VIII. Earthquakes
The number of deadly earthquakes
during the 20th century has risen exponentially from the
number that have occurred from pre-industrial revolution times up to
the beginning of the 20th century. Click on http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake and read the earthquakes listed on pages 6, 7 and 8. You will see the number of 20th century
killer quakes is about double of all the recorded ones that have occurred
going all the way back to 1556AD. And
the 21st century is starting off with a real bang for earthquake
watchers as these pages will show. Is there a “smoking gun” relationship between all the melting
glaciers and ice sheets to the rise in earthquakes, especially deadly
ones? Scientists seem to think so, but aren’t quite
sure. As reported online in Sciencemag.com
under “CLIMATE CHANGE: Greenland Rumbles Louder as Glaciers Accelerate. Flow rates of many large glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica
have accelerated recently. Greenland earthquakes produced from glacier
motion and calving have also increased dramatically [ http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/311/5768/1719 ] And NASA has this to say: “Retreating
Glaciers Spur Alaskan Earthquakes…as glaciers melt and their load on
the plate lessens, there is a greater likelihood of an earthquake happening
to relieve the large strain underneath.” [ http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/environment/glacier_quakes.html ] The Alaskan plate is at the
very top of the “ring of fire”, an earthquake zone that runs from the
Aleutian Islands down through Japan and Indonesia (and yes, the Adaman
Islands, where the 9.0 earthquake caused the deadly tsunami that killed
over 300,000 people). Millions, maybe even billions of tons of ice
is disappearing off Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica. Any way you look at it, the number of large
quakes has risen exponentially from the past, and there may be a connection
here to glacial and ice-sheet melt and shrinkage.
IX. What Did
Jesus and the Old Testament Prophets Predict That Matches What We Have
Studied?
Let’s connect the dots here
and see if they match. Matthew
24:7 is all about the time period leading up to the tribulation (World
War III) and the 2nd coming of Jesus Christ. It shows how to identify the period of time just before the start
of the tribulation (or World War III). Matthew 24:7, “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom
against kingdom:…”—i.e. this is talking about world wars when it says
‘kingdom against kingdom’, as opposed to simply one nation fighting
or warring against another. We have in the 20th century entered into the period in
man’s history where world wars are occurring. We’ve been through two, and the third one is going to be a biggie
by comparison to the 2nd one. So we’ve entered the beginning of verse 7 of Matthew 24 in time
sequence. What comes next? “…and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes
in divers places.” This is talking about these things becoming
commonplace, famines and disease that follows them, stalking around
the world in various places, along with multiplied earthquakes. As we have just read, major desertification
and water shortages, which destroy agriculture, which brings food shortages
and—you guessed it—famines are all on the horizon due to global warming. Where famines occur disease epidemics always
follow as a natural by-product.
Let’s look into the Old Testament. God had Moses write down a series of blessings and curses that
would occur to the ancient nation of Israel, written to apply both then
and now. Blessings for obedience, and curses for disobedience. Now when we read a certain section of Leviticus 26 that deals
with rain, you may ask yourself ‘Does God actually bring about these
curses?’ You may be amazed to
learn that it isn’t God who actually does it. Prophecy is merely God predicting the consequences
man will reap his actions whether good or bad—simple cause and effect. You fathers and mothers try to teach your kids cause and effect,
and warn them that if they do something bad, form a bad habit, it will
result in a bad consequence for them in their life. (I hope you’re teaching your kids that.) Well, God is no different. He has merely looked down the time-line of history
before it happens, and predicted what nasty effects man’s selfish, greedy
actions would have for both him and the earth—simple cause and effect. Although God is listing these curses and blessing for Israel,
they apply basically to all of mankind. We all live on planet earth, it’s not like we
can step off when we want to and go to another planet. Leviticus 26:19-20, “And I will break the pride
of your power; and I will make
your heaven as iron, and your earth as brass: and your strength shall
be spent in vain: for your land shall not yield her increase, neither
