The following is a production of Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary. For more information about the seminary, visit us online at gpts.edu. While you all are getting resettled for this extra optional session, I would like to to just welcome you here for this. Some of you heard me speak yesterday morning for the pre-conference chapel over at the seminary. And I was asked to redo that this afternoon so that people who were not able to be there could hear the lecture as well. So as people are finding their seats, I wanted also just to mention a few things. I noticed that my dear friend Nelson did a little advertising at the start. I'm going to do the same thing. At the Cornwall Alliance's exhibit table over in the exhibit hall, we have quite a lot of different material. I want to bring just a little bit of it to your attention. My book, Where Garden Meets Wilderness, Evangelical Entry into the Environmental Debate, is simultaneously a critique of the evangelical environmental movement in terms of its It's worldview, it's theology, it's ethics, it's use of scripture, it's use also of science and economics. But it's also a positive attempt to build a basic picture of what biblical environmental stewardship or what I really prefer to call godly dominion is all about. So that's available there. My book, Prospects for Growth, a biblical view of population, resources, and the future, addresses those issues and answers questions about is the world overpopulated, are we running out of resources, are human beings really a threat to the survival of the planet, things of that nature, and gives a biblical understanding of how the doctrine of the image of God affects our vision for humanity's role on the earth. Dr. James Wendliss wrote a book called Resisting the Green Dragon, Dominion Not Death, that is a critique of the worldview, theology, and ethics of environmentalism as a whole, and that also sets forth a biblical understanding of man and his relationship with the creation. We have a set of lectures called Resisting the Green Dragon. four DVDs, 12 lectures, plus a half-hour documentary that critiques the worldview, theology, and ethics, as well as the science, the economics, the politics of the environmental movement. Talks about how to present the gospel effectively to environmentalists, why environmentalism needs to be recognized as a religion of its own. Nine different lecturers, some really outstanding people on that. And then also, Back in 2006, when a group called the Evangelical Climate Initiative issued climate change, an evangelical call to action, I issued, acting along with a group of scientists and economists and other theologians, We prepared a rebuttal of that statement called A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor, an Evangelical Response to Global Warming. And then later on that year, I did a three-hour-long formal debate with the primary author of that other document, and that is on DVD here, and it's available, Evangelicals and Global Warming, a formal debate. So that's available. And then finally, in my talk today, I'm going to be going over a number of different things that I wanted to make you aware Bits and pieces of that are available already in print in some handouts that the Cornwall Alliance has. One of them is called Putting Together the Pieces in the Spiritual World War. Another one is Arm Yourself and Your Friends Against the Fatal Cult of Anti-Humanism. Another one is Wanted for Premeditated Murder, How Post-Normal Science Stabbed Real Science in the Back on the Way to the Illusion of Scientific Consensus on Global Warming. And then finally, are environmental risks as evil as abortion? Somebody wants voters to think so. So all of those are available at our table. And then, finally, I've asked Brent, just as he's able, or maybe you've already done it, pass around a handout that we have called Are You a Carbon Footprint that looks at the way environmentalists envision human beings and their their life on earth and contrasts it with the Bible's way. And then I want to just start this around. Any of you who are not already signed up for Cornwall Alliance's electronic email newsletter, I'd welcome you to do that. So if this can just start somewhere and make its way around, please sign up. The title of my talk is Godly Dominion versus Environmentalism. reducing poverty, restoring liberty, and renewing human dignity by reclaiming the blessings of Genesis 128. A newspaper reporter once asked me what I thought biblical environmental stewardship would look like. I responded that on the basis of Genesis 128, which says God blessed Adam and Eve and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over the cattle and everything that moves on the face of the earth. It would look like people made in the image of God, reflecting God's own creativity, working together to enhance the fruitfulness, the beauty and the safety of the earth for the glory of God and for the benefit of our neighbors, thus fulfilling simultaneously the two great commandments, to love God and to love neighbor. For example, I said, 300 years ago, the average yield per grain of wheat sown was four grains. Today, it's 800. That astonishing increase in yield came from our exercising godly dominion over the soil through better methods of cultivation, fertilization, and irrigation, over the weeds, insects, and diseases through herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, and even over the very wheat grains themselves through careful breeding and recently genetic engineering. Farmers exercising godly dominion over the earth not only makes food more abundant and nourishing and affordable for everyone, especially for the poor, and so prevents hunger and starvation, but also means that we don't need to farm nearly so much land to feed the same number of people. And