The Climate Connection

Illustration by Viktor Miller-Gausa

Ken Ham
President/CEO
Answers in Genesis

The news media are reporting on two types of climate change.

One concerns spiritual climate change. Now, the media reporters don’t discuss it this way, but as they write and talk about issues that are increasingly permeating the culture, such as gay “marriage,” transgender, abortion, and euthanasia, they are actually reporting on spiritual climate change.

The second climate change concerns the changing physical climates on the earth, and discussions of whether man has caused these changes and whether this will lead to a doomsday scenario in the very near future.

Now, there is a connection between these two types of climate change.

The secular education systems of the entire world are, by and large, teaching generations of students that science has proved the universe and all life (including humans) arose by natural processes. Students are indoctrinated to believe that astronomical, biological, geological, and anthropological evolution are fact. As a result, increasing numbers in each generation believe the Bible is not a true book of history but is a book of mythology.

The more people believe that there is no God and that they arose by natural processes, the more they will build a worldview consistent with this belief. The best way to summarize their worldview is to apply this verse of Scripture to their situation: “In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes” (Judges 21:25).

In other words, when people reject the absolute authority of God’s Word, ultimately anything goes regarding their worldview. Right and wrong are a matter of their subjective decision. As a result of such a worldview, we would expect to see moral relativism permeating the culture—which is exactly what we see. This is resulting in a massive spiritual climate change, particularly in the West, that has had a predominantly Christianized worldview built on the Judeo-Christian ethic found in the Bible.

Now, when people reject the Bible (including the book of Genesis) as a book of history, they are rejecting the account of a perfect creation that has been affected by the entrance of sin and God’s judgment of death and the curse. They also reject the account of the geological, globally catastrophic event of the flood of Noah’s day.

God’s Word tells us that, because of man’s fall, the whole of creation now groans: “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22).

God no longer “holds together” the creation by the power of his hand (Colossians 1:17) in the perfect way it was originally made. Everything is running down because of the effects of sin. This affects every aspect of the physical creation, including climate.

Approximately 1,600 years after creation, we read in the Bible that God judged the earth with a cataclysmic event—the global flood. This flood devastated the surface of the earth and led to dramatic climate changes. After the flood, there were warmer oceans (due to plate movements, heat from the earth’s mantle, and so on) and lots of ash and other particles in the atmosphere (such as from volcanic activity). This led to a catastrophic ice age with the formation of massive glaciers. Along with such drastic changes would come severe storms, hurricanes, and other weather disturbances.

Ever since the flood, the climates on earth have been changing, settling down from this major catastrophe. It was cooler during the ice age but has since been warming. Some areas of desert today were fertile areas hundreds or thousands of years ago. The glaciers that arose during the post-flood ice age have been melting back as temperatures have risen. These fluctuations in climate have occurred as the earth settles down from the effects of the events associated with the flood.

But we need to understand that if people reject that the flood caused one major ice age, they will not understand what has been happening to climates over the past 4,300 years since the flood. And many people don’t understand that ocean currents and phases of the sun’s activity have a major bearing on earth’s climates too.

Now, this is not to say that humans are free to pollute the earth as much as they want. Man was given dominion over the earth, but this means we need to look after the creation, using it for man’s good and God’s glory. We need to do the best we can to take care of this fallen, cursed world.

However, if people reject the event of the global flood as recorded in the Bible, they will not understand what has happened on this earth regarding physical climate change, or why glaciers were much more extensive in the past (such as the glacier-carved valleys in Wyoming). And if people reject God’s Word as the absolute authority and foundation for their thinking, they will not understand the connection to the spiritual climate change as people decide whatever morality they want for their lives.

To build a way of thinking that correctly interprets spiritual and physical climate change, one must start with the true history of the earth and all life as recorded in Genesis 1–11. One cannot disconnect the history in the Bible from understanding spiritual and physical climate change. And one cannot disconnect the Bible from the changes God says are coming—such as the final judgment of this earth by fire. But it’s God, not man, who is in charge of this massive change to come.

Let God be true though every one were a liar. (Romans 3:4)