shall the trees of the land yield their fruits.” Remember how the temperate zone glaciers supply water for
reservoirs and cities, as well as major river systems like the Ganges
and Indus? The glaciers of the Cascades supply a lot of
water for western U.S. cities. Let’s
look at what Amos says. Amos 4:6-8, “And I also have given you cleanness
of teeth in all your cities, and want of bread in all your places: yet
have ye not returned unto me, saith the Lord. And also I have withholden the rain from you,
when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to
rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one
piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered. So two or three cities wandered unto one city, to drink water;
but they were not satisfied…” Now
this happened in part to the ancient 10 tribed northern nation of Israel
before they were deported by the Assyrians enmass to the land of Assyria,
never to return, but verses 12-13 point to Israel and God meeting, and
God’s not happy. Verses
12-13, “Therefore thus will I do unto thee, O Israel: and because I
will do this unto thee, prepare to meet thy God, O Israel. For lo, he that formeth the mountains, and createth
the wind, and declareth unto man what is his thought, that maketh the
morning darkness, and treadeth upon the high places of the earth, The
Lord, The God of hosts, is his name.” Now this smacks of the end-time meeting the returning Jesus
Christ—God the Son—has arranged to have with both Israel and all the
inhabitants of the earth. Israel in their ancient history just before
their captivity never had a face-to-face meeting with God. So how does God do this, no rain, desertification,
all these nasty conditions? The
most effective method of teaching someone (or a people, or the whole
world for that matter) how wrong they are, and what their ways will
lead to, is to let them eat of the “fruit” of their own ways. What is
fruit of unrestrained industrial output with no forethought to anti-pollution
engineering put up front into all products they design and manufacture
(especially vehicles and power generation)? It is global warming. This
form of unrestrained industrialization without pollution controls is
the result of pure greed and avarice of industrialists, the rich who
own and operate the manufacturing companies. Fossil fuels have provided a cheap short-cut to the way things
ought to have been done. But the end-price will be far from cheap. As you have read, some of the major side-effects of global warming
are desertification, droughts, and the expansion of the semi-arid regions
of the earth into populated areas on the major continents. Droughts will ultimately cause famines, as the population of
the earth has already passed the 6 billion mark. We’re just too populated to be able to tolerate a major shortfall
in agricultural production.
We’re at the very doors of this happening—that’s what the scientific
data is showing. We also know
the timing for these global warming side-effects could be one or two
decades away before they really get going, or a “trip-point” could be
reached where global warming rapidly accelerates, bringing on these
conditions, maybe in as short a time period as one to two years. Jesus did say “no man would know the day or the hour…” The very starting sequence of events that lead to World War III
(the tribulation) and then the 2nd coming of Jesus is when
you see most of what’s listed in Matthew 24:7 start to occur. Don’t forget, we’re already in the first part
of Matthew 24:7, the time in man’s history where we find ourselves in
a cycle of world wars (World War I and World War II so far—the next
one’s a biggie!).
“So What Should
I Do With This Knowledge?”
We are very near the fulfillment
of these amazing prophecies. It
is high time we woke up spiritually (if you’re a believer—if you’re
not, you’d better find out who Jesus is—log onto http://www.unityinchrist.com/prophecies/1stcoming.htm). Matthew 25 in Jesus’ parable of the ten brides
maids, basically showed the whole church would be slumbering spiritually
before his 2nd coming. Most
definitely that shows most of the church in America. This site is chock full of nourishing sermon
transcripts going into spiritually meaty, growth oriented subjects,
and topical studies on prayer—get busy. It is also high time we as the whole body of Christ, regardless
of denominational ties, got busy supporting the promotion of the gospel
of salvation worldwide. Global warming? Let’s make a bit of global warming ourselves,
spiritually, with the gospel—by supporting international evangelistic
organizations. Log onto http://www.UNITYINCHRIST.COM/missionstatement.htm to see how each and every one of us reading this right now can really
make the gospel of Jesus Christ an unavoidable issue, before a majority
of those folks die some horrible death in World War III or some worldwide
famine—without Christ in their life. How close are we? We’re at the doors.
