Matt 24:6-8 -- Jesus promises His apostles that they will have famines, wars and rumors concerning wars. This prophecy had special significance during that period of the great Pax Romana ("Roman Peace"), when the outbreak of these wars transpired: Claudius' Roman war with Britain/East Anglia; at least three Jewish insurrections against Rome prior to the 60s AD (one violently put down by Cuspius Fadus); the Jewish/Alexandrian revolt upon Caligula's death; Claudius declares martial law in Palestine after the Jewish insurrection at the death of Agrippa I; the Germanic tribes in present-day Belgium and Germany made perpetual trouble for the legions throughout the reign; a smoldering Balkan war was in continuous progress. As these conflagrations escalated, Rome started its own civil wars in 68-70 that nearly toppled the empire. As Tacitus writes, "Four princes [Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian] killed by the sword; three civil wars, several foreign wars; and mostly raging at the same time. Favorable events in the East [the subjection of the Jews], unfortunate ones in the West. Illyria disturbed, Gaul uneasy; Britain conquered and soon relinquished; the nations of Sarmatia and Suevia rising against us; the Parthians excited by the deception of a pseudo-Nero." For more on wars of this time and false prophets, see: Josephus: Antiquities, 20:5:1-4; 20:8:5-10; Wars, 2:10:1; 2:13:4-7; 6:5:2. As for famines, Acts 11:28 records a worldwide famine. Josephus reports famines in Jerusalem in the 60s AD which killed hundreds of thousands during the Jewish War (AD 66-70). There were accounts of infanticide and cannibalism (as foretold in Deuteronomy 28:53,57) -- Jewish women cooked and ate their babies (Josephus; Wars 6:3:3-4; Wars 5:1:4). Concerning earthquakes, Seneca writes: "How often have cities in Asia, how often in Achaia, been laid low by a single shock of earthquake! How many towns in Smyrna, how many in Macedonia, have been swallowed up! How often has Paphos collapsed! Not infrequently are tidings brought to us of the utter destruction of entire cities" (Seneca Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, trans. Richard M. Gummere, vol. 2, 437). Josephus says of Jerusalem, "the city was besieged on both sides...there broke out a prodigious storm in the night, with the utmost violence, and very strong winds, with the largest showers of rain, with continued lightnings, terrible thunderings, and amazing concussions and bellowings of the earth, that was in an earthquake. These things were a manifest indication that some destruction was coming upon men, when the system of the world was put into this disorder; and any one would guess that these wonders foreshowed some grand calamities that were coming" (Wars, 4:4:5).
Sorry to burst your "sky is falling" bubble, but This is ALL 1st century stuff greyeagle... long since fulfilled, to the letter.
You are reading someone elses mail, not addressed to you.
