stubborn things, as John Adams said, and sometimes they get in the way of your dogma. (I love that bumper sticker that reads: “My dogma ran over your karma.” Pretty cute.)

This article recorded over 174,000 Facebook shares, a record for any article in this paper. The article and its author, David Rose, became the object of “extraordinarily vitriolic attacks from climate commentators who refuse to accept any evidence that may unsettle their view of the science.”

Most of these comments had to be taken down because they were just too vile. One post that remained compared the work of Mr. Rose (who is Jewish), to that of Hitler's Mein Kampf. Another suggested that it would be perfectly fine for Mr. Rose’s children to kill him in self-defense and use this article as evidence on their behalf. All he did was quote facts! It puts me in mind of the Spanish Inquisition.

There are dozens more quotes I would love to give you but the point is, it is a religion. And if you are not a true believer than you are a heretic, a skeptic. US. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, said recently that her department has discussed prosecuting “climate change deniers.”

Sometimes I feel like I must be living in some kind of parallel universe, that these comments cannot be real. And yet they are.

Lest you think that I do not have a love for the environment, nothing could be further from the truth. When God finished the six days of creation week, He says,

Genesis 1:31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Genesis 2:15 Then the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.

God was well-pleased with His creation. He gave mankind the task of cultivating and protecting it. And I take that commission very seriously, and I think you do too. I believe in recycling, I believe in clean water, I believe in organic foods, and the list goes on. But there is a balance, or there should be. You have to combine this with an understanding of who is in charge. God gave us the minerals in the ground, and sometimes you will make a mess getting them out, but you should try to make as little mess as possible and you should clean up the mess when you are done.

Most of us are not mining coal or pumping oil, but of the areas of responsibility God has given us, we should strive to “tend and keep.” Keep a clean home, clean property, fix the oil leak in your car, repair leaky faucets so as to not waste water, turn out the lights when you leave a room, and so on. Use your common sense, but do not think for a minute that if you drive an electric car that you are personally saving the planet.

If you do, well good on you. No problem with that. I would like to have solar panels on my house, but again I have to stress the importance of balance. I am not against innovation and progress at all. But an electric car, for example, still has to be charged, most likely with fossil fuels, because that is where eighty percent of the worlds energy comes from. The lithium for the batteries have to be mined, which is a less than green activity.

Do you know that by the time an electric car is off the assembly line it has been responsible for 30,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emission. The amount for making a conventional car is 14,000 pounds. So to overcome that deficit, you would need to drive the electric care 80,000 to 90,000 miles, which so far is not being done. On average they are being driven around 50,000 miles.

But let us say that technology continues to improve and advance and you can drive the electric care for 100,000 miles. If you did you would achieve twenty-four percent less carbon dioxide emissions than its gas powered cousin. So over the lifetime of the electric car, that is about 8.7 tons of carbon dioxide less than a conventional car. That is $44 in climate damage, based on the current charges the Europeans are charging for 8.7 tons of carbon dioxide.

Yet our federal government subsidies electric car buyers to the amount of about $7,500 and in return you only get $44 return from emissions. I am not against electric cars in principle, but you cannot worship at the “electric car altar.”

When the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, asked repeatedly for additional security, it was denied every time. Security was even cut! At the same time the American embassy in Vienna was given $108,000 for charging electric cars. Religious fanatics killed four Americans in Benghazi and I would make the case that religious fanaticism of another type puts money into battery chargers rather than security. I realize it is not apples to apples but my point here is that there is no balance!

We are not saving the planet just as we are not saving ourselves spiritually. We do our part, yes absolutely, but God does the saving. Physically we have to have a balance in our approach. We have to do our part, but we do not think for a second that we are changing the tides and that we are altering the weather patterns. I was warm yesterday; it is cool today. I did not do that. God tells us,

Leviticus 25:23 ‘The land shall not be sold permanently, for the land is Mine; for you are strangers and sojourners with Me."

We tend it and we keep it, but it belongs to God.

