One morning recently I casually passed by the television as Nancy my wife was cooking breakfast. She had the Today Show on and Ann Curry was beginning an interview with CEO and Chief Operations Officer of British Petroleum. She was asking him if BP was willing to offer an apology to the American people for the devastating damage of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis which is now being considered the worst man caused pollution disaster in the history of the world (spewing more oil than the Valdez oil spill of twenty years ago every four days.) BP’s original claim that the leak was spilling 5000 barrels (200,000 gallons) of crude oil is now estimated by some scientists as being possibly ten times greater – nobody seems to know for sure. 

 As I passed by the television I couldn’t help but be drawn in by the intensity of the interview but also the devastating pictures that accompanied it. As this BP spokesman squirmed to avoid direct answers to Ann Curry’s questions across the screen were images from a mile under the sea showing the ruptured pipe gushing a massive stream of black oil upward and aerial pictures of the growing oil slick slowly spreading across the ocean’s surface. 

 Seeing those images brought to mind a picture of a severed human artery pumping dark blood outward forming a slow spreading pool on the pavement near a dying body. That picture coupled with the familiar new footage of dead and dying dolphins, sea turtles and birds coated in oil washing up on the southern U.S. shores gave me the morbid thought that I was observing a picture of the earth dying from a mortal wound. I thought of the scripture in Romans 8 where it says, “For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.” (Romans 8:19-22)

As a pastor I have always exhorted my people to minister to what has been referred to as “a lost and dying world”. Somehow I had never equated it with the death of the physical earth. The reality that the earth could actually die right before my eyes really shook me. I know as well as any Christian that the Bible prophesied that horrible things would happen in the time period that is referred to as “the last days” or the “day of the Lord”. In my optimism I had always believed that it would be a time in the way distant future but I now realize it could happen in my lifetime. Read the rest of this entry »

Isaiah 61:3 "...He will give beauty for ashes, joy instead of mourning, praise instead of despair."

Three years ago I sat up awake through the night, staring out my front window at a distant mountain burning from one end to the other. The fire raged so hot that literally hundreds of firefighters couldn’t control it and resorted to becoming bystanders. For miles around, officials evacuated people from their homes due to strong unpredictable winds. By dawn the fire had burned a devastating 25-mile swath that left nothing alive in its wake. The entire butte remained a heap of blackened ash until winter arrived and covered it with a blanket of fresh snow. By the following spring, the snows melted away and the butte transformed into a landscape of vivid colors. Wild flowers covered its slopes and the grass grew longer and greener than I had ever seen. God restored and renewed this beautiful butte with fire.

 While the balance God strikes between mercy and justice is often difficult for us to grasp, it is clear throughout the Bible that God places redemption and restoration as two of his top priorities. Through the prophet Isaiah, God detailed all that the Christ would do some eight hundred years before his arrival on earth. Isaiah 61 contains one of the most famous prophecies, the same prophecy that Jesus quoted when he began his public ministry as recorded in Luke 4. It is here that Jesus stated that he had come to heal the broken hearted, to set the captive free and to bring good news to the poor. It was also here that God explained the Messiah would come and turn ashes to beauty (see Isaiah 61:3). 

 From the ashes of devastation God would bring redemption and restoration. This is a picture of the intent and heart of God. Isaiah prophecies, “The Sovereign Lord will show his justice to the nations of the world.  Everyone will praise him!  His righteousness will be like a garden in early spring, with plants springing up everywhere” (Isaiah 61:11). Out of justice will come a new beginning and a restored garden. But not every doctrine ascribes to honor this perspective of Scripture.

 One common biblical view held by many Christians is that the unrighteous or ungodly will be destroyed by fire along with the earth at the final judgment. This is based on the scripture in 2 Peter 3 where Peter wrote, “Most importantly, I want to remind you that in the last days scoffers will come, mocking the truth and following their own desires. They will say, ‘What happened to the promise that Jesus is coming again? From before the times of our ancestors, everything has remained the same since the world was first created.’ They deliberately forget that God made the heavens by the word of his command, and he brought the earth out from the water and surrounded it with water.  Then he used the water to destroy the ancient world with a mighty flood.” Peter goes on to say, “And by the same word, the present heavens and earth have been stored up for fire. They are being kept for the day of judgment when ungodly people will be destroyed. ” A few verses later he writes, “But we are looking forward to the new heavens and new earth he has promised, a world filled with God’s righteousness. And so, dear friends, while you are waiting for these things to happen, make every effort to be found living peaceful lives that are pure and blameless in his sight.” Some have surmised that this consuming fire could be a result of nuclear holocaust—but who really knows?

