Magnetic north and the end of the world

Magnetic pole moving…dead birds, crabs and fish all over the world…2012 looming on the horizon…nations rising up against nations…prophecy, or business as usual?

If you’ve looked at the news services lately, you’ve no doubt heard about the mass fish and bird die-offs all over the world this week. Some would write it off as coincidence, others believe that the movement of the magnetic poles has caused it.  Still others believe that it’s a sign from God of the impending apocalypse.  Others point to the Mayan calendar’s end at 2012, or Nostradamus’ predictions for all these things.

Well folks, I don’t pretend to be an expert in human history, nor would I claim to be a theologian.  I do consider myself a to be a literate man and a Christian, and having read much of human history and the Bible, I have to say that I don’t think these are signs of anything more than the normal course of world events. While many prophesies in the Bible refer to fish kills, birds survive.  In fact there are many Biblical references to birds picking over the carcasses of men killed in battle or gorging themselves on the dead fish, but the only mass die-off of birds in the Bible that I am aware of is in the book of Genesis, chapter seven. All the birds died except those gathered in the Ark with Noah along with every other living creature.  I don’t think there is Scriptural support for dead birds being a sign of anything.  I don’t have the Bible memorized and am not an expert in its contents, but so far I haven’t found anything there to support it.

In the New Testament, Matthew, Mark and Luke all relate Jesus’ instructions on how to tell when the end time is upon us.  Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 all tell of coming wars, earthquakes and famine.  In fact, the texts are almost identical. Yes, we’ve have had all these things, in abundance in the last few years, but I don’t believe it’s an indication of the end times.  Why?  Well, whether you are a person of faith or not, looking back through the many thousands of years of recorded history both Biblical and otherwise, you find that such things are business as usual for the human race.  War and famine go hand in hand.  You can’t grow crops or raise livestock when the fields needed for these activities are full of men killing each other with rocks or swords or bullets or bombs so people starve. Most of us are aware of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but what about the other conflicts that don’t make our nightly news?  Are you aware that since 2003, there have been at least 49 major armed conflicts in the world, many of which are ongoing?  These range from drug cartels that have overthrown legitimate governments to ethnic conflicts; some have been religious wars with different varieties of Islam at war with each other to the never ending fight between Israel and its Islamic neighbors. 

The US-Iraq war is the most famous of this group, some feared that it would spark a world war. How many nations would it take to call it a world war?  Did you know that almost 50 nations have been involved so far in the Iraq war? By far the most war torn part of the world is Africa with an estimated 400,000 deaths in Somalia alone.  There have been more than 20 major civil wars on the African continent since 1960.

What about a little closer to home? Are you aware that there have been more than 30,000 fatalities since 2006 in Mexico’s Drug War? That’s just one door south folks.  This is why I don’t think what’s happening now is an indication of the end times.  War is what humans do best.  No, it’s going to have to be something beyond the normal  course of history to live up the Gospel predictions.   

Well, what about earthquakes? Ok, what about them?  There are more than 1.3 million earthquakes every year on average. Most don’t do any damage and many go unnoticed by the mass of the human population of the earth. Of these, about 15 per year are magnitude 7 -7.9, which can cause significant loss of life and property.

As I said before, famine follows war and natural disaster.  People in the wealthiest of nations perish from hunger every year, let alone the war torn areas.  The only thing a human  does  as well as going to war with his neighbor is ignoring him so completely that the person can literally starve to death right under his nose and he won’t even know it. 

No my friends, the “wars and rumors of wars” will be something far worse than the normal state of affairs.  You won’t have to wonder if it’s the end, it will be very clear. Civilization will collapse quickly and  completely. Anarchy will grip the entire world in a matter of days. No one will be safe anywhere.  Am I basing this opinion only on Biblical references?  No, look back through the history of the world.  Every civilization that has ever existed has followed this pattern.   The Mayans, Incas, Aztecs, Greeks, Romans, and any others you can come up with have struggled together, found prosperity and wealth, became convinced of their own “immortality” or in some cases their own “divinity”, set out on a time of conquest to enlighten the barbarians, then fallen into decadence and chaos and even disappeared completely, leaving only ruins as evidence of their existence.    There are a few exceptions, those being the civilizations that have been wiped out by some natural cataclysm like a volcanic eruption (Mt. Vesuvius comes to mind) but the end result is the same. The survivors will set upon each other like dogs, justified in their actions by the need for self preservation. This has all happened before and it will all happen again.

So what do the dead birds, fish, and crabs and the movements of the magnetic poles have to do with it?  Absolutely nothing.   Our world has become so populated, our people so technologically interconnected that these days, anything that happens can and will be witnessed, photographed, recorded on video and out on the evening news before the sound of whatever happened dies on the air. Fifty or a hundred years ago, no one would have paid any attention much to these things let alone hear about it half way round the world.  When people were fewer in number and had to struggle for food, a mass die-off might even be kept secret by the few people who knew about it.  The potential for extra food was enormous and precious.  Not the dead animals necessarily, but the other creatures that would arrive to eat them.  Such an event would draw all manner of feathered and wooly beasties to scavenge off the dead and present a valuable chance to harvest food and other resources from the scavengers.   Fast forward to today, such a thing is an opportunity to harvest not food or resources, but ratings and money.  Sensationalize it a bit and you sell more subscriptions or have a story before your competitors get it.  Same thing with the magnetic pole movements.  It moves around all the time.  Scientists first started recording and tracking it’s movements in 1831 (nearly two centuries now).  One of the first things you learn in a map reading class is how to figure the difference between where your compass says north is and where your map plots it.  This difference between magnetic north and “true” north is called declination and that difference is usually noted on a topo map.  These things are not a sign of the apocalypse, just the normal workings of the earth, but it causes a stir to hear it on the news. When the ramp up to the apocalypse begins, you won’t have to wonder if it’s started, you will know beyond the shadow of a doubt.