German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the flooding that devastated parts of western Germany and Belgium as “terrifying” after the death toll across the region rose to 188. The storm moved south and battered parts of Bavaria, Switzerland and Austria. Parts of Arizona have been hit with devastating flooding, with the city of Flagstaff declaring a state of emergency after being inundated with torrents of water that turned streets into murky, fast-running streams. Meanwhile, torrential rains have devastated parts of Arizona, forced thousands of people on New Zealand’s west coast to flee to safety, swamped Mumbai in India, broken through two dams in China’s Inner Mongolia region. Parts of China suffered their heaviest rain in 1000 years, causing people to be trapped in underground trains and destroying agricultural land.
The US has suffered dangerous wildfires, after a deadly heatwave in north west USA and Canada killed more than 30 people. This had a terrible impact on marine life, causing an estimated 1 billion sea creatures on the coast of Vancouver to die of the heat.
Drought has affected much of the west coast region, wiping out agriculture in major food producing areas of California. Iran has faced its worst drought in 50 years, with severe water shortages in the southwest causing street protests. In Russia’s Siberia, there have been nearly 200 separate forest fires, amid the driest summer in 150 years and the hottest June on record.
Is it the result of global warming? Angela Merkel’s response to the German floods was to say that governments would have to go faster in their efforts to tackle climate change. John Kerry, US special envoy for the Climate, said “The climate crisis is the test of our own times, as acute and as existential as any previous one. Time is running out,” he said. He called the Cop26 climate conference scheduled to take place in Glasgow this November “a pivotal moment” and 2021 “a decisive year”, as the world must get to grips with the climate crisis and rapidly slash emissions in the 2020s to have a chance of a safe future.
On the other hand there is extreme cold weather hitting different parts of the earth. While the north west USA and Canada had very hot weather, but the Midwest and south, including Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas had abnormally cold weather. In Africa the Kenyan government has warned of an ‘acute maize shortage’ in the coming year, due to reduced rainfall and unusually cold temperatures. Winds whipping up from Antarctica have brought snow and abnormally cold weather to Namibia, South Africa, southern Australia and New Zealand in their winter months. South American farmers are bracing for another round of harvest wrecking polar cold. Record cold has hit Brazil as heavy frosts have ravaged sugar can, coffee and corn crops. According to a report released by the National Snow and Ice Data in June 2021, ice locked at the Earth’s poles is actually growing.
The opening paragraph of the report reads: “Sea ice in the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica was well above the 1981 to 2010 average extent in June, rising above the ninetieth percentile near the end of the month”.
The mainstream narrative is that all this is caused by man made global warming and that the only solution is to cut out the use of fossil fuels. However there are climate sceptics who point to other causes of the problem. The main drivers of the weather are the sun, wind direction and ocean currents. Changes in all of these are taking place and affecting our weather now. Humans are powerless to affect any of these changes.
One such change which NASA has noted is the absence of sunspots leading to what may be a ‘solar minimum’ in the next decade. This is likely to cause colder winters and affect the direction of the jet stream.
Instead of flowing in a generally straight line from west to east, the solar minimum causes the jet stream to flow in a wavy direction, bringing up very hot weather from the tropics and very cold weather from the poles. This causes unusually hot weather in some parts and unusually cold weather in others.
Another potential change which NASA has noted is a ‘wobble’ in the moon’s orbit. A moon “wobble” will contribute to an increase in severe flooding in the mid-2030s, NASA has warned, bringing flooding to coastal regions (‘the sea and the waves roaring’ – Luke 21.25). The sun could cause a potentially apocalyptic event through a coronal mass ejection, which nearly happened in 2012. This would knock out most of earth’s communication system and cause the kind of scenario described in Revelation 8.7: ‘
The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
Revelation 8.7
Governments now are looking at the possibility of an asteroid strike, again something which lines up with the prophecy of Revelation 8:
And something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea, and a third of the sea became blood. 9 And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
Revelation 8.8-9
Jesus spoke of the coming time of the great tribulation when
there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring; 26 men’s hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming on the earth, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.
Luke 21.25-26
We are beginning to see the forerunners of these events taking place as the earth is shaken by disasters. Jesus said when you see these things begin to take place, ‘Look up and lift up your heads for your redemption draws near.’ Luke 21.28
The only answer will be the intervention of our Creator, as the Lord Jesus returns to put right the great trouble on earth and cause the earth to be ‘full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.’