Date: 26 July 2002
Subject: Cosmology

"World Ends Feb 1st 2019"

Scientists have detected a giant asteroid heading towards Earth which could wipe out humanity.

This was the headline in one newspaper this week. With precision rivaling Ussher, the predicted impact time is 11.47 am that day, so make sure you take your morning coffee break early. This particular Armageddon rock is called 2002 NT7, and it is between 0.6 and 2.5 miles across. An impact at 18 miles per second would wipe out a continent and throw up enough dust to block out the sun and bring devastation to organic life and our food chains.

Last month, a soccer-field-sized asteroid missed the Earth by some 75,000 miles in one of the closest known approaches by an object that size. Something this the size of NT7 is calculated to strike earth every few million years, and most scientists believe that an even larger meteor some 6-9 miles wide struck the earth some 65 million years ago and led to effective extinction of most dinosaurs.

How should Christians react to such news? Young-earth creationists will presumably doubt the whole model on which the effects of such impacts are made. But what about those of us Christians who take such science seriously though not as infallible? If God has set out a timetable then surely nothing can alter it? Should we not therefore worry about threatening asteroids?

The basis issue here is fatalism. On an individual level, if God has a plan for my life does it matter what I choose to do? If Jesus promised that God would feed his servants like the sparrows who neither sow nor reap, then should we not bother with sowing or reaping? Surely it does matter. We have a responsibility to act for the temporal benefit of both ourselves and humanity, provided that this is neither to the detriment of our spiritual welfare nor leads us into pure anxiety. God originally gave the world to humankind to be their "dominion". Although sin has marred this (and we see today what greed and selfishness is doing to the environment), we still have responsibilities. Christians no less than others should support the monitoring of such asteroid threats and where possible appropriate action to be taken. In the meantime, we have the action films about them!"