And There Shall Be Pestilences

Mankind is nearing the end of 6,000 years of rebellion against his Creator. Among other trials and conditions prophesied to occur before man’s rule comes to an end, Christ said, in Matthew 24:7, that “pestilences” (diseases) would be a sign that the end of this age is near. This is the same as the FOURTH SEAL, or PALE HORSE, of Revelation 6:7-8 and is a critical element of the Warning (Ezek. 33:7). This report describes some of the pestilences that are already here and why they are prophesied to worsen.

Christ said, in Matthew 24:7, that pestilence—disease—would be a sign of His Return and of the end of the age. Mankind is indeed very near the end of its 6,000-year rebellion against God!

Man has unleashed the power of the atom, walked on the moon, brought amazing technological advances and greatly increased his fund of knowledge. Yet, he does not acknowledge the God that created him or follow His instruction. Instead, he reasons his way through life, forming his own governments and laws. He decides for himself right and wrong and lives according to his own values and traditions.

Man has developed his own governments, with his own written laws and penalties to enforce them. But God also has a government, and spiritual laws. Just as man administers punishment for lawlessness, so does God! His laws bring blessings for obedience—and punishment for sin. I John 3:4 states, “Whosoever commits sin transgresses also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.”

For every cause there is an effect. When laws are broken, a penalty has to be paid. Sometimes the penalty for breaking spiritual laws is immediate. Other times, it is delayed.

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The following report paints a grim and terrifying picture for a world in rebellion against God. The terrible plagues and diseases described in this report are just a few of the many that exist. Others are certain to appear.

Medical science once thought that it could control and conquer disease. But new diseases are emerging, and older ones, like tuberculosis, are rapidly mutating into antibiotic-resistant forms. Medicine is quickly losing its main weapon in the war against disease. Hardly a week passes without reports of new disease outbreaks somewhere in the world. The danger is greatest in underdeveloped nations, where poor sanitation, war, overcrowding, and poverty spawn epidemics. Cholera, dysentery, and malaria are recent examples. Here are some others.

Four hundred passengers developed an unidentified intestinal ailment after boarding a Royal Caribbean cruise ship to Baja, California. In Bermuda, one thousand passengers were evacuated from the ocean liner, “Horizon,” because of Legionnaires disease. Previously, there had been 11 confirmed cases of the potentially fatal pneumonia-like illness (24 suspected cases, with at least one death) on this same ship. Late 2002/early 2003 saw a rash of this and other disease outbreaks aboard several cruise ships worldwide.

Recently, in southern Russia, more than 850 people have been afflicted with cholera. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, collapsing health services and deteriorating sanitary conditions have worsened the situation. Meanwhile, a shortage of vaccines was caused by an upsurge in diphtheria. Health experts have also encountered cases of typhoid, hepatitis, anthrax and salmonella in neighboring Ukraine.

In a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles, a high school experienced a recent flare-up of tuberculosis, brought into the country by a 16-year-old Vietnamese immigrant. Nearly 400 young people tested positive for the disease. (While all monkeys from Africa are first placed in quarantine upon entering the country, human travelers need only pass through a metal detector!)

Scientists now know that germs and fungi are being funneled across the Atlantic in dust clouds from Africa. These clouds are so thick that they block ultraviolet radiation. This protects the bacteria and other microbes during the crossing. A study of samples in the summer of 2001 found that the pathogenic microbes associated with these dust clouds pose a risk to humans.

Most people place great faith in the power of antibiotics to protect them from disease. But The Cleveland Plain Dealer recently reported a frustrating development in the battle against drug-resistant bacteria. The scientific community reported that a staph super germ had beaten the first new type of antibiotic in 35 years—little more than a year after it was introduced.

Penicillin and the more powerful drug Vancomycin once easily controlled the staphylococcus bacteria. But staph has now transformed into a super germ with a 30 percent resistance to penicillin and 10 percent resistant to Vancomycin. Thousands are now dying from incurable hospital-acquired staph infections.

Penicillin was considered a miracle when it was developed in the 1940s. But when it is used, it kills defenseless bacteria, leaving behind resistant strains and a system open to diseases, due to lowered general immunity. When these new, more powerful bacteria spread, they can fight off antibiotics.

Diseases like tuberculosis, gonorrhea, yellow fever and cholera, expected to vanish and once considered eradicated, are now re-emerging.

Also, newly discovered diseases are appearing, with others lurking in the shadows. Some are old bird, cattle and ape diseases that have infected humans.

When the always-fatal mad cow disease jumps from cattle to humans, it takes the form of Variant Creutzfeltd-Jakob disease. The emergence of avian influenza is raising concerns. In 1997, it passed from birds to humans and killed 7 in Hong Kong.

In 1999, when the West Nile Virus crossed the Atlantic and appeared in New York City, doctors were stunned. It killed nine Americans.

Another outbreak occurred in the summer of 2002, striking nearly 1,300 people, killing at least 54, according to the Center for Disease Control.

