Is it news yet?

Airplanes that land safely and earthquakes under a 4.0 magnitude are not news. You only hear about the quakes that muscle their way through the gossip about Brad and Jen to reach the threshold of media attention. That gives us laymen the impression that seismic activity is a rarity. I didn't know how wobbly our earth was at all times until I learned from the Incorporated Research Institutes of Seismology that just in the last 30 days there have been 368 "shakings" of the earth (to use the preferred term of the author of Hebrews) over 4.0:

"At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, 'Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.' The phrase 'yet once more' indicates the removal of things that are shaken---that is, things that have been made---in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain" (Hebrews 12:26-27). (I wonder if the volcano eruption in Iceland that is crippling airports across Europe could qualify as the "also the heavens" part of the verse.)

Last month the Los Angeles Times reported that Cal Tech has been monitoring the frequency of significant earthquakes and that they had seen a huge uptick. In the first four months of this year, they've measured 70 quakes that are greater than 4.0. That's compared with 30 that they felt all of last year. There are many possible explanations for this, the articled stated, including that nobody knows.

It could mean nothing. And indeed it does mean nothing to non-Christians. Jesus said:

"You will hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet" (Matthew 24:6).

Phew! "The end is not yet." Plenty of time.

"For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places. All these are but the beginning of the birth pains" (7-8)

Phew! Just "the beginning of the birth pains." At the slow rate things go, I'll be out of here anyway before the contractions get too close together.

Isaiah told King Hezekiah that Israel was going to be destroyed, but that God would put it off until after the King's death; only his sons would be caught in the cataclysm.

"Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, 'The word of the LORD that you have spoken is good.' For he thought, 'Why not, if there will be peace and security in my days?'" (2 Kings 20:19).

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