Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 171:684 (Oct 2014)
Article: The Flood Is As Bad As It Gets: Never Again Will God Destroy The Earth
Author: Glenn R. Kreider

BSac 171:684 (October-December 2014) p. 418

The Flood Is As Bad As It Gets:
Never Again Will God Destroy The Earth

Glenn R. Kreider

Glenn R. Kreider is Professor of Theological Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.

Growing up in dispensational churches in the latter half of the twentieth century, it was common to hear preachers predict the end of the age and the annihilation of the earth in a fiery judgment. In light of that end, care for the environment was considered a waste of time. Widely repeated was the quip, often attributed to J. Vernon McGee, “You don’t polish the brass on a sinking ship.”1 The application seemed clear: Since the world is a sinking ship, we should not devote limited time and resources to making it a better place to live. Critics of dispensationalism have used this and similar statements to create an impression of the movement that is, quite frankly, sometimes deserved.2

Hal Lindsey, the author of The Late Great Planet Earth, once retorted: “God didn’t send me to clean the fishbowl, he sent me to fish.”3 The implication is that the job of Christians is evangelism,

BSac 171:684 (October-December 2014) p. 419

not caring for the environment or the physical needs of people.

D. L. Moody famously said,

I have felt like working three times as hard ever since I came to understand that my Lord was coming back again. I look on this world as a wrecked vessel. God has given me a life-boat, and said to me, “Moody, save all you can.” God will come in judgment and burn up this world, but the children of God don’t belong to this world; they are in it, but not of it, like a ship in the water. The world is getting darker and darker; its ruin is coming nearer and nearer. If you have any friends on this wreck unsaved, you had better lose no time in getting them off.4

The “leaky dispensationalist” John MacArthur has written:

But man’s efforts to bring about a better world, however well intended, are ultimately doomed. They amount to little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic to give everyone a better view as the ship sinks. The truth is that not a better day, but an unimaginably worse day lies ahead for man and his world. In the future, God will pour out His wrath and judgment on a scale never before seen. Only after the earth is utterly devastated and unbelievers judged will a better day come—the blessed earthly kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ...