Wednesday 14 January 2009

Biblical End-Time Predictions

The Bible warns about a number of futuristic global, grandscale cataclysmic events.

As frigthening as it may seem, some of these descriptions are only recently discovered as plausible calamatious treats to the human society, yet the Bible has predicted these horrors all a long. I will only summarize a few of these here.

Interestingly some of these are to a much larger scale futuristic but are already clearly visible in their early stages:

Effects of Global warming:

'... On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea' (Luke 21: 25)

The effects of the destruction of the Ozon layer:

'The first angel went and poured out his bowl on the land and ugly and painful sores broke out on the people who had the mark of the beast and worshiped his image' (Revelation, 16: 2)

see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming

Increasing temperature is likely to lead to increasing precipitation [6][7] but the effects on storms are less clear. Extratropical storms partly depend on the temperature gradient, which is predicted to weaken in the northern hemisphere as the polar region warms more than the rest of the hemisphere.[8].

Storm strength leading to
extreme weather is increasing, such as the power dissipation index of hurricane intensity.[9] Kerry Emanuel writes that hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with temperature, reflecting global warming.[10] However, a further study by Emanuel using current model output concluded that the increase in power dissipation in recent decades cannot be completely attributed to global warming[11]. Hurricane modeling has produced similar results, finding that hurricanes, simulated under warmer, high-CO2 conditions, are more intense, however, hurricane frequency will be reduced.[12] Worldwide, the proportion of hurricanes reaching categories 4 or 5 – with wind speeds above 56 metres per second – has risen from 20% in the 1970s to 35% in the 1990s.[13] Precipitation hitting the US from hurricanes has increased by 7% over the twentieth century.[14][15][16] The extent to which this is due to global warming as opposed to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is unclear. Some studies have found that the increase in sea surface temperature may be offset by an increase in wind shear, leading to little or no change in hurricane activity.[17] Hoyos et al. (2006) have linked the increasing trend in number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes for the period 1970-2004 directly to the trend in sea surface temperatures.[18]
Increases in catastrophes resulting from
extreme weather are mainly caused by increasing population densities, and anticipated future increases are similarly dominated by societal change rather than climate change.[19] The World Meteorological Organization explains that “though there is evidence both for and against the existence of a detectable anthropogenic signal in the tropical cyclone climate record to date, no firm conclusion can be made on this point.”[20] They also clarified that “no individual tropical cyclone can be directly attributed to climate change.”[20]

Others are still imminent:

Meteorite Impact:

'The Second angel sounded his trumphet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed' (Revelation 8: 8-9)

see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event

An impact event is commonly seen as a scenario[22][23] that would bring about the end of civilization. In 2000, Discover Magazine published a list of 20 possible sudden doomsday scenarios with impact event listed as the number one most likely to occur.[24] Until the 1980s this idea was not taken seriously, but all that changed after the discovery of the Chicxulub Crater which was further reinforced by witness to the Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 event. Since then there has been more interest from the scientific community and greater public awareness of the possibility of impact events.

The Bible is indeed describing an impact, nevertheless this future impact will despite its destructive effect will not annihilate all life on earth or the human race.

Solar wind:

'The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and the sun was given power to scorch people with fire. They were seared by the intense heat and they cursed the name of God, who had control over these plagues, but they refused to repent and glorify Hime' (Revelation 16: 8-9).

See this article on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_wind

Earth itself is largely protected from the solar wind by its magnetic field, which deflects most of the charged particles, however some of the charged particles are trapped in the Van Allen radiation belt. A smaller number of particles from the solar wind manage to travel, as though on an electromagnetic energy transmission line, to the Earth's upper atmosphere and ionosphere in the auroral zones. The only time the solar wind is observable on the Earth is when it is strong enough to produce phenomena such as the aurora and geomagnetic storms. Bright auroras strongly heat the ionosphere, causing its plasma to expand into the magnetosphere, increasing the size of the plasma geosphere, and causing escape of atmospheric matter into the solar wind. Geomagnetic storms result when the pressure of plasmas contained inside the magnetosphere is sufficiently large to inflate and thereby distort the geomagnetic field.

Notice that Solar wind is a reality, notice also that the earth at the present is largely protected from its effect. However, notice the wording in the book of Revelation that God will one day give power to the sun to strike the earth with fire and intense heat.

Earth Quake Storm:

'Then there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder and a severe earthquake. No earthquake like it has ever occurred since man has been on earth, so tremendous was the quake. The great city split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed' (Revelation 16: 18)

Wikipedia summaries it:

An earthquake storm is a recently proposed theory about earthquakes, where one triggers a series of other large earthquakes—within the same tectonic plate—as the stress transfers along the fault. This is similar to the idea of aftershocks, with the exception that they take place years apart. These series of earthquakes can devastate entire countries or geographical regions. Possible events may have occurred during the end of the Bronze Age, and the latter part of the Roman Empire. It has been suggested that this is what may be occurring in modern day Turkey.[1]The term was coined by Stanford Professor of Geophysics Amos Nur in 2000.[2]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/horizon/2003/earthquakestorms.shtml

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthquake_storm

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