Essay by Eric Worrall
The climate crisis is Armageddon?
Climate change fuels End Times evangelicalism
On an unusually warm Friday night in August, adults and children gather at the New Life Chapel in the Victorian town of Wodonga for the first night of the Oceania End Times Prophetic Conference.
Inside, the hall is dark but for a projected constellation of stars illuminating the stage, where a band is playing light rock.
Pastor Zoran Paunovich steps out in front of the tightly-packed front rows, a crisp T-shirt and sneakers giving off carefully crafted “cool dad” vibes. He welcomes the hundreds in the audience, including online viewers, with a shout-out to the youngest present. “I am so encouraged to see so many young people here tonight,” he says. “We desperately need your generation to understand these things.”
…
“There have been people in every generation since the time of Jesus that have believed that they were living in the End Times and it’s just a constant reinvention of the story,” he says.
…
While some evangelical Christians – such as Kyle Meyaard-Schaap, author of Following Jesus in a Warming World: A Christian Call to Climate Action – see their religious beliefs embracing climate change activism, McSkimming says it can be discouraged, even by churches that don’t teach End Times prophecies, as “social gospel”. She says it’s chilling to hear some people say “Bring it on, Lord” in response to signs they interpret as meaning “God is getting closer”.
…
“This is the beginning of sorrows, the stuff we’re seeing,” Hall tells the assembled in Wodonga.
“The world is going to be cast into a cauldron of horror which is beyond description, and I want my kids in the kingdom,” he says. “I do believe that God is using End Time teaching to stir people about the urgency of the hour.”
…
Read more: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/life/religion/2023/08/24/apocalypse-nigh#mtr
“Bring it on, Lord”. Probably not the outcome climate alarmists who relentlessly proselytise their secular mockery of the Christian faith intended.
Note I am not criticising the pastor or his congregation for being deceived by the climate crisis narrative. I believe Pastor Zoran Paunovich and his congregation have been persuaded by relentless media climate propaganda, which in the People’s Republic of Victoria is at saturation level.
I hope Pastor Paunovich‘s faith and his obvious empathy for others lead him and his congregation to a less troubled view of the world.
There is no climate crisis.
Story tip – ‘Climate Change’ High Priest John Kerry Declares Virtual War on ‘Deniers,’ Calls Them ‘Inexorable Threat’ – PJ Media
They are praying to the same lord that burned down Lahaina…and brought us Covid 19…and lets Putin kill civilians and children. Yeah, that one.
True believers need not reply – just like true believers of ‘climate change’…
It’s an arrogant man indeed who presumes to judge the One who made him.
As I said, true believers can withhold their comments. A man and a woman made me not some fictitious ‘god’. Sorry Mary, I breed peppers also, and don’t need ‘the one who made them’ to do it.
How can you be sure there is no creator?
The world’s most famous athiest, Dawkins, admits that the only scientifically justified position is agnosticism. He choses to believe there is no creator, but that’s an article of faith.
The God hypothesis isn’t subject to the scientific method, so can’t be confirmed or shown false.
He said he is agnostic about gods the same way he is agnostic about Leprechauns and Fairies.
You can’t disprove them, either.
“He choses to believe there is no creator, but that’s an article of faith.”
At least in these days it’s OK to have THAT faith- unlike in the past.
Not sure how far back in the past you are looking joe, certainly not in the United States from the ratification of the Constitution, but the Cultural Elite Ruling class have lock down control of our politicians and provide our Bureaucrats their marching orders as we are currently watching them, the bureaucrats, flip the script on the 1st amendment regulating speech along with freedom of religious worship.
At the inception of this country and for the first 2 centuries one has been free to express their opinion on any subject and choose to believe or not believe in God so you should point to where and when that was not allowed.
I agree with your 2nd paragraph- by “past” I was refering to before the Constitution. However, though people have had the right to not be religious since the Constitution, it wasn’t something you’d like to brag about. To this day, I doubt anyone could be elected president if they say they’re an atheist or even agnostic- so they all play the game and get seen going to church.
