Disaster in the Great Smoky Mountains: what it can tell us

Majestic mountains covered with luxurious green forest all the way to the top; stands of magnificent trees; Frazier firs in the high country and gigantic hemlocks lining the streams at lower elevations. Dogwood blossomed in the forest each spring, with millions of honey bees pollinating trees and plants in the forest as well as the surrounding farms. As one of the most awe-inspiring places on earth, the Great Smokey Mountains National Park is visited by over eight million people each year and has been declared a World Heritage site by the United Nations!

Sadly that paradise is now coming to an abrupt end.

The decline began during the opening decades of the 20th century, with extensive lumbering: mining the forest for large, old-growth trees. Then, during the 1930s, blight imported from Japan swept through North America, killing off the American Chestnut; the largest species of tree in the Eastern U.S.

Following these blows to the forest, large areas of Tennessee and North Carolina were set aside as national forests along with the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Now much of what is left of the world's greatest temperate zone forest is dying.

The remaining high elevation conifers in the park stopped growing by the 1980s. The trees' needles absorb chemical compounds from the acid mist which now floats through the forest, cutting visibility by as much as 80 percent. This mist – containing emissions from industries, power plants and automobiles – is sometimes as acidic as lemonade and can even be tasted on the tongue. The acidic compounds in the mist act as fertilizer, promoting tender new foliage to grow beyond the normal growing season. This then freezes during winter, stunting and weakening the trees.

Next, an imported old-world insect, the Balsam Wooly Adelgid, decimated Frazier fir trees throughout Eastern North America, including the weakened trees within the park. From the highest peaks you can now look out over millions of ugly skeletons of dead trees!

In addition, honeybees have been almost exterminated during this decade by the efforts of another invasive insect, the Tracheal Mite. Pollination of wild and domestic plants is suffering because of the shortage of healthy bees.

Blight has also attacked the beautiful dogwoods, and the Hemlock Wooly Adelgid is beginning to wipe out the remaining huge Hemlock trees, some over 400 years old.

Our country is under a curse! No wonder we are told to pray, "Your kingdom come" (Matthew 6:10).

But, before Christ returns and sets up His Kingdom, the whole creation will groan, in anticipation: "For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now" (Romans 8:19-22).

It isn't just the beauty of the mountains or a few national parks affected; what is happening is much broader than that. All across North America, the natural world, along with our entire food supply, is in jeopardy from the accumulated effects of our wrong decisions and actions – sins – which are coming back to bite us. For more on what lies ahead, read our free booklet, Fourteen Signs Announcing Christ's Return.

There is hope, but only after we have proven to ourselves that our ways have brought both blessings, and curses – the fruit of the tree of both good and evil.