How big is your God?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
TRACKING THE TREMORS
Hurricane Katrina struck Louisiana and the U.S. Gulf Coast in late August 2005. At the time, I was in the middle of a seventeen-city book tour for The Ezekiel Option across the U.S. and Canada, but like everyone else in North America, I was horrified as I watched television coverage of the disaster and the enormous human toll it left in its wake.
Like the Asian tsunami in December 2004, Katrina was a sudden and sobering reminder of the enormous devastation that can be unleashed by an “act of God.” But this time it was not in some faraway place. An American city had been virtually wiped out overnight. Americans of all ages, races, and income levels saw their homes and businesses and memories swept away forever. Local, state, and federal officials from both political parties found themselves overwhelmed by the magnitude of the destruction and seemed all but paralyzed to respond quickly or effectively enough to meet the growing needs of the residents of New Orleans and other Gulf Coast communities.
And then the questions began: Why did so many people ignore the storm warnings? Why didn’t the mayor and the governor do more to explain to people just how powerful this storm was going to be? Why weren’t more people evacuated? Why were whole fleets of school buses not used for such an evacuation? And so forth.
A few days after the hurricane hit, I was preparing to give a speech in Winnipeg, Canada, to 250 business leaders about The Ezekiel Option and the coming War of Gog and Magog. Right before the speech began, I felt my BlackBerry buzz, alerting me to a new e-mail. I don’t know what compelled me to read it just then. I was about to step onto the stage. But something caught my eye.
The automated e-mail alert from NBC News was written by Brian Williams, describing an eerie experience he’d had on the day before Katrina reached land. “I was on the phone with my wife while at the checkout area [of a local Wal-Mart] when a weather bulletin arrived on my Blackberry, along with a strong caveat from our New York producers,” Williams explained. “The wording and contents were so incendiary that our folks were concerned that it wasn’t real . . . either a bogus dispatch or a rogue piece of text. I filed a live report by phone for Nightly News (after an exchange with New York about the contents of the bulletin) and very cautiously couched the information. Later, we learned it was real, every word of it. Below are actual excerpts, in the urgent, all-capital-letters style of the medium. Note the time on the message . . . but more importantly . . . note the content.”347
URGENT — WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
1011 AM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005
. . . DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED . . .
HURRICANE KATRINA . . . A MOST POWERFUL HURRICANE WITH UNPRECEDENTED STRENGTH . . . RIVALING THE INTENSITY OF HURRICANE CAMILLE OF 1969.
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS . . . PERHAPS LONGER.
AT LEAST HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL . . . ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED . . . ALL WINDOWS WILL BE BLOWN OUT.
THE VAST MAJORITY . . . OF TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING . . . BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS . . . AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.348
“The last sentence in that statement is as concise a summation of conditions in New Orleans as is possible,” Williams wrote. “It turned out to be an advance copy of the script for this storm, predicting in unbelievable detail the level of destruction that was by now less than 24 hours away. To me it conjured up the image of a lone forecaster, known but to his or her co-workers, struggling to merge decades-old boilerplate Weather Service wording with the most vivid language possible in a final attempt to warn an entire region” (emphasis added).
AN ADVANCE SCRIPT FOR THIS STORM
As I headed to the podium, I kept chewing over those last few sentences, and I found myself reminded that Ezekiel 38:9 says that the War of Gog and Magog will “come like a storm” upon Israel and the world (NASB). And it struck me at that moment that God himself was giving us an advance script for this terrible and powerful global storm.
So as I began speaking, I walked the audience through the prophecies of Ezekiel 38–39, and then I read them Williams’s e-mail and the National Weather Service bulletin. I explained that when Ezekiel’s “storm” hits, it will make the devastation caused by the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina pale by comparison, and then I tried as best I could to help the audience understand how their lives would be changed forever.
In the run-up to the war, for example, a wave of fear will sweep across the world as a nuclear cataclysm draws near. We will see our leaders feverishly trying to negotiate a peaceful solution that will never come. We may very well see the American military mobilized as a defensive posture against Russian, Iranian, and other Islamic forces streaming toward Israel.
At the same time we will likely experience unprecedented price shocks at the pumps as oil and gas prices reach new record heights. At the very least, the markets will be traumatized by the prospect of World War III in the oil-rich region. But there may also be a cutoff of the very oil supplies upon which we so depend. We will see American citizens and business leaders fleeing the Middle East, eager for a safe haven. We may see terrorist attacks increase abroad and even here at home.
When the war itself begins, the world will experience the great earthquake of which Ezekiel wrote, “and all the men who are on the face of the earth will shake” at God’s presence (Ezekiel 38:20, NASB). If this does, in fact, mean that all people around the globe will experience a physical shaking as opposed to an emotional and spiritual shaking, we could well see catastrophic casualties and property damage here in North America. The “big one” Californians and particularly San Franciscans have feared for so long could be triggered, bringing unspeakable devastation, though it would by no means be isolated to the American West Coast.
