You Destroyed The Wild Animals So Now Their Terror Will Be Yours

The Minor Prophets Speak to Today

God Does Care About The Destruction of Species

Habakkuk 2:17b

 _____________________________________________________

You destroyed the wild animals, so now their terror will be yours.

 _____________________________________________________   

Many modern Christians would be surprised that the Bible has something to say about the extinction of animals. 

Here is a point where the Bible stands in surprising contrast to the theories of evolution.

God did not plan the destruction of wild animals. In other world, the death of a species, or apparently subspecies, is not God's plan for creation. 

Now it's not all as simple as that statement and how that truth works out in a fallen world remains a thought to consider. But apparently when we become responsible for the destruction of wild animals, God cares.

Now other Bible texts would likely exclude controlled hunting from God's condemnation, but even hunting was not originally part of God's plan for creation. Man killing animals started after the Fall and found greater regulation after the Flood.

And this passage does not limit itself to the issue of extinction. It includes destruction by killing without reason. It includes destruction but the destruction of habitat such as done by the Babylonians. It includes destruction by all human means that do not take in the consideration of God's love for his creation - specifically here his love for wild animals.

We cannot rightly steward the earth and willfully destroy the wild animals. God notices and God cares.

And his judgment against the people, lands, nations that do is precise:

 

Their Terror Will Be Yours!

Perhaps we Christians should study just how that has been so throughout former and present history. Could it be another factor in the was of terrorism that God is visiting upon us?

Photo Credits: (all of these are extinct animals)

Carolina Parakeet @ Wikimedia Commons
Pyrenean ibex @ Getty Images
Blue Walleye @ Wikimedia Commons
Golden toad @ Wikimedia Commons
West African black rhino @ Wikimedia Commons
Spix's macaw @ ZUMA Press