As did Hitchens although atheists hold him up as one of their own. I just watched a video clip of him saying that his belief is more correctly categorized as agnostic insomuch as he sees no evidence of god but that he does not hate the concept nor people who do believe. Too bad he cannot report back from his grave to provide the necessary proof to his acolytes and resolve the matter once and for all.
Seems to me that faith is the key. I Suppose maybe, believers experience eternity and non-believers experience an eternal dreamless dirt nap. Nobody can prove that hypothesis nor disprove it. We will never know until we cross the threshold. I believe God is real and that I have a lot of esplainen to do.
“I breed peppers also, and don’t need ‘the one who made them’ to do it.”
Where did the peppers come from? And don’t try to claim spontaneous abiogenesis. Spontaneous generation was disproved by the 19th century, through the efforts of Francesco Redi and Louis Pasteur, among others.
Francesco Redi discovered that maggots don’t spontaneously appear but come from eggs that flies lay.
This proves that there is a god.
Yours has to be the funniest comment I’ve read in ages.
“Francesco Redi discovered that maggots don’t spontaneously appear but come from eggs that flies lay. This proves that there is a god. Yours has to be the funniest comment I’ve read in ages.”
You need to work on your reading comprehension skills. I didn’t say that Francesco Redi’s experiment proves that there is a god.
What I DID say is that Francesco Redi’s experiment proves that life doesn’t spontaneously appear out of nowhere – which is in direct opposition to the evolutionary claim that life DID spontaneously appear out of nowhere, AKA abiogenesis.
As a matter of fact, it is impossible to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of God, because you can’t put God under a microscope and perform replicable experiments upon Him.
It was the space aliens wot dun us.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Clark’s 3rd law.
The Old Testament is full of them.
Abiogenesis isn’t the same as evolution. Two different processes. Evolution is a scientific fact, ie an observation of nature, seen every day in every way.
Redi did not “disprove” abiogenesis. He showed that flies don’t spontaneously appear. That’s a far cry from RNA self-assembling, which it does, including in liquid water in spaces in ice. Amino acids also self-assemble, as do lipid bilayer spheres, like cell membranes.
God told man, “Go forth and multiply”. Soooo… you’re kinda confirming what we’re saying. 👍
And still many people can’t do basic arithmetic !! 😉
And who is meant to go first second and third ?
So, you hold to yourself the right to denigrate and insult other people, but they must shut up and say: “Yes boss”?
Are are way stupider than your school bully told you.
What is it about atheists and their belief that they cannot be wrong?
If you can’t judge this god, how do you differentiate him from the Devil/Satan? Satan kills about 10 people in the Bible. Yhwh kills (or assists/approves of killing) millions upon millions (even excluding wiping out the entire population in a flood [and thinking, oops! that didn’t do anything… better try again to fix stuff in a few thousand years by sacrificing myself to myself to appease myself]).
So how are you deciding which one is the bad guy? One of them doesn’t even have a book to tell his side of the story. The other one has a book chock full of his own evil deeds while (literally) demonizing his opponent.
<<Putin kill civilians and children>>
Putin’s army is killing the Ukrainian-NATO forces who from 2008-2022 casually lobbed shells into Donetsk city killing Russian civilians there. Their aim was not “bring it on Lord” but “bring it on Putin”. Be careful what you wish for.
True believers need not reply.
How typical, you have no interest in the truth, you already know everything you want to know,
How typical.
If the End Times end the Communist regimes in NSW and Victoria, I say, “Amen!, brethren and sistern!”
Interesting . . . the Bible, that widely quoted Christian reference, never once mentions the word climate or discusses climate change:
“Climate change is not discussed in the Bible . . .”
(source: https://www.christianity.com/wiki/christian-life/what-does-the-bible-say-about-climate-change.html )
So, how is one to discern that “climate change” as portrayed by the IPCC and MSM is not the tool of the devil, or that one is being led astray by false prophets?
