In the coming days I plan to continue the ongoing series about the Signs of the End. Here are a few of the topics I plan to write about while continuing this series:
Wars and Rumors of Wars
Revolutions
False Christs
The forces of evil’s interpretation of birth pangs
Beyond the continuation of the Signs of the End series there are a few more topics that I have planned in the coming days, including my thoughts about the potential for the European Union to be a major power in the future. In addition, I plan to implement a new blog design which I hope will be more user-friendly. Of course, everything is subject to change if something unexpected happens…
Can you believe it? Rush Limbaugh inferred on his radio show yesterday that the plume of smoke spreading over Europe from Iceland and grounding air traffic ( principally keeping President Obama from attending a State funeral in Poland) might be divine punishment for the passage of the Obama Health Care Bill. I swear it's true The guy is totally nuts.Here's the quote:
"You know, a couple of days after the health care bill had been signed into law Obama ran around all over the country saying, “Hey, you know, I’m looking around. The earth hadn’t opened up. There’s no Armageddon out there. The birds are still chirping.” I think the earth has opened up. God may have replied. This volcano in Iceland has grounded more airplanes — airspace has more affected — than even after 9/11 because of this plume, because of this ash cloud over Northern and Western Europe. At the Paris airport they’re telling people to head to the train station to catch trains out of France, and when people get to the train station they’re telling people, “There aren’t any seats until at least April 22nd,” basically a week from now. It’s got everybody in a shutdown. Earth has opened up. I don’t know whether it’s a rebirth or Armageddon. Hopefully it’s a rebirth, God speaking."
Rush, honey........Get a grip!!! It's time to lay off the OxyContin. Everything isn't about you, sugarplum. Everything isn't even about Obama,or American politics. Sometimes things happen in Iceland that are about the geology of Iceland. This may not be so good for the airlines, but Armageddon it's not. So just relax and try not to appear too whacko or they just might cart you off to rehab.
I am currently working on redesigning the blog so that it becomes more user-friendly and so it has more features for people. I hope to get the new design completed and implemented soon.
In the meantime I still plan to post regularly in the coming days, including more installments of the Signs of the End series. There is still plenty to write about with regards to that.
Thank you to all who read this blog. May the Lord bless you.
A couple of headlines over the past few days has given me the impression that Barack Obama may be prepared to turn his back on Israel.
It was reported earlier this week that American-Jewish leaders have accused the Obama Administration of turning its back on Israel. American-Jewish leaders (and many Pro-Israel lawmakers) have written letters directly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and letters to major American newspapers voicing their frustration at what they perceive to be a lack of support for Israel.
On Thursday the New York Timesreported that Barack Obama’s strategy towards the Mideast has recently shifted towards balancing support for Israel against other American interests despite Obama Administration officials publicly claiming that the U.S.'s support for Israel is unwavering. This shift in Mideast strategy seems subtle at first glance, but it is significant when you consider that the U.S. has had a special relationship with Israel.
The U.S. has historically supported Israel even when Israel’s hostile neighbors have demanded that the U.S. stop their support of Israel. However, it now appears that Barack Obama is willing to use America’s support for Israel as a bargaining chip to get concessions from Middle Eastern countries. For example, we could soon see the U.S. refrain from vetoing a proposed UN resolution that condemns Israel in exchange for some benefit that advances the U.S.’s short-term interests in the Middle East.
Barack Obama’s job as the President of the United States is to advance America’s interests in the world (whether he’s actually doing that is another story) However, ruining America’s special relationship with Israel in exchange for any short-term benefits is not worth it and can be dangerous for both countries.
In Part 3 of Signs of the End I showed how global earthquake activity is at its highest level on record, which is an indication that the end times is approaching. In this installment I examine whether trends in famine and pestilence are sending a similar message.
Like with earthquakes, if we are near the end times we should be seeing a noticeable change in the prevalence of famine and pestilence. I will start by looking at trends in famine before looking at trends in pestilence.
Famine The best website to examine the current risk for famine is the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET). The website provides short-term and medium-term forecasts of the likelihood certain places around the world will experience food supply difficulties. Currently, FEWS NET forecasts that the potential for famine exists in various portions of Africa, Central America, Southern Asia (primarily Afghanistan) in the next several months.
