Signs of the Times 4

Taken from The End of the World and the Return of the Lord Jesus Christ, by a servant (copyright 2009, 2016; to be published in 2017 – copy freely for personal use):

PART FOUR

Signs of the Times

3. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION: ‘What makes these signs of the times you speak of different than those that believed the Lord’s coming was very near 200 or 300 years ago?’ There is a vast difference;   even if the Temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem 100 years ago, the Lord would not have returned until mankind was capable of mass destruction or killing one quarter of the inhabitants of the earth in a short period of time – not longer than months. This capability did not come into being until after the mass production of nuclear weapons in the 1960s.

The Lord said of ‘wars and rumors of wars… but the end is not yet; for nation will rise against nation …and there will be famines and troubles.  These are the beginning of sorrows… (Mark 13:7,8; Matthew 24:6-8).’  And what sorrows?   John in Revelation tells us after the Lord ‘opened the second seal …another horse, fiery red, went out …that people should kill one another…and when He open the fourth seal …a pale horse went forth …and power was given to them over a fourth of the earth, to kill with sword (war), with hunger, with death and by the beasts of the earth… after these things …a third of the waters became wormwood (poisoned) and many men died… (Rev. 6:1-8; 7:1; 8:1, 10,11).’

Yes, one ‘angel of the Lord (could go) out and kill …185,000 (2 Kings 19:35),’ and if it was the will of God the ‘Death (Rev. 6:8)’ angel could kill 1,850,000,000 people.  All nations have ‘blasphemed (2 Kings 19:6)’ God, and the tribulation under these seals is not a plague that kills in one day, but lasts for a time mixed with famine and hunger.  The Bible says, even beasts will kill the weak and hungry.  At that time, the Lord will judge the nations by His word: ‘If you do not obey Me… and if you despise My commandments… I will appoint terror over you… and disease… and you shall be defeated by your enemies… and after this, if you do not obey Me, then I will punish you 7 times more for your sins. …I will bring a sword …and send pestilence… (as in Matt. 24:7) and vengeance… and after all this …if you do not obey Me, but walk contrary to Me, then I will come …in fury …and I will lay your cities waste… (Lev. 26:14-31).’       This decree of God is not just to Israel, for ‘the great, mighty and awesome God, who shows no partially (Deut. 10:17),’ in the Great Tribulation, shall bring vengeance, sorrow and judgment upon all nations of the earth first by war and pestilence, ‘such as has not been since the beginning of the world (Matt. 24:21),’ then ‘after all this… (Lev. 26:27; Rev. 7:1,9)’ …the seventh seal and the seven trumpets, etc. (Rev. 8:2).

Though the city of Jerusalem, Israel and natural Jewish descendants of Abraham are central in John’s Revelation and in Christ’s warning on the Mount (Matt. 24; Mark 13; Luke 21), this ‘time of trouble, such as never was since (Dan. 12:1)’ shall, ‘as in the days of Noah (Matt. 24:37; Luke 17:26; Gen. 6:13),’ prevail upon and cover the whole earth.

In 1895, Alfred Nobel established the Nobel Peace Prize just before his death; ironically he was the inventor of dynamite (1866).  And though dynamite was used for industrial uses such as mining and creating railway and subway tunnels, Nobel said, ‘My dynamite will sooner lead to peace than a thousand world conventions.  As soon as men will find that in one instant whole armies can be destroyed, they surely will abide by golden peace.’  In 1921, Albert Einstein, a German born Jew, won the Nobel Prize in Physics.  August 1939, Einstein, who became a U. S. citizen the following year, wrote President Franklin D. Roosevelt telling him about the potential of ‘the element uranium.’  September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland and began World War II.

(unable to show pictures of Sims-Dudley dynamite gun 1897; and other WWI pictures of weapons and imagines of machine gunners, etc… Artillery causes over 65% of casualties of WWI; over 100 million grenades used.)

After receiving Einstein’s letter; October (1939), Roosevelt sets up the Advisory Committee on Uranium and Atomic Power with $6,000.  February 1941 Seaborg and Wahl discovered plutonium.  A month before the Pearl Harbor attack (Dec. 7, 1941), joint British (Maud Committee) – American research revealed a bomb of ‘superlatively destructive power’ was possible with uranium fission. September 17, 1942, Col. L.R.Groves was appointed over the Manhattan Engineer District (‘the Manhattan Project’).  Within 10 days, Groves (made Brigadier General) obtained 52,000 acres for ‘Site X’ in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and ordered 1,250 tons of high quality Belgian Congo uranium.  In October, he made J. Robert Oppenheimer head of Project Y and acquired ‘Site Y’ at Los Alamos, New Mexico.  Scientists came from Germany, Hungary, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, Britain, and the United States.  By May 1943, the budget exceeded $ 2 billion.

December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi led a team that completed the first virtual nuclear reactor at the University of Chicago.  September 1944, the first full scale plutonium reactor (B-Reactor) was completed at Hanford Site in Washington state (590 sq. miles).  January 1945, output of U-235 was at a level sufficient for a bomb in July.  May 7, 1945, Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allies. On July 16, 1945, the ‘Trinity’ test explosion in New Mexico became the first used nuclear bomb. July 24, President Harry S. Truman formally tells General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, that the United States had atomic weapons.  In the Pacific fighting still raged on as thousands of troops were being killed.  By July 1945, the U.S. had already had about 300,000 causalities in the Pacific and determined the cost of invading Japan was too high.   President Truman made the decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima.

(unable to show pictures of Trinity explosion at Jornada or Hiroshima or bombs dropped during WWII – millions of bombs.  And below unable to show pictures of Nagasaki – waste land and of victims with their skin falling off as they attempt to receive treatment)

August 6, 1945, the B-29 ‘Enola Gay’ carrying a uranium bomb called ‘Little boy,’ at 8:15 AM, dropped that atomic bomb on Hiroshima which killed over 70,000 Japanese by the initial blast, heat, radiation and fires.  Co-pilot Robert Lewis latter said, ‘I don’t believe anyone ever expected to look at a sight quite like that.  Where we had seen a clear city two minutes before, we could now no longer see the city.  We could see smoke and fires creeping up the sides of the mountain…’  Yet, Japan’s Premier Suzuki did not accept Truman’s surrender ultimatum.  Thus, on August 9 the only other atomic bomb in existence was placed on a B-29 super-fortress named ‘Bocks Car.’  This plutonium bomb was ‘Fat Man (10,800 lbs; 10’ 8” long; 60” diameter; 1.176 kilograms of plutonium; nuclear; equal to 21,000 tons of TNT; about 2 times ‘Little Boy’).’   The plane left from the island of Tinian for the primarily target Kokura, but because of a haze of smoke over the city, the bomb was dropped on the secondary target – Nagasaki.  The atomic blast released huge amounts of energy devastating all in its path, killing about 39,000 people instantly; and by the next year twice that many had died, and within 5 years over 100,000 had died from after effects.  Looking upon their ruined cities and horrible and hideous hundreds of thousands of casualties, in distress and awe of such force, August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered.

After the Korean War, Dec. 1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower (Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces in Europe WW II) delivered his Atoms for Peace speech before the United Nations General Assembly: ‘…I know that the American people share my deep belief that if a danger exists in the world, it is a danger shared by all …if hope exists …that hope should be shared by all.  …I feel impelled to speak today in a language that in a sense is new – one which I, who has spent so much of my life in the military profession, would have preferred never to use …the language of atomic warfare.  The atomic age has moved forward at such a pace that every citizen of the world should have some comprehension …July 16, 1945, the United States set off the world’s first atomic explosion. Since that date… the U S has conducted 42 test explosions.  Atomic bombs today are more than 25 times as powerful as the weapons with which the atomic age dawned, while hydrogen weapons are in the range of millions of tons of TNT equivalent.  Today, the United State’s stockpile of atomic weapons, which, of course, increases daily, exceeds by many times the explosive equivalent of the total of all bombs and all shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theatre of war in all the years of World War II.  …In the United States, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and the Marine Corps are all capable of putting this weapon to military use. But the dread secret, and the fearful engines of atomic might, are not ours alone …the secret is possessed by our friends and allies, Great Britain and Canada… also by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union has informed us that… it has devoted extensive resources to atomic weapons.  …If at one time the United States possessed what might have been called a monopoly of atomic power, that monopoly ceased to exist several years ago… There is at least one new avenue of peace… the U.N. …Disarmament Commission …consisting of representatives of the Powers principally involved… which should seek in private an acceptable solution to the atomic armaments race which over shadows not only the peace, but the very life, of the world.”

(unable to show pictures of ‘Bravo’ Hydrogen Bomb test 1954, or the Crater blasted by H-bomb in 1962 in Nevada; or Russian ‘Tsar Bomba’ – 50 megatons; 1961.)

As a direct result of the 1953 U.N. meeting, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created in 1957.  The IAEA reports to the United Nations Security Council and other committees; it is just one more of the U.N.’s pieces of control and sense of global authority.  IAEA’s article History of the IAEA states: “…more countries mastered nuclear technology …two additional nations had ‘joined the club,’ France in 1960 and China in 1964. …There was growing support for international, legally binding, commitments and comprehensive safeguards to stop the further spread of nuclear weapons and to work towards their eventual elimination.  …In 1968 the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) …froze the number of declared nuclear weapons States at five (USA, Russia, UK, France, and China).  …The 1970’s showed that the NPT would be accepted by almost all of the key industrial countries and by the vast majority of developing countries.  The technology had matured and was commercially available, and the oil crisis of 1973 enhanced the attraction of the nuclear energy option. …By the early 1980’s, the demand for new nuclear power plants had declined sharply in Western countries, and it shrank nearly to zero in these countries after the 1986 Chernobyl accident.  …In 1991, the discovery of Iraq’s clandestine weapon program sowed doubts about the adequacy of IAEA safeguards, but also led to steps to strengthen them, some of which were put to the test when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) became the second country that was discovered violating its NPT safeguards agreement.  The Three Mile Island accident and especially the Chernobyl disaster persuaded governments to strengthen the IAEA’s role in enhancing nuclear safety.  In the early 1990’s, the end of the Cold War and the consequent improvement in international security virtually eliminated the danger of a global nuclear conflict.  Broad adherence to regional treaties underscored the nuclear weapon free status of Latin America, Africa, and South East Asia, as well as the South Pacific.  The treat of proliferation in some successor States of the former Soviet Union was averted; in Iraq and the DPRK the threat was contained.  In 1995, the NPT was made permanent… In recent years, the Agency’s work has taken on some urgent added dimensions.  Among them are countermeasures against the threat of nuclear terrorism…”