that's good, not just for people, but also for all ecosystems and all of the creatures that inhabit them. Well, this is an important difference between environmentalism and biblical stewardship, what I call godly dominion. Today, I want to unfold for you what I believe it means to live out the dominion mandate of Genesis 128, how most of the environmental movement undermines that mandate and robs us of its blessings, and how to recover it. A little historical background tied to an analysis of Two great creation themes in Genesis 1, 27 and 28 will help you to see the situation we're in, the challenges it presents, and how working together we can turn those challenges into opportunities. Genesis 1, 27 reveals the essence of man. God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him. male and female, he created them. Man is the image of God, male and female. And from these truths flow all truths about man's relationships with and duties toward God and other men, and particularly about sexuality, marriage, and procreation. Now verse 28 expands on the mission of man. God blessed them and God said to them, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over everything in it. God's mission for man, male and female, is twofold, to multiply and fill the earth and filling it, to subdue and rule it. Not to abuse it, but to rule it as God does, enhancing its fruitfulness, enhancing its safety, enhancing its beauty, to the glory of God and the benefit of our neighbors. Human multiplication, then, and human rule over the earth are the heart of this verse. But these two ideas, multiplication and dominion, are also the nemeses of environmentalism. Believing that we have overpopulated the earth, and so our multiplication has become a curse, not a blessing, environmentalists attack the first part, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Following the lead of eco-historian Lynn White, Jr., who argued in his 1967 Science Magazine article, The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis, that Judaism and Christianity justified ecological abuse by appeal to this verse, they attack its second part. subdue it and have dominion over it. Sad to say, even some Christians have come to view having more than one or two children as irresponsible, despite Psalm 127's teaching that children, lots of them, are a blessing from the Lord. Unaware that the church has not interpreted Genesis 128 as justifying abusing the earth, They have forced a false interpretation on it, transforming man's role from ruler to slave of the earth. As a result, even many Christian self-described environmentalists, advocates of what they call creation care, now undermine the message of Genesis 128. They have borrowed without discernment from a broader worldview, not recognizing it as part of a spiritual world war focused on undermining faith in Genesis 1, 27 and 28. To correct their error and restore the truth, we need to note some simple differences between Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. One could go into much more detail, but here are the simple ones. Genesis 2, particularly verses 4 through 16, retells the story of creation with a focus narrowed in two ways from that of Genesis 1. Genesis 1, 28, records God's mandate to Adam and Eve respecting the whole earth. Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over it. Genesis 2.15 records God's mandate to Adam before Eve's creation respecting the Garden of Eden. God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work and keep it. As we learn from allusions to it elsewhere in scripture, the Garden of Eden represented the sanctuary, the place of special communion between God and man. It was distinct from the rest of the earth. Scripture distinguishes the Garden of Eden from the wilderness, which it uses to describe parts of the earth that man hasn't yet subdued, or that once were subdued, but under divine judgment have become wild again. Scripture often, almost invariably in fact, associates wilderness with divine curse. In short, while guarding and improving the Garden of Eden, mankind's mandate was to multiply, spread out from the garden, fill the earth, and turn wilderness into garden. But many proponents of creation care obscure this mandate by reinterpreting Genesis 2.15 and then transferring that false interpretation of 2.15 onto 1.28. Their reinterpretation of Genesis 2.15 involves two mistakes. First, they falsely assume that what Adam was to work and keep was the whole earth, not just the garden of Eden. And second, noting that the Hebrew verb avap, usually here translated work, dress, cultivate, or tend, can mean serve, and that's true. They grasp that meaning and insist that that's the right one here. But avadh means serve only when its object is personal, not when its object is impersonal. You serve persons. You don't serve rocks or trees or rivers or tables or machines. Nonetheless, they insist that Genesis 2.15 means that man should serve and keep not just the garden, but the whole earth. And suddenly, the idea from Genesis 2.15 becomes almost identical to the preservationist use idea of environmentalism, that nature is best untouched by human hands. Then they insist that serve and keep, in Genesis 2.15, restates and controls the meaning of subdue and have dominion in Genesis 128, despite the fact that the verbs have very different meanings. Subdue translates the Hebrew word kabash, you know, put the kabash on something, right? To bring into bondage, to subdue or force, to dominate. And have dominion over translates the Hebrew radah, to rule or to dominate. Now, while I would certainly not say that evangelical proponents of creation care intentionally misinterpret Genesis 128, I'm convinced that their mistaken understandings arise partly because they have borrowed without discernment from a broader worldview heavily shaped by the environmental and population control movements. And I'm convinced that those two movements are aspects of a spiritual world war that focuses on undermining faith in Genesis 1, 27 and 28. Let me quickly review some of the history of that spiritual world war for you, each step building on those before it. I'm drawing considerably from three brilliant recent books. Robert Zubrin's book, Merchants of Despair, Radical Environmentalists, Criminal Pseudo-Scientists, and the Fatal Cult of Anti-Humanism. Matthew Connolly's Fatal Misconception, The Struggle to Control World Population, and Mary Eberstadt's Adam and Eve after the pill, paradoxes of the sexual revolution. