“Christianity should be at the forefront of battle to save planet”
So writes one, Gareth Hanna, in the ‘Belfast Telegraph’, of October 24th. He is employed as a ‘writer’ there. Hanna claims to have been brought up in ‘evangelical’ Christianity here in Ulster.
He discloses more about himself in another article entitled:
“Why it’s time more NI Christians came out as LGBTQ+ affirming”
He wrote: “As a Christian who has spent a lifetime within the religion in Northern Ireland, I now feel an ever-increasing responsibility to publicly say that I am convinced, wholly and utterly, that it is OK to be gay. I mean, of course it is — it’s more than OK.”
So now that we know the calibre of this purveyor of nonsense, we can examine his article about ‘saving the planet’ with an assurance that he is wrong on this topic as he is on the matter of Christianity and sodomy.
He starts off his ‘treatise’ with a reference to the TV cartoon characters, ‘The Simpsons’ and that immediately informs us of the sort of material from which he obtains his inspiration!
He uses an event from these TV cartoons, as a basis for ridiculing a Christian who phoned into a radio programme to say: “The whole threads of society are coming apart bit by bit,” he explained. “Economically, food, if you say weather, people trying to abort babies and things like that. I’m a Christian and there’s a verse in the Bible that says ‘righteousness exalteth a nation’ (Proverbs 14 v 34). We have turned our backs on the one and only true God of Heaven and Earth. Once we get back to that, Stephen, we’ll be all right.”
Hanna then goes on to write: “I’ve always found it the overwhelming truth, and yet a curious notion, that Christians and churches aren’t at the very forefront of the fight to protect the planet.”
He would have Christians show sympathy with the protesters who glue themselves to the roads, seek to destroy works of art and other such acts of public disorder, and that on the basis that the Bible refers to the world lovingly as God’s creation and which He saw as “good”. The Genesis story account of the creation even says God “tasked humanity with taking care of it — what responsibility!”
He continues his foolish diatribe by ridiculing some basic beliefs of Biblical Christianity
He says: “In my experience of evangelical Christianity in Northern Ireland, it’s all about saving souls from a lost eternity. Everything else, climate change included, doesn’t even make it as far as an afterthought.
If the theology is all about looking forward to a future in which the “saved” are parachuted off to a heavenly realm boasting streets paved with gold, what does it matter if the “fallen” world is trashed along the way?
I think I have quoted enough of his foolishness to show just where he is ‘coming from’, not to mention ‘where he is going to’!
I would ask a few questions of him and his ilk!
1. Just where in the Bible do we read that the earth is going to come to ruin by way of ‘climate change’?
It is the ‘morality’ of mankind that will bring an end to this age, not his failure to join the idiots protesting ‘climate change’!
What brought about the judgment of the ‘flood’ in Noah’s day? Was it man’s ‘ecological’ failures? Or was it, as the Lord puts it, man’s wickedness?
“And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them,” Genesis 6:5-7.
Well, that answers that question and bring us on to a statement by the Lord Jesus regarding just how this age is going to end.
“And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed,” Luke 17:26-30.
So the young Christian whose words to the radio interviewer Hanna mocked, was correct. It is ‘man turning his back on God’ that will bring an end to this age.
Indeed, this fool Hanna, far from acting so as to save the planet, is living, writing and propagating the very views which will bring down God’s wrath upon this world and bring this age to an end. He is a supporter of the perverted views of the ‘LGBTQ+’ bunch, those who are of the exact same ‘pedigree’ as the sodomites upon whom God’s judgment fell as stated by the Lord Jesus. “But the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all,” Luke 17:29.
The thinking of Gareth Hanna is referred to by Paul the apostle in 2 Timothy 3.
“This know also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God; having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away. For of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith,” verses 1-8.
Hiding there in the midst of that collection of spiritual imprudence you will find the philosophy of Gareth Hanna.
It is the rejector of the Bible who is quite content to subject the unborn to the cruelties involved in abortion that the law forbids us to subject animals to!
The young Christian whose words have been mocked and ridiculed by Hanna is right. It is man’s turning of his back on ‘the one and only true God of Heaven’ and embracing the practices of abortion and sodomy and other gross immoralities, commonly accepted today, (thanks to the spreading of error by the likes of the ‘Belfast Telegraph’) that is going to bring down God’s judgment.
I ask another question.
2. Has Hanna ever read the Bible?
Hanna goes on to make a further stupid comment that can only come from a gross ignorance of God’s Word.
“As I’ve found evangelicalism, that perspective is that only humans really matter. Animals and the rest of creation are merely at our service.”
That is likely because Hanna moved in anything but true ‘evangelical’ circles. Bible Christianity teaches and practices the truth of such statements as:
“A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast: but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel,” Proverbs 12:10.
That last phrase aptly sums up the abortionist’s ‘tender mercies’!
Jacob displayed such consideration for his animals.
“And he said unto him, My lord knoweth that the children are tender, and the flocks and herds with young are with me: and if men should overdrive them one day, all the flock will die. Let my lord, I pray thee, pass over before his servant: and I will lead on softly, according as the cattle that goeth before me and the children be able to endure, until I come unto my lord unto Seir,” Genesis 33:13-14.
The Law of God for Israel embodied such kindness.
“Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn,”Deuteronomy 25:4.
Furthermore, long before today’s ‘lunatic eco-warriors’ emerged, the Lord instituted wise laws designed to preserve the environment.
“And six years thou shalt sow thy land, and shalt gather in the fruits thereof: but the seventh year thou shalt let it rest and lie still; that the poor of thy people may eat: and what they leave the beasts of the field shall eat. In like manner thou shalt deal with thy vineyard, and with thy oliveyard,” Exodus 23:10-11.
Again, man’s sinful heart and his greed has brought many parts of the earth to ruin. It is, we repeat, man’s sin that will end this age.
3. Does Hanna realise what a most wicked blasphemy is found in the closing words of his article?
He writes, “I see more of the mischievous Jesus in Phoebe Plummer pouring soup over a painting in a theatrical plea for environmental repentance than in any theology that disregards her concerns.”
Phoebe Plummer openly acknowledges that she is a moral deviant, part of the ‘LGBTQ+’ band of perverts. To liken Christ unto her is a most obnoxious and gratuitous blasphemy against the One who is “holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners,” Hebrews 7:26.
Of the lifestyle of this young woman God has given us His opinion. “For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet,” Romans 1:26-27.
The eternal cost of such a lifestyle is high indeed.
“Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God,” 1 Corinthians 6:9-10.
That is the plain warning of God’s Word for the likes of Gareth Hanna and Phoebe Plummer.
However, in His mercy he graciously indicates in the next verse in chapter 6, that there is deliverance for such.
Paul reminds the Corinthians: “And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God,” 1 Corinthians 6:11.
The deliverance of sinners from the consequences of their sins was the chief element in the Christ-appointed calling of Paul the apostle.
He was not called to engage in futile attempts to stop the dying of the planet, brought about as a result of man’s sin.
Paul was aware of the deteriorating of the planet for he has told us: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now,” Romans 8:22. The earth was and is dying. But there is a day of deliverance for the earth. It is day of Christ’s return.
“Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God,” Romans 8:21.
How little the likes of Gareth Hanna and his acolytes know of God’s purpose and plan.
Rev Ivan Foster. (Rtd)
25th October 2022