I’ve Never Seen so Many Natural Disasters at One Time

It is generally true about major natural disasters; that there is only one occurring at any given time. When have events that normally take place over a time span of several decades been so closely aligned? It is unlikely to have them transpire within days of each other.

The vast devastation of the Houston area qualifies us for a natural disaster break. The governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, said the total cost of Hurricane Harvey could total $180 billion, making it more costly than the epic hurricanes, Katrina or Sandy, which devastated New Orleans in 2005 and New York City in 2012. It will still be many weeks before we get a real measure of Hurricane Harvey’s cost.”

I was a bit shocked to learn that the city of Los Angeles just had its biggest fire in the history of the city in terms of sheer acreage. “We’re confident, back to 1961, the Bel-Air fire, that this is the largest fire by acreage in the city of Los Angeles,” LAFD Chief Ralph Terrazas said. Considering the intense fire, it is amazing that only a few homes were lost.

While fires in L.A. may grab instant headlines, blazes in Montana, Oregon, and Washington are just now starting to draw attention. Montana has had major fires burning for months. Governor Steve Bullock declared a statewide fire disaster for the third time last week, and called this year’s fire season “Very challenging and unprecedented.” Wildfires have burned more than half a million acres in the state since July.

Satellite images of North America show huge clouds of smoke stretching from Washington to Maine. The smoke is very thick in the Northwestern states. Montana’s capital city Helena, is covered in smog that has people asking for prayers on Twitter and Facebook.

In Seattle, the air is filled with smoke and ash from wildfires around Mt. Crystal. One gentleman posted an image of the hood of his car covered with ash that was raining down on the city.

I’ve been monitoring the weather reports on Hurricane Irma. I can’t believe that I’ve just finished watching a hurricane that brought historic destruction to Texas and here comes Hurricane Irma spinning across the Atlantic Ocean establishing its own set of historic milestones:

With peak winds of 185 mph, Irma has set a record for the strongest hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. Four other storms have had winds that were stronger, but they have been in the Caribbean Sea or the Gulf of Mexico, where the usually warmer waters fuel tropical systems.

Irma’s ability to sustain winds of 185 mph winds for more than 36 hours is another record for length of time. All other storms maintained their 180 mph plus winds for only a few hours.

By making landfall in the U.S. Virgin Islands, makes it the first time in history that U.S. territory has been hit by a category 4 and 5 hurricane in the same season. In 2005 we had Katrina stroke as a category 4 and Hurricane Rita stroke as a category 3.

It should be obvious to any student of Bible prophecy that this rash series of disasters are part of Christ’s birth-pang warning signs. Climate Change cannot explain why we suddenly have back to back hurricanes with the most ever amount of rainfall and the highest winds in recorded history.

There is the possibility that God is simply sick of hearing about all the Trump bashing, and He has decided to force the press to cover something else for a change. The Lord is very patient and longsuffering, but I think there is a limit to how much He is willing to have His intelligence insulted.

Even while the liberal media is forced to cover a non-political subject, they still manage to make it about President Trump. When Hurricane Irma barreled across the Caribbean island of St. Martin, the storm damaged President Trump’s lavish waterfront estate on Plum Bay. The eleven bedroom compound was on the market for $17 million; which value is now in doubt.

Of course we should ignore the fact that the people of St. Martin have had 90 percent of their property heavily damaged by Irma, because the press is so happy that our billionaire president is going to lose a few million dollars on one of his investments!

The big hope for liberals is that Hurricane Irma will devastate the Miami area. Washington Post reporter, Matea Gold, noted that Trump National Doral, which recently completed a three-year $250 million renovation, is in central Miami. She also pointed out that Trump’s signature Mar-A-Lago club on the barrier Island of West Palm Beach  would be heavily damaged by a direct hit from Irma. The fulfillment of this demented fantasy would result in at least $200 billion dollars of damage in southeast Florida.

I expect the left to be clueless about the end-times. I’m surprised that these events have not caused Christians to become more interested in prophecy. Church organizations are so neglectful in teaching the last days message that most believers are unable to recognize the warning signs.

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4 NIV).

–Todd

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Putin Predicts Coming Prince

One would almost think that Russian President Vladimir Putin has been pouring over prophetic Scripture in the Bible. He has predicted that the entity that becomes the ultimate leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) will rule planet earth. His is a most interesting prognostication. Here’s an excerpt from the news item laying out ol’ Vlad’s foretelling.

MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin says that whoever reaches a breakthrough in developing artificial intelligence will come to dominate the world.

Putin, speaking Friday at a meeting with students, said the development of AI raises “colossal opportunities and threats that are difficult to predict now.” (Source: Putin: Leader in Artificial Intelligence Will Rule World, Houston Chronicle, 9/2/2017)

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The former KGB operative turned dictator/oligarch of the nucleus of what was the Soviet Union before perestroika, glasnost, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and finally the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., said further that “the one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the ruler of the world.”