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus published an essay on the principle of population, inciting fear of overpopulation and depletion of resources, portraying man as consumer, not as producer. In 1859, building on Malthus, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or The Preservation of the Favored Races, and note that word, in the Struggle for Life, undermining belief in the sanctity of human life and offering supposedly scientific justification for racism. In 1883, Francis Galton, building on Malthus and Darwin, published Inquiries into Human Faculty and its Development, launching the eugenics movement as a means for higher races, the so-called fit, to weed out lower ones, the unfit, through population control imposed by Western nations on their colonies. In the 1890s through the 1930s, progressives like Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, building on Malthus, Darwin, and Galton, launched the sexual revolution of the 1910s through 20s, advocating contraception and abortion to limit population growth, particularly among the racially unfit. Their efforts led to government family planning programs, including incentivized or coerced sterilization and abortion. including here in the United States, including here in this state of South Carolina, which had one of the nation's most extensive forced sterilization programs, a refusal to alleviate famines around the world, and contributed to Nazi antisemitism, eugenics, and the Holocaust. In the 1920s through the 1950s, Secular humanists, led by John Dewey, took over America's colleges of education, and then the public schools, undermining belief that human beings are the image of God with God-given rights to life, liberty, and property. In the 1950s through 1970s, the progressive sexual revolution, delayed by the Great Depression and World War II, revived and, aided by new contraceptive technologies promising pleasure without consequences, became dominant with destructive effects on marriage, family, and broader society. In 1962, Darwinist naturalist Rachel Carson published Silent Spring, popularizing exaggerated ecological fears that came to dominate the environmental movement. One consequence, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency banned DDT Though EPA's own scientific tests showed that it was safe and the EPA's own administrative court ruled that it was safe, and the U.S. then began requiring countries receiving foreign aid to ban it as well, leading to about 2 million malaria deaths every year in poor countries around the world. in the 1990s through today. The environmental movement has grown to world prominence, especially with the UN's Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, repeated just last year, the Earth Charter, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Agenda 21, the International Council for Local Environmental Initiative, and the Kyoto Protocol. The growth of the animal rights, plant rights, and ecosystems rights movements. Did you know that in Switzerland today, plant rights are included in the Constitution? And when you get ready to harvest your crop of wheat or anything else, you have to file a report with the government showing how you're going to ensure that your harvesting will not insult the dignity of your crop. And then there are also demands for global governance to overcome alleged environmental crises, especially global warming. Environmentalism is a full-blown religion with its own doctrines of God, creation, humanity, sin, and salvation. It is also, in my estimation, the greatest threat to the survival of Western civilization and its institutions of the rule of law, government by the consent of the governed, and the protection, however incomplete and flawed, of God-given rights to life, to religious and civil and economic liberty, and to property. It is a threat, I believe, greater than the Marxist secularism that spawned the Cold War, greater than the secular humanism that has now all but disappeared except in American government school education. overwhelmed by a vaguely defined spirituality all over the West characterized by imported spiritualities of the East, resurgent spiritualities of the ancient Near East, classical Greece and Rome and pagan Europe, and the hybrid novel spiritualities of Jungian psychology. And it is a threat, I believe, greater than radical Islam with its jihad. To borrow a literary device from the prophet Amos, for three reasons and for four, environmentalism is a greater threat than all of these. First, because unlike the Soviet Union and its satellites in the Cold War, and unlike Islamic jihad, which were or are external and clearly recognized as enemies by the overwhelming majority of people in the free world, environmentalism is internal and thought by almost everyone to be friend, not foe. Second, because unlike arid and nihilistic secular humanism, environmentalism speaks to the inherent spiritual yearnings of human souls and provides plausible answers to the dogged questions about how we got here, what causes suffering, and how suffering might come to an end. Third, because environmentalism incorporates the