#953

Prophecy Update: Going Nuclear

Hiding Under Desks

Did any of you live when we had bomb drills in school? Well I did. And in an article from history.com we see why hiding under your desk was all the rage:

On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its first nuclear device at a remote site in Kazakhstan, signaling a new and terrifying phase in the Cold War. By the early 1950s, schools across the United States were training students to dive under their desks and cover their heads. The now-infamous duck-and-cover drills simulated what should be done in case of an atomic attack—and channeled a growing panic over an escalating arms race.

According to one historian the move recognized that the US could be vulnerable to a nuclear attack:

“During this period, the United States is suddenly having to really reckon with the fact that it is not the only nuclear power out there anymore,” says Alex Wellerstein, a historian of science and nuclear weapons and professor at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “Now, instead of just seeing the bomb as this asset that we could use or not use...it suddenly is brought to bear that this is something that could be used against us.”

If you’re like me you are thinking that hiding under a desk won’t really help you much if a nuclear bomb hits your school, but the article makes the case for it this way:

The school drills, which were part of President Harry S. Truman’s Federal Civil Defense Administration program, aimed to educate the public about what ordinary people could do to protect themselves—and they were easy to mock. After all, how was ducking and covering really going to protect you from a nuclear bomb detonating your school? But according to Wellerstein, in some scenarios, the drills could have actually helped.

“People look at this and they say, how's my school desk going to protect me against an atomic bomb that goes off right overhead?” says Wellerstein. “The answer is, it isn't. It's going to protect you from an atomic bomb that goes off a little in the distance.”

And about that nuclear fallout…but I digress. In any event the threat of nuclear attacks is in our minds again.

No Nukes For You!

With a wink and a nod to the infamous Soup Nazi episode in the popular television show Seinfeld, the US made sure that Iran wouldn’t get nuclear weapons by dropping bunker-busting bombs on their nuclear sites on June 22 of this year. Operation Midnight Hammer saw America hit three nuclear sites in Iran in a military operation unlike any we’ve seen before using bombs never deployed in a military offensive. In an article from usni.org we’re told just exactly what happened:

A bomber mission of seven B-2 Spirit bombers and more than 30 Tomahawk Attack Missiles fired from an Ohio-class guided-missile nuclear submarine struck three Iranian nuclear sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo, Pentagon officials confirmed on Sunday.

“Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” President Trump said in a Saturday night address at the White House.

While the account is much more detailed, here is a brief overview of how hard the sites were hit:

The main strike package of seven bombers began the more than day-long round trip from Whiteman Airbase, Mo., on Saturday. The B-2s ultimately dropped 14 GBU-57/B Massive Ordnance Penetrators on the enrichment facilities at Natanz and Fordo early Sunday morning Iranian time, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said in a Pentagon press briefing. The MOP is a 20-foot-long, 30,000-pound munition capable of tunneling through more than 100 feet of concrete and is thought to be the only weapon in the U.S. or Israeli arsenal capable of destroying Iran’s underground uranium enrichment facilities.

Yes, the threat of a nuclear Iran needed to be addressed just as the Cuban missile crisis was a major threat to America back in 1962. Afterall, the Iranian regime always chants “death to America” and would surely use those nukes against us and Israel if they had them. They’ve actually said as much before so the threat is a very real one. Does the Bible warns us of nuclear warfare in prophecy?

Describing The Future

In the book of Revelation the Apostle John was tasked with detailing things thousands of years before they happened. Some Bible prophecy authors ascribe to the notion that they did their best to detail what a fighter helicopter looked like in Revelation 9:7-10:

The locusts looked like horses armored for battle. They had what looked like golden crowns on their heads, and their faces looked like men’s. 8 Their hair was long like women’s, and their teeth were those of lions. 9 They wore breastplates that seemed to be of iron, and their wings roared like an army of chariots rushing into battle. 10 They had stinging tails like scorpions, and their power to hurt, given to them for five months, was in their tails. (TLB)

If one puts a picture of a locust next to fighter copters in the US like the Apache the comparisons are there. However, did John also see a nuclear explosion in Revelation 8? In an article on the possibilities of the Bible foreseeing nuclear war found in christinprophecy.org we read this:

Nearly two thousand years ago, an elderly Christian leader was banished to an island as a punishment for sharing his faith in Christ. There, as he communed with the Lord on the island, he had a series of visions which described things which would take place in the last days. The man’s name was John and the visions he saw were recorded and are now known as the book of Revelation. Many have tried to defuse the book by turning it into a giant parable in which nothing can be definitely known except that in the end Christ will triumph and all will be well. But such an interpretation makes all the details of the visions meaningless. Some have dared to suggest that John’s visions may have been more literal than most have supposed. This more literalistic interpretation just might make sense if John was seeing the terrible results of a nuclear holocaust just before Christ’s coming to claim planet earth.

The article then references the late Hal Lindsey for his opinion on a nuclear future:

In his book There’s A New World Coming (1973), Hal Lindsey writes:

“Although it is possible for God to supernaturally pull off every miracle in the Book of Revelation and use totally unheard of means to do it, I personally believe that all the enormous ecological catastrophes described in this chapter (Revelation 8) are the direct result of nuclear weapons. In actuality, man inflicts these judgments on himself. God simply steps back and removes His restraining influence from man, allowing him to do what comes naturally out of his sinful nature. In fact, if the Book of Revelation had never been written, we might well predict these very catastrophes within fifty years or less!”

