GOD'S CARE FOR HIS CREATION
The principle that God promised His perfect deliverance and provision in the Promised Land “Eretz Yisrael” as long as His people obey His commands would be applied to His provision for the rest of His creation.
Observe therefore all the commands I am giving you today, so that you may have the strength to go in and take over the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, and so that you may live long in the land that the LORD swore to your ancestors to give to them and their descendants, a land flowing with milk and honey.
The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.
The land you are entering to take over is not like the land of Egypt, from which you have come, where you planted your seed and irrigated it by foot as in a vegetable garden. But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the LORD your God cares for; the eyes of the LORD your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.
So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today – to love the LORD your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul – then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your corn, new wine and olive oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied. Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the LORD’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the LORD is giving you.
Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow – to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him – then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. Every place where you set your foot will be yours: your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the River Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea. No one will be able to stand against you. The LORD your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.
Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the door-frames of your houses and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be many in the land that the LORD swore to give your ancestors, as many as the days that the heavens are above the earth.
If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow – to love the LORD your God, to walk in obedience to him and to hold fast to him – then the LORD will drive out all these nations before you, and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you. Every place where you set your foot will be yours: your territory will extend from the desert to Lebanon, and from the River Euphrates to the Mediterranean Sea. No one will be able to stand against you. The LORD your God, as he promised you, will put the terror and fear of you on the whole land, wherever you go.
DEUTERONOMY 11:8-25.
Last month we discussed climate change. The following article: “The fiddling with temperature data is the biggest science scandal ever”, issued on 7th Feb.’15 supports our conclusion that scientists’ opinions about climate change should be examined with skeptical and critical eyes. Our perspective over this issue should be primarily dependant on the teaching of the Bible, authored by the Creator of the universe, Himself. In the passages above God promised His perfect deliverance and provision in the Promised Land “Eretz Yisrael” as long as His people obey His commands. This principle could be applied to God’s provision for the rest of His creation.
New data shows that the “vanishing” of polar ice is not the result of runaway global warming. When future generations look back on the global-warming scare of the past 30 years, nothing will shock them more than the extent to which the official temperature records – on which the entire panic ultimately rested – were systematically “adjusted” to show the Earth as having warmed much more than the actual data justified. Two weeks ago, under the headline “How we are being tricked by flawed data on global warming”, I wrote about Paul Homewood, who, on his Notalotofpeopleknowthat blog, had checked the published temperature graphs for three weather stations in Paraguay against the temperatures that had originally been recorded. In each instance, the actual trend of 60 years of data had been dramatically reversed, so that a cooling trend was changed to one that showed a marked warming. This was only the latest of many examples of a practice long recognised by expert observers around the world – one that raises an ever larger question mark over the entire official surface-temperature record.
Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.
Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded. This has surprised no one more than Traust Jonsson, who was long in charge of climate research for the Iceland met office (and with whom Homewood has been in touch). Jonsson was amazed to see how the new version completely “disappears” Iceland’s “sea ice years” around 1970, when a period of extreme cooling almost devastated his country’s economy.
One of the first examples of these “adjustments” was exposed in 2007 by the statistician Steve McIntyre, when he discovered a paper published in 1987 by James Hansen, the scientist (later turned fanatical climate activist) who for many years ran Giss. Hansen’s original graph showed temperatures in the Arctic as having been much higher around 1940 than at any time since. But as Homewood reveals in his blog post, “Temperature adjustments transform Arctic history”, Giss has turned this upside down. Arctic temperatures from that time have been lowered so much that they are now dwarfed by those of the past 20 years.
Homewood’s interest in the Arctic is partly because the “vanishing” of its polar ice (and the polar bears) has become such a poster-child for those trying to persuade us that we are threatened by runaway warming. But he chose that particular stretch of the Arctic because it is where ice is affected by warmer water brought in by cyclical shifts in a major Atlantic current – this last peaked at just the time 75 years ago when Arctic ice retreated even further than it has done recently. The ice-melt is not caused by rising global temperatures at all. Of much more serious significance, however, is the way this wholesale manipulation of the official temperature record – for reasons GHCN and Giss have never plausibly explained – has become the real elephant in the room of the greatest and most costly scare the world has known. This really does begin to look like one of the greatest scientific scandals of all time. (www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/globalwarming/11395516/The-fiddling-with-temperature-data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html)
Another article entitled “The Bible and the Climate” tells us how climate plays an important role in biblical tradition. The author (Professor Pinhas Alpert, a geophysicist who authored the book “Rain and Wind— Meteorology and Weather in Jewish Tradition and Modern Science”) explains the fact that the land of Israel “Eretz Yisrael” is located in a region with dynamic weather systems, which is so unique and which therefore compelled the ancient Israelites to ask the Lord for His care for their land every season.
