As I sit in my living room, feeling the heat from the wood stove warming my old bones, the television is on and I am listening to the folks on the Weather Channel reporting on the latest “End of the World.” I am not sure how many ends have come this winter but it sure seems like a lot. While I know winter storms, especially ice storms in the south, can be bad, and they can certainly be destructive, but I can’t help wondering if the constant hype really helps or if it just creates more panic. 

I also wonder something else, something way more important. The reporters for the Weather Channel are talking about “a catastrophic event” and are preaching what people need to do to prepare. They need to get flashlights, batteries, generators, gasoline, non-perishable food, and on and on. Again, all good advice, but what about the real “catastrophic event” that is coming? Who is preparing for that? Where are the reporters and their live shots? Where is the expert to explain what is happening?

Look at the world around us, we kill our children through abortion, we are passing laws allowing us to kill the weak and infirm, we are destroying the true purpose of marriage, yet we don’t hear an outcry about that. We aren’t being told how to prepare for that “catastrophic event.”

The snow will melt, the power will be restored, the roads will be opened, and life will go on, but is that true with our morality? Will the culture of death be reversed? Will we continue to live in a world where we no longer put others before ourselves? Will we continue to live in a world where money is the God we worship? How do we prepare for that, how do we restore our “power” from that storm?

He answered me and said, “Measure carefully in your mind, and when you see that some of the predicted signs have occurred,  then you will know that it is the very time when the Most High is about to visit the world that he has made.  So when there shall appear in the world earthquakes, tumult of peoples, intrigues of nations, wavering of leaders, confusion of princes,  then you will know that it was of these that the Most High spoke from the days that were of old, from the beginning.  For just as with everything that has occurred in the world, the beginning is evident, and the end manifest;  so also are the times of the Most High: the beginnings are manifest in wonders and mighty works, and the end in penalties and in signs. – 2 Esdras 9:1 – 6