Will God fix the earth?

I would have thought it would be straight forwards for the old Earth people here to see that the end of the World will be in about three or so billion years. I can imagine that the YEC are sitting on the edge of their seat, waiting for it to come. It should have happened 1,000 years ago if you take the Bible literally. But I would have thought the enlightened, evolution friendly Christians would see that there is much time remaining in God’s plan.

… three … or so?!!! Surely you can get a bit more precision on that so we can plan. I mean, is it 2.91 or 3.478 billion? As “straightforward” as it apparently is, I guess I need a bit of hand holding to arrive where you all got to already.

More seriously, though; we all here seem to agree that the planet is a whole lot heartier than we are. It might still be here some billions of years down the road, but given our ability to, within generational memory, make entire species’ existences tenuous enough, it’s a near certain thing that we won’t still be existing in this present form for anything like those kinds of timescales.

Or as Martin Luther was said to have said (but probably didn’t), “If I knew the world were to end tomorrow, I would still plant an apple tree.”

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We are in the middle of a mass extinction, for sure, but a good Christian should believe that humans will be part of the 2% that survives.

Our “survival” (or the transformed, resurrected selves that we are to be) are all in God’s hands, and, as such, above our worry or attempted appraisal. I don’t at all share your confidence in so many numbers and percentages as you seem to have latched yourself onto, but I do share your confidence in Christ. And that is enough for me.

Dear Mervin,
My “confidence” comes from God’s creation and the history of His Earth. Why would God spend 13.8 billion years creating a universe and end it 2,000 or 20,000 or 200,000 years after the beginning of His plan of redemption? Why would God create a world that has a built-in rebirth every 66 million years or so?

End Ordovician, 444 million years ago, 86% of species lost
Late Devonian, 375 million years ago, 75% of species lost
End Permian, 251 million years ago, 96% of species lost
End Triassic, 200 million years ago, 80% of species lost
End Cretaceous, 66 million years ago, 76% of all species lost (Cosmos)

Shouldn’t Christian scientists speak out with God’s hope against the doom that people like Hawking instead of thinking, “well at least I am I saved?” I think it is our duty to spread hope. Maybe I am not doing my job well enough here, but this is my intension.

Amen to all of that! Go team! I just don’t make the leap from there to confident proclamations about “3 billion years from now” or “2% will survive”. My hope comes from Christ - not from speculated “knowledge” of future time scales or physical survival rates.

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This is the salt that put in my posts. 3 Billion is about how long the Earth will remain in the habitable zone. 2% is 1.8 standard deviations below the mean species survival rate from the mass extinctions. The point I try to make is there is simply no physical evidence for an end of the world anytime soon.

What you call salt, many would see as speculation if not outright falsehood (when packaged with unwarranted confidence.) There is a lot that can happen in the cosmos in 3 billion years - and no profit in our spending time worrying out that far. The faithful have plenty to occupy our proper concerns just within the next few decades and centuries. And we may be doing well to even adjust our outlooks that far ahead as many of us still struggle to even look past the present moment toward the good of the next generation. We are called to plenty of needed work just getting our own generation’s house in order.

[If somebody is explaining something to me, giving me plausible hope about the future, but then their explanation veers off into proclamations that reveal they don’t really know what they’re talking about, then suddenly all their earlier plausibility is called into question. This is why so many of us here are eager to keep implausible or unwarranted speculation out from the pure and simple good news that Christ has made our salvation possible and will work in us towards our own redemption and perfection. That is the heart of our message that is the hope for us. Truth matters.]

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Dear Mervin, Thank your for your opinion. I agree wholeheartedly that Truth Matters and I surprised that you think my confidence turns truth into falsehood. I am asking people in this thread “Will god fix the Earth?” to consider the overwhelming evidence of the durability of the Earth, proven by billions of years of data.

My mother-in-law was six years old living in Dresden Germany. In the middle of the night, she woke up and convinced her family to evacuate the house. They watched from a safe distance as the bombs destroyed their home. Yet when she died a few years ago, it was with a fear for the future, perpetrated by the media and theologians speculation of the end of the world. God does not want us to live in fear, and for me, knowing the world will be here tomorrow, regardless of what man does, is just another fear I do not have pass on to my children.

As you said, why should we worry about the next 3 billion years? We don’t need to, but knowing they are highly probable strengthens my belief in God’s goodness.

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Agreed. We shouldn’t be ruled by fear.

That isn’t the same as what I suggested. It is impossible for “truth to turn into falsehood”. Truth will always remain truth. What I suggest is that you venture from truth toward likely falsehoods when you push details about specific future timelines, archangel intrigue and reincarnation, and all these things that are go well beyond what scriptures give us any confidence to know, or may even be contrary to scriptural affirmation. Any confidence you have in Christ, however, will remain itself true no matter how much error you mix in with it. And given that we are all in error about some things, we should all rejoice that Christ remains true. But when we discover or are shown our error, we also should rejoice to blow it away as chaff that we may focus down more purely on that which remains.

That’s a fascinating story about your mother-in-law leaving Dresden. And again, I agree that we shouldn’t be ruled by end-times fears - apart from a healthy fear of God, that is.

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@Shawn_Murphy @Mervin_Bitikofer I agree that we will probably not go completely extinct, and that those alarmists claiming the world will end in 12 years give the movement a bad name. But lets not downplay the seriousness of what is going on. Already poor air quality causes tens of thousands of deaths worldwide.

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Yes Reggie, Stewardship is written into the Swiss constitution, and In my heart as a Christian.

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