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To: Strategerist
And that's fine.

Those of us who believe Scripture and believe what Jesus said about conditions in the world right before His return watch all these earthquakes lately in conjunction with all the other fulfilled signs and see something more than just another earthquake.

There will be millions of people who believe these are just routine earthquakes. They are entitled to believe that.

Then there are those of us who marvel at the daily fulfillment of Bible prophecy - including "earthquakes in diverse places" (Matthew 24:7) and see something else entirely.

135 posted on 01/12/2010 4:12:14 PM PST by GiovannaNicoletta
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To: GiovannaNicoletta
There will be millions of people who believe these are just routine earthquakes. They are entitled to believe that.

And they would be right, and people who believe otherwise would be wrong. One unfortunate aspect of modern society is the "everyone is entitled to their opininion" statement or its variations; the idea that all ideas or thoughts are equally valid and none are more right or wrong than others. It's a dangerous and intellectually corrosive perspective.

We've got a solid 100 year instrumental record of large earthquakes, and a historical record (of varying lengths and accuracy, depending on what part of the world) of large earthquakes extending back in some places thousands of years.

There is such a thing as truth, and making informed factual statements about the world using reasoning, evidence, and statistics.

From any unbiased evidentiary perspective, with our knowledge of the historical record, this earthquake (and all recent earthquakes) are routine.

There's nothing remotely unusual, no increasing trend, etc. about any sorts of recent destructive geological activity, be it earthquakes or volcanoes. It's unfortunate that people attempt to twist the evidence to either forward a religious agenda, or out of wishful thinking.

The problem is the reality is pretty terrifying to a lot of people; this quake was caused by basic physics, on a fault that has existed for millions of years and generated tens of thousands of earthquakes before humans even lived near it or built a city of millions on top of it. There's no deeper meaning or message to it beyond the need to understand and manage seismic risk. There's nothing the people of Haiti did or failed to do that either caused, or could have prevented, this quake. It simply happened.

"Earthquakes in diverse places" have occured continously for the 4 billion+ year history of the earth; thus it's useless as a predictive tool. The whole point of the Bilblical passage is likely to emphasize the complete uselessness and futility of attempting to predict the second coming or the end times or what have you; unfortunately people taking the passage literally, in combination with unfortunate ignorance of basic geology has led to a great deal of misinformation.

Large earthquakes, even in a year of average activity, are not spaced evenly throughout the year; pure randomness will cause meaningless "clumps" of large quakes, along with periods of at times several months with no large quakes.

There have been a number of periods of upwards of 3-4 months without large quakes and/or destructive quakes, and for some reason I don't see people taking those periods as evidence the end times AREN'T near. Suggests the analysis of this activity isn't particularly objective.

148 posted on 01/12/2010 4:32:57 PM PST by Strategerist
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To: GiovannaNicoletta
I concur with your observation.

Quakes in Scripture are associated with judgment.

I don't know the causes for this one, but considering the history of Haiti, including the billions invested by the US to help that nation, I find the below shake map to interestingly nearly isolate the violence from surrounding nations.

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/pager/events/us/2010rja6/exposure.png

The US was still deploying JTF assets to Haiti in 2008 and 2009. I don't know if those JTFs/CJTFs have ever been disbanded.

208 posted on 01/12/2010 6:42:25 PM PST by Cvengr (Adversity in life and death is inevitable. Thru faith in Christ, stress is optional.)
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To: GiovannaNicoletta
From a Christian perspective, one should always have the Lord in his heart not just when they see “signs”. Also, Christ himself said that the day of judgment would come “like a thief in the night” that even he didn't know when the end would come.

It's all well and good dramatic and attention getting to profess your evangelical zeal but the Bible tells us to pray in private and treat the lest of our brothers as you would Christ himself. Of course, it's not as attention getting as dancing before the Arch of the Covenant.

331 posted on 01/14/2010 5:36:32 PM PST by Unshriven
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