This Week's News

 SMOKE FROM WILDFIRES 

The northeastern U.S. is shrouded in smoke from fires in Nova Scotia and Quebec. Does this remind you of the beginning of Chapter 9 of the Book of Revelation? There will be smoke everywhere.

Have you ever noticed that down through history, all across the world, wilderness and forest fires are very rarely, if ever, mentioned? But then, for the past 60 or 70 years or so, there are major fires virtually every summer. Incredibly this is because, in the past, humans didn't have the capability to battle such major fires but now they do.

If that doesn't sound like it makes sense it is because putting out wilderness fires is the problem, rather than the solution. A low level fire every few years burns off the dead underbrush that builds up. The fire doesn't do lasting damage to trees and the animals know how to avoid it. The purpose of lightning is to start such fires and this is the way nature has been working for millions of years. 

But then humans come along and think we know better. We keep putting fires out so that the dead underbrush keeps building up. Then, when it might have been 70 or 80 years since the last fire, we get the kind of fires that we see now. For that reason maybe the smoke from wildfires is part of the End Times scenario.

Variations in rainfall, due to climate change, is another factor. If there is a lot of rain one year it will produce a lot of plant growth. But if there is a shortage of rain the following year it will not be able to sustain the plant growth from the previous year and there will be a lot of dead and dry plant matter.

The reason that the sky may appear orange during a major fire is the scattering of sunlight in the atmosphere. Light, or other electromagnetic radiation, is reflected by objects that are about the same size as the wavelength. The microscopic particles of dust in the air scatter blue, the shorter wavelength of light the most. But the fire fills the air with larger particles which scatter longer wavelengths, which are orange. At morning or evening the sunlight passes through a thicker section of atmosphere to get to us, so the blue is scattered away altogether and we see orange and red.

FAREWELL TO PAT ROBERTSON

We know that Pat Robertson did a lot for Christianity in the U.S. I used to watch the 700 Club. But his putting politics together with religion, and running for president, is yet another manifestation of what we saw in "The Great Revolution Of Our Time", January 2017. Billy Graham came before Pat Robertson and didn't try to mix politics and religion. Billy Graham running for president is unimaginable.