|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Watching for cuesReader comment on item: Siege in Sydney Submitted by Michael S (United States), Jan 27, 2015 at 06:13
I think we've strayed a long way from the Sydney attack, but I've enjoyed these trans-Pacific notes. I'm definitely not talking about things that will happen 50 years from now. My eyes are glued on very current events; because things have been changing so quickly the past few months that it's easy to miss a cue. The end of the age, mentioned in Revelation. 19 and Zechariah 14 (They describe the same event, which includes a nuclear war) will happen within perhaps a decade. At my age, that's not a long time at all. This will likely be preceded by seven years (according to the text of the scripture) by the less important attack on Israel by Turkey, Iran, Sudan and Libya. I just mention these things, so you know what time-frame I'me talking about. It will not happen 50 years from now. So, how will you prepare for a nuclear war in ten years? It definitely requires preparation; because a very small percent of humanity will be killed instantly in such an event. You say it's good that I live near the mountains? How's that, exactly? We in more rural surroundings are very dependent on cars and trucks, to deliver food and other things we need. Even if the pumps keep on working, the tanks at the petrol stations will be empty in a few days. In big cities, at least the powers that be can tap into large storage tanks. We don't have that here. Oh, we've got lots of wood; but my cars don't run on wood. I have an electric chainsaw and a gasoline generator, which could keep the fireplace fed, and a small emergency store of wood. We don't have that for Armageddon, but for ordinary power outages that happen now and then. There will be lots of burn victims; and even with good stocks of food storage, not many folks here could stay alive for more than a couple of months. Look what happened in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, after a few years of war weakened their health system. Ebola has never gotten out of hand like that before; but it happened last year because technology actually worked AGAINST those people instead of for them: It brought people into much more daily contact with one another. If and when we get a destructive war, people won't get their flu shots, rabies shots, etc.; and bubonic plague is endemic in our rural areas. We aren't Amish farmers, plowing fields by hand with Percherons for tractors. Ten years, Waza... how does one prepare? We had a tidal wave in New York city a couple of years ago, and the whole country had to pitch in to help those folks. What will happen, when "tidal wave"-type disasters are happening all over the country? People will wish they were living in the "good old days" of the Indonesian tidal wave, the Bali bombing and Hurricaine Katrina. How does one deal with such disasters? How did the Jews deal with the Holocaust? That began in 1938, with Kristalnacht; but by 1942, when the gas chambers and ovens were running like factories, the Jews found that there was nothing more they could do to stave off the evil day: They had to confront it. They had to confront death. I'm somewhat able to confront a disaster or war; but death? You can't stop death with food storage, or with fallout shelters. And like the Jews in World War II, most of us will see death approaching and know we cannot stop it. The German bombings of London took a heavy toll in World War II. What took an even greater toll, was having the great majority of young men away at war, away from their wived and families. Children spent years without their fathers, and with their mothers often away from home with wartime occupations. As the physical landmarks crumbled before the eyes of the adults, the social and moral landmarks were missing for the children. England changed tremendously during the war: It changed inside of people. They could never go back to the way things were. For the Germans, it was worse; and for the Jews, much, much worse. It's that internal devastation, that I would like to prepare people for. Westerners are so smug nowadays. Now that they have hand-held telephones-cum-cameras-cum-computers, geopositioning sattelites and driverless motorcars, they think they really have life figured out. Why, they've even found evidence of yet another sub-atomic particle, at the cost of tens or hundreds of billions of dollars, in the CERN reactor! Whoopie, whoopie! They think that's such a accomplishment, a real answer to life's mysteries; but all it's done, is to let people know that they will need to spend trillions of dollars to find the next particle, and the next, and the next, and still be no closer to knowing the truth. Yes, people are smug and self-confident, having no need to seek out and find an invisivble God; but when these things happen, as I say, perhaps in around ten years, there will be a scramble... no, a panic: not to find new sub-atomic particles, nor to get their GPS to work, nor to find God. Some will look for God, but won't find him; other will curse the God they don't believe in, for all the suffering and deprivation they are in; but when we all arrive on the other side of Death's door, many will look back upon the "good old days" -- not of Hurricaine Katrina and the Bali bombing, but the days when they still had strength and breath in them to repent, but didn't. That's the scenario I'm looking at. Things are changing very quickly nowadays, very quickly. I check the news every day, lest I miss a cue. Shalom shalom Waza :-) Note: Opinions expressed in comments are those of the authors alone and not necessarily those of Daniel Pipes. Original writing only, please. Comments are screened and in some cases edited before posting. Reasoned disagreement is welcome but not comments that are scurrilous, off-topic, commercial, disparaging religions, or otherwise inappropriate. For complete regulations, see the "Guidelines for Reader Comments". Reader comments (92) on this item
|
Latest Articles |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
All materials by Daniel Pipes on this site: © 1968-2024 Daniel Pipes. daniel.pipes@gmail.com and @DanielPipes Support Daniel Pipes' work with a tax-deductible donation to the Middle East Forum.Daniel J. Pipes (The MEF is a publicly supported, nonprofit organization under section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by law. Tax-ID 23-774-9796, approved Apr. 27, 1998. For more information, view our IRS letter of determination.) |