Time & Perspective Quote by John Shimkus

Shimkus is doing more than offering comfort; he is drawing a bright theological line that conveniently doubles as a policy firewall. By insisting the planet ends only on God's timetable, he relocates the ultimate stakes from science and governance to faith and providence. That move narrows the space for environmental urgency: if catastrophe is either impossible or irrelevant to human agency, then regulation can be framed not as stewardship but as overreach.

The phrasing is strategic in its absolutes. "Man will not destroy this earth" is less a metaphysical claim than a rhetorical permission slip, suggesting that warnings about climate change are exaggerated, even faithless. The follow-up, "This earth will not be destroyed by a flood", is a pointed Biblical callback to Noah, a way of saying: we've been promised certain guardrails; panic is suspect. It also sidesteps the more precise scientific argument - not that the planet explodes, but that ecosystems and societies can be made unlivable. In other words, the earth survives; people don't.

Context matters: a politician speaking to constituencies where evangelical language signals belonging. The statement functions as identity politics in Sunday clothes, staking out an in-group worldview against technocratic elites and "alarmists". Its subtext isn't simply religious conviction; it's an argument about jurisdiction: God owns the horizon of disaster, so government shouldn't police the present. That is why it lands - not because it resolves climate anxiety, but because it reframes it as a test of loyalty.