Tsunamis And End Times: Part 2

The tragic tsunami that hit Asia has been described as being of Biblical proportions. Persons have tried to read spiritual meaning into it. Some members of the Islamic press have said it was Ala’s way of punishing the Muslims of that part of the world for their cooperation with the infidel Christians. Christians have mused over the opposite.

Members of the secular American press have spoken of it as being apocalyptic, that is, having prophetic significance. If so what?

For me it helped make more understandable the Scripture passage in which Christ was speaking of end times and said, “And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved…” (Matthew 24: 22). He had been addressing the topic of the terrible tribulation what would occur near the end of the ages and concluded with this statement. An apocalyptic characteristic of that period is earthquakes.

Many scientists believe the Earth’s land mass once consisted of one large body they call Pangea. They postulate that geological forces caused it to break apart and the pieces called plates have been slowly drifting ever since. When two plates collide earthquakes occur and the earth is changed. Most often this change is almost undetectable. Modern technology can now measure such minute seismic change. The two plates that collided on the floor of the Indian Ocean were approximately 750 miles long. Their collision moved the Island of Sumatra about 60 feet to the north and caused the tsunami killing thousands.

Geologists believe that at the Earth’s center is a hot metal core approximately 2,160 miles thick, the center of it is solid and the outer layer molten. Around this is a hot rocky mantle 1,800 miles thick. The outer core on which we live consists of a thin cooler layer about 30 miles thick. The plates move when cooler plates slowly pass over hotter plates. Where the plates overlap is called the subduction zones and it is here the earthquakes occur.

America has two major candidates for such geological action. One is in California and the other in the Mississippi River area. Both have the capacity for major action.

Christ’s expression “unless those days were shortened” does not mean the number of days decreased. It means the length of the daylight in each day lessened. How could that be? The answer is hinted at by the tsunami.

Richard Goss, a geophysicist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California theorizes that a shift of Earth’s mass toward the center during the quake caused the planet to spin three millionths of a second faster and tilt about 2.5 centimeters on its axis. The conclusion is that it caused the earth to wobble on its axis and speed up its acceleration by a fraction of a second permanently shortening the length of our days. This indicates a more dramatic geological action could change the length of our days significantly.

Well, now wouldn’t you know it! The days can be shortened. All elements for the fulfillment of prophecy are in place.