Simultaneously, we should expect to see pandemic diseases sweep through Russia, the Middle East, central Asia, North Africa, and southern Europe, putting the entire world at risk of such pestilence and plagues. Is this a massive outbreak of the avian flu? Or is it something else, like Ebola or some other pandemic? We do not know for certain, but we can conclude that casualties will be high. What’s more, we will see massive hailstorms and torrential rains and a firestorm unlike anything the world has ever experienced, and again, casualties and property damage and psychological trauma will overwhelm all the emergency systems our nation and our fellow nations have ever put into place.
Air and shipping traffic will be disrupted indefinitely. Depending on the magnitude of the earthquake, roads and railways may be impacted across the U.S. and Canada. But even if not, global commerce will be severely affected, and though Americans and others will no doubt be exceedingly generous with their financial contributions to the Red Cross, Salvation Army, and other emergency-relief agencies, none of it will be enough. Not in the near term, anyway.
The safest place in the world to be, ironically, will be Israel, though it, too, will be impacted by the effect of the “Day of Devastation” on its neighbors and the rest of the world. If the oil industry in Israel is fully up and running by that point, the energy resources and services of the Jewish state will be a desperately needed blessing for the rest of the world. If not, God may use the aftermath of the war to bring those oil resources on line at last. Either way, we know Israel will be the center of global attention and a blessing to the world at that difficult hour.
Soon afterward, churches will be overflowing around the world as masses turn to Jesus Christ and his followers for wisdom and comfort amid such cataclysmic events. Synagogues will also be overflowing as many Jews turn not to Jesus (though many will) but back to their roots in the Hebrew Scriptures. Mosques, on the other h
and, will be increasingly deserted—if they survive this day of judgment at all—as Muslims begin an intense period of soul-searching in the shadow of the sudden global demonstration of the power of the God of Israel. New Age and other forms of spirituality will also surge in popularity as many seek explanations for events from sources other than the Bible. And the Internet will become a primary source in the global search for news, analysis, and answers.
Unfortunately, Ezekiel’s war is not the end of such global trauma. The Bible states that it is only the beginning. It will be followed eventually by an event known as the Rapture, in which followers of Jesus Christ suddenly disappear and meet Christ in the sky. This will lead to the rise of the Antichrist and a seven-year period described in the book of Revelation as “the great tribulation” (Revelation 7:14), the worst seven years in the history of mankind.
I realize there are many skeptics reading this book, people who are certain all this is a fairy tale, not something to be taken seriously. As I stated in the introduction, I am not trying to persuade you that these events are going to happen. I am simply trying to explain what the Bible says will happen, why it matters, and how it will change your world.
And what if it is true? What if God has given us in the Scriptures a sneak preview of the terrible things to come? None of us want these things to happen. I certainly don’t. But for those of us who believe the Bible is the actual Word of God and therefore have no doubt that these events are actually going to happen—perhaps in our lifetime—should we be silent? Should we keep such information to ourselves?
I don’t see how. I would rather be criticized or even ridiculed than be asked after the fact how I could have known such traumas were coming and given people no warning. So I asked the audience in Winnipeg that night—and many audiences since—these questions: Are you going to heed the Bible’s warnings of this coming storm and take the necessary precautionary steps to protect yourself and your loved ones and neighbors? Or are you going to try to ride out the storm and suffer its unspeakable consequences?
“WE DIDN’T THINK IT WOULD COME THIS SOON”
It is easy to ignore such warnings or to think that we have more time. But history suggests this is a mistake. This point was really driven home to me on the September 15, 2005, broadcast of the NBC Nightly News, when Brian Williams followed up his story by doing an on- camera interview with Robert Ricks of the National Weather Service, the “lone forecaster” who had written that prescient warning tragically disregarded by so many.
WILLIAMS: Did a part of you want to be wrong?
RICKS: I would much rather have been wrong in this one. I would much rather be talking to you and taking the heat and crying wolf. But our local expertise said otherwise. You know, “Hey, let’s gear up for the Big One, this is going to be the Big One.”
WILLIAMS: How much of you is in that statement? What of you is in that wording?
RICKS: I also had to validate each one of those statements and . . . in my mind, I was saying, “I’m not going to take this out, it sounds valid. I’m not going to take this part out, it sounds valid.”
WILLIAMS: So you went through point by point?
RICKS: Yeah, I read each one. I was trying to find things to actually take out. And I said, “I cannot find it in myself to take these out, because they seem very valid for the situation.” And I came from the experience of going through [hurricanes] Betsy and Camille myself in the Lower Ninth Ward [of New Orleans].
WILLIAMS: If you knew the damage was going to be like this, you did everything in your power to tell people a monster was coming, did the response break your heart?