 As I overlaid Jesus’ words onto Peter’s writing in 2 Peter 3, it suddenly occurred to me that God used the flood not to destroy the earth, but to renew it. Out of this devastating flood emerged righteous humanity and a restored creation. You might say that Noah, his family and all the animals with him stepped onto a new earth, but in reality it was the same earth. Noah’s flood was an Old Testament foreshadow of a New Testament reality; God’s heart is for restoration, reconciliation and renewal, and has never been for complete destruction in the form of obliteration.  In 2 Peter 3:10, Peter says, “The elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare.” The word translated “laid bare” literally means “shall be found” or “discovered.” Noah found or discovered a new world, even though it was the same physical earth. The word “destroyed” found in 2 Peter, chapter 3 verse 10 in the Greek is eurethesetai meaning “shall be found” or “to discover.” Noah found or discovered a new earth, even though it was the same physical earth. 

 This is important because if the second destruction of the earth is like the first one (only by fire instead of water), the same result will occur. Like the first time, God’s plan is not to obliterate the earth and create a new one somewhere else, but to renew and restore it by fire. Throughout the Bible water and fire have always been seen as agents of purification and refining. The Bible speaks of a baptism of water and a baptism of fire, both of which produce cleansing. Jesus provides a prime example of purification by fire when he speaks of our faith being refined by the “fire” of trials and hardships even as gold is refined by fire (see 1 Peter 1:6-7).

 In the state of Idaho, the Sawtooth Wilderness easily ranks as one of the most beautiful ranges of mountains. I have climbed the alpine peaks, fished the lakes and packed my horses in the backcountry of the Sawtooth Range since the 1960s. After our wedding in 1970, my wife Nancy and I backpacked into these breathtaking mountains on our honeymoon.

 On a recent trip to the Sawtooths, we discovered that most of the forest in the area had become infested with Bark Beetles. Thousands of mature pine trees, primarily Lodgepole pines, were dying and dropping their needles. What was once a breathtaking sight had become a landscape of devastating brown.  Due to the Idaho firefighters so diligently putting out the fires that would normally eradicate the beetles and regenerate life in Lodgepoles, the pines were dying while the Bark Beetles were thriving. At this point, the only hope for the recovery of this forest is a devastating fire that will leave the landscape charred and ugly for many years. Nevertheless, this fire is what will one day turn a sick forest into a thriving one.

God gave us an earth to love, appreciate and care for. He called us to environmental responsibility. In Genesis 9, it tells us that he gave us the resources of the earth for our provision so that we could reproduce and live. He gave us everything on the earth for our use, but not our abuse. Use turns to abuse when we express feelings of entitlement through our actions. When our use of something steps over the line of sustainability it becomes abuse. When we no longer think about the welfare of future generations but only of our own immediate wants, our actions become abusive. Stewardship requires an authentic reverence towards the Creator, something that every true Christian should have. When I hear someone say, “It’s all going to burn anyway,” it makes me think two things: first, that person has missed the heart, motive and character of God; and second, that person is denying the responsibility of creation care or environmental stewardship. The statement, “It’s all going to burn anyway” communicates an absence of Kingdom responsibility, much like the neglectful stewards that Jesus rebuked so harshly in Matthew 24 after he spoke of the characteristics of the last days.  

 The earth is a gift of God, there is none like it and it is the only one we will get. The Bible tells us that there is coming a day that it will be cleansed with fire, but like in the days of Noah it will be renewed and restored. And like in the days of Noah, two things will survive: God’s miraculous creation and righteous, faithful humanity.

Improvised trap drain valve

As I have previously mentioned I’ve lately been converting a storage room in the barn into a butchering shop which includes a hot and cold running water sink.  One of the challenges has been to install a plumbing system that could easily be shut off and winterized after each use during the cold winter months.  Freezing water lines is always a risk here from October through March and keeping the heat on simply to protect sporadically used vulnerable pipes for six months of the year is both costly and a poor act of stewardship when it comes to energy usage.  The only answer as I see it is to shut off and drain the entire system;  the hot water tank and all water lines and sewage traps, and be able to do it without undo hassle.   Here are two things I have incorporated in my butcher plumbing system to help me accomplish this.

