Earthquakes

“and earthquakes in various places. All these [are] the beginning of sorrows.”

As far as natural disasters go, earthquakes probably stand at number one on the scare list, for two simple reasons:

1) they are unpredictable and

2) because there is not enough time to react when they occur and there is almost nowhere to run or hide since all the soil is unstable, cracking and sliding at will.

In the course of human history there have always been earthquakes and therefore at face value, Jesus's prophecy may appear as rather oddly predictable. But when the Lord speaks, we must look further and deeper into His Words. Once we do that, the meaning becomes obvious: He is NOT referring to general, ordinary stats but to occurrences that will be above and beyond the normal. In other words He is pointing to a noticeable greater frequency and magnitude of these events.

In a "normal" year, there are about 500,000 earthquakes annualy that are being recorded, (of which, only about 100,000 are actually felt by the population). Since the early 1900, the science of earthquakes monitoring has been continously improved and perfected to the point that that even the slightest tremors can be accurately recorded