Maybe the end of the age isn’t upon us, though in my opinion it is, but given the antics of those performing on the American stage political and otherwise it’s a little difficult to categorize this age as anything but lunatic! And, to my reasonably sane mind I find myself asking how we are going to survive it? Adding to my sense of impending financial doom for America is the prospect of global famine together with the very real prospect of water rationing in SoCal together with severe weather across the country and all these “earthquakes, in divers places.”

 In light of our being told by the experts to expect the Big One within 30 years the recent rash of earthquakes both here and elsewhere in the country is disconcerting to say the least. I have somehow managed to be at or near the epicenter of several major earthquakes here in California, and it is only to be expected those of us living here in the Kern River Valley are especially concerned about the recent local quakes, particularly since we know the Isabella Dam has been declared at high risk.

I was living in Saugus at the time of that large quake in 1971, in Morgan Hill during the quake of 1984, and right next to the Loma Prieta quake of 1989. But the most memorable one for me was the Tehachapi quake in 1952. There are few things to equal feeling the earth violently hammering under you while watching it literally heaving up and down throwing gravel into the air, a hammering, physical violence deep from within the bowels of the earth making it impossible to stand accompanied by the sound of several freight trains bearing right down on top of you! There are few other experiences that so remind of how utterly helpless we humans are in the scheme of nature despite all the marvels of our science and technology.

With roads cracked, boulder-strewn and impassable friends and I were stuck for three days in a campground in the Piutes where we had been prospecting all the while listening to huge boulders large as houses knocked loose by aftershocks tumbling down into the canyons with a booming sound like cannons all around during those three days. But it has only been due to the many quakes across the country recently that I have been thinking seriously about them in regard to Matthew 24:7,8: “For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.”

Though for many years I have believed America may be the “Babylon” of Revelation chapters 17 and 18, this recent flurry of earthquake activity has caused me to speculate the Big One may strike sooner rather than later. Much as I love Don Knotts and especially his role in “The Ghost and Mr. Chicken” I’ve never been given to an “excitable” imagination, but I read and study a lot about many different things. I try to stay current in science and physics, in biology, archeology, paleontology as well as current events around the world. And to my mind, the lunacy I see on the American stage and elsewhere do not bode well for our future as a species, notwithstanding Biblical prophecies calling attention to earthquakes among other doomsday activities pertaining to the end of the age.

Even after I weigh all the various theological interpretations and Biblical criticism, I’m left with the uneasy feeling the end may be near, that too many passages of Scripture ring true concerning the end of the age. Just looking at the world scene, the lunatics and prevailing lunacy all about especially here in America is enough to give me cause to believe the Bible has it right.

But I have no ax to grind with atheists or agnostics; I have been long out a pulpit and my own theological views are too heterodox now for me to hope of any church fellowship. I no longer believe in prayer for example, the asking God to help anyone or change anything, though I continue to talk to God, to loved ones and friends gone on before me. I believe however it happened this earth is in the power of Satan, as the book of Job in the Old Testament and the Temptation of Jesus seems to validate and the Devil calls the shots, making life a living hell on earth for those that try to do what is right. But neither do I find fault with those who pray, and bless the hearts of those who tell me they pray for me.

Throughout the history of humankind Satan does seem to go about like a roaring lion; and I don’t doubt our own government is sold out to the Evil One. Right now the purported “suicide” of Deborah Jeane Palfrey is getting a lot of attention. “DC Madam Deborah Jeane Palfrey, who was found hanged in what authorities claim was a "suicide," not only asserted that she would never commit suicide, but also thought the alleged suicide of one of her former call girls was possibly murder.”

Not since the end of WWII have I trusted those in our government, and things like JFK and RFK, the Warren and 9/11 Commissions have only earned my further distrust of our government. But unlike some I am not calling out to God to bring down fiery judgment upon the wicked of this evil world system.

One of my favorite films is “Mulholland Falls.” Those of us familiar with that era of Los Angeles have no doubt about how “police business” was handled in those days. But it would be naïve in the extreme to doubt those right now in our federal government are not handling business in the same fashion, though I believe the LAPD as per the film handled things better in the “old days” when the bad guys simply “disappeared.”

What most of us want is justice, and that seems to belong to another era rather than the one we now live in. So if I seem to take a particular interest in earthquakes in divers places and fit this into my theological view of things it is only because I very much want to see justice finally done and do not expect it to come by any human instrumentality.