Lie Number 2: Depletion
Lie Number 2. The World Is Soon Going To Run Out Of Food And Natural Resources
I will quickly state at the outset again that I am not advocating bringing children into the world prayerlessly and recklessly regardless of personal circumstances and conditions. I believe in family planning between God and the married couple. Above all, spiritual planning, i.e. how to best bring up our children in the fear and admonition of the Lord, so that we don’t bring them into one world, and cause them to pass eternally into a far worse! It is better to be unborn than to be raised up badly.
Nor am I in any way suggesting the squandering of earth’s natural resources. America has more garbage than many nations have food. God will not spare a nation from judgment that dumps more than it eats. It is man’s God-given responsibility to multiply, fill the earth, and to subdue it. (Genesis 1:28) That simply means that God gave man dominion over everything in God’s creation so as to meet his own needs and the needs of the world. Man will give account to God for his stewardship or failure in it.
However, with that said, no, the world is not on the brink of exhausting food and natural resource supplies. What do I base that on? The Rock of Ages! God tells us in Matthew 6:30 that He literally clothes the grass of the field, and if He does that, will He not much more do so for you, O men of little faith? Whatever grass blades wear, God puts that glorious green array upon their backs. He assures us in Psalm 104:21 that the lions on the plains of Africa seek their food from God. Amazing! If anything, one would think that lions would be able to hunt and provide for themselves. Nope! Their roars are prayers, and God hears their prayers and provides their food!
Jesus says about the birds in Matthew 6:26, “Look at the birds of the air, they do not sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not worth much more than they?” In truth, the robin doesn’t know where his next worm is coming from. Did you ever see a robin with a nervous breakdown? God then says about all creatures in Psalm 104:27, “They all wait for Thee, to give them their food in due season.” I thrill to the words of Psalm 104:28, “…Thou dost open Thy hand, they are satisfied with good.”
So Jesus says to us in Matthew 6:31, “Do not be anxious then, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?'” He goes on in verses 32-33, “…for your Heavenly Father knows that you need all things. But seek first His Kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” You have God our Father’s word on that! However, the promise is conditional, for it is given to those whose spiritual appetites are greater priorities than their physical appetites! Would to God that religious people’s spiritual appetites were at least as boundless and unlimited as their physical appetites these days! Often our stomachs growl louder than our spirits. Would to God that religious people would at least prepare themselves for Christ’s coming with as much zeal as they prepare for their next meal. Only those who have oil in their lamps can be assured that they will have food on their plates.
He feeds all mankind too! The Psalmist in Psalm 17:14 says about God and the masses of mankind who do not even know Him, “…And whose belly Thou dost fill with Thy treasure….” They all are fed by the same One Whom they curse. God causes the rains to fall and the sun to shine on the just and the unjust. God’s power never produces what His goodness will not sustain. The same goodness which moved Him to create equally moves Him to provide. Which is exactly why He comes so strongly against heads of homes who do not provide for their own, as He says in I Timothy 5:8, “But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.” God practices what He preaches.
Jesus taught us to pray ” Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread” (Matthew 6:11)
Why? Certainly man can provide simple bread for himself. No he cannot. Heaven is our breadbox, not America. God is our source, not us! We are totally and prayerfully dependent upon Him, for as He made us and the whole world from nothing, He alone is the One who keeps us from relapsing into nothingness again. As fruit is produced by the tree, it also hangs in total dependence upon the tree for its very life! That is how it is with God and man. That very creaturely dependence upon the Creator is what causes Him to provide for His creatures in mercy and love. And the Lord gives His children, whom He often refers to as the righteous, this glorious promise of guaranteed sustenance in Psalm 37:25 where the Psalmist says, “I have been young, and now I am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, or his descendants begging bread.” My parents and grandparents found that to be true in the great depression. They didn’t eat like kings, but they did eat.
Does that mean that man has no responsibility? No, of course not! As in all relationships, there are two components – God’s supply and man’s stewardship of it! For instance, in India, their constant battle with hunger is due to their religious beliefs primarily, all of which are contrary to the Word of God. Secular humanists and sociologists never take this into account. In India, the Hindu religion teaches that when people die they are reincarnated in the form of animals. One of the most important elements of the Hindu religion is reincarnation. Therefore it is forbidden in their religion to kill rats, mice, dogs, cows and other animals. Why? Because they might be the reincarnation of your Uncle Zoongash or Aunt Heeposh or someone else! There are hundreds of millions of sacred cows in India. In New Delhi the cows literally have convalescent homes.
Dear God help them to see through these fallacies and start eating the cows for food, and stop feeding the cows all the food! Use the grain of which one cow eats enough daily to feed seven people every 24 hours. They then would have enough grain to feed the nation and then some. India has over 1/4th of the world’s population, many of which die of starvation and sickness in the streets, then are thrown into wagons to be buried in unmarked graves. I have never seen it, but I have talked to those who have. It is heartrending.
God has provided within His created order the food supply which is more than enough to feed the world. There is not even the slimmest excuse for people in Africa dying daily by the thousands, while America and Europe gorge themselves into blimpdom. There is not a lack of food in the world. There is a despicable lack of compassionate stewardship. Let alone the food resources in the oceans which cover 2/3rds of the earth’s surface, there is now the food supply of dried foods and dehydrated foods which have all the elements of a balanced diet. The world’s food problem is not a lack of food, but a lack of wisdom and heart.
In our lifetime, there have been huge strides in the reclamation of vast areas of land around the world that were formerly tossed aside as barren wastelands. Until very recently, the land of Israel was one of those barren areas that you would not choose for a vacation or for your retirement home. But God made the ancient promise about the land of Israel:
The Wilderness And The Desert Will Be Glad. It Will Blossom Profusely…. Isaiah 35:1-2
Israel now has irrigation canals that run from the Sea of Galilee. They pour the water into the deserts of Israel and now Israel blossoms like a rose. Israel has over the years become one of the world’s major exporters of fruit, and not only that, but of roses, which is the literal fulfillment of Bible prophecy. There are vast lands in the world like Israel that remain undeveloped, and if the world goes hungry, it will not be God’s fault for under-providing. It is and will be man’s selfish love affair with himself, IGM – I Got Mine! Likewise, as long as man continues to worship the elk-creatures rather than the Creator (Romans 1:25), he will not be able to expand drilling for oil in Alaska’s very promising North Slope. The problems always come down to man’s selfishness and creature worship, not God’s bountiful supply.