These are just a few of the emerging and re-emerging diseases that now threaten to devastate mankind as the pale horse of Revelation 6:8: “And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.”

The balance of this report will discuss these and other diseases in more detail.

Hemorrhagic Fevers

These diseases are some of the most frightening types known to man. Before suffering a painful death, people bleed from virtually every orifice of their body. Outbreaks of these virus-caused fevers occur sporadically, with no way to predict when or where they will strike next. Many of these viruses have no cure.

Humans are infected when they come into contact with a host animal or infected insect. Occasionally, a person becomes infected in an area where the virus occurs naturally. The person then carries the virus elsewhere.

If the virus can be further transmitted by person-to-person contact, the traveler could infect others. For instance, in 1996, a medical professional treating patients with ebola hemorrhagic fever in Gabon unknowingly became infected. When he later traveled to South Africa, and was treated for ebola in a hospital, the virus was transmitted to a nurse. She fell ill and died.

Because more and more people travel each year, outbreaks of these diseases are becoming an increasing threat in places where they rarely—if ever—have been seen before.

Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever

Ebola, one of the most virulent viruses in existence, causes death in up to 90 percent of the people it infects. Patients “bleed out” in an agonizing death in which blood literally pours from the nose, eyes, lungs and stomach.

In Gabon, by the Ivindo River, what locals call “a fierce, bad wind” blows down this tar-black jungle river, literally causing most people to run away. They fear it will turn their eyes the color of blood and kill them. Strangely, after spreading through the local population, this disease always subsides and returns to the jungle without a trace.

One man, named Isidore Edjimouagno, breathed the “bad wind” and survived—a broken man. Edjimouagno’s brush with the winds of the Ivindo River was actually the world’s last recorded outbreak of ebola, Africa’s notoriously lethal virus.

“At first, people thought it was yellow fever and weren’t that frightened,” said Edjimouagno, 61, one of scores of gold panners who were brought down the Ivindo River in dugouts, vomiting blood and semiconscious. “But the next time the wind came, they all ran away. The police had to set up roadblocks in the towns. The people wanted to run all the way to the capital.”

Hundreds of terrified people from the remote hot zone near the Ivindo River drove, hitched rides, flew or limped all the way to Libreville, the Gabonese capital—a 15-hour drive away. There, fearing infection, appalled friends and families slammed doors in the refugees’ faces. The government admits that 11 of the quarantined escapees died in the city.

“Ebola is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Sally Lahm, an American ecologist and anthropologist doing fieldwork in the vast Ivindo watershed. “Everybody in the West loves the idea of biodiversity in rain forests. Well, people forget that that includes microbes, too.”

“Forget trying to stop these scary things spread out of Africa,” said David Heymann, the American executive director of the communicable-disease program for the World Health Organization. “If you’re sitting in Podunk, Wisconsin, you’re not safe from these infectious diseases. They go anywhere. We can’t rely on our little spacesuits to insulate us from Africa anymore,” he said. “With trade, travel, global investments, it just ain’t that kind of world any longer.”

Marburg

Marburg hemorrhagic fever is a rare, severe type of hemorrhagic fever. As with ebola, the actual animal host for Marburg virus still remains a mystery. This virus was first recognized in 1967, when outbreaks of hemorrhagic fever occurred simultaneously in laboratories in Marburg and Frankfurt, Germany and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia.

During the outbreak, 37 people became ill, including laboratory workers and several medical personnel and family members who cared for them. The first people infected had been exposed to African green monkeys. In Marburg, the monkeys had been imported from Uganda for research in preparing a Polio vaccine.

No other case was recorded until 1975, when a traveler, most likely exposed in Zimbabwe, became ill in Johannesburg, South Africa. He then passed the virus to his nurse traveling companion. Two other cases occurred in 1980—one in Western Kenya, not far from Uganda. The patient’s doctor became the second case. Another Marburg infection was recognized in 1987, when a young man who had traveled extensively in western Kenya became ill and died.

Crimean-Congo

Crimean-congo hemorrhagic fever (CCHF) primarily affects animals. However, sporadic cases and outbreaks do occasionally affect humans. In early 1998, two outbreaks occurred: one in Pakistan, affecting four people (two deaths), and another in Afghanistan affecting 19 people (12 deaths). When CCHF strikes human beings, it has an extremely high mortality rate.

The disease was first described in the Crimea in 1944 and was recognized in 1969 as the same pathogen found in the Congo in 1956.

The geographical distribution of the virus, like that of the tick that carries it, is widespread. This virus has been found in Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

Rift Valley Fever

Rift Valley Fever (RVF) also primarily affects animals, but it occasionally infects humans. It also carries a high mortality rate in both animals and humans.

RVF resembles an influenza-like illness, with sudden onset of fever, headache, muscle pain and backache. Some patients also develop a stiff neck and vomiting. A small portion of patients develop a much more severe disease, with inflammation of the brain and surrounding tissue, including hemorrhagic fever.

