While modernity often mocks the Scriptures, especially with regard to its apocalyptic predictions about the future (2 Peter 3:1-9), it remains completely unaware of how fundamental the biblical eschaton is to its own outlook. In fact, modernity would not modern without it. Most evolutionary and revolutionary ideas about progress within history leading to some hopeful goal in the future are firmly rooted in the biblical tradition. Indeed, biblical history progresses from the Old to the New Testaments which eventually culminates in a catastrophic, yet victorious messianic outcome (Jeremiah 30-31; Matthew 24-25; 2 Thessalonians 1-2; Revelation 6-20). Having grown up under western civilization’s strong Christian foundations, modern man has imbibed deeply from the biblical-eschatological view of history in spite of his secularity, “we of today, concerned with the unity of universal history and with its progress toward an ultimate goal or at least toward a better world, are still in the line of prophetic and messianic monotheism – however little we may think of ourselves in those terms.”[i]
"Christian theology about the apocalypse has been transposed into secular progressive ideologies like Socialism, Marxism, and even Nazism as well"
Christian theology about the apocalypse has been transposed into secular progressive ideologies like Socialism, Marxism, and even Nazism as well. As Christianity receded behind the wave of naturalism and secularism in western culture, apocalyptic political hubris filled in the vacuum left behind. Ironically enough, this has also led to insoluble political burdens which continue to haunt the modern mindset as ideologues, policy analysts and politicians foist upon unsuspecting populaces the full crushing weight of their apocalyptic concerns, “the moderns elaborate a philosophy of history by secularizing theological principles and applying them to an ever increasing number of empirical facts.”[ii]
"Such an apocalyptic outlook has placed unprecedented burdens on modern society and has also left the hard sciences in the lurch by requiring an evidential basis for catastrophic global warming"
That the great ‘global’ push to combat catastrophic global warming began in Germany Darwin ’s theory of natural selection and converted it into a naturalistic eschatological process that required racial eugenic action to save Germany
Here, even the Nazis got in on the action when Hitler proclaimed a future 1,000 year Millennial Reich for
More troublesome still is that the original popularizer of apocalyptic global warming is Guenther Schwab (1904-2006), a former Austrian Nazi.[iii] In 1958, Schwab wrote a fictional novel built off of Goethe’s (1749-1832) Faustian play entitled “Dance with the Devil.” While a few scientists since the late 1800’s had contemplated the possibility of minor global warming coming from industrial pollution, Schwab used Goethe’s dramatic approach to convert the theory into an apocalyptic crisis. The book outlines many looming environmental emergencies, including anthropogenic global warming. Guenther Schwab’s very popular novel was an apocalyptic game changer. By the early 1970’s, it had been translated into several languages and had sold over a million copies.
"Schwab used Goethe’s dramatic approach to convert the theory into an apocalyptic crisis"
At one point in his novel, Schwab opines over the fragile relationship between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Assuming the planet has only about 100 years remaining, Schwab frets over the continuing rise of carbon dioxide which “will absorb and hold fast the warmth given out by the earth. This will cause the climate to become milder and the Polar ice will begin to thaw. As a result, there will be a rise in the level of the ocean and whole continents will be flooded.” As such, three decades before Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth,” green Nazi Guenther Schwab played an early important role in catalyzing the frightening theory of global warming. With no small thanks to Schwab, the Great Tribulation of Global Warming was ushered into the modern consciousness behind the collapse of the Millennial 1,000 year Third Reich.
Long before the international green community spent billions of dollars on global warming research, Schwab had already clearly spelled out the doomsday climate apocalypse in 1958. However, what was required was rational scientific support beyond a religious Faustian play. This later proved to be much harder to come by than many had first anticipated. With no small irony, just as Schwab’s book sales began to develop exponentially in the late 50’s and early 60’s, this was also the about the same timeframe that the IPCC global warming researchers began to “hide the decline” by artificially removing some of their proxy data that they relied on in order to help calibrate their scheme with actual observable temperatures to strengthen the infamous hockey stick graph. Thanks largely to the apocalyptic burden being placed upon global warming researchers, the hockey stick graph has thus become a fascist boomerang.
Schwab had been a strong nature lover since boyhood, and by the 1920’s he became very active in the emerging environmental movement in
"The dropping of the atom bomb and the nuclear fallout of the Cold War helped to globalize the greens into an apocalyptic ‘peace’ movement with Guenther Schwab being one of its original spokesmen"
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After the war in the 1950’s, Guenther Schwab’s brand of environmentalism also played a fundamental role in the development of the green anti-nuclear movement in West Germany Germany
Later, Guenther Schwab joined the advisory panel of the “Society of Biological Anthropology, Eugenics and Behavior Research.” Schwab was especially concerned with the burgeoning overpopulation explosion of the Third World that he was sure would eventually overrun Europe . By advocating modern racial science based on genetics, Schwab believed that the population bomb, together with its associated environmental degradation, could be averted. Here, Schwab’s mixing of environmentalism and eugenics can be directly traced back to the Nazi SS doctrine of ‘blood and soil’ – an eco-imperialistic worldview that had devastating consequences on the Eastern Front in World War II.
