As I’m sitting here writing this blog in my humble apartment in Jerusalem, a large percentage of the world’s rich and powerful people are assembled just a few hundred kilometers away in the Egyptian resort city of Sharm El Sheikh for what is officially known as the 2022 United Nations Climate Change Conference, but more commonly known as “COP27”. A lot of Believers in Israel and around the world are very upset by some of the statements coming out of this conference and, in general, by the quasi-religion surrounding the subject of “climate change” that it exemplifies. Many people see the COP27 conference as another step in the “great reset” plan that “global elites” have to radically change all of our lives in ways that include things we don’t want and don’t believe we need.
However, there is a small but rapidly growing movement within the worldwide Evangelical movement which begs to point out that God commands us to be good stewards of this planet that He created for us to live on. This movement would say that whether the “global elites” are planning something bad for us or not, the Church can’t just pretend that pollution isn’t a problem we should be involved in fixing.
Here’s what I think.
The topic of environmental change, and what if any effect human activity has on it, is one that has become very trendy in recent years. It simply can’t be denied by anyone anywhere that weather patterns are drastically changing. These changes have already wreaked terrible destruction on infrastructure and cost billions of dollars worth of direct damage and lost economic potential. But there are reasons to believe that much worse is yet to come.
All of this is being caused by something, and there are a lot of people who seem pretty sure it’s being caused by human activity, specifically the burning of hydrocarbons (crude oil, natural gas, coal, distillates, etc.) These people have become quite influential in culture and even governments around the world, especially in Western Europe.
For instance, laws have been enacted (usually with little input from the people who will be most affected by them) that have raised taxes on gasoline in order to discourage citizens from using it and encourage them to buy cars that run on electricity instead. While that might seem like a good idea on principle, most of the electricity produced in most countries around the world is still produced by the burning of hydrocarbons in centralized plants. So the amount of pollution produced by an electric car is roughly the same as that produced by an old-fashioned gasoline-powered car. This is not to even mention the huge amount of pollution required to assemble an electric car (mining for lithium, one of the most important components in the batteries which enable an electric car to run, is very polluting, just as an example.)
Anyone who cares enough about the truth to take a serious look at the relevant data sets can see that even if one is quite sure that human activity is causing the changes to the physical environment of this planet that are making so many problems for its human inhabitants, most of the ideas being pushed by “climate activists” and the “global elite” types who gather at conferences like COP27 are causing almost as many, if not more, problems for the environment than they solve. At the same time, they’re also causing catastrophic disruptions in the long-established economic, social, and cultural patterns of many countries which are resulting in great hardship for ordinary people.
So that begs the question of why the “Green agenda” is so popular and why it has even become a quasi-religion to so many people all over the world.
I think the answer to that question can be found in a story way back in Genesis 11:1-9; Now all the earth used the same language and the same words. And it came about, as they journeyed east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. Then they said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and fire them thoroughly.” And they used brick for stone, and they used tar for mortar. And they said, “Come, let’s build ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let’s make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of all the earth.” Now the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the men had built. And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they all have the same language. And this is what they have started to do, and now nothing which they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.” So the Lord scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth; and they stopped building the city. Therefore it was named Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth.”
This story is a big part of every children’s Bible but strangely, it doesn’t get discussed much by adults, and I think that’s a mistake. This story tells us about one of the most important inflection points in God’s relationship with the human race that He created, and as I said before, it also offers some insight into what’s going on in the world today.
Even when I was a little kid reading the story of the Tower of Babel in my children’s Bible, I wondered why the God who had created the Universe and everything in it would be concerned by a tower made out of mud bricks. I’ve had atheist friends who also pointed to this as an example of why they don’t think the Bible should be taken seriously since it contains stories with such apparently illogical contradictions.
But I have a theory, and it’s JUST a theory. It’s just a guess. Please don’t get upset with me if you don’t think it’s true.
My theory/guess is that the “Tower of Babel” wasn’t just a platform made out of mud bricks that could “reach to heaven” in the same way a ladder you lean against the side of your house lets you reach the rain gutters. But rather, the phrase “a tower which could reach to Heaven” in this passage refers to some technology or machine that would give the humans who were building it access to the knowledge and power God had utilized to create the physical Universe.
If that’s true, then I also think it’s possible that they were able to construct this technology or machine because at that time, they were using 100% of their mental capacity, which gave them a much greater ability to conceptualize mathematical equations, chemical processes, and many other principles in the natural world than human beings had after the events described in this passage of Scripture. If this is true, then it wasn’t just their speech God confused in order to put a stop to what they were trying to do. He touched their brains in such a way that many other things changed, leading to a vastly reduced cognative capacity for what today we’d call technological innovation, as well as many other things.
What makes me think so is that according to Psalm 8:5, God created human beings to be just a little bit lower than Himself (some translations say “a little lower than the angels”) but as we look at ourselves, we must admit that in every imaginable way, we’re a LOT lower than God, or the angels. We’re also a lot less impressive in every way than the human beings described in the early chapters of Genesis who routinely lived hundreds of years and, as I said, might have had vastly greater cognitive mental abilities than we do today.