In the fall, at the end of Sukkot (the Feast of Tabernacles), the prayers for dew conclude and the supplications for rain begin. “May the Creator in the coming months let the winds blow and let the rain fall from the sky as a blessing, like He lets the dew fall from spring to autumn.” These prayers are recited until Passover in the spring… “The location of the Land of Israel is very interesting from a geophysical point of view…Israel is in the middle of four different climate zones struggling in the sky above it. There is only one place similar to this and it is located in the Pacific. This interaction is responsible for the sensitive balance of our climate. Israel is a nightmare for meteorologists trying to predict the weather.” Forecasters could predict rain in the Mediterranean coastal area of Tel Aviv while only 12 miles (20 kilometers) further south it looks like sunshine. Alpert, a religious man, draws a parallel to these verses in the Torah, Deuteronomy 11:13-14, :16-17 (whose passages have been quoted at the beginning).
The warnings of the Almighty are reflected in the synoptic meteorological charts; and religious Jews believe the complicated weather patterns fluctuate according to the behavior of the people of Israel in the Land. That’s why verse 12 is especially important to Alpert: “…a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it from the beginning even to the end of the year.” Alpert substantiates the biblical commands scientifically. In ancient times, people thought the dew was more important than rain because rain could cause destruction. “But today we know that dew can do damage to plants as well. Just think about fungal infestation,” he says. Nevertheless, “dew is a big blessing in climates like Israel. Dew allows plants to grow in the morning hours. During these hours they grow seven times as fast than in the afternoon. As a religious person, I am always fascinated when scientific reports confirm the biblical testimony of our forefathers.” Alpert, a father of eight children, is known for his research on the weather in Jerusalem, and he points to Psalm 48: “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, in the city of our God His holy mountain. Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion in the far north, the city of the great King.” The words “in elevation” are translated from the Hebrew word nof. “The meaning of nof is a ‘view’ or ‘panorama,’ but some biblical scholars also translate the word as ‘climate,’” says the professor. “So you can also read the passage as: ‘Beautiful is the climate in Jerusalem!’” (January 2015 IsraelToday Magazine).
Alpert’s argument is a testimony of how God looks after His creation in His very unique ways so that the people of God cannot live without Him. The following article issued in December last year by IsraelToday Magazine also testifies to how unpredictable the weather in “Eretz Yisrael” is.
November was one of the rainiest months Israel has ever had. In Jerusalem there was four times more rainfall than usual. According to Israeli meteorologists, there were only three years with more rainfall in Jerusalem: 1892, 1944 and 1986. The level of the Sea of Galilee, Israel’s biggest reservoir, rose by 5 centimeters (2 inches) which is not very common. Most of the rain came down in coastal areas and the hills of Jerusalem. The North was spared a little this time, but it started snowing on Mount Hermon on the strategic Golan Heights. The sight of water bursting through a parched and thirsty land was a rare spectacle. Dry river beds (or wadis) in the desert became roaring streams. Rescue teams repeatedly had to save people trapped in flash floods, this time in Wadi Og, 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) south of the biblical town of Jericho. The desert does not give a warning signal: no clouds, a shining sun—when suddenly a powerful rush of water surges through the wadi.
In Israel, rainfall mostly occurs between the Mediterranean coast and the mountain range of Judea and Samaria. From there, the rain flows downhill into the wadis near the Dead Sea, creating streams and waterfalls into the wilderness. Even the Bible describes it: “For thus says the Lord, ‘You shall not see wind nor shall you see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water, so that you shall drink, both you and your cattle and your beasts” (2 Kings 3:17). That’s why the winter months are dangerous in the Judean Desert if there is heavy rain in Jerusalem. Flash floods or not, the early precipitation was an encouragement as two of the rainiest months, January and February, are still ahead. Israel’s reservoirs and aquifers remain depleted, so please pray for more abundant rain!
Acknowledging such characteristics of the climate in “Eretz Yisrael” helps us understand the Scripture better. For example, it supports why God ordained every male Israelite to appear before Him three times a year at the central sanctuary Jerusalem to commemorate His care in the wilderness and celebrate it with joy during spring to autumn but not winter. It also supports the argument that Jesus Christ could not have been born in winter time when much of the land was impassable. Accordingly, the Roman Empire in Christ’s time took a census every fourteen years for military and tax purposes and no Roman administrator would require this for her province “Eretz Yisrael” in winter. It must have been before early October when Joseph traveled up to Bethlehem through Judea from Nazareth in Galilee with Mary for the census. Christ Himself also warned His followers to earnestly pray for God’s favour in their future crisis: ‘Pray that your flight will not take place in winter or on the Sabbath’ (Matt.24:20, Line added), and as a result it was in Autumn that Christians in Jerusalem fled to the Trans-Jordan mountains, Pella, before the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in 70 CE and they were all saved.