The Russian warned that “it would be strongly undesirable if someone wins a monopolist position.” He pledged that Russia would share its know-how in artificial intelligence with other nations.

Putin predicted that drones will fight future wars. He said, “When one party’s drones are destroyed by drones of another, it will have no other choice but to surrender.”

The Putin prediction would be amusing, if not so much on the eerie side—kind of like Gog of Ezekiel 38–39 “prophesying” the emergence of the prince that shall come of Daniel 9:26–27.

We have mentioned numerous times that Vladimir Putin displays characteristics that the future leader of the Gog-Magog attack will possess, according to the prophet Ezekiel. Putin, here, is delving into perhaps not the characteristics of Antichrist, but certainly into the technological realm Revelation seems to indicate that future fuhrer will have at his disposal.

The Russian says that the leader in such advanced technology will eventually rule the world. To be sure, Antichrist is prophesied to rule over most of the world at a point during the seven-year Tribulation era. His rule will be brief and chaotic, but it will be brutal and, according to Jesus Himself, will bring a time upon the people of the planet worse than any before or after.

Artificial Intelligence will mark his despotic control. He will, through the most advanced computer (AI) technology, do the following:

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. (Revelation 13:16–17)

But AI is, perhaps, prophesied to go much deeper than Antichrist’s 666 computer controls. Some would say there will come a destructive military force that appears to be completely robotic, commanded through AI to assault Jerusalem during that time known as the Day of the Lord. It is a terrifying description of a superhuman—or perhaps hybrid or robotic—force destined to riffle the city and ravish its women, according to prophecy.

Read about what some call Joel’s Army (Joel 2: 1-11).

(I wrote a short story of a fictional nature about Joel’s Army years ago for a filmmaker. That story can be linked below.)

Joel’s Army – A Short Story

 AI is a hot topic, causing an uproar even among some of the well-known leaders in its development.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk got into a spat recently on Twitter with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg over the dangers of artificial intelligence.

Musk urged a group of governors to proactively regulate AI, which he views as a “fundamental risk to the existence of human civilization.”

“Until people see robots going down the street killing people, they don’t know how to react because it seems so ethereal,” Musk said.

Zuckerberg shot back, saying fearmongering about AI is “irresponsible.” (Source: “Humanlike Robots Provoke Questions about our Humanity,” Rosalie Chan, Religion News Service)

Many scientists and futurists are declaring that from some point in the near future, major wars will be waged by beings of intelligence superior to that of mere mortals. However, Bible prophecy tells that, ultimately, it is human blood that will flow to the bridle reins following the fighting at Armageddon. It is the corpses of millions of human beings that will have to be buried following the battle of Gog and Magog.

–Terry

Houston’s Third Occurrence a of 500-Year-Flood

Hurricane Harvey has been the fiercest hurricane to strike Texas since Hurricane Carla in 1961—the most powerful Texas hurricane on record. What Harvey lacked in intensity, it more than made up for in rainfall. If you add up the highest rainfall for Hurricanes Katrina (16.33 inches); Andrew (13.9 inches); and Sandy (12.55 inches), they would not equal the over 50 inches of rainfall from Hurricane Harvey.

This storm has dropped more than 27 trillion gallons of water on Texas, triggering catastrophic, unprecedented flooding in the Houston area. The rains have broken numerous all-time records. There has simply never been a storm in U.S. history that has dropped so much rain over such a vast area of land.

The Weather Service office in Houston reported just over two feet of rain in 24 hours between 7 a.m. Saturday and 7 a.m. Sunday morning—making August the wettest month on record. Hurricane Harvey continued to be a named storm four days after making landfall. Prior to Harvey, there has never been a named storm that has managed to last even three days, according to Colorado State University tropical scientist Dr. Phil Klotzbach.

The record of records was the 51.88 inches measured at the Cedar Bayou weather station in southeast Houston. This is the highest storm total ever in the continental U.S. The previous record was 48 inches in 1978 by Cyclone Amelia, in Medina, Texas.

The eventual insured losses from this Category 4 hurricane will likely be well over $40 billion. Hurricane Ike in 2008 was only a Category 2 storm and resulted in $13 billion of insurance losses. Since only one in six residents have insurance, there’s 100 percent chance of Congress passing a huge government assistance package.

It is going to take a long time for aid agencies to help get eastern Texas back on its feet. The director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Brock Long, predicted that the aftermath of the storm would require FEMA’s involvement for years. “This disaster’s going to be a landmark event,” Long said.

The climate change lobby is already claiming that Hurricane Harvey is the result of global warming. The Gulf of Mexico, where warm water fuels hurricanes, had temperatures just under 90 °F.  Most of the water in the Northern Hemisphere has been warmer than normal for the past year. For the first time in recorded history, the daily average surface temperature of the Gulf of Mexico never fell below 73 °F during last winter.

The frequency of hurricanes has been down over the past several years. We just ended a record 13-year-drought for not seeing a category three hurricane strike the continental U.S. The vast majority the of destruction from Hurricane Harvey is the result of it being penned in by two high pressure areas. The rain kept coming down in the same location because the upper air steering currents were in neutral.