RICKS: Yes, it did. Because we always prepare for the Big One; we just didn’t think it was going to come this soon.349
As I watched that interview, I felt great sadness for the people who had chosen not to take the warnings seriously and had paid the ultimate price for their disbelief or inaction. At the same time, I thought about how many more would have suffered and died if Ricks had known such a terrible storm was coming and said nothing or chosen to temper his sense of urgency for fear of sounding like an alarmist. In such a scenario, Ricks would not have been responsible for Katrina itself. But he certainly would have been guilty of knowing the truth—however terrible—and doing little or nothing to alert those who would be most impacted by it. Thank God he did what he could.
The more I thought about it, the more it struck me that Ezekiel wrote chapters 38 and 39 for the same reason Robert Ricks wrote his weather bulletin—not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Both men saw terrible events coming. Both men felt morally and ethically compelled to tell people what they knew. And both men were willing to risk their public reputations in order to give people time to get to safety.
I wrote Epicenter and the Last Jihad series for the same reason. Some may ignore them. Others may be offended or even angered by their content. But with more than one million copies now in print in multiple languages, I am struck by how many people around the world are eager to view world events through the third lens of Scripture and to make sure they are spiritually safe before the storms Ezekiel described arrive with full force.
REAL-TIME INTEL
A book, however, can only lay out the basic elements of the story. It cannot keep pace with rapidly moving events. To track the tremors in real time, therefore, I have created a weblog at www.joelrosenberg.com, where I write about the latest political, economic, military, and spiritual developments in Washington, DC, Moscow, and the Middle East.
The site allows me to link to breaking news—like when Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced, “Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. . . . The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm,” echoing the very language of Ezekiel 38:9.350 It also allows me to link to stories a casual observer might have missed, often from foreign media and intelligence sources, and to analyses by a wide range of Jewish, Muslim, and evangelical Christian writers with their own unique insights and perspectives.
The latest technology also makes it possible for me to post from almost anywhere in the world in real time, and I have done so from Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, Moscow, Istanbul, Amman, Cairo, and other Middle Eastern locations.
What’s more, readers of the site can post their own comments and give me and others a heads-up on intriguing stories they have found. They can also e-mail me with intelligence they have gleaned from their own experiences. This can prove exceptionally useful. One reader, for example, was an F-16 weapons-systems officer flying combat missions over Iraq during the war. He didn’t provide any classified information, of course, but he did give my readers and me intriguing insights into the war effort that we weren’t getting anywhere else. A former CIA undercover officer operating in central Asia occasionally e-mails me details on the growing turmoil in that region. A Palestinian pastor e-mailed me from inside Gaza when Hamas won the elections there. A Wall Street investment banker (a real-life Jon Bennett) sends me the latest inside news from Russia and the Middle East. When I can, I post these or weave the pertinent information into the articles I write.
One of my favorite examples comes from a radio producer in California who became intrigued with The Ezekiel Option, began reading my weblog, and started studying the Scriptures more closely for himself. At one point, he came across Ezekiel 38:4-8, where God says to the dictator of Russia, “I will turn you around and put hooks in your jaws to lead you out . . . to the mountains of Israel.” The passage suddenly reminded him of an article he had read in U.S. News & World Report. He contacted me and asked me if I’d read “Moscow’s Mad Gamble,” a column by Mort Zuckerman. I had not. “You should,” he said. “It’s pretty spooky in light of your books.”
He was right. Zuckerman wrote that when it came to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, “Russia has become part of the problem, not the solution.” Why? Because Moscow is selling nuclear power plants and nuclear technology to Iran and has thus become inextricably
linked to Iran’s fate. As one American diplomat told Zuckerman, this Russian-Iranian nuclear business is a “giant hook in Russia’s jaw” that will lead to serious dangers for both countries.351 The story had been written three months earlier, in January of 2006, but I would have missed it if not for an alert reader now tracking events through the third lens of Scripture.
>>FLASH TRAFFIC<<
Another way I try to help people track the tremors is through the e-mail alerts I send out from Washington called >>FLASH TRAFFIC<<, to which people can subscribe for free at joelrosenberg.com.
These are typically brief interviews with key players in Washington and the Middle East, my own analysis of breaking news, or advance notice of important upcoming events, films, or media appearances. Sometimes they are geopolitical in nature; sometimes they are more spiritual. But whereas I update the weblog every day or two (and sometimes several times a day), FLASH TRAFFIC e-mails only go out about once every week or two. They are designed for people who may not have the time to check the weblog every day but want to have the most important stories delivered directly to their desktops, Palm Pilots, or BlackBerrys without having to be reminded.
One dispatch dated March 30, 2006, described my experience at a dinner put on by the Radio and Television Correspondents Association, where conversation at my table centered on the three I’s—Iran, Iraq, and Israel.
I quoted Frank Gaffney, who served as assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration and is now head of the Center for Security Policy. Frank told me that Iran worried him for several reasons, and not just because of its nuclear program. “First: Iran now has the capability of firing a Scud missile off the back of a commercial container ship, making it possible to deliver a nuclear warhead into the U.S. without having an ICBM. Second: Iran is working on building an electromagnetic-pulse bomb, which could detonate over an American, European, or Israeli city, fry all electronics and communications, and render a country virtually defenseless.”
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