In the second half of the Twentieth Century, we got used to speaking about the end of the world. Most of the discussions centered around the consequences of a world-wide nuclear war that would destroy civilization and possibly the biosphere of the Earth, rendering it uninhabitable.
Towards the end of the century, and into this one, we transitioned to discussing the end of the world due to human-caused changes in the atmosphere of the earth. After asserting that human beings were driving the Earth to a nice Ice Age, we switched to a belief that human beings were going to cause the Earth to heat up beyond a zone of temperature in which much of Earth's flora and fauna could continue to exist. Then we transitioned to believing that humans were going to disrupt the climate patterns in some unknown but chaotic fashion, both colder and hotter, rainier and drier, in a such a way as to accomplish the same dire end.
What all of these scenarios had in common is an end of the world as we know it due to human agency. In the case of a nuclear exchange, it was not only the warlike tendencies of humanity, but man's need to understanding the fundamental laws of physics, a quest which had unleashed the golem of particle physics. Our quest for knowledge was our undoing.
In the case of Global Cooling/Warming/Climate Change, the culprit was our modern society and our opulence built on resource usage.
In all these scenarios, which were both proximate and somewhat predictable, the solution to saving the world involved blaming Man himself, and correcting something in human nature.
This makes sense from a historical point of view, as by the Twentieth Century, western civilization had transitioned away from a belief of God as the supreme intelligence in the Cosmos towards a belief in Man as being supreme. Not surprisingly, our apocalyptic scenarios transitioned from ones due to the intervention of God to ones due to the effects of human agency.
There are other more exotic scenarios one could mention, that have been explored in science fiction, for example the arrival of deleterious extraterrestrials who someone bring about the end of human existence or civilization. In such scenarios, it is almost always the cause that humans somehow were instrumental in bringing this about, e.g. by our modern radio and television broadcasts out into the galaxy, or by our space exploration that "went too far."
Our "God-caused" end-of-the-world scenarios still existed, but they receded far away, either to the edge of time and space itself (the heat death of the universe, or the Sun going supernova), or to random, unpredictable disaster events (asteroid impact), ones that might be countered by human technology.
But what if we were to become aware that the most significant threat to the world, that could lead to the end of the world, was both proximate and predictable (like Climate Change), but was in no way due to human agency, and furthermore could not be prevented by any human intervention?
That is, suppose we became aware of some impeding apocalyptic event, that was not due to human action, but which would happen, say, twenty to thirty years from now at most, perhaps sooner, which was probably inevitable, but which could not be stopped by any imaginable human agency?
One wonders how humanity would react under such a scenario. The anthropocentric folks who are wedded to Climate Change as being their preferred end-of-the-world scenario (and who are using it as a cudgel to force changes in human behavior they deem as necessary), would probably not want to give up their favorite future end-times scenario. They would fight against the acceptance of such a God-driven scenario about which we could do nothing.
One wonders if the awareness of such a "God-driven" apocalypse, if it emerged into public consciousness, would lead to a shift in the religious consciousness of the world. What if there was nothing we could do about it except beg God Almighty for some miraculous intervention?
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