I read a 2008 article that predicted warmer Gulf of Mexico water would result in more tornadoes. Yet we’ve had three recent years with record low numbers of twisters.

The flood that hit Houston is being called a 500-year-event. The thinking is that if you live in a flood plain, there is a 0.2 percent chance each year that your property could be overrun by water. The entire concept of a 500-year-flood desperately needs to be reevaluated.

In 2015, Houston was hit on May 26 (Memorial Day) by heavy rains that flooded 6,500 homes. It was called a 500-year-flood. Again, in 2016, Houston was hit on April 18 (tax day) by massive rains that flooded 9,800 homes.

Houston isn’t the only city to get hit by “historic” floods with rapid frequency. Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was hit with a 500-year flood in 2008, followed by a 100-year flood in 2016.

The people who manage flood planning may try to fix matters by calling Hurricane Harvey the 1000-year-flood. However, this flawed interpretation gives little comfort to people who have had to gut and rebuild their homes three years in a row.

The logical explanation for why Houston has had three so-called 500 year floods in a row may be the result of Bible prophecy. As we draw closer to the last days, calamities like Hurricane Harvey are going to occur with greater frequency.

Jesus said the arrival of the Tribulation hour can be likened to the contractions experienced by a woman about to give birth, as they increase with frequency and intensity. We can see these dynamics taking place worldwide  affecting nearly every aspect of life. When Jesus foretold of these birth pangs He used the word “sorrows,” in His Olivet Discourse in reference to  end-time things to come.

“And as he sat upon the mount of Olives, the disciples came unto him privately, saying, Tell us, when shall these things be? And what shall be the sign of thy coming, and of the end of the world? And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.

For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” (Matthew 24:3-8)

–Todd

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Prelude to Planetary Madness

News reports forewarn a nation descending toward chaos. Forces have obviously been set in motion that threaten to tear America apart. This instigation is purposeful, I have no doubt, and is spawned by Satan.

Saul Alinsky’s blueprint to bring about chaos so the one-world-order builders’ perfect, utopian plan can eventually rise from the ashes of this republic is well underway. George Soros and all the other globalists elite have little trouble finding minions of the human source to carry out the carnage. Lucifer’s demonic minions throw fuel of hatred on the fires of anarchy, and we see the incendiary results in our hourly headlines.

A 1979 Hollywood production, remade in 1980, 1985, and 2015, I believe, gives a fictionalized look at the real world to come when God the Holy Spirit removes from acting as restrainer on the already half-crazed minds of earth dwellers.

Mad Max is the disturbing foreshadowing of things to come when the Body of Christ—the Church—is removed in the Rapture.

Although made in Australia, the movie was Americanized in that the Aussie accents were dubbed over in the American-English accent in order to give the sense of the carnage taking place in the U.S. The storyline, set in the near future, portrayed a world gone mad with evil. The dystopian film presented in graphic terms people’s unrestrained actions against their fellow human beings.

Of course, the creators of the film had no idea that Bible prophecy presents just such a scenario—at least, I don’t think that entered their thinking.

We find the real story of things to come in this regard in the following Scripture.

And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now [restrains] will [restrain], until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming. (2 Thessalonians 6–8)

When God the Holy Spirit withdraws from restraining wickedness perpetrated by fallen mankind, the world will become instantly worse than the fictional world of Mad Max. The present hostilities and chaos being churned by the would-be masters—both human and demonic—will swiftly result in destructiveness beyond description. We are indeed currently enduring a prelude to planetary madness.

But the Creator has not left us in a state of hopelessness despite the rioting and insanity going on in our nation and world. The Lord has provided a way to escape the carnage so vividly described in Revelation by John the apostle while exiled on Patmos two thousand years ago.

I wrote the following for our book, The Departure: God’s Next Catastrophic Intervention Into Earth’s History:

First, the Departure 

Before God’s wrath falls, in the twinkling of an eye (an atomos of time), millions of Christians—those born again by believing in the shed blood of Christ on the cross two millennia ago for salvation—will vanish from the earth’s surface. The departure—the Rapture—will bring planet-rending disturbances to an already reeling world of nonbelievers.

God has been patient in allowing the world to see the Tribulation storm alerts. He has shown mercy and grace, as there is no prophecy given that must be fulfilled in order for the Rapture to happen. The departure can take place at any moment.

Getting out the warnings is the duty of spiritual meteorologists. This is a commission each author in The Departure: God’s Next Catastrophic Intervention into Earth’s History takes most seriously. We prayerfully hope many, upon reading the book, will take to heart the call of the only Lord and God of all Creation, who prompted the apostle Peter to write: “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

This is the only way to be saved from the sin that separates the sinner from the Heavenly Father. This is the only way to be secure from the approaching Tribulation storm.

If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. (Romans 10: 9–10)

We join with the prophet John, who wrote, “He which testifieth these things saith, ‘Surely I come quickly.’ Amen. Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20).

 

–Terry