The success of Schwab’s book helped him to establish an international environmental organization called “The World League for the Defense of Life.” Not surprisingly, Werner Haverbeck, former Hitler Youth member and Nazi environmental leader of the Reich’s League for Folk National Character and Landscape, later became the chairman of Schwab’s organization. In 1973, Haverbeck blamed the environmental crisis in
Both Schwab’s organization and Haverbeck were also instrumental in establishing the German Green Party in 1980. Such embarrassing facts were later managed with some house cleaning and lots of cosmetics, which was further buoyed by characterizing such greens as extreme ‘far right’ ecologists – a counterintuitive label that continues to misdirect and plague all environmental studies of the Third Reich. While it may be true that the German greens have largely cleansed their party from environmental racism, many greens these days have mutated into anti-humanists with a special hatred for global capitalism American style. Exactly where the improvement fits in here is often difficult to fathom. There is thus a swastika in the German woods lurking in the historic background of the apocalyptic version of global warming.
"When science and politics become mixed up with eschatology, it goes without saying that policy analysts and scientific researchers have gone far afield from their given expertise"
"The fact of the matter is that without the resurrection, an apocalyptic goal-orientated view of history makes little sense"
More importantly, an eschatological view of history presupposes and requires the resurrection. The fact of the matter is that without the resurrection, an apocalyptic goal-orientated view of history makes little sense. Worse, is that it condemns and reduces all past generations to sacrificial stepping stones of a future glory which they will never be able to participate in or experience – all simply because they were born at the wrong time. This is precisely why the Bible sets forth an apocalyptic view of history. Its authors clearly understood that fallen man cannot fix a broken world ushered in by his sinful rebellion against the Creator of the earth (Genesis 3:1-24; Romans 5:12-21). Biblically understood, the apocalypse is something only the Lord of history can inaugurate according to His own sovereign timetable (Matthew 24:15-41; Acts 1:6-8). Neither is it something that must be hastened on by its followers (2 Thessalonians 2:1-12). One can only get ready for it by believing in Christ and by living a godly life (John 3:36; 2 Peter 3:10-18; Revelation 21:1-8; 22:14).
"While the apocalypse is everywhere predicted in the Bible as imminent, its suffering and destruction can only be escaped by faith in Christ"
While the apocalypse is everywhere predicted in the Bible as imminent, its suffering and destruction can only be escaped by faith in Christ, not by human religious works, much less political social activism, social engineering or environmental eugenics, “in the western world the problem of suffering has been faced in two different ways: by the myth of Promotheus and by the faith in Christ – the one a rebel, the other a servant. Neither antiquity nor Christianity indulged the modern illusion that history can be conceived as a progressive evolution which solves the problem of evil by way of elimination.”[iv]
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That man is saved by grace and not by works (Romans 3:21-4:8; Galatians 2:16) rules out modern eschatological hubris, “for by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).” Man is a pitiful sinner (Romans 3:10-20) in desperate need of the grace of God (Ephesians 2:1-6). What he really needs is the cross (1 Corinthians 1:18-31; Galatians 6:14), not an environmental fascist program to save the planet from too much carbon dioxide. More to the point, the answer to man’s problem, sin, has already been bought and paid for the precious blood of Christ according to the riches of God’s grace (1 Peter 1:18-20; Ephesians 1:7). In other words, God is not shaking down the American taxpayer in order to avert the impending apocalypse.
RMM I.F.
This article has been modified from the original posted on the American Thinker on February 15, 2011 entitled “The Nazi Origins of Apocalyptic Global Warming Theory.”
Mark Musser is the author of “Nazi Oaks: The Green Sacrificial Offering of the Judeo-Christian Worldview in the Holocaust” and a commentary on the warning passages in the book of Hebrews called “Wrath or Rest: Saints in the Hands of an Angry God.”
[iii] Gert Gröning, Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn, Stiftung Naturschutzgeschichte, Naturschutz und Demokratie!?: Dokumentation der Beiträge zur Veranstaltung der Stiftung Naturschutzgeschichte und des Zentrums für Gartenkunst und Landschaftsarchitektur (CGL) der Leibniz Universität Hannover in Kooperation mit dem Institut für Geschichte und Theorie der Gestaltung (GTG) der Universität der Künste Berlin, Martin Meidenbauer Verlag, 2006, p. 113.