Since the virus was first isolated in 1930 during an investigation into an epidemic among sheep on a farm in the Rift Valley of Kenya, there have been outbreaks in sub-Saharan and North Africa. In 1997-98, a major outbreak occurred in Kenya and Somalia. RVF was reported outside the African Continent for the first time in September 2000. Cases have been confirmed in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Arabian Peninsula epidemic raises the threat of expansion into other parts of Asia and Europe.

Dengue Fever

Dengue, a mosquito-borne infection, has become a major international public health concern in recent years. The global prevalence of this disease has grown dramatically in recent decades. It is now endemic in more than 100 countries and is found in Africa, the Americas and the Eastern Mediter-ranean. Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific are the most seriously affected areas.

Before 1970, only nine countries had experienced epidemics. Since 1995, the number has increased more than four-fold. Some 2.5 billion people—two fifths of the world’s population—are now at risk. Currently, worldwide estimates are that there may be 50 million new cases of dengue every year.

In 1998 alone, there were more than 616,000 cases just in the Americas. This is greater than double the number of recorded cases in the same region in 1995. Not only is the number of cases increasing as the disease spreads to new areas, but explosive outbreaks are occurring more often. In Brazil, nearly 475,000 cases were reported between January and October 1998—more than were reported from the entire continent in previous years.

Old Diseases Re-Emerging

Certain diseases were thought to have been permanently brought under control or completely eradicated. But several are now resurfacing—sometimes in a stronger and more virulent condition. These diseases now pose a renewed risk to mankind. Here is a sampling of many of these re-emerging diseases.

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis (TB) kills 2 million people each year and is a quiet, growing and dangerous global epidemic. Localized breakdowns of health services, the spread of HIV/AIDS and the emergence of drug-resistant strains worsen the impact of this disease.

When the disease is in the active stage, every person infects an average of 10 to 15 people every year. Not all infected people get sick with the disease. In some cases, the immune system “walls off” the TB bacilli and protects the host with a thick waxy coat that can lie dormant for years.

TB affects around 8 million people each year—more than 1.5 million cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa. The African HIV/AIDS epidemic is causing this number to rise rapidly. Each year, nearly 3 million cases occur in Southeast Asia and over a quarter million occur in Eastern Europe—ten times as many are exposed.

When untreated, TB spreads quickly in crowded refugee camps and shelters. It is difficult to treat these transient people because the treatment takes at least six months. As many as 50 percent of the world’s refugees may be infected. And, as they migrate, they spread the disease.

Industrialized countries are also at risk. In 1995, approximately 30 percent of San Francisco’s and 25 percent of London’s homeless populations were reportedly infected with TB.

Between the years 2000 and 2020, an estimated one billion people will be infected with TB. Two hundred million people will get sick, and another 35 million will die from it.

Malaria

Malaria is by far the world’s most devastating parasitic disease, killing more people than any other communicable disease except tuberculosis! The emergence of multiple drug-resistant strains is exacerbating the situation worldwide.

Every year, 900 cases are imported into the United States. The mosquitoes that carry yellow fever and malaria are all over the southeastern United States—just waiting to feast on an unsuspecting population.

Malaria is a public health problem in more than 90 countries—threatening some 2.4 billion people. There are about 300-500 million clinical cases worldwide each year. More than 90 percent of all malaria cases occur in sub-Saharan Africa. Remote rural areas with poor access to health services are the most severely afflicted.

Malaria kills an estimated 1 million every year. The vast majority are among young children in Africa, where malaria kills 3,000 children per day below age five—claiming a child of any age every 30 seconds! This toll far exceeds even the mortality rate of AIDS.

Bubonic Plague

Bubonic Plague was discovered over 3,000 years ago, with epidemics having been recorded in China since 224 B.C.

The various forms of this disease cause fever, chills, coughing, abdominal pain and bleeding into the skin and other organs. It usually ends in difficulty breathing, rapid shock, and death if not treated early.

Pandemics destroyed entire populations of cities all through the Middle Ages. But there have been sporadic outbreaks in modern times as well. The last great pandemic began in China, in 1894, and quickly spread to Africa, the Pacific islands, Australia, and the Americas, reaching San Francisco in 1900. The plague still affects Asia, Africa, South America and Australia, but rarely appears in the U.S. Two small, well-contained outbreaks occurred in India in 1994.

The world trusts in antibiotics. While they have proven successful in treating the effects of disease, scientists encountered an exception in 1997. A Madagascaran child was infected with a strain of bubonic plague that was resistant to all antibiotics normally used to fight it.

In 1348, Europe suffered a devastating plague that reportedly killed twenty-five million people. Fear and superstition seized the masses of Europe. Many noticed that Jews rarely contracted the plague. Of course, their more careful hygiene and the fact that they did not keep or eat biblically unclean animals that carried fleas contributed to this. (Read our article entitled, “Are All Animals Good Food?”)

