March 3, 2010
By Ron Fraser
The Trumpet
The incidence of natural disaster has risen dramatically over the past 20 years. To close observers of current events in relation to both history and Bible prophecy, this is no mere coincidence. What muddies the water as soon as Bible prophecy is mentioned in relation to natural disaster is the fact that there is a literal abundance of kooks, screwballs and fanatics out there who instantly seize on the latest catastrophe to declare “the end is nigh.”
Doomsayers have been doing this for years. Far too many get involved in such activity for personal profit. They peddle their scaremongering by taking advantage of vulnerable people and, for a price, promise to show a way that the gullible can escape the wrath of their god, the next disaster, creatures from outer space, the end of the world, the implosion of the universe or some other such wacky idea. They make it doubly hard for the genuine seeker after truth.
The facts are that statistics prove natural disasters have risen startlingly since 1990. In a law-abiding universe, there has to be a reason for this.
During the 40 years preceding the decade of the 1990s, there were 142 classified natural disasters in the United States. During the 10 years of the 1990s, there were 72. The decade that followed from 2000 to 2009 saw some of the worst and most destructive natural disasters in recorded history across the globe. And the most destructive in terms of loss of life and property? Earthquakes by far!
“‘Earthquakes are the deadliest natural hazard of the past 10 years and remain a serious threat for millions of people worldwide as eight out of the ten most populous cities in the world are on earthquake fault lines,’ said Margareta Wahlström, UN special representative of the secretary general for disaster risk reduction. …
“According to the figures released today by cred [the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters] in Geneva, 3,852 disasters killed more than 780,000 people over the past 10 years, affected more than 2 billion others and cost a minimum of us$960 billion. …
“After earthquakes, storms (22%) and extreme temperatures (11%) were the most deadly disasters between 2000 and 2009. … ‘The number of catastrophic events has more than doubled since the 1980-1989 decade,’ [said] Professor Guha-Sapir, director of cred” (United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction Secretariat press release, January 2010).
The current decade has commenced with early indications of that trend continuing. Devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, and record-breaking winter storms in Europe and North America have left many dead and homeless, and town and city infrastructures greatly damaged.
On reflection, clearly 1989 was a watershed year, a threshold from which natural disasters escalated most dramatically compared to past eras in history.
Why such drastic escalation in natural disasters since 1989–earthquakes, tsunamis, destructive storms, floods, fires, mudslides, extremes of temperatures—which take the figures right off the record charts since statistics have been recorded?
Well, there is a reason. But it is only apparent to those who, in unbiased, clear-minded fashion, link the facts on the ground with the history of the past and the reality of inerrant Bible prophecies for the future.
There is a prophecy in your Bible that speaks of the world reaching a time when catastrophic events prophesied by humanity’s Creator which were once delayed in their fulfillment for a great purpose would no longer be held back by the hand of God. These climactic events were predestined to be delayed in their inevitable fulfillment to allow a great purpose to come to fruition. They were delayed to allow for the good news of His coming Kingdom on Earth to “be preached in all the world for a witness to all nations” before earthshaking events would herald His return (Matthew 24:14). After that, those events would be no longer delayed. A point in time would be reached when they would break out suddenly and dramatically to shock the world with their destructive force. That’s the only way God has ever been able to grab the attention of humanity!
Those prophesied catastrophes were to be a dramatic warning sign to humankind of the sudden, direct, imminent intervention in human affairs by the Creator God Himself! This was to be a warning sign especially to those who ought to know better than to live the prevailing life of immoral, godless profligacy that has so taken over their society today.
Most especially that warning applies to the descendants of the people to whom Jesus Christ personally came 2,000 years ago as a personal witness to them of the way humankind was destined by its Creator to live—the people of His very own national human heritage. They remain, though in rapid decline, the most blessed nations on Earth. They are the very descendants of the patriarch Abraham, descendants who rejected Christ’s message and slaughtered Him in a most hideous form of death, rather than accept who He was—the literal Son of God.
It was Jesus Christ Himself, whose death and resurrection many will soon celebrate, who declared that before His return to Earth, “there shall be famines and pestilences and earthquakes in divers places” (Matthew 24:7). He went on to declare that additional signs of the closeness of His return would be that His own true and loyal followers would be persecuted at a time of great religious, moral and social confusion.
Why can we point to the year 1989 as the break point, the watershed, from which there have been 20 years of rapidly accelerating incidences of disaster across this world?
Jesus Christ showed the Apostle John, in vision, a keynote prophecy for our day forecasting that we would reach a time when events He had prophesied for our generation would be no longer delayed. Referring to that prophecy, which is contained in Revelation 10, our editor in chief has declared, “We are in a time of no more delay (verse 6), and I believe that is the major reason why our commission has changed from preaching the gospel around the world to prophesying again”.
We can prove to any mind open to receive it that the prophesied time of no more delay began on Dec. 7, 1989, just 28 days following the breaching of the Berlin Wall. Ever since that time the world has increasingly destabilized—through accelerating natural disasters, political upheavals, wars and rumors of wars, economic and financial disaster and great moral and social disintegration.
This will continue until humankind gets the message. The message that there is a great omnipresent, omniscient Creator and Sustainer of this universe who has created humankind with an incredible human potential to which he remains blinded by a power which has been set since man’s creation on destroying that very same potential!
If you have read this far, then you need to find out just what that potential is and really do something about laying hold on it—fast—before catastrophe overtakes you and you regret not having acted earlier!
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