Seven Bowls of Wrath: the ecological relevance of Revelation

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Summer, 2008 by Richard Woods

The dire effect of the first bowl is an outbreak of festering sores on those who follow the Beast. Perhaps the most underestimated consequence of global climate change will be its adverse effects on the health of people worldwide, especially the poor, and among them the very young, the elderly, and those already infirm.

More than a decade-long series of reports from the World Health Organization (WHO) and other international agencies have warned with increasing urgency that global warming poses serious risks to human health. Wealthy developed countries such as the United States and most of Europe are better able to cope with environmental deterioration, but poor countries, especially those in Africa and tropical areas of Asia and Oceania, are much less so according to health experts. The elderly, sick, and poor are most at risk (Balbus & Wilson). A very recent report from the World Health Organization indicated that each year almost four million children under the age of five, particularly those in the poorest areas, die from the effects of environmental factors such as exposure to air and water pollution and toxic chemicals. Poisoning, respiratory diseases, diarrhoea, and malaria are the chief factors in these preventable deaths (Louis et al.).

During the past 25 years, at least 30 new diseases have emerged to threaten the health of hundreds of millions of people, including variants of viruses such as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and avian influenza. Malaria, the greatest killer of all time, is increasing in incidence and location, as disease-bearing anopheles mosquitoes move northward. Other tropical diseases will likewise begin to affect hitherto unlikely northern latitudes as the climate warms. Even diseases once almost epidemic in northern latitudes and thought in recent times to be on the verge of eradication have staged a vigorous return in recent years--tuberculosis, measles, diphtheria, cholera, typhoid fever, and whooping cough among them. Several extremely infectious and deadly, often incurable "new" diseases are almost certainly related to environmental disturbance, especially as humans penetrate deeper into areas uninhabited for millions of years. Among them are multi-symptom diseases such as AIDS and hemorrhagic fevers caused by the Ebola virus and other virtually immune agents of infection.

Bacterial and viral pneumonia, two of the biggest childhood killers in the world today, are increasingly resistant to drugs. According to the World Health Organization, however, tuberculosis is the world's greatest killer of adults, killing three million people a year. It is expected to result in a mortality of more than 100 million people within the next fifty years. A half-billion persons could become ill with tuberculosis in the same period. As an opportunistic infection, it is the leading cause of death among HIV-positive persons, killing one out of three.

According to a recent United Nations report based on five years of international study,