In a single moment of history, punctuated by two huge nuclear explosions, a new anxiety was born.

The atom bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki did more than destroy cities and the Japanese will to fight. They raised the human conscience to the possibility that we humans might have the power to destroy ourselves. They made "nuclear fallout" a household phrase. It was said that for the first time, human beings held the power to destroy their own, life-giving atmosphere. Overnight, we became anxious about the delicate nature of the air we breathe.

In short, men were reminded of their own mortality. In the 1950s and 60s, a new mentality developed: the quality of life was subtly linked to the shifting quality of the air. Once that happened, the far-reaching ramifications of human pollution began to create a growing fear that at some point, we might establish an irreversible chain of reactions that would render the air unusable. Today, that anxiety has reached the level of full-blown fear.

And fear is the raw fuel that feeds political power. It can be used by the unscrupulous to reassure the quavering soul that all is well. The politician says, "Simply follow my lead, and your fear will disappear." Having won their trust, he then places restrictions on the offenders that are accused of causing the problem. New bureaucracies arise (e.g., the Environmental Protection Agency). Solutions are proposed and suddenly, fear is miraculously eased. Or at least, that's the nature of the public announcements.

On the negative side, governmental regulations multiply, and restrictions blossom into existence like so many summer weeds. Remember the notorious ozone hole? About 1985, scientists in Antarctica documented the depletion of stratospheric ozone during the darkness of winter in the southern hemisphere. As they continued to observe the phenomenon, they concluded that it was growing.

Soon, it was depicted as a threat to mankind, possibly spreading to the temperate zones where earth is heavily populated. Ozone, which shields us from the Sun's ultraviolet radiation, was said to be disappearing! Dramatic scenarios were presented, in which millions would develop fatal maladies – various types of skin cancer, and eye disease. It was predicted that in the near future, no one would be able to venture outdoors unless they were completely covered by clothing and wearing dark glasses.

The great ozone-hole scare grew to dramatic proportions, when science finally pronounced that the great atmospheric rift was the result of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) leaking from spray cans, air conditioners and a few other sources. Never mind that the relationship between CFCs and the size of the ozone hole was never fully documented. In fact, to this day, the relationship between enlargement of the ozone hole and the damage caused by CFCs remains an unproven hypothesis.

Still, it became an emotional rallying point. The hysterical cries of the activists told us that humanity would be wiped out when the quantity of CFCs reached a certain tipping point. The destruction would become irreversible. Bureaucratic control exploded; budgets multiplied, and CFCs fell under tight scrutiny and control. Some types were actually banned.

This sort of thinking has made the atmosphere a battleground. A war now rages. Its armies are the political and bureaucratic forces that are currently in the process of seizing control of the environment on the grounds that they are saving the world. In fact, their frenzied activity is the perfect expression of protecting us "for our own good."

For Christians, the question is clear. Do we trust the Lord, or the state?

A new, "benevolent" dictatorship is arising. Like a wolf in sheep's clothing, its goal is control of the air we breathe. Catastrophe is the ultimate tool for totalitarianism, constantly unveiling new reasons to be afraid. Its latest embodiment is now seen in the growing "global warming" hysteria that surrounds theories about climate change. The enemy: carbon dioxide, the so-called "greenhouse gas."

It's depicted in these terms because it is transparent to incoming solar radiation, allowing it to reach the earth's surface, but it tends to trap that energy once it has been absorbed into air, water and soil. It performs like the glass in a greenhouse.

Demonizing Carbon Dioxide

By the late 1990s, the global effort to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses was rolling at full speed. Under the auspices of the United Nations (the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, [UNFCCC]), the Kyoto Protocol emerged. Its name came from Kyoto, the city in Japan where it was adopted on December 11, 1997.

Its complex system of rules divides countries into two groups … developed and non-developed, with a myriad of sub-categories, exemptions and penalties. But in general, it subjects participating governments to an annual greenhouse gas limit. Its goal is "Clean Development." But what it actually does is place repressive, authoritarian control of the global economy directly into the hands of the United Nations.

Furthermore, it takes the earth and sky out of the hands of a providential God, reducing them to the vagaries of human politics. Carbon is now the enemy, and the dreaded "carbon footprint" is the measure of its evil trail. One envisions huge tracks, left behind by some rampaging giant, as it tramples the environment.