Right round this time four years ago we had Hurricane Sandy on the east coast of the United States. New York City mayor at the time, Michael Bloomberg, essentially blamed climate change for this hurricane. Then he and the city council instituted some changes to prevent a future hurricane Sandy. I think his picture should be in the dictionary under “pretentious.”

Now this deadly storm took a hundred lives and that is very sad. Most of them drown. But the deadliest hurricane in U.S. history was back in 1900 in Galveston Texas, actually it was the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. 12,000 people died! Horrible devastation and loss of life. I do not mean to belittle it or demean it, but I have never seen an article about this stating that “methane from cows did it,” or” if only we had electric wagons.”

Climate has and always will change. From 250 BC to 400 AD we had the Roman Optimum, a warm period that researchers say was within a degree of current summer mean temperatures. It was mild enough for Hannibal to take elephants over the Alps.

Then there was the Medieval Warm Period from 950 AD to 1250 AD, followed by the little ice age and that lasted until 1850. During that time Swedish armies could march to Denmark without getting their feet wet.

I am sure you have all seen those coastal homes, up on stilts, huge shutters. Why did they build them this way? Because occasionally you have a hurricane and you best batten down the hatches and head inland.

But what if Satan could tell the story that drilling in the gulf of Mexico caused the seas to rise and spawned hurricane Katrina? Was it stupid to build New Orleans in a marsh, in a low land, and depend on levies maintained by the government for protection from flooding? The same government that delivers your mail to your neighbor?

No, no, no! That is all good. The problem was George Bush. It was all his fault. If only Al Gore had been president, there would have been no Katrina. This is what some people believe.

Where is God in all of this? During the Katrina fiasco, crisis, disaster, a few religious commentators like Hal Lindsey, Charles Colson, Pat Robertson, they made some general comments about God’s judgment and, boy oh boy, did they get jumped on by the media. To listen to the media there is no God and man, (mostly meaning conservatives in business), have caused these disasters. Turn to Proverbs 30.

Proverbs 30:4 (Contemporary English Version) Has anyone gone up to heaven and come back down? Has anyone grabbed hold of the wind? Has anyone wrapped up the sea or marked out boundaries for the earth? If you know of any who have done such things, then tell me their names and their children’s names.

Let me quote President Obama as he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in 2008. He said: “Generations from now we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”

In Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5, we find the Ten Commandments and the first one states, “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Let us go to Romans 1:20. Paul is saying here that even those not called should know that there is a Creator—just from the creation.

Romans 1:20 (CEV) God’s eternal power and character cannot be seen. But from the beginning of creation, God has shown what these are like by all he has made. That’s why those people [those not called] don’t have any excuse.

Even those not yet called should be able to look at creation and know that there is a Creator, then the natural progression would be to worship that Creator and then follow His commandments. But the world at large denies that there is a God. They worship the creation, mother earth and so on instead, and they establish their own morals and their own code of conduct. This leads inevitably to Satan, and if you start with wrong principles you end up in the wrong place.

In Job 38-39, God is asking this great builder a series of questions and these questions show very clearly the huge chasm that exists between the capabilities of the man and those of God.

Job 38:3-4 (Good News Translation) Now stand up straight and answer the questions I ask you. [How would you like to be in that spot? Called before God! Talk about being nervous!] Were you there when I made the world? If you know so much, tell me about it.

Job 38:8 (GNT) Who closed the gates to hold back the sea when it burst from the womb of the earth?

Job 38:10-11 I marked a boundary for the sea and kept it behind bolted gates. I told it, “So far and no farther! Here your powerful waves must stop.”

Now think about this in light of President Obama’s claim that he will stop the rise of the ocean.

Job 38:22-26 (GNT) Have you ever visited the storerooms, where I keep the snow and the hail? I keep them ready for times of trouble, for days of battle and war. Have you been to the place where the sun comes up, or the place from which the east wind blows? Who dug a channel for the pouring rain and cleared the way for the thunderstorm? Who makes rain fall where no one lives?

Think about how feeble the assertion of former mayor Bloomberg that climate change played any role in Hurricane Sandy.