However, a rumor spread that the Jews were conspiring to poison Christians. Supposedly, leaders in the Jewish metropolis of Toledo had initiated the plot. Pronounced as one of the chief “conspirators,” Rabbi Peyret of Savoy, was said to have dispatched “poisoners” to France, Switzerland, and Italy.

By authority of Amadeus VI, Count of Savoy, a number of Jews were arrested and tortured. Naturally, they confessed anything that their inquisitors suggested. Under torture, these Jews incriminated others. Records of their confessions were sent from one town to another in Switzerland and down the Rhine River into Germany. As a result, thousands of Jews, in at least two hundred towns and hamlets, were butchered and burned to death.

There have been a few encounters with bubonic plague in modern times. The last major outbreak in the United States occurred in 1924 in Los Angeles. In that epidemic, 31 out of the 32 cases of pneumonic (bubonic) plague were fatal. There have been approximately 16 cases a year in the United States since that time.

Cholera

The world is currently experiencing its seventh pandemic of cholera. It first appeared as an epidemic in Indonesia in 1961. The disease then spread rapidly to other countries of eastern Asia and reached Bangladesh in 1963, India in 1964, and the USSR, Iran and Iraq in the next two years.

In 1970, cholera invaded West Africa, which had not experienced the disease for more than 100 years. It quickly spread to a number of countries and eventually to most of the continent. In 1991, it struck Latin America, where it had also been absent for more than a century. Within the year, it spread to 11 more countries, and subsequently throughout the rest of the continent. Late that year, large outbreaks occurred in India and Bangladesh that were caused by a previously unrecognized type of cholera!

Leprosy

Leprosy mainly affects the skin and nerves, but it can also affect the limbs and eyes. Left untreated, it causes progressive and permanent damage. Symptoms can take almost 20 years to appear.

There were approximately 740,000 new cases of leprosy in 1999. An estimated 2.5 million additional cases will be detected between 2000 and 2005.

In 24 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, leprosy is still considered a public health problem. Together, Brazil, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal and Tanzania account for 90 percent of the world’s cases.

Typhus

In the past, typhus was associated with wars and human disasters. It is still prevalent in the highlands and cold areas of Africa, Asia, Central and South America.

The symptoms of this louse-borne disease include sudden onset of headaches, chills, high fever, coughing and severe muscular pain. By the sixth day, the entire body experiences skin eruptions. It is fatal in 1 to 20 percent of cases.

Since World War II, large outbreaks of typhus have occurred mainly in Africa, with reported cases coming predominantly from three countries: Burundi, Ethiopia and Rwanda. In Ethiopia, the number of cases reported annually has ranged between 7,000 and 17,000. In the 1970s, major outbreaks in Burundi and Rwanda were documented, and in 1975 alone, 9,000 cases were reported in Burundi. In 1996, Burundi reported 3,500 cases. This increased to 20,000 for the period from January to March 1997.

Poliomyeltis

At the beginning of 2001, twenty countries still had ongoing poliovirus transmission. Although not a recent problem in the United States, most people over 40 know someone or have had a family member stricken by the disease.

Polio is a highly infectious viral disease. It invades the nervous system and can cause total paralysis in a matter of hours. The virus enters the body through the mouth and multiplies in the intestine. One in 200 infections leads to irreversible paralysis (usually in the legs). Among paralyzed patients, 5 to 10 percent die an agonizing death when their breathing muscles become immobilized.

As long as one person remains infected with poliovirus, children in all countries are at risk of contracting it. The poliovirus can be easily re-imported into a country—and from there it will spread rapidly. Countries most at risk for polio epidemics are Bangladesh, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria and Pakistan, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia, Sudan and the Congo.

Diptheria

In 1994, diphtheria re-emerged in Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union and resulted in over 50,000 reported cases in 1995. Its re-emergence was linked to a dramatic disruption of health services during the unsettled times immediately after the break-up of the Soviet Union.

The symptoms range from a sore throat to life-threatening infection of the larynx or of the lower and upper respiratory tracts. It often causes damage to heart muscles and surrounding nerves, and is fatal in 5 to 10 percent of cases, even when treated.

E. Coli

First detected in 1982, this bacterium is an emerging cause of a food-borne illness that often leads to bloody diarrhea. Sometimes it is accompanied by kidney failure. An estimated 73,000 infections and 61 deaths occur in the United States each year. In 1996, a widespread outbreak in Japan affected over 6,000 school children, with two deaths. During a single outbreak in Scotland in 1996, 496 people fell ill and 16 died.

The next group of diseases is unique, in that they are transmitted to humans by animals, either through contact with the animal or by the bite of a mosquito that has been in contact with the animal.

Mad Cow Disease

First seen in 1985, Mad Cow disease (Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) is a rare and fatal human neuro-degenerative condition. Because of its characteristic spongy degeneration of the brain and because of its ability to be transmitted, it is also known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE). From October 1996 to early June 2001, 101 cases were reported in the United Kingdom, three in France and one in Ireland.

