Just how far-reaching are the consequences of rejecting God as our Creator, Father and Lawgiver?

Heard Island is the poster child of the term “far.” Situated about 2,500 miles southwest of the Australian mainland, and 1,056 miles north of Antarctica, the windswept volcanic island, encrusted with glaciers and ringed by dark, foaming oceans, is about as “far” from man’s touch as you can get. Or so you might suppose.

At the beginning of the year, scientists returning to the island made a horrific discovery: 13,000 baby elephant seals were dead, 75 percent of the entire population. In some areas, 95 percent had died.

Bird flu had arrived on the island. Scientists theorize that a migratory bird carried the H5N1 disease to the remote location in August.

H5N1, first discovered in China in 1996, has spread to all areas of the globe. As highly transmissible as the disease is, it still shocked me that such a pathogen could reach such a remote location as Heard Island.

It reminded me of God’s diagnosis of our world just before the return of His Son:

Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more: the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.
—Isaiah 1:5

This sickness refers primarily to the descendants of Israel and our moral decay. But every aspect of our world is sick. Nothing is untouched by man’s rejection of God. Not even distant Heard Island.

It takes 6 to 10 weeks for an expedition to reach the pinnacle of Mount Everest. What do you find on the top of our highest mountain? A garbage dump! Go further. Look to outer space. Less than 1,000 people have been there, yet orbital debris is becoming so thick that it is a genuine risk to future space travel!

Look closer to home and you see the same corruption taking place. Our lives are saturated with corruption.

We are told the air we breathe is full of noxious fumes. The food we eat is laced with microplastics or sprayed with insecticides. Our perfumes are carcinogenic. The shirt on our back is laced with its own concoction of chemicals.

It is not happenstance. Be it as close as your own body or the outer reaches of man’s space travel, you will find some type of pollution or sickness. Why is corruption so pervasive?

It is the result of our decision to turn our backs on God.

“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters: they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger, they are gone away backward” (verse 4). That last statement might be better translated “turned their backs on him” (New Living Translation). And what have we turned to? Our own ways. That is, the way of the current ruler of this world: Satan the devil (2 Corinthians 4:4).

God placed man in the Garden of Eden to dress and to keep it, and, by extension, to maintain the world over which he was given dominion. Yet Adam rejected that mandate. For 6,000 years, our world and our very bodies have borne the brunt of that decision.

In a May 2022 Key of David program, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry stated:

So Adam just succumbed to Satan’s way of choosing. OK, we kind of like that. We can do our own thing. We can have our own religion, our own government, our own science. And hey, we don’t have to submit to God! And look what that has done! Just look around at this Earth in this end time and see what has happened! Man cannot rule over man! That’s the lesson He’s teaching us, the hard way. And people don’t understand that! We’re in captivity to the devil! Because we’ve rejected God throughout the ages, really.

“From the sole of the foot even unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and putrifying sores: they have not been closed, neither bound up, neither mollified with ointment” (Isaiah 1:6).

It is little wonder that the Apostle Paul was inspired to write, “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now” (Romans 8:22).

The creation is yearning for a new ruler. Are you?

Run a diagnosis. Our world is sick! Morally, socially, economically and spiritually! We are on death’s door! Unless God intervenes, there can only be one outcome. “And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).

God will halt the destruction for the sake of those who repent and are converted, who prepare for the coming liberation of our world.

Are you sick of this current evil world? Do you, like the rest of creation, groan for something different from our current sick society? The only way to treat this sickness is to treat the root cause. You need to understand our adversary and what he is doing. Read our reprint article “A World Held Captive,” by Herbert W. Armstrong, to continue this study of our current world condition.