Disasters

It is very hard to ignore the disasters that have been in the news recently.  There may or may not be more important things going on in the world but disasters have been the top story.

Last week two villages were buried in a landslide in Central America.  There was a loud noise and then the villages were gone.  The disaster was a result of flooding by remnants of Hurricane Stan.  In the end, 1,400 people were buried alive instantly.  The government was considering declaring the area a mass grave because of the small likelihood of finding any survivors and a law that calls off searches after 72 hours.

Just a few days later, a large earthquake struck parts of Asia, killing tens of thousands of people.  I didn't follow the news coverage.  I only heard that there were more than a dozen aftershocks.  I was away for the weekend and didn't catch much news but even if I had been home, it is doubtful that I would have followed closely.  The disaster was too eerily reminiscent of the tsunami that occurred slightly more than nine months ago.

Of course there are those who will proclaim that this is the wrath of God being poured out on the earth - that we must repent now or be swept away in the coming wrath.  I'm not going to disagree with them, but I will also not agree with them.  I don't know the mind of God and I can't make such a statement without it being more than a guess.  This could be the wrath of God, or it could just be disasters that God has allowed to happen.

Whatever the case may be, it should make some Christians' ears perk up when they hear of things like this.  We are told that things will get worse and that there will be signs.  This could be the beginning of birth pains that Jesus describes in Matthew 24.  Once again, I can't really know for sure.

One thing I believe I can say is that we are becoming hardened to disasters.  Sure, there is still a lot of news coverage about Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans but people aren't listening as closely.  When tens of thousands of people were killed in an earthquake, I myself didn't think much about it.

Maybe you have not become so callous yet.  I believe that these disasters will be much worse when the end does come.  And by then, many people will be so used to them that they will see them as just another meteorological event.  When the end times come, it will be without a doubt the wrath of God being poured out and I believe that many will just blame the weather patterns or believe that we were due for a large earthquake.

I hope many people wake up before then and that the rapture has come before we see it get much worse.

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