LTRP Note: While Lighthouse Trails does not always issue comments on tragic events (e.g. shootings in Florida and Texas), we want our readers to know that we find these tragedies heart rendering and deplorable. And we are very moved and aware that the families of these victims suffer terribly. We are struck by a sense of dread as we consider the reality that times are only going to get darker as mankind and societies turn further away from their only hope, Jesus Christ and from the truth of God’s Word.
By Tony Pearce
Light for the Last Days Ministries (UK)
The situation in nations around the world points to end-time events taking place as “the distress of nations” prophesied by Jesus for the last days. Since the beginning of Ma,y there were huge forest fires in Alberta, Canada, in Siberia, and Russia’s far east, Cyprus and California. 2015 ended up being the worst year for wildfires in all of U.S. history, and since 2016 began, things have continued to get worse.
Searing heat has also caused droughts in many parts of the world, including east and southern Africa. Malawi has declared a state of emergency as 2.8 million people face food shortages as a result of drought. In India the month of May saw 330 million people affected by drought. The June monsoon has eased the situation in India, but there are doubts about the country’s ability to provide water for its huge population. One source of water, the Ganges River, is now so polluted that the amount of toxins, chemicals, and other dangerous bacteria found in the river are now almost 3000 times over the limit suggested by the World Health Organization as “safe.”
There have been unusual floods in France, Germany, and Russia, while in the USA, West Virginia is dealing with a “500-year flood” after it received approximately a quarter of its entire average annual rainfall in a single day. There have been reports around the world of unusual fish deaths, in particular in Chile and Vietnam where millions of clams, fish, and even mammals have been washed up on the beaches. In China, a vast number of dead fish suddenly appeared in Hongcheng Lake in Haikou.
T
he most dangerous volcano in Mexico, Mt. Popocatepetl, has roared to life in spectacular fashion, not far from where Mexico City’s 18 million residents live. Our world is being pummeled by dozens of earthquakes of magnitude 4.0 or greater, and a total of 38 volcanoes are erupting worldwide. Seismologists are warning that the crust of our planet is becoming increasingly unstable. They are concerned that the big quake long feared for California may be about to hit. As well as the spread of the Zika virus in South America, urgent action is needed to combat a yellow fever epidemic in Africa amid signs it is turning into a global health emergency. Nearly a billion people are at risk from the deadly disease in Africa and Latin America and Asia.
The Syrian conflict rages on into its sixth year. Half the country’s pre-war population—more than 11 million people—have been killed or forced to flee their homes. Iraqi forces have pushed back IS from the cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, but there has been massive devastation as a result. Fallujah’s population of 300,000 is now in camps in the searing desert heat outside the city. While ISIS is being pushed back in Syria and Iraq, it has “celebrated” the Muslim holy month of Ramadan by launching a series of terrorist attacks causing mass death and injury around the world.
More and more countries are falling into poverty with governments unable to provide their people with the basics of life. Greece, devastated by debt and the Euro crisis, has been abandoned by the EU to a situation of permanent poverty. Suicides have doubled to 3,000 a year. Almost one in three people have no work. The young are emigrating, and people have lost hope of the situation improving. In South America, oil rich Venezuela is now running out of food with people killing cats and dogs to eat. Hospitals have no medicine, and the country is in a state of near anarchy. Brazil, about to host the Olympic Games, is also in an economic and political crisis, after the acting governor of Rio de Janeiro state has declared a state of financial disaster and warned of “the total collapse of public security.”
Droughts, forest fires, pollution of waters causing fish deaths, earthquakes, famine and epidemics, wars, terrorism, collapse of economies–all this points us to the coming time of tribulation as prophesied in such passages as Matthew 24.7 and Revelation 8.7-12, and the soon coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, the only hope of our world. (From the Summer 2016 newsletter of Light For the Last Days)
