Abstract
Catastrophic effects of climate change invite comparisons with the “plagues” or wounds of the earth described in chapters 15 and 16 of the Book of Revelation. The seven Bowls of Wrath can be interpreted as an ecological parable for the decades ahead, as the impact of several centuries of human exploitation of natural resources and the effects of pollution threaten to result in a number of global calamities in the areas of human and animal health, environmental decline, habitat destruction, population displacement, and physical suffering caused by increasingly violent and frequent storms. Although symbolic admonitions, the “bowls of wrath” demonstrate an unusually sophisticated insight into the organic connection that exists among biological and geological systems and also the consequences of wantonly disrupting this balance through human greed, oppression, and malice. Finally, the compensating divine response to ecocatastrophe ends not in ultimate punishment, but the renewal of the cosmos and the healing of the nations. Revelation is a message of hope as well as warning and a summons to repent.
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