Chapter 8 - What is happening to our world?

The second greatest menace to mankind are the biological weapons being produced. With advances in biology, more man-made viruses are being created that can propagate around the world, by intentional or unintentional means, causing deadly diseases that could wipe out the human race.

“For the past 50 years or so,” relates Steven Block in American Scientist magazine, “the world has lived under the shadow of atomic weapons, threatening a ‘nuclear nightmare’ that would bomb us back to the Stone Age. The recent revolution in molecular biology may have incidentally unleashed a new threat to a peaceful night’s sleep with ‘living nightmares’: genetically modified viruses and microorganisms that could be used to develop new biological weapons."

He goes further and says: "Biological weapons have been called ‘the poor man’s atom bomb.’ By any measure, the economic outlay required to develop offensive bio-weapons capabilities is significantly less than that of a nuclear program” (“The Growing Threat of Biological Weapons,” January 2001).

Not so long ago, I read an article written by Bill Gates, one of the founders of Microsoft, where he warned that these advances in biology have made it far easier for a terrorist to recreate smallpox, which is a highly fatal pathogen, where there is essentially no immunity remaining at this point …

“Whether the next epidemic is unleashed by a quirk of nature or the hand of [a] terrorist, scientists say a fast-moving airborne pathogen could kill more than 30 million people in less than a year . So the world does need to think about this” (quoted by Sarah Knapton, “Bill Gates: Terrorists Could Wipe Out 30 Million People by Weaponising a Disease Such as Smallpox,” The Daily Telegraph, April 19, 2017).

In my book Apocalypse Unfolding Now, I turn light into the prophetic messages written in the last Book of the Bible, Revelation, about the deadly diseases and other scourges that are depicted in the end times as a fourth horseman riding upon the earth. In Revelation chapter 6 verse 8 the following is stated:

"I looked, and there before me was a pale horse! Its rider was named Death, and Hades was following close behind him. They were given power over a fourth of the earth to kill by sword, famine and plague, and by the wild beasts of the earth."

The four horsemen of the Apocalypse, as it is commonly referred to, are given power over one-fourth of the earth, indicating that God is still limiting His judgment - it is not yet complete. The limited punishment not only demonstrates God's wrath on sin, but also His merciful love in giving people yet another opportunity to turn to Him before He brings the final judgment. (to be continued - Genetic engineering)