It must have been the 1:00 a.m. radio news that I heard it....possibly a few hours earlier. I was working the midnight shift in a coal-fired power plant....alone in a small control room of auxiliary equipment. The date was December 27, 2004....the early morning two days after Christmas....a Friday....and I would have been halfway through my twelve hour shift. There had been an earthquake centering in the Bay of Bengal about thirty or so hours earlier....a 9.1to 9.3 earthquake....that spawned a tsunami....thirty deaths had been reported in the radio news that I listened to. I remember that radio broadcast only because the next few hours and days would correct that figure. The New York Post the next morning would raise that death figure to about 13,000. The final figure is at 230,000 deaths!
This past Tuesday morning....very early in the new day....about 2:30 in the a.m.....having been struggling with sleep which is my norm....I came downstairs and opened up my laptop to see a very small news headline....halfway down whatever news source I was on....about a partial bridge collapse near Baltimore. That peaked my interest since I had lived for a short while in Glen Burnie when I was twelve years old. Most of the news websites had not reported anything as of yet....being only about an hour after the incident....but after pulling up a map and seeing the location of it.....(the bridge had not been there when I lived in Baltimore)....I thought that this cannot be a minor news story. Well we all know now the extent of that terrible disaster.
It was a similar situation of early news reports this past October 7....6:30 a.m. in Israel....about 11:30 p.m. our time....still October 6....the last day of the holiday of Sukkot. Once again I heard initial reports of Hamas incursions into Israel....and then the horror of it all as the hours passed....and once again taking quite a while for the full extent of the loss of life to even be near what it turned out to be.
I have been in the habit for many years....probably going all the way back to the Boxing Day Tsunami of 2004....a holiday of gift giving that in the area of the tsunami....in many countries....is a national holiday....of looking very closely and looking ahead at all news stories of this nature....even political stories....to consider what the wider ramifications might be.
This whole scenario that I laid out here is the 'micro' aspect of it all.....individual events. The 'macro" aspect of it would be the turmoil in the world. I'm old enough to remember the terror attacks on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. It was two weeks before I ended my three years in the army....this at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Having little to do....just waiting my ETS as an afternoon CQ.....(Charge of Quarters....I simply logged people going in and out of the barracks)....I would along with everyone else in the world....follow the September terror on the television news.
As the years and the decades progressed....the situation all around the world would intensify. Christians.....those who took their faith seriously.....knew that the reports of violence and wars were only the beginning. I remember very well an evening class I had in college....(an 18 month program on Higher Education....along with about thirty cohort members)....and this at fifty years of age....about twenty-four years ago.....where I stood up for emphasis in class....(the class conversation was somehow related to what I would say)....and pleaded with my fellow students to take more seriously the division that was occurring all over the world but particularly in America. I could see it coming. I passionately presented my case....and the other students....all of us being friends by now....politely listened....but surely did not take my warnings seriously.
So the initial reports of the collapse of society are that of political divisions....of an extreme left....and an extreme right....but the eyewitness reports are pouring in....along with videos and statistics....and it is becoming obvious that the center will not hold. God's Word tells us to flee immediately....to follow the straight path....to the higher ground....do not linger or look back....call others to join you on your way to the Celestial City....shine the light of the Word onto the path in the darkness....in "fear and trembling"....yet not timid....but with confidence in the Lord....all the while...."addressing one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with your heart, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Ephesians 5:19-20