God’s promise to Noah stands,
God will not allow another massive global flood to destroy all life
from off the planet. He won’t
even allow mankind to unlock all that water. While there may be some rise in ocean levels (8 inches to 3 feet
perhaps), we will not see a 230 foot rise in ocean levels. It’s a promise in God’s Word (see Genesis 8:21-22). But the other Global Warming side-effects are a solid part of
Bible prophecy. Who’s going to
solve global warming? For a Biblical
answer log onto http://www.unityinchrist.com/romans/Romans8-18-271.htm.
Postscript: How Long?
[The
following three paragraphs are taken from a short five page article
written by Bill McKibben for the August 2006 number of the National
Geographic Magazine. In it he sets a scary but realistic timeframe
when all of this will become irreversible. Truly for Christians this is a serious wake-up call to get busy
with the Lord’s work, funding it, working for it, in whatever ways he
inspires us to. How long do we
have. Let’s see.]
A
Deeper Shade of Green
By
BILL McKIBBEN
At times he can seem like a biblical prophet, lamenting how our human
failings are destroying the planet. Yet listen more carefully to Bill McKibben—environmental essayist,
activist, and author of the best seller The End of Nature—and you’ll hear a redeeming message that transforms the idea of what “green”
can mean. [Geographic staff]
“This
is the year when we finally started to understand what we are in for. Exactly 12 months ago, an MIT professor named
Kerry Emanuel published a paper in Nature showing that hurricanes had slowly but steadily been gaining in strength
and duration for a generation. It
didn’t attract widespread attention for a few weeks—not until Katrina
roared across the Gulf of Mexico and rendered half a million people
refugees. The scenario kept repeating: Rita choking highways
with fleeing Texans; Wilma setting an Atlantic Ocean record for barometric
lows; Zeta spinning on New Year’s Day. Meanwhile, other data kept pouring in from around
the planet: Arctic sea ice melting past an irrevocable tipping point;
thawing permafrost in northeastern Siberia creating so much methane
that lakes didn’t freeze even in the depths of boreal winter; the NASA
calculation that 2005 had been the warmest year on record.
In January, a trinity of announcements sealed the mood. First, British scientist James Lovelock, who
invented the instrument that allowed us to detect our eroding ozone
layer, published an essay predicting we’d already added too much CO2
to the atmosphere and that runaway global warming was inevitable. He predicted that billions will die this century. A few days later came a less dramatic but equally
alarming announcement. The steady
and long-serving NASA climatologist James Hansen defied federal attempts
to gag him and told reporters that new calculations about, among other
things, the instability of Greenland’s ice shelf showed “we can’t let
it go another ten years like this.” If we did? Over time, the buildup of CO2 emissions would
“imply changes that constitute practically a different planet.” Less
than ten years to reverse course. Not our kids’ lifetimes, or our grandkid’s. Ours.
Finally, at month’s end, even President Bush, as faithful a friend
as the fossil fuel industry has ever had, announced America was “addicted
to oil.” Historians, I think, will look back on this
as the time when denial finally began to crumble. When we finally began to understand that the
planet as we’ve known it was at stake—and not from a possible scenario,
like nuclear war, but from the consumption of the coal and oil and gas
that power most of the actions of our lives. This is new. Humans have
never faced a civilization-scale challenge before…” [National Geographic Magazine, August 2006, p.33, par. 1-3]
Be
sure to purchase this issue of the National Geographic to read this
article in its entirety as well as their lead cover article Killer Hurricanes, No
End in Sight, as well as New
Orleans: Home No More. In
the physical sense the vision Bill McKibben describes in this short
five page article is a lot like what Jesus will set up on earth at his
return—very interesting. (see http://www.unityinchrist.com/kingdomofgod/mkg1.htm). So purchase this Geographic and read it and
make the comparison. Man is helpless
to effect these changes. God
isn’t, and will yet do so.
|