The first thing I did was to incorporate a way to quickly empty the sink trap without having to pour antifreeze into it after every use. (Antifreeze is a toxic substance meant for the radiators of cars not to be consistently poured into the ground.)  I accomplished this by gluing a small plastic drip-line irrigation value on the bottom of the sink trap (see picture).   A sink trap serves two major purposes; one to “trap” or catch objects such as wedding rings from going into the septic system before being able to be retrieved and second, to block sewage smells from coming back up from the septic system.  Water caught in the “U” trap serves as a vapor barrier thus stopping odors from passing back by.   In our case, the sink drain empties into a non-sewage tank and thus odor isn’t an issue.  If it were an issue a rubber stopper could serve to accomplish the same thing.  By installing a valve in the trap the drain can easily be emptied when winterizing the system to alleviate an ice blockage and thus inhibit drainage at a later usage.

With these two simple additions I can shut off the main water source, open the drain valves and free the system of all potential freezing water in a matter of minutes after each winter use.

My plane landed late that evening in Nicaragua and after clearing customs was immediately comforted as I recognized my old friends’ crazy smiling faces through the terminal windows in the midst of the chaotic crowd. After some brief hugging and hand shaking in the open humid topical air we loaded into a van and headed an hour out of the city to the orphanage they had all worked hard to establish. On the way they shared what they had been doing through the missions’ partnership, and about the political, social and economic condition of Nicaragua. I learned that the unemployment rate was over 50% and the extreme poverty that resulted was having a devastating ripple effect on a country that had once been considered one of the wealthiest in Central America. 

Since I arrived a couple of days before the conference started I had the chance to hang out with my old comrades and experience what they had been doing. On one of the days they took me to visit the Managua city dump which provides trash disposal for some two million people. Visiting a dump in a developing nation isn’t something that most tourists would do; but if you want to discover the truth about a society’s condition it is the most revealing place to begin. It tells the story of the cycle of poverty in a way that would both shock and devastate people who aren’t spiritually prepared to see it. As heartbreaking as it was, what I saw that day in Managua is not unique; it is a scenario that is reproduced in nearly every city in the developing nations of the world. Thousands of people literally spend their entire lives in these dumps; some never even seeing the outside world. This is their entire livelihood. Their houses are built from what can be savaged from the refuge; their food comes from its waste; and whatever income is made by cashing in and recycling the debris. 

We stood on a hill that rose above a landscape of miles of garbage, observing truck after truck dump its towering loads. With every load literally hundreds of people – men, women and children – stormed the trucks hoping to be the first to extract the precious resources that the rest of their society considered useless garbage. We were told that it wasn’t uncommon for people in their zeal for trash to end losing their lives after becoming buried alive under the discarded piles of rubble. Looking from our vantage point I could only think of what hell must be like. Here and there methane gas pockets erupted in flames, which was another common source of devastating injury or death to the people who inhabited that place. Everything was polluted far beyond anything I had ever seen. Children swam and bathed in a small lake that was not only surrounded by trash, but had decaying rubbish floating in it. As I viewed the hopeless scene before me, God was re-breaking and renewing my heart for suffering humanity – reminding me again that I couldn’t hide behind busyness, feeling overwhelmed or extreme weariness. I had to do something. I could never cease being an active participant in his Kingdom. I could not give up. I had to collect myself and muster up the courage by his Spirit to continue to run the race to the end. Read the rest of this entry »

Nancy loving kids in Zambia, Africa

What I am about to state seems indisputably clear to me as a Bible believing and Bible practicing Christian. After spending the better part of thirty years of my adult life studying and teaching the Old and New Testament, I believe that those who profess Christ as Messiah and call his words and ministry the “Gospel  of  truth” have no other option than to care for suffering humanity and care about the root causes of their suffering.   Denial of the conditions of a world that is escalating in crises is not an option.

