World Changers

[A.W. Bowman]

While I am doing this study on a different forum, I thought there might be some interest here.

Financial collapse, water/food quality and quantity, oil/energy shortage, natural disasters, terrorism (bio and nuclear), failure of the electrical network, etc.

Looming on the horizon are a number of natural and man-made events that have been foretold in the books of the Bible. Even as this article is being written, many of these events have already began unfolding over the world. Yet, with all of the catastrophic hype and doom and gloom forecasters, we do not hear much in the way of what we should expect and what attitude should Christians take toward all of the disasters that are already befalling us – and are yet ignored. The first thing to recognize and come to grips with is that the doom and gloom preachers (religious and speculator) have not even come close to what is happing right now, much less what will be coming along very soon.

There is an old Jewish saying, “If you keep saying things are going to get worse, long enough, you stand a good chance of becoming a prophet.”

From Daniel to Revelation, we have been told that as the day of the Lord approaches the entire earth will go through an ever increasing level of turmoil, not unlike the travails of a woman giving birth.

While the entire world has been experiencing the early stages of this world changing process, the western hemisphere has been relatively quiet. Of course, over the past hundred years there have been a few events, such as the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, a couple of major earthquakes in Alaska, California and even in the mid west. So, while the rest of the world is experience even greater volcanic eruptions, greater earthquakes, tsunami, and storms that produce great magnitudes of destruction. In addition, with the growing human population, the threat of one or more pandemic diseases grows more acute every year. All of these things are being reported throughout the world in greater number, frequency and magnitude of severity. Then there seems to be a growing awareness to the possibility of the earth being hit by large chunks of space debris, from old spacecraft with nuclear fuel onboard to large asteroids.

With the advent of there now being over six trillion people on the face of the earth, and growing ever more rapidly, it doesn’t take much of a physical event to create an horrendous toll in human death and suffering. Yet, in addition to all of these things, there is yet another, and possibility an even greater threat to mankind, and that is mankind itself.

The second major element in the end-time events are the actions of men. This can be seen throughout the world in the armed conflicts between different governments and between the general population and their governments. Then we also have minority groups, some with significant numbers, who are waging war around the world with anyone and everyone who disagrees with them and their agendas. We generally refer to these individuals and groups as ‘terrorist’.

What these people seek is to create uncertainty and fear within a population, by killing and maiming as many as possible without warning or regard to gender or age, for the purpose of extracting political, religious, and/or economic concessions. Their tools range from rocks, clubs, to guns and knives, to biological and (today, the threat of) nuclear weapons of mass destruction.

The effectiveness of the assault by people on a society is just as great and perhaps even greater than most natural disasters, mega volcano eruptions being an example. One such eruption could result in the extinction of perhaps half of the world’s human population, plants and animals, as have been recorded in our world history.

What are the elements of that both natural and man-made disasters have in common? While in undeveloped countries, the effects are about the same. Compared to the industrialized nations, notability in the West (Western Europe and the US, Canada, etc.), the effect will be small. In the industrialized nations, however, the results will be beyond comprehension.

Disrupted and polluted water supplies will kill many within a week.
Loss of food products will result in mass starvation.

Infrastructure will collapse. The highway system, rails, air travel will come to a halt because of a lack of fuel availability. The electrical system will fail because of fuel shortages and disrupted power grid overloads and general physical collapse. The international financial system will not only fail, it will cease to exist when any wide spread national electronic banking, record keeping, and information transfer fails. All financial (including investment) institutions are now all inter connected.

The majority of the world’s populations are centered in and around mega cities that are growing by thousands every week. A biological agent turned loose in the water supplies will wipe out millions in days. Food riots will kill, no one knows, how many.

The Bible informs us that we stand at the edge of a precipice when a third of the world’s water will become undrinkable. One third of the population will die. Today that figure stands at over two trillion people. Think about that number. One third of all plants, animals and fish will die. We are indeed living in interesting times. Because in the face of all of this, there is an ever increasing number of wars and rumor of war circulating around the nations of the world. Some wars are with other nations, and many wars are confined within the borders of individual nations. Then with all of this facing us, the nations of the world are still expending their attention on aligning themselves against just one people and one country, Israel, but again, this is especially so concerning the aligning of Israel’s Middle East neighbors.

The imminent fall off the current Egyptian government will result in a Muslim Brotherhood puppet government that will have the trappings of a democratic government. However, within one to three years that government will fall to the Islamic Clerics who will have taken over that government, and Israel will find another army posed on its southern borders. All of these events have already started taking place according to recorded scripture.

Birth pangs - increasing in frequency and intensity.

I'll be posting more on this subject later this week. However, with all of this - Jesus has given us a reason to hope - and a plan.