“Test all things; hold fast what is good.”
—Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)
Genesis Chapter 8 Verse 22: While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Shall we quibble over whether the seasons and day and night are the same as “climate”, or whether the phrase “shall not cease” is the same as “change”?
I thinketh not.
Such would certainly lead us astray into debate over whether or not Ice Ages have occurred in Earth’s history.
Read Genesis 8:22 it says right there that global warming
is not going to happen!
Well, if we’re gonna get biblical about it:
I’ve long wondered why not one single Christian seems to remember the injunction to immediately execute any prophet who proves to have made a wrong prediction….
But seriously, you answered your own question: False prophets are by definition not from God. Not one climastrologist prophesy has come true, ergo…
If that injunction was followed—ahem—religiously, their might be all of 100 people on Earth right now.
I mean, given things like, “I think it’s going to rain this afternoon” and “My team is going to win the XXXX this year!” and “It’s going to be a boy!”
…lucky there’s a diffs twixt forecasting and prophesy, methinks. I don’t pretend I’m better than you when I guess the baby’s gender, and I certainly don’t demand you change your life and laws because I bought some pink nappies, so the gods probably don’t despise me quite as much as they do John Kerry?
On the other hand, they gave him the money, not me…
Mass movements can be interchangeable, but I think this is a misguided as Liberation Theology in the Catholic Church. Combining Jesus and Marx turned out mostly Marx. I think this will end up mostly Green Blob in theology.
The Marxists won. The pope is a Commie rat bastard.
And pedophile protector.
And palace coup perpetrator.
I’m not allowed to edit prior posts.
It’s the Pope Catholic? used to be a rhetorical question.
This pope is a wild Commie who defecates in the Holy of Holies.
Given Bergoglio’s history, I think he is a Peronist rat bastard. Low rent Mussolini with South American efficiency.
He’s of the Liberation Theology generation.
That is, a Marxist. And when he goes to his well-deserved demise, Vatican Marxist flunkies will replace him with yet another Commie rat bastard. When will the Catholic faithful rebel against these anti-God usurpers?
Mario Bergoglio is 86, about ten years too old for Liberation Theology. But Peron was a socialist, just like Mussolini. Distinguishing the various flavors of socialist, Marxist, Nazi, or Fascist, is like detailing the differences between various Evangelical churches. It only matters to the members, really.
No, he’s not too old. He’s just the right age to be caught up in the insanity:
http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/9/22/pope-embraces-liberation-theology.html
The Commie rat bastard, while born in 1936, wasn’t ordained a Catholic priest until 1969, well into the “Marxist-Catholic dialogue” era.
I suspect that he became a Jesuit because it was a safe way to become a Communist in 1969 Argentina.
Tom, I can not find one single phrase in your comment that does not raise the bile in my throat.
I was going to call you ignorant, but so much ignorance in one paragraph deserves an ovation…
For what? Noting Nazis were socialists?
Hitler stated repeatedly hundreds of times in speeches and essays, “I am a socialist.”
And he was. All socialism is 1. select a target group; 2. steal everything they possess; 3. kill them all. The target group for Marxists is the bourgeoisie. The target group for National Socialists is the Jews. But the method and effect is identical; millions perish in the slaughter.
Such a pleasant, loving comment.
“Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: Not rendering evil for evil, or railing for railing: but contrariwise blessing; knowing that ye are thereunto called, that ye should inherit a blessing.” (Peter 3:8-9)
Christians are called upon to return good for evil. We may not always be very good at doing it but that is what our religion tells us to do.
The putative Petrine books are all forged, as are so many other NT books, including about half of alleged Paul’s letters..
https://ehrmanblog.org/the-situation-behind-the-forged-book-of-1-peter/
Francis advocates energy poverty for the world’s poorest people. He is indeed a Commie rat bastard, antihuman, like all Commies. Now the enemy of humanity lionizes Russian imperialism. Quite a fall from John Paul II.
