The present is not the key to the future . . .

The earth is around six thousand years old. Three-fourths of the planet is now covered by water, and a thin veneer of atmosphere continues to protect us from harmful radiation.

Currently 6.7 billion humans call earth home. They share the planet with a variety of amazing plants and animals—nearly 2 million species catalogued so far—living together in a complex web of life filling the sky, sea, and land.

But the world is changing. While the earth’s plates have slowed to a crawl, volcanoes and earthquakes continue to reshape the surface. Hurricanes and local floods cause enormous damage. Occasionally, species still arise and go extinct. The ozone appears to be thinning, temperatures are rising, glaciers are receding, and the sea level is rising.

How can we know what will happen next?

Scoffers say that the present world is the key to understanding what happened in the past and what will happen in the future. They trust that the same slow processes we see today have always been and will always be.

But we know from the Bible that unique events happened in the past, never to be repeated. For example, God created everything “very good” out of nothing. We also know that God destroyed that world in a global Flood.

We also find geologic evidence of unique catastrophes in the past—thick mud layers over continents, coal seams covering entire states, craters of supervolcanoes, canyons cut thousands of feet deep, miles of underground cave passages, and remnants of thick ice sheets that once moved over continents.

So we have no reason to believe that the present can tell us about the past . . . or the future. Based on God’s Word, we know that unique events are in store for the future, as they were for the past. As God once destroyed the earth by Flood, He will judge it by fire.

As stewards of God’s earth living in the present, we still have a responsibility to study the earth’s clues. Only by combining our knowledge of God’s Word and God’s world can we better understand how to live in the present and how to prepare for the future.

The everlasting Creator, who made all things in six days, sustains them now by His word. One day He will fulfill His glorious work by providing a new world, where He will dwell forever with His redeemed people.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/am/v3/n4/future-world