strengths of all three of those other threats, the utopian vision of Marxism, the scientific facade of secular humanism, and the religious fanaticism of jihad. And fourth, because it encompasses all those vague spiritualities that have already overwhelmed secular humanism and now threaten the Christian faith. In short, the worldwide environmental movement today unites pagan religion, ecological utopianism, and socialist politics and economics to create a vision for a global government and a global state that is the conscious goal of those who lead it. The environmental movement seeks a fundamental transformation of the values, institutions, and practices on which modern civilization rests. A hundred years ago, about 50 years after Darwin's origin of species, the Darwinist movement had grown large and powerful enough to challenge the Christian teaching that previously prevailed not only in American churches, but throughout American society, including the state schools. Darwinism attacked Genesis 127 on the essence of man. The result has been the tragic undermining of human dignity and the growing prevalence of all kinds of depravity, including abortion and euthanasia, which attack the sanctity of human life, and homosexuality, which attacks the God-ordained sexual differences and roles of human life. My friends, listen carefully. This is the truth. Today, 50 years after the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, The Christian church stands with regard to environmentalism where it stood a century ago with regard to Darwinism. At that time, some Christians strove valiantly. Some were deceived. Some were unaware. And some capitulated to Darwinism's attack on Genesis 127. We largely lost that battle. And the sad consequences are obvious all around us. Today, Our response to environmentalism's attack on Genesis 128 must be better. To restore the teaching and reclaim the blessings of Genesis 128, we must exercise a wise, courageous, powerful, spiritual warfare, tearing down ideological strongholds and taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. The Cornwall Alliance last year launched In His Image, a multi-year educational effort to help Christian ministries fighting on many battlefronts in the spiritual world war to see the big picture and begin to cooperate better to restore the glory, dignity, and purpose of God, of people in God's created order. As part of that, we're working on a new gospel presentation and training program that addresses young people's longing for dignity and purpose in the face of environmentalism's misanthropic view of people as parasites on the earth. We need to help people recover the blessings of Genesis 1.28. Now, earlier I told you about the astounding 200-fold improvement in wheat yields. What are some other blessings that come from obeying Genesis 1.28? For you really to appreciate them, Let me paint for you a quick and simple picture of mankind's past and present. From a few generations after the flood in Noah's day for the rest of the thousands of years of human history until just 200 years ago, almost all people everywhere lived in abject poverty on the equivalent of less than $1.25 a day. Their main cooking and heating fuels were wood and dried dung, smoke from which even today kills over a million people a year in developing countries. Almost all transportation was by foot. And what wasn't had accidental injury and death rates sky high compared with today's. Slash and burn was the main agricultural method, resulting in terrible deforestation like what transformed Lebanon, famous in David and Solomon's time for its great cedar forests, into a desert. Water-borne, smoke-borne, insect-borne, rodent-borne, and spoiled food-borne diseases, along with hunger, stalked every land on earth. Nearly half of all children died before their first birthday. And life expectancy at birth was about 27 or 28 years, everywhere in the world. Quick little illustration of that for you. Queen Anne of England bore 19 children. Not one of them grew to adulthood. The wealthiest woman in the United Kingdom. Not one child grew to adulthood. No one enjoyed the benefits of water purification. sewage sanitation, antibiotics or other medicinal drugs, or electricity and all the wonders that come with it, from lights to work and learn by, to power to run assembly lines, to refrigeration and air conditioning, to MRIs and computers and the internet. Now, in the two centuries since then, in developed countries, real income has increased by a factor of about 16, and the standard of living it can buy has increased by a factor of about 190. That is, the average person in developed countries today is about 190 times better off than almost every person on Earth. 200 years ago. While some abject poverty continues and it should move our hearts to compassion and our hands to action, the share of the world's people living in abject poverty has fallen from nearly half as recently as 1990 to under one-fifth today. Lower than at any time in history and rapidly declining. Although environmentalism Not biblical earth stewardship or godly dominion, but environmentalism constitutes a serious threat to reverse that trend. Our main cooking and heating fuels today is clean electricity, mostly from coal, natural gas, and nuclear. All of them hundreds and nuclear thousands of times cleaner than wood and dried dung. Almost all transportation today is by car or truck, plane, train, or ship, and much safer and scores to even hundreds of times faster. Crop land in developed countries has been improving in quality for over 70 years and is hundreds of times more productive. And because we've greatly reduced hunger and the causes of the diseases that brought the most deaths two centuries ago, life expectancy is near 80 in developed countries, over 65 in developing countries, and nowhere