It is no mystery that the world’s population has grown at an exponential rate in the last 100 years. In my lifetime alone (a baby boomer born in 1948) the population has tripled from 2.5 to 6.8 billion people. Half of these people (3 billion) are living on less than two dollars a day.  One third of them are starving and another third are suffering from malnutrition.  Extreme poverty like this not only places people in physical jeopardy, but into vulnerable states of desperation.  Desperate people are often forced to do desperate things.  In dire efforts they struggle to feed their hungry families by slashing and burning their forests in attempt to grow food and produce charcoal to heat their homes,  cook their food and as a meager means of commerce.  Rains then erode the land washing precious topsoil into the rivers and oceans resulting in ecological disaster and the inability to produce more food.  This escalates poverty and elevates vulnerability producing hotbeds for such atrocities as human trafficking and child soldering. Each year there are over 800,000 people illegally trafficked across borders, many of which are children who are exploited into the sex slave industry.  Observation tells us that the most effective curb against excessive population growth and extreme poverty is literacy, but sadly one billion people entered the 21^st century unable to read their own name.    Ironically it would only require less than 1% of the money spent on weapons of war each year to put every child on the planet in school.  The direction in which the world is heading is not sustainable. Something must be done; something has gone horribly amiss. The world needs reformation.

A biblical timeline of world population growth from the original garden to present day

As a Christian I believe in the sanctity of life.  I do not believe in genocide of any kind, either before or after the womb.  I believe that every life is divine and precious to God; therefore I believe that every Christian must be concerned with the environmental crisis that is threatening the wellbeing of our planet.  Today, 80% of all illness and death (especially among infants and children) in developing countries is water related.   Two and a half billion people do not have access to clean drinking water causing the deaths of 2.1 million people every year.   It is easy to deny the reality of climate change (no matter what is causing it) and consequently the potential devastation that will come because of it. For those who sincerely care about the poor and are Biblically called to serve them, there must be an awakening to the impending calamity.  It is the poor who will be impacted first by devastating wave surges in low lying coastal areas such as Bangladesh.  The call to action cannot be postponed as these natural disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity.

There are presently over two billion people that profess to know Jesus and who believe that the Bible is true.  That is one third of the world’s population – a potential massive, worldwide, networked workforce.   If the church would embrace this cause as the compassionate, merciful ministry of Jesus a difference could truly be made.

After spending thirty days in the wilderness Jesus began his three year public ministry. He started by entering his home town of Nazareth and going to the synagogue on the Sabbath.  The attendant in charge that day handed him the book of the prophet Isaiah for a public reading.  Jesus unrolled the scroll to Isaiah 61 where the prophet had proclaimed and recorded eight hundred years before the things that the messiah would do when he came.       Jesus read:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released,
that the blind will see,
that the oppressed will be set free,
and that the time of the Lord’s favor has come

After he had finished, he rolled the scroll up, handed it back to the attendant, sat down and said, “The scripture has come true today before your very eyes.”  What he meant was that he was the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy, he was the Christ and Isaiah 61 was his job description.  This infuriated everyone in the room that day, and is still cause for reaction by many today. Despite what some may say, the fact remains that Jesus accepted the ministry to the lost and broken world as his own.  For the next three years he did just that – spending  his time among the devastated, rejected and broken.

An increase in natural disaster

Three years later we find Jesus talking to some of his disciples on a hillside in Jerusalem just before his crucifixion.  This is recorded in Matthew 24.  They asked him about the last days of the earth and what those days would look like.  In response he painted a picture of a world in extreme crises.  He told them there would be an increase of world violence (wars and rumors of wars),  an escalation of natural disasters and a breakdown of social ethics and values.  He described drought, famine and extreme world hunger as well as an increase of plagues, disease and human suffering.   He  went on to say that no one knows when this will happen (“no man knows the time or the hour”),  and that when these things occur  it will be like in the days of Noah when people were in denial trying to maintain life like they always had.  After that he told three parables or stories, all of which were about stewardship.  For example, he told of an unfaithful steward whose master had entrusted him with his estate after announcing he was going away for awhile.   Later the master returned unannounced and unexpected.  and judged the servant based on how well he had taken care of his people and his land.  This is an obvious exhortation and warning to every person that desires to be responsive to God’s heart for humanity.

Right after these parables, Jesus spoke of the final judgment and a time of separation between the wicked and righteous.  It was here that Jesus said those famous words, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world.  For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home.  I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.”  The disciples curiously responded by asking Jesus when any of this ever happened to him, and he simply said, “as you (all those who profess him as Lord and savior) do this to the least of humanity, you do it to him.”  Caring for suffering humanity is not only the ministry of Jesus, but it our ministry to Him.  How much more clarity do we need?  If we love God and desire to obediently serve Him we must not only go and serve in this suffering world, but we must do it until the day He returns.  There is no option; there is no way around it. There can be no rationalizing or denying it.  We must pray that we capture the very heart of God so that we will be impassioned for the ministry of Jesus. We must unite around His commission, equip ourselves for His mission and courageously go.