In fact, the footprint is just an evil confabulation of ideas that supposedly calculate the impact of human activities on the environment, as measured in units of carbon dioxide. Supposedly, the more excess carbon dioxide that finds its way into the air, the faster will be the rise of global warming. Proponents of the system swear that they have scientific proof that human-produced carbon dioxide has taken a radical, exponential, upswing in the last few decades. Other equally-qualified scientists say that this is simply not true, or that we do not have the means to measure the change.

Whatever the case, the carbon footprint has now become a globally-accepted idea, and industries are already being debited for having too large a carbon footprint. Their only recourse is to involve themselves in activities, which produce "carbon offsets." Thus, too much carbon production can be compensated for, only by "beneficial" activities, such as planting new forests, purchasing wind power, investing in solar energy, and the like.

The only winners in this system are the czars of carbon emissions. If UNFCCC becomes mandatory, it will wield the awesome power of controlling the global means of production. And all this is achieved, by simply manipulating our perception of the air we breathe!

Who Really Controls the Air?

The atmosphere was designed by God as a self-purifying and self-regulating system. It constantly balances temperature, humidity, rainfall and a host of electrochemical variables that make life on planet earth pleasant and productive. It is a beautiful, flowing miracle that surrounds the earth, and reacts to changes that range from ground level to the high-energy patterns that swirl through the surrounding Solar system.

On spaceship earth, the atmosphere is constantly engaged in the process of making tiny adjustments that keep the surface environment at the levels required to sustain life. Its ionized upper layers have the power to deflect harmful radiation and the winds of raging solar storms. It is an interactive channeling device that performs as both shield and filter. Its complex patterns and eddies interact in ways precisely designed to maintain a perfect ground-level environment for man.

But the atmosphere is not merely a passive mechanism. It is a subtle and powerful instrument in the hands of God. To put it simply, God created this system, and He controls it. Through Moses, He left the Israelites no doubt about His expectations concerning their obedience. Notice in the following passage of Scripture, that good weather was one of the rewards for their proper behavior:

"Ye shall make you no idols nor graven image, neither rear you up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the LORD your God. Ye shall keep my sabbaths, and reverence my sanctuary: I am the LORD. If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase, and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit. And your threshing shall reach unto the vintage, and the vintage shall reach unto the sowing time: and ye shall eat your bread to the full, and dwell in your land safely. And I will give peace in the land, and ye shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid: and I will rid evil beasts out of the land, neither shall the sword go through your land" (Leviticus 26:1-6).

Rainfall at the proper time is an invaluable asset to any nation. And the critical confluence of events necessary to bring it about is far beyond even modern man, with all his computers, electronics and cloud-seeding technology. Breaking a drought or altering the path of a hurricane still lies uniquely within the province of God.

Through Elijah the prophet, God demonstrated that He is the Lord of the weather. At the end of Elijah's prophesied three and a half years of drought, the rain came in a most miraculous way:

"And Elijah said unto Ahab, Get thee up, eat and drink; for there is a sound of abundance of rain. So Ahab went up to eat and to drink. And Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; and he cast himself down upon the earth, and put his face between his knees, and said to his servant, Go up now, look toward the sea. And he went up, and looked, and said, There is nothing. And he said, Go again seven times. And it came to pass at the seventh time, that he said, Behold, there ariseth a little cloud out of the sea, like a man's hand. And he said, Go up, say unto Ahab, Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not. And it came to pass in the mean while, that the heaven was black with clouds and wind, and there was a great rain. And Ahab rode, and went to Jezreel" (I Kings 18:41-45).

If there was ever any doubt about God's ability to control the atmosphere at the most miniscule level, this narrative removes it, completely. From the beautiful prospect atop Mt. Carmel, Elijah and his servant surveyed the Mediterranean horizon toward the west.

Spiritually, the prophet actually heard the sound of distant rain. A deluge was on the way! As he prayed, his servant looked westward again and again, finally sighting a small cloud in the distance.

It must have been a growing cloud, fed by rising air currents that filled it with moisture from the sea below. It began to loom into what we now call a towering cumulus cloud, topped by the familiar windswept anvil, caused by high winds in the upper atmosphere.

Quickly, the parched land was overshadowed by what must surely have been a gigantic squall line. Dry gulches were soon awash with flowing water and the land was refreshed, all as a lesson to Israel about who controls the clouds, wind and sky … including ozone and carbon dioxide!