Job 38:31-33 (GNT) Can you tie the Pleiades together or loosen the bonds that hold Orion? Can you guide the stars season by season and direct the Big and the Little Dipper? Do you know the laws that govern the skies, and can you make them apply to the earth?

Now I dare say that Job was a far greater man in every respect than say Messieurs Obama or Bloomberg. Could they answer these questions from God any better than Job did?

God was talking to Job about the stars in the sky. Think about the stars, how far away they are, how long it took that light to get here, how they maintain their orbits, and how their patterns are so predictable. How can that be chance? We hear and see things every day that show a Creator.

Recently, while driving on my job, I heard a program on the radio saying that they discovered a planet very much like earth orbiting the nearest star to our solar system, which would be Proxima Centauri, so they are calling this planet Proxima B. It appears to astronomers to have similar conditions to earth, they think it might have liquid water. How they know this, I do not know. But they want to have an interstellar mission to send a spacecraft to this planet.

As I was listening to this I thought, it sounds reasonable, it is 4.24 light years away, how far can that really be. So, I looked it up. We have had previous deep space missions, and some are still out there, and they can achieve speeds of 35,000 MPH, using a Zenon powered ion drive. I have no idea what that is but it sounds really cool. So, at 35,000 MPH how long would it take to reach Proxima B? A “mere” 81,000 years! And we think that we can control the weather. How puny we really are.

Paul says in Romans 1,

Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse.

But that is what the religion of climate change is doing. It is making people into creation skeptics—worshipping the creation rather than the Creator.

Now we do have some control over the weather.

Leviticus 26:1-4 ‘You shall not make idols for yourselves; neither a carved image nor a sacred pillar shall you rear up for yourselves; nor shall you set up an engraved stone in your land, to bow down to it; for I am the Lord your God. You shall keep My Sabbaths and reverence My sanctuary: I am the Lord. If you walk in My statutes and keep My commandments, and perform them, then I will give you rain in its season, the land shall yield its produce, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.’

So it is a very simple promise from God. A nation that obeys His will prosper and have appropriate weather. The remainder of this chapter tells what happens to disobedient people and it is not pretty. This is obviously where the descendants of Israel are now, they are disobedient nations.

But if these nations can be convinced that there is no God, if they can be convinced that we ourselves can control the weather, then what of end time prophesies? These punishments will not be from God. They will be from our failure to put enough Teslas on the road.

Matthew 24:7 (CEV) Nations and kingdoms will go to war against each other. People will starve to death, and in some places there will be earthquakes.

Now over the last some years, private enterprise in the U.S. have developed a process called fracking. It is able to get trapped deposits of natural gas that is in shale formations. According to the United States Geological Survey, fracking causes extremely small earthquakes, but they are almost always too small to be a safety concern, according to the government.

The problem is the disposal of the waste water that comes up during this process. The drilling companies have been putting that water back into the ground and this causes formations to slip. Indeed it does cause small earthquakes. I have to believe that the same ingenuity that developed this process without any input form the government will also be able to solve the problem with what to do with this waste water, but they may not get a chance. Because lower gas prices that fracking has given us goes against the plans of the elders of climate change. Cheap gas leads to apathy among the public toward emissions, they think, from our internal combustion engines. In my lifetime, tail pipe emissions have gone down 98 percent, again mostly from private enterprise (with a prod from the government, I will admit). Private enterprise developed this technology at a time when the government wants to shut it down and put up wind and solar farms and so on.

Please turn to verse 18 of Revelation 11 and we will read the last part of the verse. Christ returns to earth to establish His Kingdom and it says that He will:

Revelation 11:18 . . . destroy those who destroy the earth.”

We were commissioned in Genesis to “tend and keep God’s creation,” but here in Revelation 11 we are told that those who destroy the earth will be destroyed themselves.

Fracking companies are responsible for getting the gas out, but they are also responsible to not destroy the earth. Coal companies are responsible for reclaiming the land when a mine plays out, many times it does not happen, sometimes it does. I have a friend in Ohio that said he saw a reclaimed mine and it was so beautiful that you could not tell that it had ever been a mine. He said it was absolutely gorgeous. It can be done and it should be done but many times it is not done.