Given Frank’s recently revealed attacks on “reactionary” American Catholics, do you still object to “Commie rat bastard”?
If you are a real Christian, then you believe that God made the Earth for Humankind.
That means that God put all that luvly COAL and GAS in the ground for us to use.
It goes against God, NOT to use it.
Many marine microbes gave up their lives over millions of years for us. Greater love hath no microbe.
That goes double for coal swamp forest plants.
They died but likely gave no thought to it.
No matter. They played their role in human dominion over creation.
Sounds like an intro to Starfish Wars.;-)
Also Jew or Muslim.
Although I’m a Christian, I like the Zoroastrian tenet to do no evil by thought, word or deed.
Christianity has that goal as well, however often honored in the breech.
That’s very true. We Christians do not claim to be perfect. We acknowledge our imperfection. I can’t speak for non-Catholic Christians, but Catholics are urged by the Church to strive for holiness. That’s one of the reasons we have Confession: to obtain forgiveness of the sins we acknowledge we have committed. But that forgiveness is conditional on a strong intention not to commit those sins again. That’s not to say we won’t. But we do, at least, have to have the intention not to do so. It’s also another reason why we celebrate the saints as models to imitate. As a Catholic I am required always to put the best possible interpretation on the motives of other people. We can criticise and condemn actions, but not people. No one can see inside another person. Only God can judge people.
I know Christianity has that goal but it’s just that the Zoroastrian seems to go a bit further and stronger than that. Which, of course, is fine in principle but often is lacking in practice!
What do you mean, “Although I am a Christian”? “To do no evil by thought, word or deed” is eminently Christian. Here’s what Catholics recite at every Mass:
I confess to almighty God
and to you, my brothers and sisters,
that I have greatly sinned
in my thoughts and in my words,
in what I have done,
and in what I have failed to do;
through my fault, through my fault,
through my most grievous fault;
therefore I ask blessed Mary ever-Virgin,
all the Angels and Saints,
and you, my brothers and sisters,
to pray for me to the Lord our God.
Uranium too.
Coal and gas are part of God’s Bountiful Harvest…
They also provide CO2 which will increase the bountiful harvest of crops and provide food for animals and all creatures on HIS Earth.
“If you are a real Christian, then you believe that God made the Earth for Humankind.”
That argument is pure bollocks and just an excuse for the feeble minded. So that means he also created cancer and toothache and Joe Biden. Explain that one…….
Yawn….. You really are a pathetic little person, aren’t you, Simon
The slimy ooze created you. !
Can you not have a discussion without behaving like a spoilt child?
Can you not be a mindless twit and a pathetic little worm !
Cancer is a disease.. as is Biden.. as are you.
Haha brilliant. But you need to buy or research some more original put downs, they are getting a bit “samey” don’t you think?
Again, Slimo totally unable to counter anything I’ve said.
And actually agrees with me.
He knows he is a piece of human excrement… he chooses to be.
At least now he has admitted that El Ninos cause atmospheric warming
Progress, especially for such a tiny mind as his.
The bible emphatically teaches that the world is CURRENTLY under the control of Satan that is why there is a world filled with bad people that is abusing the planet.
“The bible emphatically teaches that the world is CURRENTLY under the control of Satan that is why there is a world filled with bad people that is abusing the planet.”
Are you arguing for or against using fossil fuels even though they are causing issues?
And the bible says lots of things…. Don’t eat shellfish if I remember right?
Those people who wish to gain control over everyone else, using the climate scam as a crutch to do so.
Abusing huge areas of land and the ocean with wind turbines.
Denying the plant life much needed CO2.
Denying future generations and developing countries the use of reliable energy supplies.
They are the scum of the planet… and you seem to enjoy being one of them.
“Abusing huge areas of land and the ocean with wind turbines.”
But wait on…. Mr Grumpy…. god gave us wind turbines.
And no one is denying plants of CO2
And I think the future generations would rather have a stable climate than one that risks their wellbeing.
