Continued from previous post.
In the past, wars were not global events involving millions of people. Both World War I and World War II are so named because much of the world was involved. That had never happened before in history, and yet it happened twice in less than 30 years. In World War II alone, about 93 million soldiers were fighting on both sides and about 22 million of them were killed. But amazingly, over 30 million civilians died during that war! (1) Some estimates put the total death count from World War II at over 60 million!
And wars have continued around the globe. In 1993, the Associated Press reported that another 23 million plus people have died in various wars since 1945. (2)
In part of that verse we looked at in Matthew 24, Jesus also said there would be famines and earthquakes. There have always been famines and earthquakes so that is not such a big prophetic remark, is it? Well, we have seen that the world has become involved in bigger and bloodier wars lately, so have there been more and worse famines and earthquakes as well?
In 1996 it was reported that 800 million people go
hungry every day, and that “Some 40,000 hunger-related deaths occur every day…”
(3) Did you know that 2000 years ago,
when Jesus was walking the Earth, there were only about 300 million people
alive on the whole planet? (4) This
means that even if every person on the planet in Jesus’ time were hungry, it
still would not come close to the problem we have today.
Okay, famines are worse nowadays. What about earthquakes? Between the years 1000 and 1800 there were
only 21 major earthquakes. Eight hundred years and only 21 major earthquakes
does not seem so bad. But between 1800
and 1900 there were 18…almost as many earthquakes but in only one-eighth the
time span. Between 1900 and 1950 the
number grew to 33. Thirty-three major
earthquakes in only 50 years? Ouch! And then there were 93 major earthquakes
between the years 1950 and 1991. (5)
Wow! More and more major
earthquakes are occurring all the time.
But what about right now? What has happened in the past 15 years or
so? Well, according to the United States
Geological Survey, the world has seen 15 monster earthquakes measuring over 8.0
on the Richter scale (see Appendix 1) between 1991 and 2006! In that same time period there have been 240
earthquakes measuring between 7.0 and 7.9 on the Richter scale. (6)
