With the advent of the nuclear age some scientists got together and invented a metaphor for the end of civilization as we know it, the Doomsday Clock. It first appeared in 1947 and was set 17 minutes to midnight for the curtain to fall on humanity. It was meant to highlight our proximity to nuclear holocaust. Since its inception the clock has been reset 23 times, each one supposedly moving humanity closer to self-destruction.
The clock in January a year ago was at one hundred seconds til midnight with the new threats of climate change, the proliferation of disinformation, Russia invading the Ukraine, and North Korea declaring itself a nuclear power. The group of Chicken Littles known as the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists who manage the clock said, “We now have a true emergency.” I suppose the last 22 times the clock was moved were not “true” emergencies.
This January 2023 the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists updated the Doomsday Clock for the 24th time to ninety seconds until midnight, ten seconds closer than last year. Bulletin President Rachel Bronson said, “We are sending a message that the situation is becoming more urgent. Crises are more likely to happen and have broader consequences and longer standing effects.”
Here are some predictions by scientists that never came true:
Climate specialists claimed, “global cooling trends” observed between WWII and the 1970s predicted the global temperatures by 2000 would be “eleven degrees cooler.” Twice what was needed for a modern ice age. Newsweek published an article in 1975 titled “The Cooling World” and Time carried a story in 1974 asking “A New Ice Age?”
Of course, climate specialists are now predicting the opposite; it’s global warming not global cooling that is going to get us.
In the early 1970’s there were forecasts that the earth’s population was growing faster than its ability to produce food, four billion people would starve to death, 65 million in America alone. The earth’s population has continued to boom, and the numbers of those starving have dropped significantly because of an increase rather than a decrease in food production.
In 1970 particle pollution was predicted to become so great that people in urban areas would be forced to use breathing masks and particle clouds would block sunlight to the point that agricultural production would see a significant drop, it didn’t happen. Read the preceding paragraph.
These are a few of the predictions from the 1970s. Each successive generation has had dire predictions from the scientific community that have failed to come true. Scientists do a poor job of seeing into the distant past or the near future, just look at a weather report.
Here is a news flash, Doomsday has not happened yet. This is because it is an inconvenient truth that scientists make poor prophets.
The Bible stands in stark contrast. Scholars say 25% of the Scriptures when originally penned were predictions about the future and approximately 95% of those prophecies have come to pass with the remaining prophecies of the apocalyptic genre yet to be fulfilled. It appears divine prophecy has a better track record than scientific predictions.
That is why I believe what Peter wrote, “But by His word the present heavens and earth are being reserved for fire, kept for the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men … But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat, and the earth and its works will be burned up,” 2 Peter 3: 7, 10.
I suppose global warming is going to get us in “the day of the Lord,” and that will be Doomsday for some.
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