No, the evil of the AGW anti-life agenda, gave us wind-turbines.
The wholesale destruction of avian species, without the slightest care for God’s creatures.
You know, that self-indulgent, virtue-seeking, but destitute, immoral, putrid, sewer-like anti-life agenda you choose to be part of.
You despise humanity… you despise yourself.
“The wholesale destruction of avian species, without the slightest care for God’s creatures.”
So you will be supporting getting rid of oil tankers then, given the unrivalled slaughter of sea life and birds by tanker accidents like… the Exxon Valdez
https://usa.oceana.org/exxon-valdez-oil-spill-facts/
“would rather have a stable climate”
They will have, same climate +/- a bit from now.
There is no evidence human CO2 effects climate.
There is no evidence humans can do anything to affect future climate.
It is all just a rancid farce, that you make yourself part of by supporting it.
The anti-CO2 agenda is the thing that is bringing down Western Civilisation… that is what you are supporting.
Do you feel no shame ?
No, you are not capable of it.
“There is no evidence human CO2 effects climate.
There is no evidence humans can do anything to affect future climate.”
There is no evidence you have any understanding of climate science. Congratulations you are now “Climate science denier No.1.”
“And no one is denying plants of CO2″
OMG.. that is whole purpose of the anti-life AGW fakery.. to reduce CO2 emissions.
You really are one of the most stupid cretins on the planet.
The whole aim is to maintain the level of CO2, so plant and animals inhabiting this planet do not have to adapt quickly to an unprecedented swift increase.
Hardly unprecedented.
And plants don’t need to adapt. They’re already adapted to make the most out of 800 to 1300 ppm. They evolved under even higher levels of their vital nutrient.
Not at this pace though. Certainly not in recent times.
The Apocalypse is a genre of religious writing.
End times people and climate alarmists, I don’t think much of either group.
End times people however haven’t cost trillions in treasure, millions of human lives and tens of millions of birds and bats, thereby saving hundreds of millions or billions of harmful insects.
My former church worships at the altar of climate change, along with the rest of the Progressive agenda. Don’t feel the need to go anymore when what they preach differs little from the alphabet news.
But they still at least believe that their solar virtue panels can change the weather. Their secularism inhibits their taking the nest step to this level of madness.
At least for the moment.
You named “McSkimming” – – meaning I think Josie McSkimming, one who left a Christian fundamentalist church.
Book title: Leaving-Christian-Fundamentalism-Reconstruction-Identity
For more than 2000 years there has not been a year when someone was not preaching ‘it is the end time, the 2nd coming in nigh’. What’s the probability that this preacher finally got it right?
Are you sure that there hasn’t been at least one year?
Not sure but seeing how many such preachers I myself have run across, going way back before “climate change”, and what the literature reveals, the odds are against it.
God likes me, but can’t guarantee me a position in heaven on this go round.
He/She/It and I were recently hanging out on a sunny cloud bank. Of the 100 billion human souls in current inventory, some 90 billion are in hell, awaiting recycling, eight billion are alive on Earth and two billion have made it to heaven over the past 200,000 years, including all three of my dead girl friends. This bodes ill for me.
God assures me that my next cycle through hell will grant me dung beetle status on Earth, but possibly butterfly, if I make a strong come from behind move in my last decade of this life.
Turns out that Hindus have some things about the afterlife more in line with reality than Christians, who at least have the monotheism bit right.
God makes the rules, and has to follow them, regardless.
If it’s dung beetle, so be it. A few more lives, and I might claw my way back to human and a shot at heaven and the sainted girlfriends. Not that they’d be all that happy to see me.
Um, no, its not.
The “climate crisis” is the religion of a heathen tribe, godless and degenerate.
Mindless and uncaring as well.
Bring it on, Lord! A subject I have often alluded to, but felt inappropriate for this site. I have long felt… actually, I suddenly realised, when I saw Mike Pompeo and his fiends in action during the Trump residency. I thought it odd how apocalyptic they sound, until I came across the exact same thing in my own family, who are not particularly religious, and ten thousand miles from America.
