Does the Bible provide a framework for understanding the possibility of a human-caused global apocalypse? By “apocalypse,” I am referring to the popular understanding, which means a global catastrophe or the end of the world rather than the precise biblical meaning which refers to the “unveiling.” Scripture begins with God creating the heavens and the earth. Consequently, creation belongs to Him.
Psalm 24:1 declares, “The earth is the LORD’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.” Genesis 18:25 calls God “the Judge of all the earth.” Deuteronomy 32:39 says, “I kill and I make alive.” The universal Flood of Genesis 6-9 also demonstrates God’s jurisdiction over creation and humanity. Human beings have been given stewardship over creation, not ultimate sovereignty over creation.
No corporation, government, scientist, technological system, or artificial intelligence possesses the moral authority to determine whether the human race should continue to exist. That prerogative belongs to God alone. At Babel, humanity united technologically, culturally and politically, around a project that represented autonomous human power. God said, “nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them” (Genesis 11:6).
Whatever one’s interpretation of Matthew 24 regarding the destruction of Jerusalem or the end of the age, Jesus also presents an important principle regarding God’s limitation of catastrophic destruction: “And if those days had not been cut short, no human being would be saved. But for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short” (Matthew 24:22). Thus, Scripture repeatedly presents God as capable of placing boundaries around human evil and destruction.
This does not mean humanity cannot cause enormous devastation. Nuclear weapons alone demonstrate that possibility. It means that humanity cannot ultimately overthrow the sovereign purposes of God.