In my ongoing search for current and historical facts about climate change, I’ve been reading a lot of research online and books, and listening to podcasts and audiobooks during my daily commutes for sales calls.

Maybe because Good Friday, Passover and Easter Sunday are only a week away, it dawned on me that I should also consider what sort of climate change has been recorded in Scripture.

The most famous story about changing climate you may have learned in Sunday school or from the musical turned into a movie, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is the biblical account of the Pharoah’s dream that only Joseph is able to interpret. It concerned the seven plentiful years in Egypt that were followed by seven years of severe famine. The famine was so bad that Joseph’s family had to migrate to Egypt or starve.

There are also numerous, lesser known records of climate changes in the Old Testament. For example, in the account of Abraham, penned by Moses sometime around 1500 B.C., it records, “Now there was a famine in the land; so Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a time, because the famine was severe in the land.” These cycles of change have clearly been around since Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden.

Oh, and there was that "little rainy season" in Noah’s day. If you’re currently inclined to be fearful of rising ocean levels, don’t forget the astounding account of relentless worldwide torrential rains and massive tectonic shifts releasing "the springs of the deep" causing ocean levels to temporarily rise above the highest mountain peaks as an act of judgment from God. You might ask, "Where could that much water come from?" Some of that mystery is becoming less mysterious as recent scientific discoveries have estimated that there is more water stored in the porous layers of the earth’s crust than in all of the oceans combined.

Of course an act of divine judgment is not the same as what’s being described today as global warming. But the Bible and other historical records show us that the earth’s weather patterns have ebbed and flowed from time period to time period. We’re experiencing some of that ever-changing climate even now in our lifetimes, such as periods of drought followed by periods of plentiful moisture. The National Weather Service has records of the snowfall totals for Colorado dating back to 1882. The 2020-2021 snowfall totals were 23” above the annual norm. Just four years prior, in 2017-2018 period, the snowfall was 30” behind the annual norm. For 140 years, the historical data has shown a constant up-and-down, round-and-round, cyclical pattern.

If you hold a Biblical worldview as I do, you likely believe that the world is not going to end by catastrophic climate change. Things like the ice caps and glaciers all melting, causing the ocean levels to again rise and flood the land will not produce our ultimate demise. Proverbs 8 declares, “When the springs of the deep became fixed, when He (God) set for the sea its boundary so that the water would not transgress His command …He marked out the foundations of the earth.” In His omniscience, God knew exactly how many people would eventually inhabit the earth and He planned and created the earth to sustain the population with food, water and resources. But just because God has a plan, it doesn’t mean we trash the earth and the environment or think of it as disposable. We have to be responsible stewards of God’s gifts.

In the "parable of the talents," Jesus instructs us to be faithful with the resources God has given us. I think this means we manage God’s creation with thoughtful, responsible dominion. We take care of what we’ve been given and make it our priority to leave the earth a better place for future generations. We can do just that, without being browbeaten by alarmists and fearmongers.

In the next blog, I’ll be considering the question: What evidence do we have that fossil fuel use is causing the earth to heat up?

If you celebrate the season, have a blessed Passover and Resurrection Sunday!

Climate change in the Bible?

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