Living midst an environmental reality

When looking at our environment around us, we must be clear that we are not observing the original pristine state which God created in the beginning (even if we go to some beautiful tropical island)! The Bible clearly states that what we are now observing is the aftermath of God's total destruction of every living thing on earth by means of a global flood (Genesis 6-8). There is every reason to believe from Scripture that the great mountain chains we see, the vast oceans and their depths, the massive canyons, and even the polar ice-caps, came into existence as a result of the catastrophic events during the flood and thereafter. In fact, it is reasonable to postulate that most of our world's fossil deposits and coal / oil reserves were created as a result of this massive cataclysm.

Furthermore, when looking at the animal kingdom, the so-called struggle for the survival of the fittest is itself a fall from God's original creation. From Genesis 1:29-30, it is most reasonable to postulate that originally all animals (and humans) were vegetarian, and that the 'carnivore' phenomenon we see everywhere around us is only a later addition into the scheme of things. Indeed, we read that only after the flood did God specifically mention to humankind that they could / should now eat meat (but without its blood). Perhaps this was because the now drastically altered climatic conditions on earth demanded that other sources of protein etc be found, or that plants alone could no longer produce the vitamins etc needed for human survival. This is not a far-fetched hypothesis, since if before the flood the earth was surrounded by a water-canopy (as Genesis 1:6-8 seems to indicate), this not only may have caused the earth to be like a greenhouse, but could also have raised the air-pressure level by a factor of two. If this is so, I have heard that it has been scientifically demonstrated that under such high-pressure conditions, plants grow bigger, fruit is more scrumptious with more vitamins etc, and people's lung's absorb more oxygen, thus causing them to be healthier and live longer.

Combining this information with what we read about Jesus implying of the devil: "The thief comes only to steal, kill, and destroy" (John 10:10a), and also that Jesus said that His words were spirit and life (John 6:63), I can see that when Adam & Eve walked in unbelief and listened to the devil's schemes, they actually handed the control of the earth over to the devil. No longer was faith the active principal on earth, but now it was unbelief, which leads to death. Therefore I postulate that the whole 'cycle of life (death)' which we now see outworking around us is the final evolutionary decay result of people handing over the earth to the devil's authority. Everything was pristine in the beginning, but now we see a new harmony of life vs death principles. In fact when I observe animal behaviour around the world, I notice that the scale is tilted to 'more death and violence' in behaviour where there is more contact with human-kind. And in remote Congo jungles where human civilization has been absent for centuries, perhaps millennia, animals are living in a peaceful co-existence virtually Eden-like! No wonder Paul writes that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:21), because the children of God are humans who walk by faith - that life giving force!! This scenario seems to also be confirmed by Jesus when He describes people of faith in God as "salt of the earth", that is, preserving agents!

(see also 'Living midst an economic reality' below).