Question

essay on planet in crisis

Answer 1

It is argued that what turns a significant event into a crisis is when it affects you. When tragedy touches someone else in an unfamiliar part of the world, it’s somehow less of a crisis and more just “a shame.” “What a shame about those attacks! Think of it—here, in this country... Well, I must take the dog for a walk ...”

Genocide in Rwanda is a tragedy of immense proportions, but it’s easy to see it as somebody else’s problem when you’re removed from it by thousands of kilometres. A tornado, flood or fire devastating someone else’s town is disastrous. But when it smashes through yours—and it’s you who’s sifting through the ruins of your home picking photos out of the mud and you don’t have a place to sleep or clean water to drink—then it’s a crisis.

On many levels we’ve reached a crisis point as a planet. The reason this is important to realise is that in the Bible, Jesus went to great lengths to point out observable indicators that would portend the end of the world and His return to earth.

And what Jesus revealed then indicates strongly that we’re now living in the time to which He then referred.

Having spoken of signs in the religious world, of international conflicts, natural disasters and disease, He announced His second coming by saying, “When you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door” (Matthew 24:33; italics added).

It certainly isn’t alarmist to believe we’re living in the crisis that precedes the return of Jesus. And wisdom suggests that people should read such signs for what they are: indicators that time is short for Planet Earth, even if we don’t know just how brief that might be