in the world below 40. But this progress can be stopped and even reversed. The Green Movement threatens to trap the poor in poverty and rob people of property rights by touting false or exaggerated claims of eco-disaster, creating constantly expanding oppressive governments while weakening sovereign states by pushing us toward global government. Would any of you want to go back to seeing half your children die before age five from disease or hunger? Of course not. But that's the consequence of the real world to which much environmentalism wants us to return. Now we've looked at environmentalism's threats to political liberty and material prosperity. I turn now to two other threats, first to science and second to Christian faith and practice. Environmentalism threatens the integrity of science and, therefore, the benefits of technology that rest on it. This is relevant to the spiritual world war on Genesis 1, 27 through 28, because science, rooted in the biblical worldview, is one of our most important tools in fulfilling the dominion mandate to subdue and rule the earth. And what is undermining it is a particular sort of irrationalism. Consistent with the prevalence of mysticism in environmental thought, many environmental scientists today practice and promote what is called post-normal science. Now, post-normal science is post-modern deconstructionism, which claimed that language doesn't convey meaning or truth, but merely projects power. to science, resulting in researchers going through the motions of science, but with preconceived conclusions to serve a predetermined agenda. Mike Hume is a stellar example of a post-normal scientist, professor of climate change and note that title, not of climate, but of climate change, at the University of East Anglia, home of the infamous Climate Gates climatic research unit, in which capacity Hume has taught many of the world's leading climate alarmist scientists and also a leading contributor to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Hume is also the author of the book, Why We Disagree About Climate Change. In short, though not much known to the public, Hume, rarely seen in any headlines, may well be the most influential climate alarmist scientist in the world. Now, Much as we might disagree with Hume's views on catastrophic anthropogenic global warming and reject his post-normal science, we should be thankful for his candor. For here are just four of many representative things that he wrote in that book that reveal his commitment to post-normal science and to what post-normal science is really all about. Quoting, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a classic example of a post-normal scientific activity. Quoting again, self-evidently dangerous climate change will not emerge from a normal scientific process of truth seeking. Scientists and politicians must trade truth for influence. Quoting again, The idea of climate change should be seen as an intellectual resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can form and take shape. We need to ask not what we can do for climate change, but what climate change can do for us. Because the idea of climate change is so plastic It can be deployed across many of our human projects and can serve many of our psychological, ethical, and spiritual needs. Last quote. Within a capitalistic world order, climate change is actually a convenient phenomenon to come along. Oh, and did I mention to you that Mike Hume is a publicly self-professed Marxist? My friends, the global warming juggernaut is how Hume and others like him are promoting both socialism and global government by means of post-normal science. And post-normal science is first and foremost the attempt to project power by claiming consensus among scientists. It is as collectivist about alleged scientific facts as socialism is about economic production. And because it draws conclusions based on climate models, regardless of real world observations, it is also as irrational as pagan mysticism. Now let me address environmentalism's most important threat to Christian faith and practice. I offer you three examples. It's threat to the gospel and Christian ethics. It's threat to biblical authority, and it's threat to the pro-life movement. First, it threatens the gospel and Christian ethics. Books like Matthew Sleeth's Serve God, Save the Planet, and The Gospel According to the Earth, and Jonathan Merritt's Green Like God, and even HarperCollins's The Green Bible. implicitly change the gospel from Jesus Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, he was buried, he rose again from the dead on the third day according to the scriptures, as Paul summarized it in 1 Corinthians 15, to something like, if you love God, take good care of the earth. Now, it's true. If you love God, you will try to take good care of the earth. But that's not gospel, that's law. and law cannot give life. By obscuring this distinction, the evangelical environmental movement threatens to obscure the gospel and thus rob the church of her greatest treasure. Now some creation care books, like Jim Ball's Global Warming and The Risen Lord, and Ben Lowe's Green Revolution, Coming Together to Care for Creation, get the gospel right, but turn all kinds of environmentalist desiderata, recycling, using compact fluorescent light bulbs, not trespassing on the wilderness, eating only organic and locally grown foods, into moral imperatives, substituting the traditions of men for the commandments of God. sometimes even contradicting the commandments of God. And so becoming what the Apostle Paul warned about in Colossians 2, 20 through 23, if with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world, why, as if you were still alive in the world, do you submit to regulations? Do not touch, pardon me, do not handle, do not taste, do not touch, referring