It is difficult to directly compare the risk of famine today versus the risk of famine in the past. However, I’ve found an indirect way to compare the prevalence of famine today versus the past. The Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) tracks statistics about the number of undernourished people in the world.[i]
While the existence of undernourished people does not mean that there is a famine in a specific region (there are undernourished people in the U.S.), there are likely food shortages in areas where there are large concentrations of undernourished people. The following graph shows the trend in the percentage of undernourished people in the world from 1969 to 2009 (this graph I made on my own using FAO data and some population data found on Infoplease).
The graph above shows that the overall percentage of undernourished people in the world has declined over the past 40 years. However, this trend began to reverse in 2008 and rose more sharply in 2009.
Food shortages are most commonly experienced in developing countries. The FAO also tracks the percentage of people who are undernourished in developing countries. The following graph shows how the percentage of undernourished people has changed from 1969 to 2009 in developing countries.
The percentage of undernourished people in the developing world has steadily declined from 1969 to 2006. While there is not nearly the same percentage of people undernourished in the developing world today as there was in the past, the trend is moving upward again.
This upward trend is likely going to increase more as the global economic and financial system collapses and as energy supplies grow scarce in the coming years.
Pestilence It is difficult to closely compare different time periods to see whether pestilence is a bigger problem today than it was in the past due to a lack of data. However, I feel we can safely say that today does not yet compare to time periods when there were major global pandemics.
The Plague of Justine: A major bubonic plague outbreak originating in Egypt helped usher in the Dark Ages by eliminating 50% of Europe’s population between 550 and 700.
Black Death: Another major bubonic plague outbreak killed up to 60% of Europe’s population between 1348 and 1350.
The Spanish Flu: 1/3 of the globe was infected and an estimated 50 million people died between March 1918 and June 1920.
The potential for us to see a global pandemic similar to major pandemics of the past is quite high according to health experts. In fact, the World Health Organization currently has their current pandemic alert system set to their highest level: Phase 6 or “Widespread Human Infection”. While swine flu has not turned into the killer virus everyone last year feared, health experts warned that this is not the time for the public to become complacent because there are still other threats out there.
Summary: Famine and Pestilence Trends in famine and pestilence indicate that we are not seeing unusually high-levels of activity compared to what the world has experienced in the past. This indicates that we are not very close to the end times yet. However, recent developments show that the prevalence of both famine and pestilence have the potential to soar in the coming years. Nevertheless, we should expect the prevalence of famine and pestilence to increase significantly as time goes on since Earth is experiencing the birth pangs that Christ forewarned us about.
References [i] “The State of Food Insecurity in the World. Economic Crises-Impacts and Lessons Learned”. 2009. UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Rome http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0876e/i0876e00.HTM
Vatican Inc is in big trouble. The worldwide corporation is going to have to change its business model in order to survive a worldwide scandal that might, just might, bring it down. It is one thing to think in centuries rather than years, it is quite another to live in the past.
What worked during the Inquisition and Counter Reformation, won't work today. Burning people at the stake is no longer an option and excommunication has lost its bite. Vatican, Inc had better learn some more modern damage control techniques. Time for a little self examination and a total overhaul of the corporate structure.
The new rules for handling priest pedophiles that were announced on Monday are all very nice. Let's see if anything really changes. Posting these rules on a website will certainly not reverse the damage done by Fr Raniero Cantalamessa, who compared the public outrage against the Vatican to Jews in WWII and the "worst excesses of the Holocaust" or the declaration by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, that homosexuality was the cause of pedophilia .
Then there was the Vatican spin machine which along with Bertone, insists that clerical celibacy has nothing to do with clerical child molestation. Such assertions do nothing to help and, in fact, make crystal clear just how dysfunctional the Church's view of human sexuality is. We are talking about a puritanical, homo-erotic, anti-female view of sex that goes back to St. Paul and St. Augustine. Celibacy is the ideal. Marriage is the fallback position for those who cannot handle celibacy and sex is ok between married partners for the purpose of procreation only. You are not supposed to enjoy it.
Priestly celibacy is a mark of holiness. This point of view is built on a theological construct that elevates the priesthood to a mystical magic level without which the authority of Vatican Inc would be severely restricted. Thus the Church has sort of painted itself into a corner when it comes to sexual scandal, especially scandal involving the rape and abuse of innocent children by the clergy.