Early in the illness, patients usually experience psychiatric symptoms—most commonly depression or a schizophrenia-like psychosis. In the early stages of the disease, unusual sensory symptoms, such as “stickiness” of the skin, are experienced in half of the cases. As patients near death, they become completely immobile and mute.

The first person to develop symptoms of what turned out to be mad cow disease became ill in January 1994. Most people who have developed the disease have lived in the UK. As of early June 2001, there were still 95 reported cases in the UK.

West Nile Virus

As previously mentioned, doctors were stunned when this disease jumped the Atlantic. The first case of West Nile Virus in the Western Hemisphere occurred in August 1999. From 1999 to 2000, 82 cases of the disease and nine deaths occurred in the New York City and New Jersey metropolitan areas. Another, more massive outbreak occurred in 2002, as mentioned earlier.

Symptoms include fever, fatigue, dizziness, weakness, confusion, headaches, joint problems and encephalitis or swelling of the brain. The U.S. Department of Health says people over 50 are at greatest risk.

Mosquitoes spread the disease by feeding on the blood of infected birds. In Georgia, authorities said a hawk found in a DeKalb County Atlanta suburb tested positive for West Nile Virus. A man walking his dog found the bird. It was Georgia’s second confirmed case. A citizen had previously found a crow infected with West Nile virus in Lowndes County, Georgia.

The 1996-97 outbreak of West Nile fever in and around Bucharest, Romania exceeded 500 cases and had a fatality rate approaching 10 percent. This largest outbreak of the illness in Europe since the 1980s reaffirmed that mosquito-borne viral diseases can occur on a massive scale, even in temperate climates.

West Nile virus has caused sporadic cases and outbreaks of the disease in Europe (western Mediterranean and southern Russia in 1962-64, Belarus and Ukraine in the 1970s and 1980s, Romania in 1996-97, The Czech Republic in 1997, and Italy in 1998). Environmental factors, including human activities that increase mosquito population densities, heavy rains followed by floods, irrigation or higher than usual temperature that enable mass breeding of mosquitoes, could increase the incidence of West Nile fever.

Yellow Fever

Yellow Fever (YF) is transmitted to humans from monkeys through mosquitoes. The threat is present in 33 countries in Africa and eight in South America.

In the early stages, symptoms include headache, backache, muscle pain, shivers, loss of appetite, nausea and vomiting. Symptoms may disappear before reappearing with a vengeance, causing the body to become jaundiced (hence, the name yellow fever), with blood appearing in the vomit and feces. Kidney deterioration, followed by complete failure, usually precedes death, which normally occurs in 10-14 days. Those who survive suffer significant organ damage.

Since the mid-1980s, there has been a steady increase in the number of reported cases—up to 5,300 per year worldwide. The true number of cases is probably much higher, because general outbreaks occur in remote areas and usually miss the attention of health services.

Monkey Pox

Monkey Pox is a viral disease similar to what used to be seen in smallpox patients, because the two viruses are related. Monkey pox is still seen in parts of Africa.

Most cases occur in remote villages of Central and West Africa, close to tropical rainforests where there is frequent contact with infected animals. Monkey pox is usually transmitted to humans from squirrels and primates through contact with the animal’s blood or through a bite.

Reports of ongoing cases of human monkey pox in the Congo represent a frightening new pattern of the disease. Studies indicate that the new outbreak had a much higher rate of person-to-person transmission than seen previously. It also spread through many generations of transmission, thus maintaining the outbreak for more than a year.

HIV/AIDS

The Human Immunodeficiency Virus, which causes AIDS, was first isolated in 1983. By the beginning of June 1998, the number of cases reported by U.S. authorities was close to 1.9 million. Since the start of the epidemic, an estimated 34.3 million people worldwide have become HIV infected, and nearly 12 million have died.

The symptoms and suffering of full-blown AIDS are so familiar that this report need not say more than that a long, protracted series of illnesses always precedes certain death.

A reported 7-8% of the population of central Africa (where the virus probably first moved from monkeys to humans 40 to 50 years ago) had become infected by July 2000, up from 5% in the mid-1980s. By contrast, in southern Africa, the HIV infection rate was less than 1 percent just 15 years ago. Today it is about 30 to 40 percent.

Africans are particularly vulnerable. Of those now infected, more than two-thirds live in sub-Saharan Africa (which has only one tenth of the world’s population). But it is now clear that southern Africa, from Zambia and Zimbabwe to Botswana, Namibia and South Africa, is even more severely afflicted than the rest of the continent.

This means that between one-third and one-half of teenagers in these countries will probably die of AIDS. Most will die in their 20s or 30s. There is a 32 percent HIV positive rate among pregnant women in KwaZulu-Natal today and more than 12 million children in sub-Saharan Africa—equivalent to the UK’s entire child population—have been orphaned by AIDS. Entire towns, including parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents, have died from AIDS—leaving no one to care for these millions of children.

As reported by The Cleveland Plain Dealer, there is an “underworld” in the U.S. where HIV is spreading at a pace that rivals some third world nations! Drug addiction, prostitution, and sexual immorality have become a way of life in cities all around the country. There, prostitutes, homeless people and intravenous drug users are spreading the disease at an alarming rate.

