It seems our government is not able to think beyond the immediate future, unable to consider the generations ahead as some of our earlier, more far sighted leaders achieved, with projects like the Snowy Mountains scheme and the delivery of  pipeline water from Perth to Kalgoorlie.

So now they have actively encouraged the removable of the moratorium on gas fracking in the Northern Territory  – an epitome of greedy short sightedness and unconcern for the irreparable damage  to the environment which it will deliver.

Four years ago I wrote this about fracking :-

FRACKING – A GOOD IDEA?

APRIL 29, 2014

Fracking is being promoted as the new saviour of the US economy and also in Britain and here in Australia. It can provide cheap and plentiful energy right on our doorstep. In the US, which is leading the search for shale gas, the price has now dropped to 1/3rd of the price in Britain, enabling industry to produce cheaper products and bring jobs back that had been lost offshore.

Fracking is new technology which makes it possible to collect gas previously locked away in shale rocks, by pumping into them a mixture of water and chemicals at very high pressure, fracturing the shale and releasing the natural gas they hold. Huge reserves of this new energy are thus available in our nations, but putting aside this further use of carbon fuels, is it a good idea?

In a program on SBS Sunday night, entitled  ‘Fracking: the New Energy Rush’, Professor Iain Stewart found a disturbing lack of transparency about the dangers of fracking to the populations living near to the gas wells throughout the US.

While it was apparent that many people with private water wells and bores now found their water fizzy with methane gas which had come from the fractured rocks, it was not clear how that gas had reached the surface. Was the water 17 times higher in gas content than normal because of leaking pipes, faulty well construction or just plain bad practice?

Many people he visited, no longer drank from their wells, had resorted to buying bottled water, and even animals would not drink the water, though he found no evidence of the chemicals used reaching the surface.

He did find people who were sick, who believed it was caused by the gas companies fracking nearby, though many who had been compensated by the gas companies were not allowed to talk about it, as part of their compensation agreement. Apparently the chemicals used are so secret that only the doctors of those who are ill, are allowed to know what they are, and then only under strict confidentiality.

That in itself is deeply worrying, for why the secrecy, unless they are harmful, but the big problem is, what lies ahead, twenty or thirty years down the road when the gas is gone, but the chemicals remain, and the already leaking pipes corrode and allow them to reach the surface, or even the deep aquifers which provide drinking water for nearby populations.

We have no right to thoughtlessly pollute the future, in our greed for quick financial gain. There is an old saying “Live your life as if you would die tomorrow. Farm your land as if you would live forever”! That coincides with the probable origin of the thought, which we find in Genesis 2:15, ‘The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it……’””   NIV.

This time the humungous quantities of water, chemicals and acid that will be pumped into the ground of the Northern Territory  will result in thousands of wells and holding dams for the polluted waste water which includes carcinogens, neurotoxins and reproductive toxins.

The pristine waterways and aquifers  will be polluted by monsoonal floods, common so far North in Australia, in ways which cannot be put right by man – ever! Four years ago I warned that God will not ignore such wilful damage.

Since then, the curses God promised in the Bible for the disobedient have begun to fall upon us, including terrorism and the growing threat from the North. It will get worse, and result in our land being taken from us, until our population is decimated. We will have deserved it because we have ignored God’s words and rejected His commands. Only those who actually change their ways and begin to obey His commands will survive to see Christ’s return and the world restored to Eden-like conditions.

…Or for that matter, any nation East of Jerusalem, such as Kenya, Iraq, India, China, Japan and Australia. There has been a suggestion that the International Date Line is just a man made concept in conflict with the Bible, and that in God’s coming Kingdom, Jerusalem will be the new International Date Line – the Sabbath then starting at Jerusalem and traveling West around the world with the sun.

 Some proponents of this concept have already begun to keep the Sabbath one day later here in Australia – on Sunday. However, it is important that we should consider what effect this concept would have in practicality. 

 The main problem is that if Jerusalem became the new Date Line, which would extend to the North and the South, the half of Jerusalem to the East of that line would be one day behind the half to the West, and one could walk back and forth in and out of the Sabbath day, for example. That is the reason why the present International Date Line is over the Pacific Ocean, almost empty of land and opposite Greenwich in the UK, on the other side of the world– to avoid such problems.

 Next, we should look at the reason why such a concept should arise, and we find it in Isaiah 2:3, last part, ‘For out of Zion shall go forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.’  Everything regarding the world’s governance will then emanate from Jerusalem, for Jesus Christ will rule the world from there, as King of Kings, Revelation 19:16, ‘On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords.’ 

 But there is another scripture we should take into account, Genesis 1:5,‘And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.’ God’s days start and end at sunset, unlike secular days which start and end at midnight. God’s day starts with sunset followed by dusk or twilight, and then darkness before the daylight part of the day arrives.

 We must consider both these verses in our conclusion, and there are many examples in the Bible of men who had to put them into practice. Take Daniel the prophet for example. He was taken into captivity by the Babylonians and carried away to Babylon, well to the East of Jerusalem. As he travelled East from Jerusalem he would have noted each day as it passed and so knew exactly which day was the Sabbath when he arrived in Babylon. He used Jerusalem as the determination of the Sabbath day and took into account the time which passed in travel to the East, to find the true Sabbath at his destination.

 And that is exactly what we must do today in order to follow Isaiah 2:3, as we will see! 

1    First, let us accept the fact that the Sabbath is determined by the    Sabbath at Jerusalem. 

2   Jerusalem, in God’s eyes is the centre of the world, Ezekiel 5:5, “Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.

3    Jerusalem will then replace Greenwich as the starting point for time – ‘Jerusalem Mean Time’. Time will then be determined in degrees East and West from Jerusalem, both, 180 degrees, placing the new Date Line exactly opposite Jerusalem on the other side of the world, as occurs today with Greenwich Mean Time; still in the Pacific Ocean but a little further East. Thus Time, and the Sabbath, also goes forth from Jerusalem, determined by the distance East or West from Jerusalem and the beginning of God’s day at sunset.

 4  ‘On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half of it East to the Dead Sea and half of it West to the Mediterranean Sea, in summer and in winter.’ Zechariah 14:8NIV.  Just as God’s Holy Spirit and His Way and His Laws will emanate from Jerusalem to the East and to the West, so does the beginning of His Sabbath Day, though centred on Jerusalem.

5  If we turn this principle into practicality today, we find for example, that, based on Greenwich Mean Time, the Sabbath starts 6 hours earlier in Perth, Australia than it does in Jerusalem. The result is that Perth actually now shares 18 hours of the same Sabbath day with Jerusalem, as time flows out of Jerusalem in all directions in God’s eyes, for He does not dwell on the Earth, as we do.

 6    However, if God’s Sabbath were to move only West, instead of flowing out from Jerusalem in all directions, Isaiah 2:5, (Brown Driver Briggs compares it to water) and Zechariah 14:8, we are still left with the problem we mentioned at the beginning, about stepping from one day to the next over the Dateline, and then we in Perth, Australia,would only share 6 hours of a common Sabbath with Jerusalem, most of it falling on a Sunday. 

  So, we are left with a choice and we must decide which seems to be the most biblical, sensible and practical choice. Those who chose a Dateline at Jerusalem must explain how that difficult problem would be overcome. I would love to hear their solution, for an International Dateline has to occur somewhere!