Weekly BlogScan: Talk of the End of Days

Hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico continue to spark news and opinion pieces all over the Web, but by far the strangest theme is the "end times" scenario. Based on prophecies in the Bible (and the Koran, and the "third secret of Fatima"—and "scientific" prophesies from ecologists), bloggers all over the world are discussing the signs that we are "entering the end of days."

On Escape All These Things, the writer asks "Can you imagine the whole world like New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina?" and speculates that perhaps Katrina is "God's judgement" for the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. The discussion leaps from 9/11 (thousands dead) to the 2004 tsunami (hundreds of thousands dead) to Katrina (?? dead), and from there to "Planet Wormwood (Billions Dead)." He cites the Bible-codes.org site:

This makes Rita the 8th hurricane that the Lord has spoken to me about—four last year and four this year. This is interesting since the hurricanes also represent the wheels of God's chariot. (As in Ezekiel 1-3, as discussed elsewhere). "A wheel intersecting a wheel" (Ezekiel 1-3.) Thus we have four wheels (i.e., major hurricanes)! Four last year and four this year; Rita makes the fourth wheel (major hurricane) this year.

Chariot of God = Hurricane, from Bible-codes.org

T. Clark of Revelation 13 also finds codes that relate to hurricanes, using Bible-code search software. (Who knew?) Clarke is even willing to set the date for Armageddon.

The U.S. is being attacked by demonic forces, because the U.S. is a force for good in the world! But in the end these demonic forces will lose! The Satanic serpent will attack the U.S. by natural disasters, and by the green serpent of Muslim terrorism. But the U.S. must continue to defend Israel in the Middle East, and divine protection will defend the U.S. and Israel when Armageddon comes in 2007.

Media Matters for America documents that, in a September 9th broadcast of Trinity Broadcasting Network's International Intelligence Briefing, Biblical prophecy author and host Hal Lindsay (The Last Days of the Late, Great Planet Earth) linked the end times to Katrina. They quote Lindsay:

It seems clear that the prophetic times I have been expecting for decades have finally arrived. And even worse, it appears that the judgment of America has begun. I warn continually that the last days lineup of world powers does not include anything resembling the United States of America. Instead, a revived Roman Empire in Europe is to rule the West, and then the world.

Of interest here is the fact that Lindsay does not write of this in his regular column on WorldNet Daily. Greg Laurie, does, though—in a commentary dated September 5th, Laurie writes:

When Jesus was asked what the signs of His return would be... [he] said: "And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven" (Luke 21:11, NKJV). The Bible teaches that there is a generation of people who will not see death, but rather will meet the Lord in what is often referred to as the rapture of the Church.... Could we be that generation? Time will tell. But if I were you, I would pay careful attention to all that is happening—you will be glad that you did!

For a non-Biblical take on the hurricanes in the Gulf, nothing tops Captain's Blog's Richard C. Hoagland, and his "Hyperdimensional Katrina" theory of a "'hyperdimensional homing beacon'—specifically designed by 'someone' to guide Katrina to a catastrophic landfall at New Orleans just eleven days [later]." Multiple animated illustrations are used to support his theory.

That, in fact, is exactly what our "hyperdimensional model" for Hurricane Katrina is proposing: that what we are seeing in this extraordinary radar sequence... is the standard NEXRAD radar signal being—somehow—reflected back from the clear air over and around New Orleans... air which has somehow been made "radar reflective" by the application of an otherwise invisible "energy" signature... from somewhere. [Ellipses and emphasis are author's, not mine.]

William Bowles' blog Investigating New Imperialism imputes this "end times" approach to President Bush, without ever bringing Biblical prophecies into it.

...the hypothesis goes something like this: some years back the US calculated that global climate meltdown was an inevitability and therefore needed to produce a plan that would enable US capitalism to come out the "other side" on top in what the PNAC describes as a position of "full spectrum dominance" of this post-apocalyptic world... Moreover, the federal government's "benign neglect" of the disaster that has struck New Orleans would seem to fit the hypothesis, in fact, it's almost a "dry run" for what now seems to be a foretaste of what we can expect to be a "normal" event in the future.

And Bill Moyers' comments in Mother Jones recently (quoted on AlterNet in "Battlefield Earth") also take off from this environmental "end of days" worry. In the essay, Moyers describes how the problems "journalists routinely cover—conventional, manageable programs like budget shortfalls and pollution—may be about to convert to chaotic, unpredictable, unmanageable situations."

The most unmanageable of all... could be the accelerating deterioration of the environment, creating perils with huge momentum like the greenhouse effect that is causing the melting of the Arctic to release so much freshwater into the North Atlantic that even the Pentagon is growing alarmed that a weakening gulf stream could yield abrupt and overwhelming changes, the kind of changes that could radically alter civilizations.... That's one challenge we journalists face—how to tell such a story without coming across as Cassandras...

CNN Online quoted Hugh Willoughby, a hurricane researcher at Florida International University in Miami, in refutation of this global-warming Apocalypse: "From 1970 to 1995, there weren't that many hurricanes, and the ones we had were nice, well-mannered, housebroken hurricanes that stayed out to sea and didn't make a mess," Willoughby said. "The only thing I can say," he added, "is this run of good luck we had is ending."

To keep things in perspective, The Easter Egg Archive informs us the Region 4 copy of End of Days contains an Easter Egg that opens a trailer for The Hurricane.

Now that's prophecy!
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