Isaiah 9:18-19 Humanity Impacts the Environment
Isaiah 9:18-19 For wickedness burns like a fire; it consumes briars and thorns; it even sets the thickets of the forest aflame and they roll upward in a column of smoke. By the fury of the LORD of hosts the land is burned up, and the people are like fuel for the fire; no man spares his brother.
Isaiah uses idiomatic language to describe wickedness. The wickedness can be in civil relations, moral, ethical, and religious connotations. The people’s wickedness is like a destructive fire. A fire burns vegetation and wood.
As God sees it, the people’s actions are like a fire. God’s judgment in return is a fire. So the logic goes, the people’s actions (wickedness) result in a consuming fire of the land. In the idiomatic language, briars, thorns, and woods are the fuel. In reality, the people become the fuel in their judgment.
God’s word says that people’s actions can affect the environment. I realize in today’s “scientific” world that seems pretty far-fetched in some circles. This concept leaves the “global warming community” and the “environmental left” in a tight spot. These two groups would agree that man has negatively impacted the environment. This position would also be in agreement with God. This does not mean these left leaning organizations are in agreement with the Bible. If you read their beliefs, they are not consistent with God’s precepts.
The greatest environmental disaster of all time was due to man’s actions and sins. That disaster was the flood in Genesis. Genesis 6:13 Then God said to Noah, “The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth.
Genesis 7:4 “For after seven more days, I will send rain on the earth forty days and forty nights; and I will blot out from the face of the land every living thing that I have made.” The wickedness of humanity resulted in forty days and forty nights of rain. Incidentally, this is the first time in history it rained according to the Bible. Genesis 7:4 is the first mention of rain being caused. Genesis 2:5 indicates that God had not sent rain on the earth. Genesis 2:6 indicates there was a mist from the ground that watered the surface of the earth. God originally used His own misting sprinkler system to water plant life.
Man’s actions have impacted the environment in the past and in today’s world. Man’s actions and wickedness will impact the environment in the future Tribulation. Revelation 8:7 talks of hail and fire. Revelation 16:21 talks of the plague of hail. The sun is progressively impacted until there is darkness in Joel 2:10, 3:15, and Revelation 16:10.
Matthew 24:37 “For the coming of the Son of Man will be just like the days of Noah.
Leave a Reply