An ”Empty” Earth

Behold, the Lord will make the land and the earth empty and make it waste and turn it upside down (twist the face of it) and scatter abroad its inhabitants. (Isa 24:1, AMPC)

Some think this verse could be a judgment on the world by way of nuclear war. Going back to the christinprophecy.org account they tell us this:

Throughout the Scriptures, terrible times are forecast for the end of this present age. Isaiah describes the earth “empty and wasted” (Isaiah 24:1). In the book of Revelation we read of an “hour of trial” which shall come upon the whole world to test those who dwell on the earth (Revelation 3:10). The Lord Jesus, in the gospel of Matthew, warns us of a “great tribulation” which shall threaten the survival of all life on earth (Matthew 24:21,22). The apostle Paul speaks of sudden destruction that shall come just when men are saying “peace and safety” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).

As these verses indicate, the Scriptures (along with current events) make it plain that world conditions will be characterized by chaos, destruction, and death just before our Lord returns to take control of planet earth. In the book of Revelation we read of the poisoning of the oceans, the burning up of the grass and the trees, and the sun scorching people with great heat. The book also tells us that horrible plagues will afflict mankind, that there will be widespread wars and famines, and that the atmosphere will become so polluted as to reduce visibility by one third. In the midst of all this devastation, the earth’s population will flee to the caves, as people cry to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” (Revelation 6:16).

They then tease us with this question:

What will bring about such universal carnage on the earth? Is the Bible describing a nuclear holocaust?

They might have a point.

A Possible Explanation

The article then gives us a scenario where nuclear fighting will cause the judgments seen in the book of Revelation:

… the most likely explanation for the terrible judgments which will empty the earth, has to do with nuclear weapons. Since the end of World War II, nuclear weapons have been proliferating all over the globe. At first limited to the United States, then produced by the Soviet Union, they are now in the hands of all sorts of second and third rate powers. It seems almost every year that new nations are added to the list of those countries with nuclear capabilities. Our capacity to destroy all life on earth has multiplied many times over. The fact that we have not yet seen a nuclear war since 1945 can be attributed only to the restraining hand of Almighty God! Surely it is His hand that has prevented us from destroying one another up until this point. How long that hand will continue to restrain us, only God knows.

They then go back to Lindsey to buttress their thinking:

It was Hal Lindsey who first popularized the theory that the terrible plagues and judgments seen and described by John in the book of Revelation might be a First Century man’s description of a thermonuclear war. In his book There’s A New World Coming (1973), Lindsey refers to the fractional orbital bomb, and then goes on to cite nuclear passages in the book of Revelation:

“It [the bomb] consists of a dozen or so nuclear tipped missiles which can be fired simultaneously from an orbiting space platform. Because the missiles come straight down from the sky, they can strike several cities simultaneously and with virtually no warning. When these missiles streak through the air they’ll look like meteors showering the atmosphere!”

(Possibly fulfilling Revelation 6:13: “the stars of heaven fell to the earth.”)

Lindsey would then make the physical description of seeing a nuclear explosion this way:

The Apostle John’s description of the sun becoming black as sack cloth and the moon becoming like blood perfectly describes the phenomena that would result from massive amounts of dust and debris blown into the sky by multiple nuclear bursts.

“And the atmosphere was pushed apart like a scroll when it is rolled together” (Revelation 6:14). Do you know what happens in a nuclear explosion? The atmosphere rolls back on itself! It’s this tremendous rush of air back into the vacuum that causes much of the destruction of a nuclear explosion. John’s words in this verse are a perfect picture of an all out nuclear exchange… The whole world will be literally shaken apart!

Was John seeing this happen? The author seems to think so:

As we read the book of Revelation, we find John did not use terms like “nuclear weapons, ICBM’s, or fractional orbital bombs.” Instead we find him describing things like “hail and fire,” “a great mountain burning with fire,” and “a great star… burning like a torch.” This is what we would expect of a First Century man, describing things he had no knowledge of in the only terms he knew to use. Could it be that what John was really witnessing in the Spirit, was an end of the age nuclear holocaust? The effects he describes certainly seem to bear this out.

Is There Hope?

In the early days of the thought of a nuclear attack, hiding under desks was the only hope given to school kids, myself included. We now know that tactic was a little short-sided considering the nuclear radiation fallout to follow would be the real threat. I like how the author ends his article by giving us a certain hope in an uncertain world:

The good news in all of this is that God has always provided a hiding place whenever He poured out His wrath. In Noah’s flood, that safety was found in the ark. In the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot was told to flee to the mountains. Rahab found safety from the destruction of her city by staying in her house with a scarlet cord tied to the window.

In these last days God’s hiding place will be found, not in a cave in the mountains, not in a mammoth ark, but in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. It was on His Cross that Jesus took the wrath of God upon Himself, in order that those who would put their trust in Him might be spared. The Scriptures tell us, “For God did not appoint us to wrath, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). For those whose godly lives reveal that they have truly placed their faith in Jesus, He will come and take them unto Himself.

Amen to that!