Weather of Biblical Proportions Sets Off Debate Among Theologians and Scientists
Pastor Dale Morgan
*Weather of Biblical Proportions Sets Off Debate Among Theologians and
Scientists*
By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES
June 12, 2008— ABC NEWS
In the beginning, God created heaven and Earth, and he saw that it was
good. So begins the Book of Genesis, the dramatic opener of the Old
Testament.
But things went downhill from there.
God's wrath seems at work these days, as the heavens and Earth have
unleashed earthquakes in China, a cyclone in Burma, killer tornadoes and
record floods across the U.S. and even a plague of locusts (cicadas) in
New England.
In Cedar Rapids, Iowa today, floodwaters forced the evacuation of a
downtown hospital after residents of more than 3,000 homes fled for
higher ground. A railroad bridge collapsed, and 100 city blocks were
underwater.
"We're just kind of at God's mercy right now, so hopefully people that
never prayed before this, it might be a good time to start," Linn County
Sheriff Don Zeller said this week as record floods hit the Midwest.
"We're going to need a lot of prayers and people are going to need a lot
of patience and understanding."
By the final Book of Revelation in the New Testament, the Earth suffers
"Seven Plagues" -- from disease to "intense heat" and drought, then
finally a shower of deadly hailstones.
And then comes the Apocalypse, the final judgment of man and destruction
of the world by fire.
Biblical imagery is all over the news these days even including a story
last week of a New York baby being enwrapped by a snake in its crib,
harking back to evil lurking in the Garden of Eden.
[There was a practical explanation: the non-poisonous snake had embedded
itself in a mattress shipped by Toys 'R' Us from California.]
Most theologians and scientists don't take seriously warnings that the
end of the world is nigh. But many reputable scholars do lend some
credence to the notion that the world is in for some kind of disaster,
be it meteorological, ecological or geopolitical.
ABC News will air a dramatic two-hour broadcast in September, Earth
2100, bringing the greatest minds across the globe together to tell us
what we must do to survive the next century. And what may happen if we
don't.
Though tsunamis, hurricanes and heat waves may not be punishment from
God, history teaches that events in the physical world trigger upheaval
in society. Civilizations have risen and fallen over drought, famine and
water wars.
"Only wild-eyed fundamentalists would think that recent weather
phenomena have any theological significance," said John P. Meier, a New
Testament scholar and professor at Notre Dame in Indiana. "The Earth has
seen and will see much worse in recorded history."
The Apocalypse is rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition, but
end-of-the-world stories are also woven through some Hindu and Islamic
beliefs. One Catholic University spokesman described it as "the magical
mystery tour of the Bible," filled with vivid imagery: a beast-like
antichrist, an angry God and the destruction of the world by fire.
Modern millennialists and eschatologists -- including Yisrayl "Buffalo
Bill" Hawkins, the founder of the House of Yahweh religious sect located
on a 44-acre compound outside Abilene, Texas, who predicted
(incorrectly) the end of the world yesterday, June 12 have been
forecasting Doomsday for decades.
"It's been going on for millennia and they get it wrong all the time,"
said Thomas Reese, senior fellow at the Woodstock Theological Seminary
at Georgetown University.
"After the first millennium, they thought the world would come to an
end," he said. "The pope and the cardinals were in the old St. Peters
and they were expecting Jesus to come back. It didn't happen."
The Book of Revelation was written at a time when the Romans were
persecuting Christians by setting them afire and feeding them to the lions.
"You have to understand the historical context of the Apocalypse and the
time it was written," said Reese. "They were trying to encourage
Christians to have hope and to argue that their cause is just and God
will not let the bad guys win."
"The central message is that sin is not good for people and it has
consequences, but we wouldn't think hurricanes, tidal waves and
locusts," he said. "We know enough about science today to look on
natural events as natural and not coming from God to punish people."
Meteorologists say there is a natural explanation for all this
catastrophic weather pacific decadal Oscillation. Since the 1970s, the
Pacific Ocean has been warming, but now it is going through a cooling
phase, according to Jay Searles, forecaster instructor at Penn State
University.