But perhaps the ultimate statement on the matter of atmospheric control comes to us as part of a magnificent discourse given by God to Job. In no uncertain terms, He tells Job about the flow of the upper atmosphere (which we now refer to as the jet stream), and its connection with snow, hail and rain. He even tells Job about the coming "Day of the Lord," with its multitude of weather catastrophes:

"Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? or hast thou seen the treasures of the hail, which I have reserved against the time of trouble, against the day of battle and war? By what way is the light parted, which scattereth the east wind upon the earth? Who hath divided a watercourse for the overflowing of waters, or a way for the lightning of thunder; to cause it to rain on the earth, where no man is; on the wilderness, wherein there is no man; to satisfy the desolate and waste ground; and to cause the bud of the tender herb to spring forth? Hath the rain a father? or who hath begotten the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice? and the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it? The waters are hid as with a stone, and the face of the deep is frozen" (Job 38:22-30).

The "east wind" is the biblical way of speaking of the upper-atmospheric streams that direct the flow of the weather. It becomes a tool of judgment in the hands of the Lord, not as the result of man's puny activities.

Especially, note that God causes the rain to fall, regardless of the presence or absence of man, and his activities!

What, Exactly, Is the Air?

The lower levels of our atmosphere extend from sea level up to a little over three and a half miles (around 20,000 feet) high. This is what the man on the street regards as "air." In fact, as we shall see, this distinction is of great biblical importance.

Above this, at the altitude of the highest mountaintops, we arrive at the region that climatologists call the "troposphere." Its lower levels begin at about three and a half miles, and extend upward to about twelve and a half miles. This is the realm of intercontinental jet travel, the thin air where the efficiency of high-speed engines is at its maximum. It is also the region of jet-stream flow, the great determiner of weather patterns that range back and forth across the surface of the earth. Again, from the biblical point of view, it is important to distinguish between this region and the lower atmosphere. At the upper levels of this region the air is far too thin to breathe.

Above the troposphere and extending to about thirty miles is the "stratosphere." Here, the only intruders are occasional weather balloons, rockets and experimental jets. From here upward to about fifty miles is the "mesosphere," home of the meteors, which we see from earth's surface as shooting stars.

Five Major Components

The atmosphere's constituent parts fall into five major categories, plus a tiny quantity of other gasses. Its largest portion (78%) is nitrogen gas. It lends thermal and chemical stability to the overall system.

Oxygen, the next largest part of the atmosphere, constitutes about 21% of the total mixture of gasses. In contrast to nitrogen, it is highly reactive. Life processes, of course, depend upon the unique qualities of this gas, which chemically combines with many substances, and is vital to the metabolic processes of all living creatures.

At this point, we've identified 99% of the atmosphere. Now, we'll look at the last, small one percent:

The third most prominent gas is argon, at a mere 0.9%. Though less than a single percent of the total volume, it is quite active in shielding earth from solar radiation. It is chemically inert.

Notice that the next ranking gas is the one that gets all the publicity. It is the gas that global warming enthusiasts eagerly demonize as the cause for what they proclaim to be a catastrophic temperature rise. It is carbon dioxide, comprising only 0.03% of the total atmospheric volume. That's three one-hundredths of one percent!

Those who would criminalize the carbon footprint say that carbon dioxide gas is growing at a dangerous rate. But theorists can't say for sure whether its volume is actually changing, or for what reason. That is unimportant. What must be emphasized is that global agencies are attempting to control society on the pretext of protecting and preserving it from the growth of this "greenhouse gas."

The rest of the atmosphere is made up of water vapor and a miniscule trace amount of other inert gasses.

To sum up: The total volume of atmosphere is comprised of about 99% nitrogen and oxygen. Within the remaining 1% is carbon dioxide, which every human exhales with each respiration, coming in at only a scant 0.03%! This mixture is the air we breathe. It is stable, but flexible … designed to adjust, when necessary, to support life on earth.

A Conflict Rages

Half the total volume of the atmosphere lies below about 20,000 feet. As mentioned earlier, it is quite important to keep in mind that this is what the Bible calls the "air." It is the realm of an ancient, raging conflict. Though the battle is staged at the spiritual level, it involves a distinct three-dimensional territory.

In his great letter to the Ephesians, Paul writes about the position and situation of the body of Christ in the fallen world. As in other epistles, he emphasizes that those safe in Christ have become heavenly citizens. Formerly, they were slaves of Satan's world, which Paul characterizes in a very special way:

"And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience: among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others" (Ephesians 2:1-3).