The following chart represents various milestones in the U.S. HIV Epidemic:

AIDS Deaths People living with AIDS Infection rate and numbers
Through December 2000—448,060 1998—274,624 1978—1st infections
  1999—299,944 1980—20,000 infected
  2000—322,865 1981—1st reported cases
    1982—100,000 infected
    1984—160,000 infected
    1986—Possible dentist to patient             transmission reported
    1989—1st 1,000,000 cases reported
    1995—500,000 cases reported

Hantavirus

Hantavirus is carried and transmitted by various rodents that are immune to its effects. This disease is believed to be spread through contact with rodent excreta or saliva and is found in many parts of the world.

Reports of this often fatal disease have been making front-page news in Chile and Argentina. Since 1993, more than sixty people have died because of the hantavirus.

It kills approximately 50 percent of all those affected. There is no known cure.

There are two principal diseases associated with this virus. The first is pulmonary, which is prevalent in cases in the United States. The second involves kidney failure, hemorrhage, and the normal effects associated with shock. Mortality rates are 50 to 60 percent in South America, and up to 80 percent in the United States.

In Argentina, over 70 cases have been diagnosed since 1987. Some sources indicate that the true number may be closer to 200. In 1993 alone, there were about 150 cases of hantavirus in the U.S. In Chile, 23 cases had been reported as of September 1997, with 14 fatalities.

Avian Influenza

Avian Influenza is a strain of Influenza virus type A, previously only known to infect birds. It has been associated with infection and illness in humans in Hong Kong, where it has caused 7 deaths. The first known human case occurred in a 3-year-old child, who died from respiratory failure in May 1997.

In 1999, an outbreak of the same type of influenza on a commercial turkey farm in Italy infected 30,000 birds. All died, and their carcasses had to be burned. This disease is killing a staggering number of birds in various parts of the world.

In Hong Kong, 1.2 million chickens and nearly all of the ducks on the island had to be destroyed by the government, after first disinfecting their carcasses.

Hepatitis B

Hepatitis B is a major disease and a serious global public health problem. Of the 2 billion people who have been infected with the hepatitis B virus, more than 350 million have lifelong infections and chronic problems.

Hepatitis means “inflammation of the liver,” and the most common cause is infection with any one of five viruses. All of them can cause acute disease with symptoms lasting several weeks. They include yellowing of the skin and eyes, dark urine, extreme fatigue, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Hepatitis B virus can cause chronic infection, where the patient never gets rid of the virus and many years later develops cirrhosis of the liver or liver cancer. Liver cancer is almost always fatal, and usually develops in people between 35 and 65 years of age. In developing countries, most people with liver cancer die within months of diagnosis.

Hepatitis B virus is transmitted by direct contact with blood or body fluids of an infected person, as with HIV. But hepatitis B virus is 50 to 100 times more infectious than HIV!

Hepatitis C

Hepatitis C is a viral infection of the liver found all around the world. An estimated 3 percent of the world’s population, 170 million people, is chronically infected with HCV. Three-to-four million are newly infected each year. HCV is spread primarily by direct contact with human blood. No vaccine is currently available to prevent hepatitis C, and treatment for chronic hepatitis C is too costly for most in developing countries to afford.

Humans and chimpanzees are the only known species susceptible to infection, with both affected similarly.

Hepatitis C is a killer. About 10,000 people die of this disease each year, and the death toll is rising. It has infected four times as many people as HIV has!

“Hepatitis C is a grave threat to our society,” Surgeon General David Satcher warned a congressional subcommittee in 2001. “Many Americans infected with hepatitis C are unaware they have the disease.” At least 4 million Americans have it—nearly 2 percent of the population.

Even more frightening is that, while the public and the medical community focus on HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C has been largely ignored and goes unchecked.

Lassa Fever

Lassa Fever was first described in the 1950s, although the virus was not isolated until 1969. Severe cases cause shock, fluid in the lung cavity, hemorrhaging and seizures. Dysfunction of the brain and swelling of the face and neck are frequent. Approximately 15 percent of hospitalized patients die.

Lassa Fever occurs in Guinea, Liberia, Sierra Leone and regions of Nigeria. It is transmitted to humans from wild rodents. Infected rodents shed the virus throughout their lives and, like hantavirus, disease transmission is primarily through direct or indirect contact with excreta deposited on surfaces such as floors or beds, or in food or water.

The most recent outbreak of lassa fever occurred in Sierra Leone. A total of 823 cases, including 153 deaths, were reported from January 1996 to April 1997. Previous outbreaks have been reported in Central African Republic, Liberia, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.

Meningitis

An estimated 1.2 million cases of bacterial meningitis occur every year around the world, with 135,000 of them fatal.

Symptoms of meningitis are high fever, headache, stiff neck, nausea, vomiting, discomfort looking into bright lights, confusion and sleepiness.

