1. "Endless" drought burns forests like kindling
The ongoing California drought has killed more than 12 million trees in its San Bernardino National Forest
to date. The danger is compounded by rampant bark beetle infestations
and wildfires, both of which take advantage of the trees' water
deprivation.
"It is almost certain that millions more trees will
die over the course of the upcoming summer as the drought situation
continues and becomes ever more long term," biologist Jeffrey Moore,
acting regional aerial survey program manager for the U.S. Forest
Service, told the
Los Angeles Times.
Now four years into the deadly drought,
California has approved unprecedented water usage restrictions
on businesses, government agencies, and individuals, in a desperate
effort to conserve the state's increasingly limited water. But with more
than 93 percent of the state experiencing severe, extreme or
exceptional drought as measured by the U.S. Drought Monitor, the
situation looks dire indeed.
"This is the drought of the century,
with greater impact than anything our parents and grandparents
experienced," said Felicia Marcus, chair of the State Water Resources
Control Board, in a statement.
2. Bird flu outbreak the next step toward a new plague?
Although
the burgeoning Ebola epidemic has largely been brought under control
(for now), another highly pathogenic virus is just starting to rampage
through the American heartland.
The
H5 strain of avian flu has infected
upward of 20 million birds at dozens of commercial sites from Iowa to
Idaho, from California to Arkansas. Though the poultry and egg industry
is taking steps to prevent any of the infected birds from entering our
food supply, one can only imagine the potential devastation that could
be wreaked should some of these infections slip through—potentially
triggering the long-feared jump to a strain of the virus inherently
infectious to humans.
3. Thousands of starving sea lions mysteriously displaced
A record number of sea lions have washed up,
starving and stranded, on southern California shores in recent months.
This ghastly phenomenon more than doubles the total of lost sea lions
appearing in 2013, the previous worst winter on record for the animals.
Moreover, the record counts don't even include the vast number of dead sea lions, many of which may never be discovered.
Government
agencies and news media have blamed the "unusual mortality event" on a
confluence of strange events, from warming coastal waters and
unseasonably weak ocean winds to abnormal food shortages. Whatever the
cause, it is clear that something strange and unprecedented is
disturbing the normal flow of this marine ecosystem, and it's growing in
intensity.
4. The Altar of the Lord rebuilt in Jerusalem
One
of the key unfulfilled elements of end-times prophecy is the rebuilding
of the temple of the Lord in Jerusalem. For centuries, the Temple Mount
has been occupied by the Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and
even today, though the site is in the State of Israel, the site is
administered by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, a Muslim organization. In
short, there are several key barriers that seem to block the way to that
particular prophecy being fulfilled.
The Temple Institute is one
organization vying for the temple's reconstruction, and it recently
undertook an unprecedented step in this prophetic restoration:
rebuilding the Altar of the Lord.
"We know that end-time prophecy cannot be fulfilled without the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem," said
New York Times best-selling author of
The Mystery of the Shemitah and
The Harbinger,
Jonathan Cahn. "What many people don't realize is that along with the
Holy of Holies, the altar of the Temple is the most central and critical
part of the Temple."
Though the altar, which was completed in
December, would comprise just a portion of the prophesied restored
temple, this is just a step in the Temple Institute's overall plan to
fulfill Scripture.
In keeping with its stated goal of "do[ing] all
in our limited power to bring about the building of the Holy Temple in
our time," the organization, and other supporters of the "Temple
Movement," are working to bring this prophecy to fruition in the very
near future.
5. Microchip implants—the Mark of the Beast?
It
has long been surmised that the Mark of the Beast could be electronic
in nature, perhaps as an implanted microchip in the hand or forehead, to
be used for commerce, identification and access to various elements of
life under the Antichrist's rule. Recently, one company in Sweden
voluntarily piloted a program that bears eerie similarities to those apocalyptic predictions.
Employees
of BioNyfiken are able to unlock doors, access their printing accounts,
and pay for lunch with a simple wave of their hand, as scanners read
the chip implanted within and identify the user associated with it.
Hannes
Sjoblad, BioNyfiken's chief disruption officer, predicts a future in
which "big corporates and big government come to us and say everyone
should get chipped."
Meanwhile, tech trends expert Faith Popcorn revealed that, "We foresee a future in which everyone will have an implanted chip."
What other end-times signs do you see unfolding? Sound off.
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