to things that all perish as they are used, according to human precepts and teachings. These have, indeed, an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in subduing the indulgence of the flesh. The grave danger to the Church of Jesus Christ is that so-called Christian environmentalism can become a new legalism. Either a false gospel of justification by works rather than by faith, or if not actually a false gospel, still a man-made ascetic ethic not grounded in what the Bible calls the perfect law of liberty. Second, the greening of the church undermines biblical authority. Recently, I was an invited plenary lecturer for the 2012 annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society, the theme of which was care of creation. I challenged some widespread environmental beliefs, including catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. Two New Testament scholars, also plenary speakers, were shocked that I would challenge the, quote, 98% of all climate scientists, unquote, who affirm catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. I don't challenge that consensus because it doesn't exist. The survey on which that figure was based was sent to 10,257 earth scientists. 3,146 responded, and the responses of only 79 who, quote, in the study by the scholars who did the survey, quote, listed climate science as their area of expertise and who also have published more than 50% of their recent peer-reviewed papers on the subject of climate change, unquote, a highly incestuous group that carefully controls access to referee journals, only 79 were counted in calculating the so-called 98% of all climate scientists, thus excluding literally thousands from the count. The survey asked only two questions. Both of them guaranteed to return the desired answer. Every climate skeptic I know would have answered yes to both of the questions. Respondents were not asked, do you think human activity is the primary contributing factor to global warming? Do you think anthropogenic global warming has been, is, or will become catastrophic? Do you think the benefits of mitigating future warming will outweigh the costs of the mitigation? Those are the debated questions, and those the survey completely sidestepped. Now that's just one example of many attempts to show a consensus on global warming. Each has failed. In truth, thousands of scientists representing every relevant specialty deny the IPCC's view on climate change, but it doesn't matter, for consensus isn't a scientific value. The real scientific value is skepticism. Nonetheless, the two other ETS speakers objected, saying that those the other on those Theologians, quote, know nothing, unquote, and therefore must simply, quote, trust the scientists. Hmm. As if no theologians knew anything about the issues. I pointed out to them that I do, as I have read over 45 books on the science and over 35 books on the economics of climate change and climate policy. And thousands of articles averaging over three, well, about three to five articles every single day, except the Lord's Day. Or their objection was made as if all scientists agreed. They don't. And as if consensus mattered in science. It doesn't. Both of them compared questioning catastrophic anthropogenic global warming with questioning the historical existence of Jesus. Now, I trust these brothers simply hadn't thought through the implications of what they said, but here are two of them. One, this implies that the ground for believing in Jesus' historical existence is no better than that for believing in global warming, which in turn implies either that the Bible, which affirms Jesus' historical existence, isn't the word of God, or that the science behind global warming fears is as authoritative as the word of God. And two, it gets things backward. The Bible says We're not supposed to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds by the Word of God. The Bible says we're supposed to test all things, hold fast what is good. The Bible says we're supposed to take every thought captive to the obedience of Christ. But trust the scientists amounts to saying, be conformed to this world, don't test all things, and let your thoughts be taken captive by others whose worldview, theology, and ethics might be radically anti-biblical. Now third, the creation care movement threatens the pro-life movement. The largest and most influential creation care organization, the Evangelical Environmental Network, heavily funded by the pro-abortion and pro-population control Rockefeller Brothers Fund, has argued that reducing mercury emissions from power plants is pro-life. Depending uncritically on refuted studies, it claims that one in six American infants in the womb is at risk of, quote, devastating permanent brain damage, unquote, because of those emissions. It praised in an advertising campaign as sensitive to pro-life concerns members of Congress who supported new mercury regulations, even some with 100 percent pro-abortion voting records. And it questioned the pro-life commitment of members of Congress who opposed the new mercury regulations, even some with 100 percent pro-life voting records. EEN's campaign risked obscuring the meaning of pro-life, dividing the pro-life movement, and hampering efforts to elect more pro-life members of Congress. But as Cornwall scholars documented in our major study, The Cost of Good Intentions, The Ethics and Economics of the War on Conventional Energy, the number exposed to any mercury from power plant emissions is more on the order of one in a thousand than one in six. The actual risk to those exposed is not of devastating permanent brain damage. But a delay in neurological development that is so slight, only a trained specialist using specifically targeted tests can detect it, disappears in most by age 2 and in almost all by age 7, and amounts to less than half a point reduction in IQ in those in whom it persists, a reduction less than is commonly exhibited in identical twins raised in the same household. In stark contrast to the effort to curb abortion, none of these babies is at risk of death. And perhaps most important, none of them, none of the harm, whatever it is, is intentionally inflicted as it is in abortion. Now, in response, over 30 top leaders of the nation's most prominent pro-life endorsed a statement prepared by the Cornwall Alliance protecting the unborn and the pro-life movement from a misleading environmentalist tactic, repudiating their advertising campaign. Nonetheless, sadly, EEN continues the campaign and has added support for carbon dioxide reductions to its list of so-called pro-life causes. Now let me conclude with a call to arms. to spiritual arms, that is, in spiritual warfare. This is what we face. We face the prospect of an increasingly powerful U.N. dominated by pagan religionists, backing an agenda for global wealth redistribution, engineered and enforced by global government, and justified by the need to avert a global environmental crisis, belief in which depends not on real science but on irrational, mystical, post-normal science, used to intimidate a gullible world into submission to a comprehensive worldview that is anti-Christian, and ipso facto anti-real science. But liberty and property and the maintenance of national sovereignty and government by consent of the governed and real science with its technologies are what have delivered the developed world and can deliver the rest of the world from abject poverty. But the Green Movement is intent on destroying all of those and replacing them with mystical paganism, post-normal science, that is pseudoscience, biological egalitarianism that demeans human life and seeks to reduce our numbers by 95%. All of the top leaders of the world's largest environmental advocacy organizations agree that optimal human population would be under half a billion. That means we have to get rid of 95% of the people in the world. And finally, global socialism. All serving a political agenda that leads to global tyranny. The Christian church needs to wake up to this threat. and find ways to defeat it. We need to be like the men of Issachar who, we're told in 1 Chronicles 12.32, understood their times to know what Israel should do. What can you do? Well, after all this, you might think the answer's complicated, but it's not. Essentially, three things. Know and teach the word, do the word, and pray. First, know and teach the word. Many passages of scripture can help people see through the false claims of environmentalism and understand and reclaim and fulfill the blessed mandate of Genesis 128. On our website, there are discussions of hundreds of them. I'm going to give you just three examples right now. Psalm 104 verse 9 says that after the flood, God set a boundary for the sea that its waters may not pass so that they might not again cover the earth, calling into question fears of catastrophic sea level rise driven by man-made global warming. Job 38 verse 9 says that God made clouds a garment for the sea. And as theologian Wayne Grudem has argued, this implies that clouds act as a garment does for the body. As a thermostat, a negative feedback mechanism regulating Earth's temperature, warming it when it's getting too cool, cooling it when it's getting too warm. Just exactly what has been found by a number of scientific studies such as by MIT's Richard Lindzen and University of Alabama's Roy Spencer and others. Third, Psalm 19 verse 1 tells us, the heavens declare the glory of God and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Is the fear of high climate sensitivity, that term, by the way, means how much Earth's average surface temperature would rise because of doubled CO2 concentration in the atmosphere after climate feedbacks. Is the fear of high climate sensitivity consistent with belief that Earth's climate system is the product of an omniscient designer, an omnipotent creator, and a faithful sustainer? Would a brilliant architectural engineer design a building so that all feedbacks would magnify the stress of your leaning on a wall and make the whole building collapse? Yet global warming alarmism claims that increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration by doubling it, now that sounds pretty drastic, doesn't it? Doubling, right? doubling it from 27 thousandths of 1% of the atmosphere to 54 thousandths of 1% of the atmosphere could raise global average temperature so much as to threaten catastrophe to human civilization and indeed to all life on earth. Instead, as much real scientific research has shown, Overall climate feedbacks reduce greenhouse warming by 58%. That is, they are overwhelmingly negative, not positive, therefore eliminating all the danger. Now, I wish I could go on and on, but you get the point. The scriptures are a treasure trove of instruction about appreciating and caring for God's earth and fulfilling the dominion mandate. To learn more about not only scripture, but also science and economics related to environmental issues, sign up for our newsletter, read the many scholarly papers on our website, see the Resisting the Green Dragon video series and read the book and all those sorts of things, and recommend these things to your friends and neighbors. Second, do the word. How? Well, some of you might want to get your churches involved in local stewardship programs like Adopt-a-Highway or working with local residents to clean up vacant lots in inner city slums and turn them into community gardens, which, by the way, is a lousy way to feed people because it's very inefficient at producing food, but it's a great way to develop relationships in those inner city neighbors and open the door to the sharing of the gospel. Or helping people save energy and money by caulking or insulating leaky houses or church buildings, or getting involved in sensible recycling programs. And there are such. But, frankly, America is already amazingly clean and safe by historical standards and compared with poor countries around the world. So some of you might want to help the poor in developing countries, for example, through Cornwall Alliance's sister ministry, Churches and Villages Together, which works with local church leaders in East Africa to bring evangelism, pastoral training, church planting, economic development through microenterprise, and basic environmental restoration and protection projects to remote, desperately poor villages. Third and finally, we all need to pray for each other and for the church around the world. to gain and to put into practice sound understanding of the biblical, theological, scientific, economic, and other aspects of godly dominion to reclaim the blessings of Genesis 1, 27 and 28. I'll close with this. Not long ago, my wife Debbie and I read aloud through Eric Larson's book, In the Garden of Beasts, love terror into an American family in Hitler's Berlin, which chronicled the lives of American ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, and his family from 1933 to 1938, and the horrors of which, little by little, they became conscious, and the ambassadors' inability to awaken either the Roosevelt administration or the American people to them. Not long after that, I happened upon the chilling 1940 movie, The Mortal Storm, in which a handful of Hollywood stars, led by Jimmy Stewart, and producers and directors, tried to warn drowsy Americans that the dangers of Hitler's Germany were far greater than they recognized. This was at a period when American businesses were still trading actively with Hitler's Germany. Soon after that, I saw the classic 1964 movie, Judgment at Nuremberg, which told the story of the trial of Nazi judges for crimes against humanity by an American tribunal after World War II. A trial that could take place only because Americans still believed in transcendent, universal, absolute, unchanging laws given by God. A trial that I believe today's America could never mount. Recently Debbie and I finished reading aloud through Eric Metaxas' Bonhoeffer, Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, about the heroic life and death of the humble German pastor who recognized and fought the evil of Nazism and paid with the price of his life. Every pastor and every seminarian should read that book. We need men of God like him today. And about the same time, I read R. Daniel McMichaels' book, The Journal of David Q. Little, a chilling and terribly depressing novel, but nonetheless one that you ought to read about life in America after America in part unwittingly embraces communism It's a novel by an expert, long time professional military and defense intelligence analyst, an expert on the tactics by which communists brought about the capitulation of Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. And most recently, given it by a new friend, I read Andy Andrews' book, How Do You Kill 11 Million People? A very, very short book. that every literate American should read and could read in 20 to 40 minutes. I have never been more fearful for the collapse of liberty and order in America and around the world than I am today. The whole world suffered immeasurably because people slept through the rise of Lenin and Stalin and Hitler and Mao and Castro and Pol Pot and countless other socialist dictators. What are we going to do to help prevent another round of such terror and suffering, this time fueled by two utopian visions combined into one? Am I concerned that God's sovereign control over the world is at stake? Not in the least. But I don't want it said a century from now that Cal Beissner didn't do his best, successful or not, to prevent the rise of pagan global tyranny in the name of environmentalism. And I hope you don't want that said of you either. Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we pray that you would give us eyes to see, minds to understand, courageous hearts to oppose, willing bodies to sacrifice, that we might stand against evil, that we might truly conduct that spiritual warfare that takes all of the panoply of God and uses it against your enemy and his minions who hate you but cannot attack you directly but instead attack your image and representative on earth. And Father, I pray particularly that you would wake up pastors and elders and deacons in your churches all over this country to this threat and give them a passion, give them an understanding that they might truly shepherd the people of God, that they might be men living and serving in the tradition of a John Calvin whose teaching utterly transformed the city of Geneva, a John Knox whose teaching utterly transformed the whole country of Scotland, a John Witherspoon whose teaching shaped the mind of James Madison and 18 others of his students who were members of the Constitutional Convention and gave us perhaps the greatest example of a just and free and responsible society in the history of the human race. I would ask, Father, that you would wake up your whole church. And let us be truly, because we take the gospel to all and make disciples of all nations, teaching them to obey everything that you have commanded them, let us truly be the head and not the tail. As the nations look at the church and say, surely this people has a very wise God who has given it wise laws. And they are moved by our light so shining before men that they see our good works and glorify our Father in heaven. So we pray, Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We ask you humbly to give us this day our daily bread and to lead us not into temptation but to deliver us from evil.