So, based on that, it seems pretty obvious to me that at some point, maybe more than one point, things changed.
One of those changes is recorded in Genesis 6:3; Then the Lord said, “My Spirit will not contend with humans forever, for they are mortal; their days will be a hundred and twenty years.”
If God altered human DNA at that point in history so that humans would no longer be physically capable of living longer than 120 years then it’s quite possible that He altered human DNA in other ways at other points in history, and that would explain what happened when he “confused their language” in Genesis 11:7.
Like I said, it’s just a theory and I might be totally wrong.
But whether I’m right or wrong, at this point, those who are still reading (I know this blog has gone on much longer than usual) are wondering what all of this could possibly have to do with climate change, COP27, global elites and all that stuff.
It has EVERYTHING to do with it!
Let me explain.
My study of human history has led me to several conclusions and one of them is that human beings in all cultures, countries, tribes, and racial and ethnic groups, are haunted by something. We’re haunted by a sense that we’ve lost something. We’re haunted by a sense that there’s something going on in the universe that we’re meant to be a part of but which is just beyond our grasp. We’re haunted by a sense (which I think is a result of a part of our brains we don’t have conscious access to and which can sense the patterns that still exist in our DNA but which God has put a freeze on) that we’ve got the ability to do things, to understand things and to build things far greater than what we’ve got in front of us.
We’re haunted by a sense that there are dimensions and levels of reality that we’re meant to have access to but which we don’t.
The people on the Plain of Shinar were trying to build the Tower of Babel because they were trying to get back in that game, and despite the way God confused their language and possibly degraded their ability to mentally function in other ways, human beings never completely gave up on that idea. In every generation since then, there have been stories about people who were able to perform “magic” and/or had special knowledge and abilities which they derived from their access to higher plains of existence.
Think about ancient fairy tales about Achilles or Hercules, or Midevil fairy tales about men like King Arthur and his friend Merlin the Magician. Think about modern fairy tales like Star Wars, where there are people who can use “the Force” to move physical objects with their minds, read other people’s thoughts, etc. For that matter, think about the Marvel Comic Universe or X-men or Star Trek, which depict a future in which human beings have built machines and/or evolved capabilities that allow them to alter the physical universe in ways that allow them to do things that are impossible for ordinary human beings today.
But it’s not just fairy tales. From ancient times down to the modern day there have always been large numbers of people who were interested in occult mystic teachings about people actually having access to “secret knowledge” and this includes the Kabbalah teachings found in the Zohar which are so popular among Orthodox Jews. It also includes the ancient and modern obsession with Astrology and the Zodiac. Last but certainly not least, it also explains the quasi-religion aptly described as “wokeness” and the sub-division of that quasi-religion on display this week in Sharm El Sheik at the COP27 conference.
The great shame of it all is that this grasping attempt to “reach to Heaven” is not only futile, but it’s also completely unnecessary. God wants to give the humans He created everything we’ve been grasping for since the events recorded in Genesis chapter 11 as a gift, but in order to receive the gift, we have to do it His way, not our way.
As Jesus told His followers in Matthew 7:3 we must ““Enter through the narrow gate; for the gate is wide and the way is broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it.”
Jesus Christ came to this Earth to restore things to the way He designed them to be, with human beings once again being a little lower than Himself. His sacrifice on the Cross made it possible for us to have access to Heaven and His teachings show the way human beings can once again live with the cognitive awareness that they are spiritual beings living in a physical body, and act accordingly.
We know the physical body we will receive at the Resurrection will not die or even decay the way the bodies we’re all living in now do. I am also quite certain the mental capacity we’ll have when we are housed in these new bodies will allow us to easily decipher mathematical equations, chemical processes, and various other matters related to the physical universe that in our current state even the most accomplished scientists can’t figure out. I believe this will allow us to partner with God in the work that He only just began when He “created the Heavens and the Earth” as recorded in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis.
When we get there, even the most powerful supercomputers which exist today, or the CERN reactor in Switzerland, or nuclear-powered submarines which can dive a mile or more beneath the surface of the ocean, or the jets which can fly from London to New York at twice the speed of sound, will seem like children’s toys compared to what we’ll be able to build.
Once again, that’s just a theory.
But in any event, COP27, the annual World Economic Forum meetings in Davos and the many other conferences where these “global elites” get together to try and enact their “great reset” and all the other plans they have for our lives that they don’t seem to think they need to consult with us about or even fully inform us about, shouldn’t frighten people like you and me. They shouldn’t even bother us. They certainly don’t bother God, nor do they surprise Him.
We read in Matthew 28:18-20; “Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
That’s all you and I have to remember. All this noise about a “great reset” shouldn’t distract us from the Great Commission that Jesus gave us. There have been several “great resets” over the centuries, but none of them overcame the plans and purposes of God and this one won’t either.
That’s what I’ve got for you this week brothers and sisters. I hope it blessed someoneץ