Many evangelicals have joined the chorus in support of reducing greenhouse emissions, but I am still on the fence about global warming. Like Bill O’Reilly, think we should get off of fossil fuels for both environmental and economic/political reasons, but I have not bought into the Global Warming Panic (GWP).
As Aaron recently noted, this past year’s hurricane season failed to meet the dire predictions of the GWP lobby, and while that may be too small a sample to be conclusive, it does show the speculative nature of the whole apocalyptic approach of the GWPers.
We’ve argued whether or not GW is a threat, or a hoax perpetrated by misinformed environmentalists. But there’s one more unusual perspective,that global warming, whether man-made or not, will be the worldwide catastrophe that unites the world in one cause, and under one world leader, the antichrist.
Now, skeptics will surely mock at such a proposition, and they have reason to mock, religious claims that the antichrist and one-world system are at hand have been the boon of Christian sects from the first century.
The Antichrist as Environmentalist
While some armchair theologians merely note that global warming could bring on the famines and plagues that attend the end times scenarios in the bible (see Global warming could bring end times disasters), others, like one Cardinal recently advising the Pope, remark that the antichrist will probably be an environmentalist.
An arch-conservative cardinal chosen by the Pope to deliver this year’s Lenten meditations to the Vatican hierarchy has caused consternation by giving warning of an Antichrist who is a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist.
Global Catastrophe Forces Centralized Oversight
Others argue that this sense of real or impending global warming apocalypse will force us towards a global, centralized, statist solution that even Islamists may buy into:
Like Marxism, this Global Warming Apocalypse pronouncement is supposed to sustain civilization not through individual virtue but through regulation and centralized planning. Their elite whose goodness is measured not by their own moral behavior but by the brilliance of their statist schemes will apparently save the earth. And through the Leftist/Marxist/Islamist Alliance they promote appeasement with the very forces seeking their own destruction [i.e. the left hates Christianity so much it has become an apologist for Islamic leaders who dupe them into partnership in the guise of wanting to help solve global warming.]
Religion and Global Warming Policies
This begs the question, What part will religion play in emerging global warming policies? The author gives a detailed history of the global ecological/political organizations, and how they mean to unite us around ecology and generic spirituality:
The Global Forum of Spiritual and Parliamentary Leaders on Human Survival began in October 1985. While the United Nations was celebrating its 40th anniversary, ten “spiritual leaders,” two each from the world’s five major religions, and eight elected officials from parliaments on five continents, met together at psychology’s New Age center in Tarrytown, New York to explore ideas for ecological salvation and world peace. Out of this meeting grew a working partnership between the world’s religious and political leaders?something which had been unthinkable since ancient Rome….
Laying the foundation for the coming world religion, ecological concerns are being expressed increasingly in pantheistic/New Age terms as though the universe were a living and even conscious entity (the Gaia hypothesis) with whom we must make peace and live in harmony. Calling spirituality “common to all humanity,” New Age physicist Fritjof Capra defined it at the Moscow Global Forum as “the experience of being connected to the cosmos as a whole…a sense of belonging that gives meaning to life.” Capra recently founded The Elmwood Institute, dedicated to “the convergence of politics, ecology and spirituality.”
Nuclear Iran Could Initiate An Immediate Warming of the Atmoshpere
If the insane leader of Iran decides to hasten the end times with the use of a nuclear weapon, we may have a global catastrophe years ahead of global warming:
Ahmadinejad’s mystical obsession with the coming of the Mahdi raises concerns that a nuclear-armed Iran could trigger the very conflagration he envisions for the end of the world.
Et tu, Al Gore?
Speculation based on the environmentalist antichrist has brought some prominent world leaders into the running, the chief of whom is Al Gore.
We first alluded to Al Gore?s merits as the antichrist back in July 2006, when we quoted Christian radio host Woodrow Kroll on the possibility of the antichrist being a popular environmental leader. This notion was consistent with the statement, in March 2007, by 78-year old Roman Catholic Cardinal Giacomo Biffi that the antichrist will be a pacifist, ecologist and ecumenist that the masses will follow.
Others have even detailed Gore’s progressive (pun intended) departure from Christianity over the years as evidence that he could be the antichrist:
In choosing to back constituents on ?abortion rights? instead of backing God, Al Gore shows he does not even respect God?s Rights to God’s Own Personal Property, His created embryos! Gore thus shows the spirit of the Anti-Christ on both abortion and in his rash, get-them-scared approach to global warming.
Of course, that is wild speculation, but this speculation has been heightened in light of his Nobel Peace Prize, don’t forget, pacifist (peace prize), ecologist (inconvenient truth), and ecumenist(well, he’s not there yet).
Interestingly, left-leaning Christians have intimated that the “Christian” leaders of the US and Canada (Bush and Harper) are the anti-Christs because they fail to respond to man-made global warming. But everyone likes to compare their opponents to the antichrist and Hitler ;) (see Global Warming and the Disciples of the Anti-Christ).
CONCLUSION
Though on first (and maybe second) glance the idea that global warming is somehow related to the biblical end times and the antichrist sounds ludicrous, there are some interesting reasonings from the bible and just practical observation that will probably promote this doctrine to the forefront of the Christian Church.
What’s also interesting is that many Christians who are now believing that global warming is real tend to think that it may not be man-caused, but the thought that it is, and the necessity for us to respond to real disasters no matter what the cause, means that a global warming apocalypse may easily lead to a one world, statist government very soon, and even sooner if Iran uses nukes. Scary thoughts.