Isaiah 24 -- It Won't Be Global Warming Doing This

The events in chapter 24 are still to come, and they are not going to be anything to look forward to.

“The Lord will destroy the earth and leave it empty; He will ruin the surface of the land and scatter its people.”

As much as environmentalists want to blame mankind for global warming, it’s impact on the earth will not be the thing that does us in.  Our sins will lead God to ruin the surface of the earth, leaving it empty and causing the few remaining inhabitants to scatter in order to find food.

“The earth will be completely empty.  The wealth will all be taken, because the Lord has commanded it.”

This emptiness and destruction of wealth could result simply from God willing everything manmade to cease to exist.  It’s not hard to imagine God ordering the removal of even the largest building and its foundations, leaving nothing but bare ground.  Though humans choose to disobey, the very atoms and molecules making up the building would certainly do God’s will, dissolving into nothingness.

“The earth will dry up and die; the world will grow weak and die .. the foundations of the earth will shake.  The earth will be broken up; the earth will split open; the earth will shake violently.  The earth will stumble around like someone who is drunk; it will shake like a hut in a storm.  Its sin is like a heavy weight on its back; it will fall and never rise again.”

This sounds like the earth’s very orbit could change.  The earth’s rotational wobble, which is well known to scientists, could become so violent from the “heavy weight on its back” of perhaps unbalanced polar ice caps (as opposed to receding polar caps due to global warming) that its rotational axis could even change.  Such a cataclysm would resemble what is described here.  This doesn’t sound like simply natural earthquakes.

In that enigmatic last sentence of verse 20, the earth is said to “fall and never rise again.”  Earthrise and earthset were first witnessed by astronauts on the moon.  This might even mean that the moon itself no longer orbits or even that God might stop the earth’s rotational spin!  Those kinds of things are much more in line with the power and might of God.

My commentary suggested that the last verses result from Christ’s return to rule, and that His light will far outshine the sun or the reflected light of the moon, which would resemble creation prior to God’s creation of the sun and moon – when God’s Shekinah glory lit all of creation.

Father, Your word says here that the people of the earth have ruined it – not by pollution but instead because of our sin problem that can only be solved by turning to You in repentance.  Our sin doesn’t just affect ourselves, but does damage to the whole world.  Help us to understand that, Father.

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford