Outside the Camp

One of the signs cul­mi­nat­ing in Jesus’ pres­ence is “earth­quakes in one place after another”. (Matthew 24:7) As we have pre­vi­ously dis­cussed the Greek word “seis­mos” which is gen­er­ally ren­dered “earth­quakes” at Matthew 24:7 basi­cally means a com­mo­tion. At Matthew 8:24 it is used to for a great sea storm. It is used in 2 Kings 2:1 (4 Kings 2:1, LXX) for the great wind­storm that car­ried Eli­jah to the heav­ens. There­fore we can under­stand that Jesus may have been giv­ing as a sign not just earth­quakes, but the whole gamut of tur­bu­lant dis­as­ters includ­ing such things as tor­na­does, typhoons, and hurricanes.

Jesus called these things “birth pains”. (Matthew 24:8, NIV) Labor pains build toward child birth, get­ting stronger in inte­sity and closer together. There­fore we can expect that the signs Jesus spoke of to build in sever­ity and increase until the birth the king­dom. At this time the com­plete num­ber of 144,000 holy ones join together with Jesus in his heav­enly king­dom to begin rul­ing. (Rev­e­la­tion 19:7,8,11–16) This King­dom will bring about judg­ment for wicked mankind and long awaited rewards for the righteous.

With this in mind we pay atten­tion close atten­tion to world events, par­tic­u­larly the indi­ca­tors Jesus spoke of — war, famine, pesti­lance, and tumul­tuous dis­as­ters. It is inter­est­ing that in response to unique hap­pen­ings in the world today that even peo­ple who do not read their Bibles are start­ing to take notice of what is going on believ­ing that what we are expe­ri­enc­ing seems out of the ordinary.

Con­sid­er­ing just the nat­ural dis­as­ters that are plagu­ing human­ity a recent Newsweek arti­cle, The Last Word: Prepar­ing for The Worst, indi­cates that there is an increase is dis­as­ters. Janos Bog­a­rdi, direc­tor of the U.N. University’s Insi­tute for the Envi­ron­ment and Human Secu­rity said in an inter­view, “There are absolutely clear signs and com­pelling sta­tis­tics show­ing the sit­u­a­tion is get­ting worse. We now are expe­ri­enc­ing 2.5 to 3 times as many extreme events of cli­matic or water-related emer­gen­cies per year as we did in the 1970s. At the same time annual eco­nomic losses [from dis­as­ters] have increased six­fold.” When asked why we are see­ing this Mr. Bog­a­rdi com­mented, “Cli­mate change cer­tainly plays an impor­tant role. That leads to extremes at both ends of the spec­trum. We have more floods, more droughts, longer heat spells with­out rain and more storms.”

This com­pli­ments the sce­nario painted in the Octo­ber 2003 Pen­ta­gon study enti­tled An Abrupt Cli­mate Change Sce­nario and Its Impli­ca­tions for United States National Secu­rity. Therein the report sug­gests a huge envi­ron­men­tal fall­out caused by global warm­ing within the next 10 to 20 years. It graph­i­cally speaks of var­i­ous dooms­day sce­nar­ios includ­ing whole coun­tries ren­dered inhab­it­able, nuclear wars fought over food and water sup­plies, and a sharp increase in dis­as­ters, famine and dis­ease. So while this report is spec­u­la­tive it is worth not­ing the national gov­ern­ments are becom­ing increas­ingly open to idea that severe cli­mate change may become a real­ity very shortly.

As Chris­tians we remain aware of the real­i­ties of the Lord’s prophetic words. We pay atten­tion to the apos­tle Paul’s advice found at 1 Corinthi­ans 7:29–31: “More­over, this I say, broth­ers, the time left is reduced. Hence­forth let those who have wives be as though they had none, and also those who weep be as those who do not weep, and those who rejoice as those who do not rejoice, and those who buy as those not pos­sess­ing, and those mak­ing use of the world as those not using it to the full; for the scene of this world is chang­ing.” And cer­tainly while it would be unwise to be dog­matic about the exact mean­ing of our times we would be fool­ish to ignore our sur­round­ings, being like those in Noah’s day who were “eat­ing and drink­ing” — those who “took no note until the flood came and swept them all away” (Matthew 24:39)