A Disposable Planet
The earth we inhabit is not a permanent planet. It is, frankly, a disposable planet—it is going to have a very short life. It’s been around six thousand years or so—that’s all—and it may last a few thousand more. And then the Lord is going to destroy it. I’ve told environmentalists that if they think humanity is wrecking the planet, wait until they see what Jesus does to it. Peter says God is going to literally turn it in on itself in an atomic implosion so that the whole universe goes out of existence (2 Peter 3:7-13
). This earth was never ever intended to be a permanent planet—it is not eternal. We do not have to worry about it being around tens of thousands, or millions, of years from now because God is going to create a new heaven and a new earth ~ John MacArthur
In the last year or so it seems that many more people and governments are starting to treat the environment as a serious issue. Just today we saw Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth win an Oscar, and in recent weeks we’ve seen both sides of Australian politics start campaigning on environmental issues. Even our Prime Minister John Howard has started to turn green, with his policies on water management and outlawing light globes.
Unfortunately though, there’s still a hard core of Christian fundamentalists giving the rest of us Christians a bad rap with comments like the one above. MacArthur’s article makes me very angry. He starts off by saying that we have a responsibility to care for the environment, and then goes on to present his “biblical” arguments why it’s not that important.
I won’t even touch his young Earth comments, but who is MacArthur to say that we don’t have to worry about the world being around “tens of thousands” of years or more? “Only the Father” (Matt 24:36) knows the timing of the “end of the world.” But even if MacArthur’s timelines were accurate, surely it is still grossly irresponsible to not be trying to do what we can to prevent/repair environmental problems which have the potential to have catastrophic effects on the next generation. Our children and grandchildren’s lives could be tremendously negatively impacted by the environmental degradation taking place today (not to mention the lives of untold billions in the third world) – using a pseudo-biblical or theological justification for not acting on the environment (“because we think Jesus is going to come back real soon!”) reminds me of the bridesmaids who let the oil run out in their lamps because the groom delayed longer than they expected (Matt 25) – surely being “ready for Jesus” includes not letting his created world fall to pieces in the meantime because of our mismanagement and neglect.
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The calvalcade of disasters and horrors is unrelenting, from the rule of Idi Amin and many other dictators, to famine, disease, and the scourge of AIDS, in the midst of an unending succesion of wars and conflict. Meredith doesn’t settle for simplistic answers as to why this has all happened – no one gets off without some share of the blame – European colonial powers like France and Britain, other Western countries like the US and communist Russia, but primarily corrupt and greedy African rulers are the main culprits.