We really are living in the end times
By newseditors // 2024-08-13
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Is it possible that Jesus specifically warned us about the times that we are living in nearly 2,000 years ago?  You may have noticed that global events have started to spiral out of control lately.  Normally, the summer is a period when things are relatively quiet.  As far as the news industry is concerned, August is supposed to be the quietest month of all because so much of the world is on vacation.  But that definitely has not been the case in 2024.  According to journalist Simon Tisdall, in recent weeks we have been experiencing a “peaking of volatility, instability and insecurity, unprecedented in recent times”… (Article republished from EndOfTheAmericanDream.com)
August is the quietest month – to mangle TS Eliot’s verse – or so news editors used to think. Politicians go on holiday, governments shut down, people head for the hills or the beach. Not much happens. Not so this August. The world this month is experiencing an extraordinary peaking of volatility, instability and insecurity, unprecedented in recent times. It’s scary, it’s shocking, it’s a wild ride. Sudden revolutions, wars current and imminent, terrible crimes, high-stakes feuding, famines, cost of living crunches, violent riots and unfathomable market panics come not as single spies but in battalions. In a world where mutual destruction, steeped in cruelty and despair, is a favoured human pastime, grim vistas of Eliot’s The Waste Land beckon anew.
He is right. But just because things have been crazy lately does not mean that we are living in the end times. If we really are living in the end times, there are certain very specific signs that we should be seeing. In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus discussed some of those signs…
6 And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. 7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. 8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Of course there have been wars, famines, pestilences and natural disasters all throughout human history. If we really are living in the end times, all of these elements should be occurring simultaneously, and the intensity of each element should be at a very high level. Let’s talk about war first.  According to the Institute for Economics & Peace, there were 56 active military conflicts in the world last year.  That was the highest number that we have witnessed since World War II…
Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia… and so on. There are up to 56 active conflicts in the world, the highest number since World War II. Moreover, these carry an increasingly international component, with 92 countries involved in wars outside their borders. These are data from the latest Global Peace Index produced annually by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), a think tank that analyzes everything from military investment and the cost of violence to military laws and deaths in combat in 163 states and territories.
As I write this, there is a tremendous amount of speculation all over the globe about “World War III”.  The conflict in the Middle East is on the verge of being transformed into an “all-out war”, it is probably only a matter of time before the U.S. is dragged into the war in Ukraine and we find ourselves directly fighting with Russia, and the moment that China invades Taiwan we will be at war with the Chinese. We are most certainly living during a time of wars and rumors of wars, and the hot phase of “World War III” will truly be unlike anything we have ever seen before. All throughout history, famine has accompanied war. Right now, we are facing a global food crisis of unprecedented magnitude.  In Sudan, endless war has created a famine that is truly horrifying.  At this moment, it is being projected that millions of Sudanese citizens will die in the months ahead…
After 15 months of fighting in that country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), experts in food insecurity estimate that almost 26 million people (no, that is not a misprint!), or more than half of Sudan’s population, could suffer from malnutrition by September. Eight and a half million of those human beings could face acute malnutrition. Worse yet, if the war continues on its present path, millions will die of hunger and disease in just the coming months (and few people in our world may even notice).
How would you feel if you had to watch your family slowly die of starvation? According to Timmo Gaasbeek of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, 2.5 million people in Sudan could perish “by the time crops are harvested in September”…
Gaasbeek warned, however, that soup kitchens can fill only so many gaping holes in a system shattered by wartime destruction, displacement, and crop failure. His institute estimates that at current rates of food sharing, 2.5 million people could die of hunger and disease by the time crops are harvested in September. In other words, a shocking 10–20 percent of the Sudanese in the hardest-hit areas could die—mortality rates similar to ones suffered during horrendous famines in parts of Nigeria in 1969, Ethiopia in 1984, and Somalia in 1992.
September is next month! But most Americans don’t even realize that this is happening because our big news networks only want to talk about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Reuters has reported that hunger is so bad in some parts of Sudan that people are literally making meals out of balls of dirt just so that they will have something to fill their stomachs… Read more at: EndOfTheAmericanDream.com
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