According to the IAEA’s PRIS (Power Reactor Information System), in 2016 there are 444 nuclear plants in operation in about 31 countries (including Iran) and another 64 plants under construction.  Since 1939, trillions of dollars have been spent on nuclear weapons, enough to not only feed all the poor in the world, but buy them each a nice home.

 

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC.org) reported that in 1945 the US had 6 nuclear weapons; and that by 1985, the United States had over 23,100; Russia over 39,100; United Kingdom – 300; France – 360 and China – 425.  By 2002, after SALT, START and many treaties, the ‘Global Nuclear Weapons Stockpile’ totaled 20,190.  In February 2005, NRDC ‘determined that the United States is still deploying 480 nuclear weapons in Europe.  …At the time the Gulf War began on January 17, 1991, Iraq was known to have chemical weapons and ballistic missiles.  …At a January 9, 1991, meeting between Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and U.S. Secretary of State James Baker… letter from President Bush warned: ‘God forbid… chemical or biological weapons are used against our forces – the American people would demand revenge… This is not a threat but a pledge that if there is any use of such weapons, our objective would not be only the liberation of Kuwait, but also the toppling of the present regime…” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (January/February 2009): “It is 5 minutes to midnight (on the doomsday clock). …We estimate that from 1959 to present, the United States produced approximately 3,160 ICBMs… We estimate that since 1960, the Soviet Union/Russia has built at least 5,000 ICBMs… In the mid-1970s, the cumulative megatonnage of Soviet ICBMs peaked at almost 450,000 Hiroshima-sized bombs.  As accuracy improved and reductions took hold, the total yield decreased; but old habits are hard to break: As of 2008, Russia has twice as many ICBM warheads as the United States with six times the total yield.”

In 2007 NRDC reported the U. S. stockpile of nuclear weapons at 9,938 located in 18 facilities in 12 states and six European countries, but with continual reducing toward the 5,047 goal for end of 2012.  According to the Federation of American Scientists and NRDC, in 1986 the worldwide ‘global nuclear stockpile’ reached about 70,000; and in 2008 it was just above 20,000.  iCAN (international campaign to abolish nuclear weapons)  in 2016 reported ‘nine countries possess more than 15,000 nuclear weapons.’  October 2015, Union of Concerned Scientists reported in Bad Math on New Nuclear Weapons… ‘U S deploys four types of ballistic missile werheads: two on land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and two on submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs)… the 3+2 plan would replace them with tree new interoperable warheads (IWs) that could be deployed on both ICBMs and SLBMs… the 3+2 plan would allow a further reduction in technical strategic hedge from 1,250 to 1,000 warheads… (the plan) would take at least three decades …current U.S. Nuclear Arsenal… 2,700.’

(unable to show chart of Estimation of Worldwide Nuclear Weapons in 2015; but sources included: iCan; SIPRI; FAS; ploughshares; Bullection of the Atomic Scientists – Nuclear Notebook:  nevertheless showed that in 2015 there were 4,000+ deployed Nuclear Weapons and including Stockpiles about 16,000 worldwide; with Russian having: about 7,300; the US 7,000; France 300; China 260; the UK 215; Israel 80; Pakistan 130; India 120 and North Korea and Iran both with less than 10.  Additionally, the Chart showed that in 2015 worldwide military spending at $ 1.7 trillion; US – $ 596 billion; China $ 215 B; Saudi Arabia – $ 87 B and Russian at $ 66 billion.)

If a worldwide nuclear war broke-out, mutually assured destruction is guaranteed from the blast, heat, radiation, tidal waves, and poisoning of air, land and sea – food; thus famine.  Rajiv Gandhi, PM of India, at U.N. General Assembly, June 1988: “Nuclear war will not mean the death of a hundred million people; or a thousand million. It will mean the extinction of four thousand million: the end of life as we know it on our planet earth.” Yet, war will come, and if only 10% of the ICBM’s hit close to their targets they would kill about a quarter of the earth’s population within months.  It will be as the day of the Lord when ‘their flesh shall dissolve while they stand on their feet… (Zech. 14:12).’