As I follow the current priest pedophile revelations, I remember sitting in a convent garden with Sr. Mary Chrysostom one spring afternoon twenty-five years ago. She was a spiritual giant--a woman who gave her life to service in the name of Christ and her Church and was certainly a jewel in the crown of Catholicism. I knew her because I was involved with an organization she ran and did some volunteer work for it. I loved and respected her. To me, she represented the best of the Roman Catholic tradition
I will never forget the conversation she and I had that day about pedophilia in the Church It was still very hush hush then, but we were talking about a man we both knew who had just gone public with the fact that he had been sexually molested by his Parish priest from the time he was seven to the time he was eleven. She opined that the greater sin was not the abuse, but the hierarchy not addressing the problem and that sooner or later the Church would pay dearly for its denial.
How right she was. Payback day is here, I fear, as I watch the Vatican, again and again, totally mis-handle media and public relations. Once again it is circling the wagons, protecting the institution at all costs and lying and playing the victim.. In a world where there is instant communication via the internet and 24 hour cable news programming worldwide, it just isn't going to work. Too many victims have come forward with provable, believable stories from all over the world. It is ironic that the word " catholic" means " world-wide" since a long record of sexual abuse by priests seems to exist across the globe from Australia and North America, to Ireland, Germany, Austria, France, Italy and even the precincts of the Vatican itself. The universality of the church may, in the long run, be its undoing. People are angry and repulsed all over the world.
There is no refuting the truth of the allegations. There are no excuses to be made. As with any corporation or government, when it comes to responsibility, the buck stops with the CEO and the Board of Directors( in this case the college of Cardinals). So far, they don't seem to be getting the picture..... but eventually they will. They have to if they want to survive.
I wonder what the boss ( not the pope; the REAL boss) would think? I doubt he would be too pleased.
Some Christians view recent earthquakes in Haiti, Chile, and now Tibet as signs that we are living in the end times or signs that the world is experiencing birth pangs. I feel it is best to take a look at historical trends in earthquake activity before making any conclusions about whether we are living in unusual times. In this installment of Signs of the End I examine how current earthquake activity compares with past earthquake activity.
Recall Part 2 where Christ compared the time approaching the end times to a woman experiencing birth pangs. This analogy means that we will see the frequency of certain phenomenon like earthquakes increase as time goes on.
http://www.dlindquist.com/ is a research website that enables users to create graphs tracking global earthquake activity trends over the past 37 years (1973 to 2010). Although there are many options a person can choose to track global earthquake activity trends, I chose to track the trend in Magnitude 6.0 or greater earthquakes. I focused on large-magnitude earthquakes because these earthquakes are relatively uncommon and are the earthquakes that get people’s attention when they are reported in the news. If there is a noticeable change in earthquake activity in terms of strength and frequency we would see it in a noticeable change in large-magnitude earthquake activity over time.
The first graph displays the total number of Magnitude 6.0 or greater earthquakes each year from 1973 to 2010.
At first glance, it seems the overall trend in large-magnitude earthquake activity is increasing over time. However, what’s most revealing about this graph is that there appears to have been more 6.0 Magnitude or greater earthquakes in the first 3.5 months of 2010 than in any other year between 1973 and 2009! This is means that 2010 is indeed a historic year when it comes to earthquake activity across the globe.
You will also notice in the above graph that there were some years that had lower levels of earthquake activity than others even though the general trend in earthquake activity appears to be rising over time. The graph below “smooths” out these annual fluctuations so that a general trend line in earthquake activity over time can be seen.
The graph shows that there has been a gradual increase in large-magnitude earthquake activity since 1990. The trend line appears to be beginning to rise at an exponential rate which is an ominous trend. If this trend continues we would see much more large-magnitude earthquake activity than what we are seeing now.
Earthquakes Summary The trend in earthquake activity indicator indicates that the end times is approaching and supports the notion that we are living in birth pangs. We are seeing a rising number of large-magnitude earthquakes around the world over time. In addition, the rate of change that we are seeing a rising amount large-magnitude earthquake activity (the acceleration) is also rising over time.
I focus on two more birth pangs indicators in Part 4: famines and pestilence.