Even as an acoitheist, I often wonder if it would not be best to start over, then I look at the people who agree with me, and I say: “Eff this for a lark, if these freaks like it, I’m wrong!”
There are a range of reactions to strongly dissenting views – everybody may experience something of this in their lifetime. There are those who experience a form of apathy; “Whatever. Just get on with it, God will judge them and sort it out.” Then there’s a nihilistic feeling; “It’s all too much, I can’t stand it. Wipe everything out and start over.” If you have ever worked with depression or suicide risk, you see these sorts of reactions all the time – a fatalistic lack of hope, a bleak view of the world and their future. There is always something worth saving, some small glimmer of hope left but you may have to look for it.
Religion and Climate Change.
Two mass delusions that fit hand in hand.
Light rock?
Good god!
The Apocalypse tapestry at Angers (France) was woven around 1375 when the Little Ice Age had been cooling the world for almost a century and had already produced the 1317 Great Famine and the 1346 Black Death pandemic.
Apocalypse lies on the other side of the climate spectrum. We couldn’t be farther from a climate apocalypse.
It is my position that people are entitled to their beliefs, no matter our opinion of them. If people want to believe we are “on a road to climate hell” or “past the age of global warming into the age of global boiling” (in the words of the UN general secretary), they are entitled to it.
What nobody has is the right to impose changes in behavior on others based on their beliefs, whether God-based or climate-based.
Climate eschatologists fight hard but fail to convince that theirs is not a belief because there is no convincing evidence that CO2 is responsible for most of the warming.
No religious fanatic agrees with your
Being an atheist, all I can do is shake my head in astonishment at people that manage to believe six impossible things before breakfast. And yes, I know who I’m paraphrasing.
If that’s Christianity it’s a poor and unbiblical kind.
God rebuked the prophet Jonah for desiring judgement of the city of Nineveh.
Yea, but he had his own to do list, and generally cares as much for peons’ opinions as does Klaus Schwab.
“Note I am not criticising the pastor or his congregation for being deceived by the climate crisis narrative.”
I would- anyone with the IQ of 100 should be able to comprehend propaganda when they see/hear it. If they don’t, then they really want that false message to be true.
Bingo.
They want to believe, need the end times. Just like those hoping for destruction in Israel, its unseemly to support Israel because its existence brings the end closer, in your world view
To some the grass will always be greener on the other side of the fence. Rather than try to surmount the obstacles to self-improvement in this life they think everything will be handed to them on a plate in the next, so hurry up and let’s all get to the next life!
I think it would be awesome to have a next life but I’m not betting on it. I watch many YouTube channels with people who’ve had a near death experience. I find it fascinating and I don’t think they’re just inventing their stories. They had the experience but I doubt it is what they think it is.
I don’t know. Every time I try to talk to God, either the line is busy, or I get an answering machine. Kind of like plumbers or electricians. Maybe they are in cahoots.
“it’s just a constant reinvention of the story,”
Clearly climate alarmists are just millenialists, what do they do except constantly re-invent the settled science?
Actually, it looks like more like the Lord of the Rings with compromised leaders.
WSJ
story tip
Pope Francis Praises Historical Russian Imperialism Amid War in UkrainePontiff celebrates the reigns of Russian czars who subjugated Ukraine for their ‘great culture and great humanity’
“I hope Pastor Paunovich‘s faith and his obvious empathy for others lead him and his congregation to a less troubled view of the world.” Yeah, it is a fool’s errand to try and predict the end time. And especially this false science event. Short of a nuclear holocaust, I don’t think man is capable of destroying God creation. That doesn’t mean we can’t do a lot of damage.
This is just another reminder that regardless of the location on this planet at least, there’s never a shortage of suckers.
Christians are to preach the Gospel of Christ. If people say “no”, shake the dust of your feet and move on. (“Shake the dust of your feet” means, basically, move on leaving your animosity behind.)