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Bible Picture Pathways

Signs of the Times 

 The Bible tells us that there will be signs in the natural world that reveal that time is short and Christ coming is near at hand.

Revelation 12:12  

Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.

We should therefore expect to see major problems in the natural world; things that could be considered bad enough that they would fit the Biblical description of the word "Woe".

 Here is a map showing NASA’s detected fires in only one week of December. Some of these are most likely controlled fires, some are wildfires, but this gives an idea of how much burning is happening currently.

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Areas the world over are experiencing major flooding at alarming rates. Whole communities are being swept away in minutes by raging waters. Just a glance at websites such as (http://floodlist.com/) gives you an idea of the devastation that is compiling around the world.

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Tornados are increasing throughout the world – striking where least expected and causing death and destruction on every side. 

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 Hurricanes/Cyclones are multiplying around the world. Analysis of hurricane characteristics in the North Atlantic has shown an increase in hurricane frequency and intensity just since 1995.

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Severe thunderstorms, lighting, and hail are becoming more and more commonplace! In just the state of New Mexico alone, hail storms have been on the increase! 

 From the 1888 Great Controversy p.589 we read:

"Satan has control of all whom God does not especially guard. He will favor and prosper some, in order to further his own designs, and he will bring trouble upon others, and lead men to believe that it is God who is afflicting them. While appearing to the children of men as a great physician who can heal all their maladies, he will bring disease and disaster, until populous cities are reduced to ruin and desolation. Even now he is at work. In accidents and calamities by sea and by land, in great conflagrations, in fierce tornadoes and terrific hail-storms, in tempests, floods, cyclones, tidal waves, and earthquakes, in every place and in a thousand forms, Satan is exercising his power. He sweeps away the ripening harvest, and famine and distress follow. He imparts to the air a deadly taint, and thousands perish by the pestilence. These visitations are to become more and more frequent and disastrous. Destruction will be upon both man and beast. “The earth mourneth and fadeth away,” “the haughty people . . . do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant.” [Isaiah 24:4, 5.] 

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 And the woe is not just on the elements of nature, it is also falling on the wildlife itself. Every year we hear of more and more strange “die – offs” of large groups of the animal kingdom.

They are called mass mortality events (MME) and according to a group of researchers from the University of San Diego, UC Berkeley and Yale – records "revealed that not only are these events becoming more frequent, they're also increasing in magnitude" as well. (http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mass-animal-deaths-on-the-rise-worldwide/). In their study, published in the January 27, 2015 edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and reported about on CBS News they state: 

“Our analysis of published animal MMEs indicates that the magnitude of MMEs has been undergoing taxon-specific shifts and that MMEs associated with multiple stressors and disease, which are associated with the largest MME magnitudes, are increasing in frequency.”

 And that was just a few of the more than 800 of these die-offs in this year (2015) alone!