Sub-Saharan Africa experiences epidemic cycles of meningitis every eight to 12 years. The intervals between major epidemics have become shorter and more irregular since the 1980s. The most recent pandemic, which began in 1996, has so far resulted in approximately 300,000 cases being reported. The most affected countries have been Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger. In 1998, the outbreaks occurring in Chad and Cameroon accounted for about 30 percent of the total cases reported in 2001.

In October 2000, a Detroit, Michigan high school student was hospitalized with bacterial meningitis. The case was at least the seventh instance of meningitis in Metro Detroit since September of that year. Three children and an adult died from the disease.

In the spring of 2001, there was an outbreak in Stark County, Ohio, resulting in the death of two students. One other case was also reported. One of the students contracted the disease while attending the funeral of the first student.

Sexually Transmitted Diseases

Sexually transmitted diseases affect industrialized and developing countries.

A host of symptoms accompany the many different kinds of STDs. They are sterility, blindness, warts, rotting of the genitals, rashes and many others.

Rampant immorality all over the world is creating an annual incidence of STDs at 333 million cases. The four most common are:

The worldwide incidence of STDs is already high, but new infection rates are constantly rising. The ever-greater mobility of populations and weakening of traditional customs are increasing the prevalence of these diseases.

Schistosomiasis

Schistosomiasis is a parasitic disease found in nearly half the countries of the world. The major types of the human form of this disease are caused by five species of water-borne flatworms, or blood flukes, called schistosomes. They enter the body through contact with infested surface water, mainly among peoples in agriculture and fishing.

The symptoms, which appear within days, include an itchy rash, fever, chills and cough. Muscle aches begin in one to two months. Typically, eggs from the worms travel to the liver or pass into the intestine or bladder. They can enter the brain or spinal cord and cause seizures, or even paralysis. It is always the eggs, not the worms, that cause damage, and they can permanently damage the liver, intestines, lungs and bladder.

Among human parasitic diseases, schistosomiasis ranks second behind malaria in terms of socio-economic and public health importance in tropical and subtropical areas. The disease is present in 74 developing countries, infecting more than 200 million people in rural agricultural and urban areas. Of these, 20 million suffer severe consequences from the disease and 120 million are “symptomatic.” An estimated 500-600 million people worldwide are at risk from this disease.

River Blindness

Onchocerciasis (River Blindness) is most prevalent in Africa. It is caused by a parasitic worm (transmitted by the black fly) that lives for up to 14 years in the human body. Each adult female worm produces millions of microscopic larvae that migrate throughout the body and cause a variety of symptoms, including blindness, rashes, lesions, intense itching and depigmentation of the skin, lymphadenitis (lymph gland inflammation), which results in hanging groins and elephantiasis of the genitals and general debilitation. River blindness is the world’s second leading infectious cause of blindness and is present in 36 countries of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula and the Americas.

Out of 120 million people worldwide who are at risk from the disease, 96 percent are in Africa. A total of 18 million people are infected with the disease and have the microfilariae in their skin and 99 percent of these are also in Africa. Of all those infected, over 6.5 million suffer from severe itching or dermatitis and 270,000 are blind.

Chagas Disease

Chagas Disease is caused by a protozoan parasite, which is transmitted to humans in two ways, either by a blood-sucking insect, which deposits its infective feces on the skin at the time of biting, or directly by transfusion of infected blood.

The symptoms include fatigue, fever, enlarged liver or spleen and swollen lymph glands. It can also include a rash, diarrhea and vomiting. But the worst symptoms can be 10 to 20 years after infection and can include all kinds of serious heart problems and swelling of various parts of the digestive tract, severe constipation and difficulty with swallowing. This disease strikes HIV/AIDS victims in a far more severe way. Patients with severe chronic disease become progressively more ill and ultimately die, usually from heart failure. There is, at present, no effective treatment for such cases.

Chagas disease is endemic in 21 countries, with 16-18 million persons infected and 100 million people at risk. It has a wide distribution in Central and South America. It is only found in the Western Hemisphere.

Humans and many kinds of domestic and wild animals carry the parasite. Typically, it infests areas with poor housing where there are thatched roofs. Rural migrations to urban areas, in the 1970s and 1980s, changed the traditional pattern of the disease. As unscreened blood transfusion created a second way of transmission, it became a more urban disease. Between 1960 and 1989, the prevalence of infected blood, in blood banks in South America, actually became far higher than Hepatitis or HIV.

Sleeping Sickness

Sleeping Sickness is a parasitic disease spread by the tsetse flies. Sleeping sickness occurs only in sub-Saharan Africa, in regions where tsetse flies are endemic. Another human form of the disease occurs in the Americas and is known as chagas disease (mentioned above). A few cases have been reported in the United States.

This disease has two phases. The first phase includes fever, headaches, pains in the joints and itching. The second phase begins when the parasite crosses the blood-brain barrier and infests the central nervous system. At this point, its characteristic symptoms appear: confusion, sensory disturbances and poor coordination. Disruption of the sleep cycle, which gives the disease its name, is the most significant feature. Without treatment, it is nearly always fatal.

