prophecy illuminated and expands on what has been written. it does not add to it. unless what this guy means is that we can tell if we ar ein the end times or close to them? i do believe that. there are signs all around us? that sys it is close. but there are no dates predicting. no day month nor year. becsue to say otherwise would contradict Jesus
I think there is a benefit of being familiar with world history here.
What is it that people think are "signs" today? Diseases? Natural disasters? Troubling times in various nations? War? Rumors of war?
Is there really any more of that today than there was in the past?
Disease:
In the 2nd century a horrible plague swept through the Roman Empire, the Antonine Plague, possibly a smallpox outbreak, the death toll in the Roman Empire was 5 million.
In the 3rd century another terrible plague broke out in Rome, the Plague of Cyprian, probably smallpox again, which lasted for over 20 years and at its height was killing five thousand people daily.
In the 6th century the Plague of Justinian, an outbreak of bubonic plague, killed 25 million people.
The Black Death of the 14th century killed as many as 200 million people, as much as half the entire population of Europe.
European contact with the Americas brought diseases with which the Native Americans had no immunity, and estimates are as high as 90% of the indigenous population of the Americas were wiped--when Europeans started colonizing and described America as a place of pristine and untamed wilderness, it's only because most of the people living there had already died and where people once lived had already been forested over.
In 1918 the Spanish Flu swept the world and resulted in a death toll of 50 million.
Natural disasters:
In 115 AD an earthquake in Antioch killed 260,000
In May of 526 AD another earthquake in Antioch killed as many as 300,000
In 856 AD an earthquake in the Persian city of Damghan killed 200,000
In 1138 AD an earthquake in Aleppo killed 230,000
In 1303 AD an earthquake in Hongdong, in what was then part of the Mongolian Empire, resulted in a death toll of 200,000
In 1556 an earthquake in Shaanxi killed 830,000
In 1923 an earthquake in the Kanto region of Japan resulted in the death of over 142,000
The 1976 earthquake in Tangshan killed anywhere between 242,000 and 655,000
The Great European Famine from 1315 to 1317 resulted in 7.5 million deaths
The Russian famine of 1601-1603, 2 million
The Bengal famine of 1770, 10 million
The Great Irish famine between 1 and 1.5 million
The Northern Chinese famin of 1876-1879, as many as 13 million
The Great Chinese famine of 1958-1961, between 15 and 43 million
A seismic event caused by the Minoan Eruption some 4,000 years ago destroyed the Minoan civilization, caused a tsunami that killed as many as 100,000, and is likely the source of the story of Atlantis which Plato mentions in The Republic.
The Krakatoa eruption of 1883 caused a tsunami that may have killed as many as 120,000, with the eruption itself resulting in the death of another 36,000
But then, Jesus tells us that these things aren't signs of the end, He says that wars, rumors of wars, earthquakes, famines, etc are not signs of the end, but are only the beginnings of birth pangs. This is the world crying out in pain on account of sin and death. But it's not the end.
-CryptoLutheran
