Glaciers were dwindling. Corn was grown as far north as Norway. Vineyards crept up English mountains. There was farming in Iceland. Ice-free seas surrounded Greenland. Worldwide, the temperature had increased about a degree Fahrenheit -- in some parts, perhaps two to five degrees.

It was not a look at current times but of Europe in the Middle Ages (from about 1000 A.D. to 1300), and those on both sides of the current debate on "global warming" miss a point: through history the climate has shifted and in certain circumstances looked very much like "signs of the times" -- a movement not of merely natural cycles, nor of pollution, but by the Finger of God.

This isn't to say that automatic cycles are not involved in our current time, nor that the input of so many combustion engines is not having an effect. It is to say that the debate may be obscuring the real meaning of it all.

From ancient Egypt through the Old Testament, and into the New, droughts and other shifts in climate have been interpreted as a reflection of the spiritual temperature, of God's pleasure or lack thereof.

Not any longer. The debate is now in purely physical, man-oriented terms. Those who fervently argue against "global warming" do so, often, because instead of seeing a shift in climate, they see an argument against corporations, capitalism, and the Western lifestyle. They also equate belief in global warming with environmentalism, which  has been hijacked, in recent years, by liberals and even New Agers.

While the Vatican has long supported environmentalism, the secular aspect of it has become extremely problematic, with virtually no mention of "Creation" or "God." Indeed, in certain corners are actual occult organizations playing on old-style paganism, which reveres nature spirits (or "Mother Earth" herself).

Moreover, those who hope for the establishment of global governing bodies -- want to see national boundaries dissolve into a new world order, or one-world government, with pagan-style spirituality -- use environmental problems as a pretext  because environmental problems know no boundaries.

It is this that many conservatives react against -- denying the entire matter, and the signs of the times, instead of aiming at the problem.

And problems there are. Pesticides found in human mother's milk in Scandinavia have been proven to come all the way through the air from the American South. The first sign of health effects at Love Canal was miscarriages. Each year, many die worldwide from environmental contamination.

That would seem to make environmentalism a "pro-life" issue (indeed, modern youth harbor hundreds of synthetic compounds in their tissues), but such has not occurred due to over-hype by New Agers and the fear that concern for animals and the ecology will translate into less regard for humans -- and even a neo-Malthusian argument to reduce human populations (and thus open a yet wider door for euthanasia and abortion).

We see then how the devil plays both sides as the master of divisiveness and confusion. Get the good Christians worried that by supporting the environment they are supporting a one-world government, and at the same time, make those who do trumpet the environment do so in a purely pagan, secular, or even occult way -- with no thought of God -- and you are having it both ways if you are the prince of deception (and darkness).

From John Paul II to Benedict XVI, the Vatican has taken a strong middle position --  repeatedly expounding on the need to curb environmental abuse and preserve wildlife (at least an eighth of which is currently threatened with extinction), while at the same time allowing a preacher at the Pope's Lenten retreat this year to warn that the anti-christ could come as an "ideologue" -- a person who poses as a pacifist, ecumenist, or even an ecologist.

It is a legitimate concern. Deep in the eco-spiritual movement are occultists who surfaced briefly at a large global ecological conference nearly a decade ago in Brazil, when the opening invocation was penned by an organization that once had a unit called Lucifer Publishing (before discreetly changing the name). It is understandable that such participation would cause Christian alarm.

Thus conservatives miss a sign of the times by arguing against global warming, period, while liberals have covered over the same signs by blaming it all on pollution and trying to use it as a tool for globalization.

Has the climate swerved? We need only look out the window to observe that there has been a "gyration."

Note the careful use of this term.

The climate is fluctuating -- as so many matters too are fluctuating. It is shifting. The point is not so much warming or cooling but that we are in a time of extremes. The global warming of the Middle Ages shifted, we should note, into a long period of cooling.

In our own time we see a microcosm of this when the warmest December melds into the coldest February. While the American Northeast suffers brutal cold, Asia has had its warmest winter ever, Mount Kilimanjaro has lost its snowcap, and ancestral ice cellars that are centuries old have melted in the territory of Eskimos.

I have been careful to use the term "gyration" or "shift" for many years because a gyration implies that there is an upset in nature but doesn't claim that the trend will remain in any one direction -- just that there are and will continue to be extremes as nature reflects the turmoil and extremes of the spiritual environment.

No one knows if the warming trend truly is a long-term one.

Perhaps the most accurate way of putting it is in the words of the Blessed Mother of LaSalette in France, where she said back in 1846 -- just before the current warming trend -- that "the seasons will be altered."

According to some of the world's oldest handwritten weather diaries -- which I viewed years ago on parchment at Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland -- the trend toward warming began right around that very year.

Whatever the involvement of 'greenhouse" gases -- and no one should doubt the need to curb pollution -- the change in climate is almost surely caused in part and perhaps in largest part by an increase in the sun's radiance or poorly understood cosmic factors.

Let us note that according to some researchers, the planet Mars also is currently undergoing a period of warmth.

Is this why, one might ask, symbolically, as a hint, there are the sun miracles?

There are cycles. There are signs. In the Middle Ages -- which I have argued was the last period of major chastisement -- a period of warmth virtually identical to the current episode was caused by increased sunspot activity and followed by a period of unusual cold (known as the Maunder Minimum).

In short, the signs of those times likewise included a gyration -- a swerving from one state to another, which occurred immediately before outbreak of the Black Death or bubonic plague.

There are many parts of the Bible relating natural events to messages from God and those who oppose the idea of weather and climate as a spiritual barometer (to mix metaphors) would do well to read the especially poignant passage of Sirach 39. It is just one of many in the Bible. It is false teaching to teach anything else.

"His blessing overflows like the Nile," it says, "like the Euphrates it enriches the surface of the earth. Again, His wrath expels the nations and turns fertile land into a salt marsh...

"There are storm winds created to punish, which in their fury can dislodge mountains; when destruction must be, they hurl all their force and appease the anger of the Maker. In His treasury also, kept for the proper time, are fire and hail, famine, disease, ravenous beasts, scorpions, vipers, and the avenging sword to exterminate the wicked."

One could add: "there is weather and climate and warmth and cold."

When they gyrate, when they stray, we are not in the equilibrium of God.

If you want a preview, study the period of 1000 A.D. to 1365, and see what occurred in those years, see if there are eerie parallels -- to biblical times and to our own.

The times are coming, yes; it is the subject of my retreats; times are coming, and if we are Scriptural we see those signs in the weather and gyrations in climate no matter who likes or doesn't like it and no matter who is a proponent of what.

3/7/06