Greta Thunberg is the Swedish teenager who is an environmental activist. She has gained a great deal of fame for her speeches proclaiming doom for the planet if we do not immediately change everything and embrace her style of environmentalism. She seems to have a difficult time understanding why the world is not heeding her warnings and if you do not plan on heeding her warnings, she does not like you.

         Greta Thunberg turned seventeen on January 3^rd. I turned sixty four on January 17^th. While I typically really enjoy talking with teenagers, Ms Thunberg is irritating to me. She is telling the same story over and over that I have heard all my life. The world is going to end. The cause may be different with each warning, but the end result seems to always be the same.

         Along with the end times warning come the other warnings as well. Bacon is bad for you and should be outlawed. But then, a few years later, bacon isn’t bad for you. Eggs are the perfect food, but then they are bad for you, but then they are OK. Coffee will lead to migraines and neurological disorders but, wait, actually coffee helps fight migraines. Now, apparently, tomatoes are bad for you. In Ohio there was a Waffle House near by and I would have breakfast there once a week with another pastor. My breakfast was always the same. Two slices of bacon, two eggs, two slices of toast, a slice of tomato and coffee. It is a wonder I am alive now.

         But the end of the world warnings. My generation was the first generation to know that the world could end in a series of atomic explosions. In 1947 a group known as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists unveiled the Doomsday Clock. This was a symbolic clock that was set just minutes away from midnight because of the threat of death by nuclear blasts and fallout. I was terrified by that stupid clock. It was awful! Every year it would be moved up by thirty seconds or a minute. It seemed to me that we were finished. This year it actually got moved up to just one hundred seconds left. The closest it has ever been to midnight. Now it is not so much nuclear war that is the worry, although that is still one the doomsday agenda, but now climate change is the big threat. Young Greta perhaps feels justified now

         But it wasn’t just nuclear war we have been worried about. In 1967 a book came out called Famine 1975! America’s Decision: Who Will Survive? The premise of the book was that because of overpopulation and the drain on food resources, we would all be starving by 1975. Those who disagreed were fools. The science could not be denied. Last week I got off of Interstate 70 at Cambridge, Ohio to get gas. I do not think I have ever seen so many places to eat at one exit in my life. I had to hunt for gas, but food was everywhere. What happened to the famine? It just didn’t happen. But when we had to read that horrible book back in the day, we were all knew we were going to starve.

         In the early 1970s we began to hear a lot about the Greenhouse Effect. A professor from the University of California named Kenneth Watt came out with a study that proclaimed that, because of pollution, the earth would become shrouded with a blanket of smog which would shut out the sun’s rays. By the year 2000 the earth’s temperature would drop by an average of eleven degrees which would be more than enough to usher in a new Ice Age. From the Royal Academy of Science in London came word that global cooling was now as much of a threat to mankind as was nuclear war. You could not deny the science.

         However, in 1970 a UN scientist (why does the UN need scientists) said that it wasn’t global cooling that was going to kill us with the Greenhouse Effect, it was global warming. This scientist said that the world would be one to seven degrees Celsius warmer by the year 2000. That would be an increase of twelve and a half degrees Fahrenheit. ENOUGH TO MELT ALL THE ICE AT THE POLES AND FLOOD THE EARTH! You couldn’t deny the science.

         In 1970 a Smithsonian scientist came out and said that one way or another, by 1995, 75 to 80% of the world’s population would be dead. In 2006, former vice president Al Gore said we were done for by 2016. The science could not be argued with. In 2018, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, House of Representatives from New York City, said we had twelve years. You could not argue with the science. In 1989 Associated Press ran a story, picked up by the New York Times, Washington Post, L.A. Times and many others, that opened with this line. "A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000." The article went on to say that you couldn’t argue with the science.

         Why all this gloom and doom? First, if we are really concerned with disaster, we will hand over to the government our freedoms so we can be protected. The Environmental Protection Agency does that all the time. They take the freedom of how you can use your land away from you and force you to comply. The do good things, too, but they want to limit your freedom. Second, gloom and doom sell news. Print media, broadcast media, online media. They are constantly looking for the bloodiest picture or the picture that shows the most devastation.

         Young Greta is a puppet. Someday she may realize she was used. Yes, the world will end. Not when she says it will end, but when God says it will end. Speaking of the last days, Jesus said in Matthew 24:35 and 36, Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away. But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only. Many have derived the timing of the end from the Book of the Revelation, but that is false as well. John was writing down everything he saw being opened to him during this time. Then, in chapter 10:1-4, we have this, Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land, and called out with a loud voice, like a lion roaring. When he called out, the seven thunders sounded. And when the seven thunders had sounded, I was about to write, but I heard a voice from heaven saying, “Seal up what the seven thunders have said, and do not write it down.” If John wasn’t allowed to share what he saw at that point, how can we make any predictions? Those that do are no better than those who try to scare us with environmental stories.

         It belongs to the Lord. We need to be ready against that day.