"But now, we are flipping, and these flips happen over decades," said
Searles. "When we go through transition phases like right now, they tend
to favor stormy more violent weather everything we have been observing."
"We are not being punished, though it may seem like it," said Searles.
"But there is a scientific reason behind what is happening and that
makes sense."
Stephen B. Chapman, associate professor of the Old Testament at Duke
University Divinity School, says the Bible has a lot to say about man's
relationship to the eco-system.
"In the Bible there is an essential relationship between social justice
and right worship and ecology," said Chapman. "The Bible has an intense
interest in ecology."
Religious scholars are beginning to pay more attention to what the Bible
has to say about man's destruction of the environment and its
relationship to natural catastrophes
"The land bearing the cost of global warming is new, but the connection
between what humankind does and what societies they form and the health
of the land and agriculture is as old as the Bible itself," he said.
One of the great Bible stories the flood of Genesis that destroyed the
Earth was caused by violence," said Chapman. But when the floods subside
and Noah step out of the ark, the Bible uses "one of the great symbols
of hope" the rainbow .
"The rainbow is explicitly a sign that God will not destroy the earth
again and the hope that humankind can live in harmony with natural world."
But evangelists like Ken Han, founder and CEO of Answers in Genesis and
the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., believe God Not man is at work
in recent weather phenomena.
"There is earthly death payment for sin," said Han. "Because of sin, God
doesn't hold the world perfectly together at times, and he uses certain
events to judge a nation."
The Bible is filled with symbolism, poetry and parables, and Han says
Revelation should not be taken "literally." Still, "just because it's
apocalyptic literature doesn't mean there is no truth there."
When the world sins, "the whole of creation groans," according to Han's
interpretation of a Biblical passage in Romans. Those groans are
reflected in recent tornadoes and storms.
"If you carefully look at events there are certain catastrophes," said
Han. "But God is in control and it's not God's fault, it's our fault
because we sinned against God."
What will the fire of the Apocalypse look like? "Whatever happens, God
will be in charge of it," he said. "I don't see man blowing it up
[either through nuclear destruction or global warming]."
"If you believe in the Bible or the Big Bang, everyone agrees about the
end of the universe," said Han. "Eventually those who believe in the Big
Bang say it dies of heat death and it's all purposeless. But the
Christian perspective in there is meaning to life."
New Age circles agree that some sort of cataclysmic event will occur
perhaps as early as 2012, according to ancient Mayan astronomers, who
developed the world's most accurate calendar.
Science writer Lawrence Joseph explores those predictions and other
theories of cybernetics the behavior of complex systems in his 2007
book, "Apocalypse 2012."
He says science can explain why the Earth has experienced recent violent
weather patterns. "When you go from one state to the next period, there
is chaos in between," according to Joseph. "There are periods of
transition and chaos and it's never a straight line."
Scientists can predict major changes on the Earth by looking at its
relationship to the sun, which has behaved "in more startling ways" in
the last century, and more dramatically in the last three or four years.
Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma were "one of the stormiest periods on
earth, and one of the stormiest on the sun," said Joseph. "People are
starting to understand the Earth's relation to the sun."
Solar climaxes occur in cycles and the next is expected in 2012, when
some scientists predict its activity will be 30 to 50 times more intense
than previous ones.
In the 1400s the sun spots disappeared, and a century of drought and
global cooling ensued, according to Joseph. It triggered chaos, and the
eventual collapse of empire in China. It's the "domino effect" of
weather on civilization "that has me worried," he said.
"If things in the Middle East were previously unstable, all we need is
something that causes starvation in a system that is already teetering
over the edge," Joseph said.
Joseph acknowledges that all the answers don't lie with science, and
people project emotional meaning to natural catastrophes when they are
anxious. Indeed, Americans have much to worry about: political threats,
a foundering economy and even high gas prices.
"There is a certain end of the empire anxiety," he said.
And when weather patterns change, even rational people get nervous.
"There are unchallenged, unspoken assumptions that the seasons come and
go your whole life, until the seasons start to mix themselves up and
records are broken," he said. "It's profoundly unsettling. But we've
seen nothing yet."
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