Is God Knocking?

---by Dave Buhlman

In Matthew Chapter 24, Jesus explains the end times, how things will be before His Second Coming. He mentions earthquakes, famines, war and pestilence. We have always had these afflictions, but they do seem more prevalent lately. Non-believers scoff at the whole concept, while believers argue endlessly about the subtlety of meanings in Matthew 24, and many other places in the Bible. But Jesus was quite clear that things will not be going well just before He returns.

I do not keep statistical tabs on how many earthquakes and other natural disasters there have been in, say, the last ten years. So far as I know, the experts say that there is no special pattern occurring these days, but I wonder. China’s earthquake, the typhoon in Myanmar, and the floods in the Midwest have all happened in the last month or so. These are quite significant events that caused tremendous loss of life, staggering disruptions to regular life, and catastrophic destruction of property. Regarding war and rumors of war (with Iran?), they are constantly with us. Famine and pestilence are also. When all is known at the end of time, we will see that we brought most of the famine and disease on ourselves. Famine is due largely to greed, and much of the disease we see today stems from bizarre sexual practices. Certainly the endless wars are all on mankind’s tab. God has an ordained and a permissive Will, and it can be difficult to draw the line between the two. But there is no question that we bring many of our troubles on ourselves. For one thing, it’s 2008, we have sent men to the moon, and had other worthy accomplishments, but our government is unwilling to allow levees and other flood control structures to be built that, while not simple to design, involve only basic engineering principles that have been practiced for thousands of years. Doing that one thing right would avoid much havoc.

We should be considering whether or not we have gone too far. The United States lies its way into wars that kill hundreds of thousands, homosexuality has been raised above heterosexuality in some quarters (Massachusetts government, for one), the Church built upon the Rock of Peter allowed child-molesting priests to continue their abuse virtually unchallenged, abortions run into the billions worldwide, with the United States accounting for nearly 50 million victims of this staggering horror, and environmentalism, with its tenets aimed at control over all of our activities, is the new religion guiding the world.

Also quite disturbing is that people with bad bodies mounted their bicycles and rode naked through the streets to protest the use of cars. Didn’t public nudity used to be a crime?

Dave Buhlman is a former New Hampshire State Representative.