As I write this:
- Iowa is drying off from its worst flood in recorded history (a "five-hundred year flood"), responsible in part to a top-5 snow accumulation this past winter.
- A local Iowa town was destoryed by an EF-5, one of the 600+ in the first half of a potentially record setting year.
- China is drying off from a flood that left 1 million+ homeless, many of them reeling from a massive 8.0 earthquake a month earlier.
- Northern California is host to 1600+ wildfires.
- Myanmar is drying off from a cyclone that killed 100,000+.
- Nebraska recorded 8 inches of hail less than a month ago.
- etc...................
(see also: http://www.secretsofsurvival.com/EXTREME-WEATHER/ )
Is our crazy weather the birth pangs of the end times?
To answer "yes" would require two presuppositions:
- An interpretation of Scripture concluding an increase of natural disaster prior to the tribulation and/or the appearance of the Antichrist.
- Certainty that the current bout of weather is in fact an increase in the spectrum of history.
First, the Scriptural references of natural disasters to the extreme are found in Matthew 24, Mark 13, Luke 21, and Revelation 6-9. The latter references will heretofore (bypassing further discussion) be categorized as during the tribulation, but the Gospel references seem to indicate the notorious increase of weather preceeding it. Assuming a pretribulational-rapture interpretation such as my own, that would mean that this increase will happen in the church age, but is not necessarily required to happen before Christ will return. Rather, it will occur as an intro to the Antichrist. So, according to the Scriptures, the increase in weather related catastrophe that everyone is talking about could happen in our time and be the increase that Christ spoke of.
Second, to describe the current patterns as the worst ever would require full records of weather in all history with which to compare. That is unfortunatley not the spot in which we or any researcher may find ourselves. A random glimpse of the spotty recodings of the past may cause one to pause before declaring our time as the worse (see future posts of extreme weather)
That there was severe weather in past history and there is a lot now does not mean that we are seeing an increase, nor does it mean we aren't. It means we can't know by the weather when exactly Christ will return. It may even mean that weather will continually increase in severity from the time predicted until the Tribulation, and determining our degree of severity in relation to an undeterminedly bad future degree of severity is impossible. It could be the end times. But it is a stretch to say it is.
The uncertainty of the timing of Christ's return and the Tribulation is clearly intended by God, but He does intend for us to watch and wait. The weather does seem to catch our attention.
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