Zechariah 14:12

And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet, and their eyes shall consume away in their holes, and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.

Have you ever read or heard a more accurate description of a nuclear blast? I haven't. I was a child the first time I stumbled across this scripture, and my reaction was  "Ewww! That's awful!"  Awful is right, and a very real possibility in the world we live in today. Pretty amazing that one of the biggest threats we face today was written about and described in 518 B.C., over 2500 years ago. And yet people say they do not believe in God.

I don't know why people claim not to believe in God. They say He is a fairy tale, a myth, a holdover from prehistoric times when man did not understand the world around him. They claim that a belief in God is only for the uneducated.  They would have you believe that the stories in the Bible are just that, stories. That they never happened. That the Earth was not created out of a formless void in 6 days, the sun and moon did not stand still at Joshua's command, the walls of Jericho did not fall down after the Israelites seventh trip around the city, and Jesus is not the Son of God. 

    Well,  Peter tells us that he was an eyewitness to the accounts recorded in the Gospels. He says:

 (2nd Peter 1:16-21): For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were  eyewitnesses of his majesty.

17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount.

19 We have also a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until the day dawn, and the day star arise in your hearts:

20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

 Peter, James, and John were Jesus closest confidantes. They were always at His side. Remember, Peter is the one that walked on the water? He didn't start to sink until he looked around him and realized that what he was doing was an "impossibility" in the natural world. That is why the Bible says that we must come to Him as little children.  

(Matthew 18:2-3)   2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 

3 And he said:“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 

Moreover, the Bible also teaches us that without the help of the Holy Spirit, the contents of the Bible appear as foolishness. 

 (1 Corinthians 2:12-16)    12 What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. 

13 This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. 

14 The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. 

15 The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments, 

16 for, “Who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?”But we have the mind of Christ.

        

Ephesians 4:18

They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart. 

Today, nine countries - China, India, Israel, France, North Korea, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States—hold nearly 16,000 nuclear weapons. Among the top threats are China’s build-up, the confrontation between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and an utterly rogue North Korea, who is knocking on the door, threatening and testing it's long range capabilities. Countries with smaller nuclear arsenals, such as India and Pakistan, are actively engaged in regional conflicts, making the possibility of regional nuclear war a concern. Other countries, including Iran and Syria, have violated their nuclear safeguards commitments and are suspected of covertly pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities. If ever there was a time when the world needs God, it is now.

Revelation 8:8-11

8The second angel sounded, and something like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea; and a third of the sea became blood,9and a third of the creatures which were in the sea and had life, died; and a third of the ships were destroyed. 10The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of waters.11The name of the star is called Wormwood; and a third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the waters, because they were made bitter.…

Today I want to talk about water. I haven’t always been a Christian, and for many years I pooh poohed all the warnings about Global Warming and Climate Change. I refused to give any credence to the warnings. Then certain things began to come to my attention, that made me take notice. I discovered that Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, and Wyoming all have water laws restricting and governing the use of water. I grew up in Colorado, and it was common to be restricted to only being able to water the lawn on certain days.  I no longer live in Colorado, but I now understand that Colorado has much stricter laws. After 911, Colorado, as well as many others, passed a law that all water that is inside their states boundary belongs to the state. It is illegal to collect rainwater, because that water also belongs to the state. Kind of hard for me to wrap my head around that, how the state can come in and claim ownership of something so basic as rainwater.  While in other areas of the United States, people collect rainwater, and think nothing of it.

Add drought and pollution to the mix, and the availability of water shrinks even more. Just recently Investigators from the Silent Spring Institute “found 27 unregulated contaminants, including a dozen different pharmaceuticals, a variety of chemicals used in non-stick coatings, flame retardants, and an artificial sweetener. It also found Sulfamethoxazole, an antibiotic used to treat urinary tract infections, and carbamazepine, a drug used to treat seizures, nerve pain, and bipolar disorder, when testing private wells in Cape Cod.1

Additionally, More than 1,400 wastewater treatment plants in the United States and Canada discharge 4.8 billion gallons of treated effluent into the Great Lakes basin every day. After 10 years of study, a report found that only about half of the prescription drugs and other newly emerging contaminants in sewage are removed by treatment plants.  Six chemicals were detected frequently and had a low rate of removal in treated effluent: an herbicide, an anti-seizure drug, two antibiotic drugs, an antibacterial drug and an anti-inflammatory drug.  The wastewater plants had a low removal rate (less than 25 percent chance of removing 75 percent or more) for 11 of the 42 chemicals that were found.2  In all, more than 165 individual pharmaceuticals and personal care products have been identified in water samples.

The immediate concern is for the fish that live in these waters. Intersex fish are particularly prevalent downstream from wastewater plants, but  I find it rather alarming that researchers have discovered intersex fish in Protected Waters. Scientists from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Geological Survey studied fish in 19 national wildlife refuges in the U.S. Northeast, including Missisquoi National Wildlife Refuge near the US-Canada border, which is among the most pristine wetland ecosystems in the Northeast.3 They found that 60 to 100 percent of all male smallmouth bass they examined had female egg cells growing in their testes. This interferes with their ability to reproduce and thereby threatens fish populations. And it is not just fish that are affected. Amphibians are also being affected, as are otters.4  The culprit? It was long thought that these changes were caused by birth control pills. While birth control may play a huge part, more research indicates that metformin, a drug for treating Type II diabetes, also plays a large role.  Metformin was "found in almost every sample, and in the highest concentrations compared to other emerging contaminants"6 Since birth control pills and metformin both are taken worldwide, this has become a global problem.

And lastly, let’s talk about China. I think everyone knows how polluted China is. Sixteen of the twenty cities on the World Banks list of “worst air cities” belong to China. In an interview with the head of the Communist Party of a village, Wang Lincheng told the New York Times, ''All the water we drink around here is polluted,'' Wang said. ''You can taste it. It's acrid and bitter. Now the victims are starting to come out, people dying of cancer and tumors and unusual causes.'' A 64 year old fisherman in Yumin, Song Dexi, tells us, 'If I had wanted to, I could have gone on the river and filled a boat with dead fish. It was smelly, like toilet water. All our fish and shrimp died. We don't have anything to live on now.''  There is no scientific evidence to prove that pollution is causing cancer rates to rise, but Dr. Zhao Meiqin, chief of radiology at the county hospital, said cancer cases in the area rose sharply after heavy industry arrived in the 1980s and '90s. Before, the area had about 10 cases a year. ''Now, in a year, there are hundreds of cases,'' she said, putting the number as high as 400, mostly stomach and intestinal tumors. ''Originally, most of the patients were in their 50s and 60s. But now it tends to strike earlier. I've even treated one patient who is only 7.''5

Jeremiah 8:14

Why are we sitting still? Assemble yourselves, and let us go into the fortified cities And let us perish there, Because the LORD our God has doomed us And given us poisoned water to drink, For we have sinned against the LORD.