In the 60s I was a student on a university campus along with thousands of other baby boomers.  Everything was in cultural flux and our generation was confused, scared, angry, opinionated and passionate. We not only wanted change, we demanded it.  We were wrapped up in a ruthless war that no one seemed to understand, our president was being exposed for dishonesty and our environment was showing signs of becoming non-sustainable.  We were looking for meaning and truth – but most of all we wanted authenticity.  During that time, thousands of us found our answer not through religion, but instead through an authentic faith in Christ.  History later referred to us as the Jesus Movement; a movement of young Bible-believing, non-denominational evangelicals.  We put our faith and hope in God and we were no longer angry or scared – although still very opinionated and passionate, just about different things.  Unfortunately our passion for the environment was lost in a new focus on the second coming of Christ.  Today, the things we once feared as young seekers are now happening: the world population has doubled and the natural resources of fresh water, soil, air and sources of energy have begun to wane.  The extinction rate of endangered species has escalated and even the global climate has started to change, threatening the future of our planet. 

I am a Christian; and not just a Sunday Christian, but a passionate evangelical Christian pastor of a thriving church.  I believe in the Bible with all of my heart and have diligently tried to mold my life around its truths.  I believe that Jesus is coming again but sincerely can’t claim to know when.  I believe that his Kingdom (that is, the Kingdom of God) has come to earth as it is in heaven.  I believe that it came because of his ultimate sacrifice on the cross for mankind.  I believe that he has called his people to stewardship in his kingdom; to care for the people he loves, specifically the poor and broken, and for the earth that he lovingly created.  I believe that this responsibility is not just a suggestion but a commission and a mandate without option. 

As a committed student and Bible teacher I have read and taught the story of the flood numerous times, always seeing it the same way until one morning in 2005.  The Bible is an amazing book and it has a miraculous characteristic.  You can read it over and over again and never get tired of it, always extracting something different with each reading.  God has a way of illuminating new understanding to his never-changing truths.  As I read Genesis 9 that morning, the Lord began to reveal something that I’d never seen before.  In this portion of scripture, it tells of God’s covenant with Noah to never again destroy the whole earth with a flood. God said, “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.” (Genesis 9:11) As I carefully examined the passage I realized for the first time that God’s covenant was not made between God and Noah or even God and man, but between God and his entire creation.  God said, “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you-the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you-every living creature on earth.” (Genesis 9:9-10)  Not only did he say it, but he repeated it six times in a row.  He really meant it and to me that was profound. 

As God laid out the conditions of this covenant agreement he spoke a number of mandates that everyone should know about. First of all, this was to be a covenant of blessing to humanity.  If his mandate was observed, the world’s environment would provide provision to all humanity and would allow man to inhabit and populate the earth. He said, “Everything that lives and moves will be food for you. Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything. ” (Genesis 9:2) Secondly, his covenant demanded responsibility and an accounting that we would use the earth, but not abuse it.  He called us to the sanctity of all life. He said, “I will demand an accounting from every animal. And from each man, too, I will demand an accounting for the life of his fellow man.” (Genesis 9:4) Also, his covenant was not to end with Noah’s generation or even with the Old Testament law, but was to be everlasting – for all generations to come. He said, “”This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth.” (Genesis 9:12-13)

This changed everything for me.  No longer could I separate my passion for the Kingdom of God from my commitment to care for the environment.  I had to tell everyone that Christians should not only care about creation but had been mandated by God to be leaders in a worldwide environmental movement.  I shared this mandate with my church, I wrote a book on caring for creation (Saving God’s Green Earth) and I became an advocate of Genesis 9 on radio and television.  Together with other like-hearted people I started a ministry called ‘Let’s Tend the Garden’.  I wrote tirelessly for all kinds of publications and spoke nationally to anyone who would listen.  I told everyone that caring for the creation is not an option but a commission, especially for those who value and believe God’s word in his Bible. Many have listened, and others who shared this conviction have joined in an effort to change the minds and practices of Christians worldwide.  Over one-third of the world’s population says they profess Christ as Savior and believe that the Bible is true.  That is nearly two and a half billion people who, if they recaptured this God-given mandate, could unite to make a lasting difference due to obedience to an ancient but culturally relevant truth.