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You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are the beginning of birth pains (Matthew 24:6-8, NIV).
This prophecy spoken by Jesus is one of the most fascinating of the 600 end-times prophecies in the Bible. End-times events, related to natural birth pangs, indicate that world disasters and trials will increase in frequency and intensity.
In preparation for this blog post, I read a book by David Reagan entitled God’s Plan for the Ages. This book was first published in 2005, and below are a couple of paragraphs from it…
At the beginning of the 2oth century the telegraph had speeded up communication considerably, but the fundamental means which most people used to get information was still word of mouth and newspapers.
Today our communication resources are overwhelming. We have telephones, radio and television. We have exotic devices like fax machines, pagers and cellular phones. And we can communicate world-wide through satellites and the Internet. I never cease to be amazed when I see someone use a credit card in an Arab shop in the Old City of Jerusalem.
In a “now” world of everyone with a mobile device, watches that act as computers, and children everywhere looking at screens — doesn’t Reagan’s paragraph on the advancement of communication written just 20 years ago sound archaic?
Let’s look at other “increasing frequency and intensity” facts…
- Famine: The number of people facing extreme or catastrophic food conditions has increased nine times since 2016.
- War: There are currently 65 active country-based conflicts — the highest number concentrated at one time since World War II. There are reports of Russia losing 20 to 30 thousand soldiers a month fighting Ukraine.
- Mental Distress: Depression among young people aged 16 to 24 has doubled in the last 20 years.
- Pestilence: New pathogens causing illness and death (despite modern medicine) are emerging faster than at any other time in recorded medical history.
We read in 1 Thessalonians 5:1-3…
Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.
An exponential curve exists with end-times events: what took 100 years now takes one year, and what took one year now takes one hour — you get the idea. Both Jesus (in Matthew 24) and Paul (in 1 Thessalonians 5) warned about the suddenness of the exponential curve with the intensity and frequency of trials in the end times.
For the Lord will carry out His sentence on earth with speed and finality (Romans 9:28).
This blog post is part of the “Saturday’s Revelations on Revelation” series.