Do Recent Natural Disasters and Current Events Relate to Biblical End-Times?
Robert Hampshire
Christianity.com Contributing Writer
Throughout my lifetime (and probably yours, too), I have personally experienced and heard about others experiencing all kinds of natural disasters and worldwide events. For example, since I am old enough to remember, I have known of earthquakes, hurricanes, volcanoes, and tsunamis that have devastated lands, destroyed homes, and taken people’s lives. Wildfires have charred thousands of acres of woods and anything else in their path. Solar eclipses, comets, and solar flares have caught the attention of billions of people, causing them to look up in wonder.
On top of all of those natural events, humans have been the cause or at least catalyst for wars and riots claiming the lives of countless people, viruses affecting whole countries, and violent regimes causing the genocide of whole races of people.
If you take a brief look through a history book, however, you will notice that none of these things are new or personalized to our current era. Only a blind idealist would think that any of these will or can be stopped as long as the world exists in its broken, sinful state.
But when these major earthquakes, devastating wars, and mysterious eclipses take place, we cannot help but wonder if there is more going on than we can see with our own eyes or hear about with our own ears.
Then we come across passages in the Bible that show us that there really IS more going on! One such passage is in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus is teaching his disciples on the Mount of Olives about some events that they can expect to take place. Jesus told them:
“And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains. “Then they will deliver you up to tribulation and put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations for my name’s sake. And then many will fall away and betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come.” (Matthew 24:6-14, ESV)
If you are like me, you have some big questions when you read this passage (subtitled “Signs of the End of the Age” in my ESV Study Bible). You may also realize that every one of these things has already come to pass (even the spreading of the gospel to every nation, depending on how you understand that line). In fact, we have had wars, famines, earthquakes, persecution of Christians, people leaving their church and “deconstructing” their faith, and lawlessness many times over throughout the world since the day that Jesus declared these things on the Mount of Olives. And because of the great missionary efforts by many churches, missionaries, and mission networks (such as the IMB) and assisted by the invention of the printing press, radio, television, and now the internet, the Gospel of Jesus Christ is accessible to at least every continent and every nation (although not all tribes and tongues have heard yet).
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