The disease had practically disappeared between 1960 and 1965. After early success, screening and effective surveillance were relaxed, and the disease has reappeared in endemic form in several areas over the last thirty years. There have been three severe epidemics in Africa over the last century: between 1896 and 1906, 1920 in several African countries, and the last epidemic, which began in 1970 and continues today.

Sleeping sickness and chagas disease spread wherever political instability, displacement of populations, war and poverty exist. It threatens over 60 million people in 36 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Almost 45,000 cases were reported in 1999 alone, but the number of people who are affected is actually ten times greater and the real number of cases seems to be between 300,000 and 500,000.

A Final Warning

These are just a few of a very long list of diseases that could have been included in this report. Even this list is certain to grow with the passing of time.

The nations that have been privileged to have God’s blessing know very little about most of the diseases described in this report. Usually it is only through newspaper headlines or news reports that they are brought to the attention of most people in the Western World.

Why have we written this report? It is not just to frighten you, but rather to inform you. Long ago, God foretold that disease would come on the peoples of the world if they did not obey Him. This is now happening in a terrible and devastating way. It is prophesied to grow far worse. It is our duty to give the Ezekiel Warning to this world in general and the nations descended from ancient Israel in particular. Ezekiel 33:7-11 explains that the blood will be on our heads if we do not warn this world of what is sure to come. Ezekiel 5:12 says that one-third of the modern nations of Israel will die of pestilence, one-third by war and one-third will be scattered.

Most who read this report will not heed—will not apply its warning. Will you?

The Bible foretells of a great time of world trouble lying ahead for all mankind. Civilization is moving closer to what the Bible calls the Great Tribulation (Matt. 24:21-22). Diseases that are now primarily found in the “Third World,” or underdeveloped countries, are prophesied to soon enter the West. Many scientists and doctors tell us these diseases are poised to make this jump. When this happens, newspaper headlines and reports will not ignore them or treat them so casually.

The modern-day descendants of the tribes of ancient Israel are the free, democratic and primarily English-speaking peoples of Europe and North America. These people have ignored the true God and His patience has just about come to an end. Like a father with the children that he loves, God is soon going to punish His people because of 6,000 years of sin and rebellion against His Way of life. This is not a punishment that anyone will want to experience.

Consider these scriptures!

In Leviticus 26:15-17, God states: “If you…will not do all my commandments…I also will do this unto you; I will even appoint over you terror, consumption, and the burning ague (fever), that shall consume the eyes…I will set My face against you, and you shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and you shall flee when none pursues you.” God forewarns us that if we do not follow His instructions, terrible trials and plagues will fall upon us—no longer will He provide for us protection from the worse pestilences that this world is soon to suffer.

Next notice Deuteronomy 28:58-62. God warns His people that if they do not heed His instruction—if they “…will not observe to do all the words of this law that are written in this book…then the Lord will make your plagues wonderful (extraordinary)…even great plagues…and sore sicknesses, and of long continuance…all the diseases of Egypt…and shall cleave unto you… until you be destroyed…because you would not obey the voice of the Lord your God.” This warning is serious!

We have just described many “extraordinary” diseases. In newspapers and on television, we see the staggering amounts of people infected with these deadly sicknesses, and it is getting worse. Yet there is hope!

Individuals who yield to God can avoid these terrible life-threatening diseases. The Bible describes promises that God makes to anyone who obeys Him. Consider: “And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and will put none of the evil diseases of Egypt…upon you…but will lay them upon them that hate you” (Deut. 7:15).

Notice further that if the nations of this world would only “…diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, and will do that which is right in His sight, and will give ear to His commandments…I will put none of these diseases upon you…for I am the Lord that heals you” (Ex. 15:26). Mankind spends great time, effort and money to find “miracle” cures for diseases—in an attempt to circumvent punishment for breaking the laws of God. In the end, it is an attempt to treat the effect, and not the cause—and only brings a short-term solution.

Modern medical science seeks to discover new ways to block the progress of highly contagious, deadly viruses and bacteria, while failing to realize that the only way to bring an end to all disease is by obeying God!

As diseases mutate and become more deadly, the numbers of outbreaks and infected people will continue to skyrocket. Doctors will scramble to find stronger antibiotics to give their patients. But they will not find cures. Only by obeying God’s commandments can one be “immune” to these diseases.

If you truly fear God, walk in His laws and are led by His Holy Spirit, then God promises to keep you from the time of trouble coming upon the world. In Psalm 91:5-10, He promises, “You shall not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flies by day; nor for the pestilence that walks in darkness; nor for the destruction that wastes at noonday. A thousand shall fall at your side, and ten thousand at your right hand; but it shall not come near you. Only with your eyes shall you behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because you have made the Lord, which is my refuge even the most High, your habitation; there shall no evil befall you, neither shall any plague come near your dwelling.”

This is God’s promise. You have been warned. What will you do?

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