Without a doubt, Satan is in mind here. The phrase, "prince of the power of the air," is literally rendered, "the ruler of the authority of the air." And so he is. One has only to remember the temptation of Christ, as the devil – Satan – took Jesus high up to a "mountain," which must surely be his lair, or headquarters. Once there, he laid out the traditional proposition, "I'll make Him an offer He can't refuse":

"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; and saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him" (Matthew 4:8-11).

The one thing that must be said about Satan's offer is that it couldn't possibly have been a genuine and appealing temptation if he didn't possess the goods. He offered the kingdoms of the world because they were his to offer. Jesus, knowing this, refused him, choosing to receive the Kingdom as a rightful heir, rather than taking the easy way out. Jesus could have bypassed all the torment, humiliation, torture and frustration of His earthly ministry, but chose to endure the trial of crucifixion, in order to legitimately receive the position due Him as King.

Think for a moment about Paul's description of Satan as ruler of a million delegated authorities. He gives orders and assigns power to his minions, who flit back and forth through the atmosphere, plying their evil trade: the subjugation of lost souls and subversion of global power blocs.

If our present experience is a measure, they even become visible at times, as the dark and fearful lights in the night, bent on tasks too evil to be discussed in most circles. Lately, many books have been written on the subject of what are called UFOs. It has long since been concluded that these intruders leave their trails of abductions, mutilations, deaths and spiritual wreckage all over the world.

But like their corrupt leader, their natural abode is in the "air." For reasons that will follow, this is an important distinction.

At the time that Paul wrote Ephesians, common Greek-speaking citizens identified the "air" by the word aer [ahr], which to them, signified the atmosphere from sea level to the tops of the highest mountains. The atmosphere above the mountaintops, they called aither [aiqhr]. This word comes down to us in modern English as "ether," the rarified, unbreatheable air, which the ancients saw as extending all the way to the Moon.

As earlier stated, we make roughly the same distinction today. For us, the lower atmosphere extends upward to about 20,000 feet. Above that is the rarified region of the troposphere.

To quote a well-known biblical commentary, "The Greek made a distinction between the impure element of air and purer ether, thus finding in the former a place of abode for imperfect spirits. Like all animism, popular Greek belief peopled the air with all kinds of spirits, who had to be taken into account. Later Judaism sharply distinguished between angels and demons, and found in the air the abode of the latter. In line with early Christian thinking, Paul links with this the idea of an organized kingdom under the single ruler Satan…," e.g. Eph. 2:2. [Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, Kittel, vol. 1, p. 165]

In very real historic terms, Paul's words summon up all the false religions of history. In the east, the dragon has flown through the Asian skies for four millennia. He is still their primary deity, and all their legends speak of the fact that he has been temporarily deposed, scheming for ways to arrive once again at his original position of power.

Today's Chinese still speak of the dragon in terms of glory, which will someday rise again to power. The theme of the dragon and the disk may be seen in any Chinese restaurant. Statues, pendants, carvings and paintings picture the flying dragon with a fiery disk just beyond his lips. The tiny disk or sphere is called the pearl of wisdom. As the legend goes, one day the dragon will catch up with the disk, eat it and experience the restoration of his lost power.

Virtually every culture on earth has a pagan history that involves some manifestation of the dragon. To the Incas and Aztecs, he was the feathered serpent, called Quetzalcoatl. To the Europeans, he was a sea monster, or flying serpent. In India and the Middle East, he was (and is) a god of great wisdom, who will rise to power at some point in the future.

The demons – his aerial retinue – are always depicted in the Bible as the originators of false religions:

"Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving: for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer" (I Timothy 4:1-5).

And there, we have it. The region of the lower atmosphere is populated by a profusion of dark spirits who work through various forms of seduction – avarice, power, greed, arrogance, pride, intellectualism and so on – to cultivate devious forms of false religion. The "doctrines of devils" would take thousands of pages to document in full, even if we limit them to the deviant forms of Christianity witnessed in the last two thousand years.

These "seducing spirits" create lies with abandon, and invent moral codes out of whole cloth, conceived to control their followers. Their motive is the exact opposite of the freedom that we experience through Christ. They specialize in the clandestine implantation of traditions and protocols designed to enslave their followers, keeping them ignorant in the process.

The lower atmosphere is their domain. Their deep desire is to control it.