But conversely wind farms need to be established away from migratory bird routes, nesting areas, and things of that sort. According to savetheeagalesinternational.org (and they are no conservative organization, believe me) says wind farms worldwide kill 40 million birds and bats every year. But see, these are acceptable losses to the disciples of climate change. Where is the balance?

Do you know that there have been so many bald and golden eagles killed by wind farms that the Obama administration was forced to offer protection to the wind farms for a 30 year period. Now what happens to you or me if we kill an eagle? The first offense is a $5,000 fine and a year in jail, the second offense is a $10,000 fine and two years in jail, unless you own a windmill. Where is the common sense?

Revelation 16 is the prophesy where seven angels pour out seven bowls of the wrath of God upon the earth. I want to pick up a few things here.

Revelation 16:3-4 Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died. Then the third angel poured out his bowl on the rivers and springs of water, and they became blood.

Will mankind recognize this punishment from God? Or will oil companies or industrial pollution be blamed?

Revelation 16:9 And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.

“Scorched with great heat.” Will the be due to global warming? It says the people will curse God and it says very clearly that God has power over these plagues. This great heat will not be the product of mankind’s actions, it will be from God! But what is the response of the people? “They did not repent.”

Revelation 16:10 Then the fifth angel poured out his bowl on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom became full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues because of the pain.

The way this is phrased, “became full of darkness,” leads me to think that it might simply be an absence of light, but it could also mean confusion and disorder, or disaster of some sort. This darkness, whatever it is, causes people to “gnaw their tongues.” This word translated gnawed is found only in this one place in the New Testament and this phrase is not used anywhere else in the Bible.

So it is obvious there is deep anguish, but do the nations think this confusion, these disasters are manmade? Do they blame too many roads and not enough light rail? Or do they begin to recognize that they are worshipping the wrong god?

Revelation 16:11 They blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds.

What role will a fanatical belief in climate change play in end time prophesy? I do not know, I am only speculating here but we do need to understand that God controls the weather, not man.

I have a minister friend in California who was telling me that he has to counsel with more and more brethren who are getting caught up the climate change hysteria. They are worried that they are not doing enough to stop it. This is the same state who is spending millions of dollars to stop methane from cows. I am not sure how they plan to do this.

Again, I personally believe we should conserve water, recycle, and minimize damage to the environment, but do not get swallowed up in the Satanic plot to shift to man the things that belong to God.

Deuteronomy 11 lays out blessings and cursing for the children of Israel, and of course to us. It is a great chapter to read with climate change in mind actually.

Deuteronomy 11:1 “Therefore you shall love the Lord your God, and keep His charge, His statutes, His judgments, and His commandments always.”

Deuteronomy 11:9 “and that you may prolong your days in the land which the Lord swore to give your fathers, to them and their descendants, ‘a land flowing with milk and honey.’ [a very apt description of all the Israelitish nations today]

Deuteronomy 11:12-17 “a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year. [It is very interesting how that is phrased, “a land for which the Lord your God cares.” And of course, we should as well.] And it shall be that if you earnestly obey My commandments which I command you today, to love the Lord your God and serve Him with all your heart and with all your soul, then I will give you the rain for your land in its season, the early rain and the latter rain, that you may gather in your grain, your new wine, and your oil. And I will send grass in your fields for your livestock, that you may eat and be filled. Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn aside and serve other gods and worship them, lest the Lord’s anger be aroused against you, and He shut up the heavens so that there be no rain, and the land yield no produce, and you perish quickly from the good land which the Lord is giving you.”

God controls the weather, not us! God blesses and curses, God gives and takes. We are only a small part of God’s creation. We have nowhere near the abilities that we think we do.

I would like to end here in I Timothy 6 where the apostle Paul is admonishing Timothy as he closes this letter to him and I think it is very applicable to this.

I Timothy 6:20-21 O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and idle babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge—by professing it some have strayed from the faith. Grace be with you. Amen.

MRF/skm/drm












 


 
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