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How Shall We Tell The Children?
By Edward Chamberlain

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EARTHQUAKES

The next thing Jesus told us to watch for was earthquakes in divers or manifold places. I do not believe that all of the typical earthquakes that have occurred since Jesus said this are to be taken as signs of the Beginning of sorrows, but they may be. For instance, the tiny Island of Guam experienced its largest recorded earthquake in this century just since I finished researching and started writing this book. Guam is an island whose axial cross section looks like a table with only one leg in the center of the table to hold it upright. This center leg rises up out of the Pacific Ocean to expose the table top to the air. I was stationed in Guam for a while when I was in the Navy and I can tell you I am glad I was not there during this earthquake. I have stood a quarter of a mile inland from the beach and looked down through cracks in the "ground" beneath my feet and seen caverns full of salt water. Soundings taken just a few hundred feet from the beach from around islands like Guam can drop from three or four fathoms to thousands of fathoms in a matter of yards. When an earthquake shakes an island built like Guam, there is always a chance that part or all of it will fall into the ocean.

Likewise, the recent "big Los Angeles Earthquake of 1994," as terrible as it was, may not be the kind of earthquake to which Jesus referred. We need to understand first of all that all such normal earthquakes are forceful reminders to man that even though he may be able to discover the cause of earthquakes, it will be forever beyond his capability to control them. All natural disasters are reminders that mankind and the earth exist under a curse that has terminal effects, and that our only hope for survival is to look to God on faith. Why do you think Insurance companies used to call such disasters "acts of God?" As such they ought to turn our thoughts toward Almighty God and his promise of salvation. It is also amazing to me how so many of the world's high density population centers like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Tokyo, St. Louis, etc. are situated directly above or near major faults in the mantle of the earth.

I believe the earthquakes of which Jesus spoke in Matthew 24, verse 7, will be of a distinct character. I believe this because there are 5 earthquakes mentioned in the Book of The Revelation, and the first one that occurs is revealed under the 6th seal before the sounding of the trumpets begin. It says of this earthquake that all men of the earth try to hide themselves in the caves and rocks of the mountains to escape its fury. It says that this earthquake moves all of the mountains and the islands out of their place.

Such a world wide earthquake has not yet happened in recorded history and is almost unimaginable. After the last of these earthquakes it says, "And every Island fled away," (Rev. 16:20). The whole of Southern California has been expecting "the big 'un" ever since I can remember, but they are going to be disappointed if they think it will be the biggest of all time because the Bible says in Rev. 16:18, "...and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth." Verse 19 of that passage identifies the location of that earthquake to be "the great city," which we will see to be the whole Babylonish world system. It is then written of this last quake that the cities of the nations fall. These earthquakes will be global in character.

I believe the earth's crust was prepared during the Genesis Flood for this event of unprecedented cataclysmic seismic proportions in which the first of these global earthquakes will shake the entire earth, not for 30 to 60 seconds, but for a period of many months, until much of the structures of our present civilizations have collapsed. By way of contrast, the "Big Los Angeles Earthquake" shook somewhere between 15 to 45 seconds, depending upon which report you read.

I believe the trigger for these unbelievably long seismic events will be an extremely large, extraterrestrial body that will approach our sun and the solar system from outer space. I believe this will be the second visit that this extraterrestrial visitor has paid upon earth in its history. I believe the first visit was during the time of the Genesis Flood when its approach broke up the pristine rock below the surface of the earth and opened up the waters of the "fountains of the deep." I believe it also was the instrument that God created and used to break up the surface of the earth into continents and build the ocean floors.

As it nears the earth, this "foreign body" will cause great convulsive tides in the earth's crust as the earth rotates underneath its approach. The stress of these tides will lift and heave all of the lands and the waters, shaking every square inch of earth until hardly anything is left standing and the surface is a left in convoluted shambles. Some astronomers are at this time looking beyond our sun for a "dark companion star" that they believe to be the binary partner of our sun. They believe this companion star has at least once before made a circuit passed our sun, disturbing the comets at the edge of our solar system and sweeping them into many collisions with the sun, and the planets and the moons. These astronomers believe this happened many millions of years ago, I believe that it happened only a few thousand years ago, and that it is going to return once again. And once again, it is going to break up the surface of the earth and rearrange the topography beyond recognition as earth's surface is prepared and rearranged for a millennium of rest. The force of gravity from this body acting upon the comets and solar debris, such as asteroids, once again causes them to be sucked along in its wake to plunge from the heavens and collide with the earth, the sun, the moon and the other planets. The dust from these space collisions will block out sunlight and darken the reflected moon light. These streaking, screaming chunks debris will impact the surface of earth opening huge craters on the surface after they explode through the atmosphere. Some of these chunks could be captured into a contra-earth orbit around the sun to meet us again and again over the next few years. Earth's orbit itself will likely be drastically altered. Also, the angle of earth's rotation in relation to the sun and the path of her orbit around the sun could be radically changed. I believe this "body" or "dark star" will be detected as it approaches in the skies for weeks and months, or possibly for even two or three years before the damage begins. Gradually, as it approaches, the buildings everywhere will begin to shake and fall as the ground under them surges up and down with every passing tide. Men will try to take refuge outside of the cities, but anarchy, terror, and self preservation turn them against one another. We will talk in more detail of this dark star and of the effects it has had upon the earth when we look at the Flood in the section about how materialism and rationalism have contributed to apostasy in the church.

Jesus said that all of the foregoing were the beginning of sorrows or birth pains.

Matthew 24:8
"All these are the beginning of sorrows" [sorrows translates odin, a Greek word meaning birth pangs].

There are some characteristics of birth pains which are of interest here: first - no one ever knows the exact length of time between conception and their onset, or the exact date on which they shall begin. Also, birth pains get more and more intense from the time they start until the delivery; and next, once they have truly started, they do not stop until delivery.

Jesus called the time in which the events from verse 4 to verse 8 occur, "the beginning of sorrows." Next, in verses 9 through 28, he discussed some additional things which will occur. But did he intend for us to understand that these events would be along with the events of verses 4 through 8, or did he intend that we should understand that the events of verse 9 through 28 would occur after the events of verses 4 through 8?

The word "then" that begins verse 9 is the Greek word "tote" which can either have a sense of consecution as "following along with," or, it can have a sense of concurrence as "at that time." In either case it seems to be inclusive of the time frame to which it refers and therefore would not segregate the events of verses 4 through 8 from the events of 9 through 28 into two separate time periods. Thus, the events of the Beginning of Sorrows would include the events of verses 9 through 28, but not necessarily require their simultaneous occurrence.

So when Jesus said in verse 9 that there would come a time in which the church would be delivered up to be afflicted, he told us to watch for the things which he called the Beginning of Sorrows and understand that sometime within the time frame between the time of the beginning of sorrows and the time that he came back, a time of great affliction of the church would also begin to occur.

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