Fowls of the Air

In many ways, these demons are like unclean birds that opportunistically swoop down to take advantage of their careless victims. Jesus depicted them in exactly this way, when He taught on the subject of salvation, redemption and the mystery of the Kingdom of God:

"And he began again to teach by the sea side: and there was gathered unto him a great multitude, so that he entered into a ship, and sat in the sea; and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land. And he taught them many things by parables, and said unto them in his doctrine, hearken; behold, there went out a sower to sow: And it came to pass, as he sowed, some fell by the way side, and the fowls of the air came and devoured it up. And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: but when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away. And some fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up, and choked it, and it yielded no fruit. And other fell on good ground, and did yield fruit that sprang up and increased; and brought forth, some thirty, and some sixty, and some an hundred. And he said unto them, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear" (Mark 4:1-9).

In this parable, we find an amazingly artful description of the Word of God, which Jesus described as seed, sown in the hope of a bountiful harvest. It is a beautiful picture of salvation from the Lord's point of view.

Some of the seeds failed to take root; some were choked out by weeds. But notice in particular that the first and foremost problem encountered by the sower of seed came in the manner of birds that stole his seed. Jesus explained it this way:

"The sower soweth the word.

"And these are they by the way side, where the word is sown; but when they have heard, Satan cometh immediately, and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts" (Mark 4:14,15).

This is precisely what Paul meant when he wrote of "doctrines of devils," that steal the word out of the hearts of those who might otherwise come to belief. In His Kingdom parables, Jesus often used the image of birds flying through the air, to portray the activities of evil spirits.

One of the best known of these images is given in very condensed form as the parable of a mustard plant:

"Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof" (Matthew 13:31,32).

As in all the Kingdom parables, the rise of the faithful is always accompanied by a corresponding rise in evil activity in Satan's kingdom of darkness. The tares grow up among the wheat; leavening is found in three measures of meal; when drawn in, the fishing net contains both good fish and bad.

But over it all is the realm of the air, and it is filled with all manner of evil traffic, bent upon frustrating the blessed work of the Gospel. The unclean birds of the air infest the redemptive efforts of the saints. They are the demons.

Arena of Conflict

Biblically, the region of the lower atmosphere is Satan's arena. Perhaps our natural instinct is to think of him as master of some heavenly realm. But in fact, his focus is upon the systems of this world. He and his underlings have the power to appear here at will, and to affect the developments that range back and forth across earth's surface.

And now, they threaten to totally subvert the great powers of the earth. A tiny percentage of the air has been identified as a villain, actually a straw man, set up to divert the attention of humanity, while it unites the world against carbon dioxide.

Satan is clever, and he knows the air like no one else. After all, it has been his back yard for millennia. Today, he has conspired to cloud men's minds with the idea that their very existence is threatened by the air, itself. He has convinced godless men that they are about to commit suicide on a global scale, and that the only possible relief is through draconian controls.

Men, who arrogantly magnify their own power to change nature, are only too willing to believe that someone must take command. Following the Kyoto Protocols, they are fully prepared to allow a small group – the UNFCCC – to unite the planet in order to save it. If, as most of them believe, there is no God, then our only hope is full-scale war in the battlefield of the air.

It's almost comical that carbon dioxide, the tiny portion of the air exhaled by humans and inhaled by plants the world over, could be convincingly painted as the great carbon villain. But in fact, men without God will believe anything. Fearful of their own mortality, they can be persuaded by degrees, and finally convinced, to follow the most corrupt leadership.

But history is about to see an ironic reversal in this great battle of the atmosphere. Soon, the Lord will come for His own people, and the Bible makes it abundantly clear that His magnificent arrival will take place in Satan's own arena:

"But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord shall not prevent them which are asleep. For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord. Wherefore comfort one another with these words" (I Thessalonians 4:13-18).

This, "the blessed hope," will mark one of the greatest changes in all history. The age of the church will end in an instant, when the Lord arrives.

And where does He appear? In the air! Again, the Greek word aer [ahr], denotes the ages-long zone of conflict. It is here that Christ will make His long-awaited appearance. This will be nothing less than His grand announcement that He has at long last come to take final possession of this disputed territory.

The region of the air – home of the human race – has a supernatural importance that is no doubt far greater than we can understand. But those of us who believe in God know who controls it, and have no anxiety that human abuse will cause it to spin out of control. Volcanic eruptions have spewed hundreds of times more noxious fumes into the air than all the emissions since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. In spite of that, the air is cleansed, and continues to deliver its life-giving qualities.

Concerning the air, the Lord will have the final say, so clearly depicted toward the end of the book of Revelation. The last stroke of His judgment is poured out … where? Into the air!

"And the seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done" (Revelation 16:17).

We await that great day!