The Bible warns that terrible times are coming soon, bringing a sudden end to our current age. For example, Isaiah the prophet warned the world: “Behold, Yahweh empties the earth to destruction, eviscerates it, distorts its surface, and scatters its inhabitants” (Isaiah 24:1).
The Lord Jesus revealed even more details: “And there will be signs in sun and moon and stars, and on the earth anguish among nations, in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting from fear and the expectation of the things which are coming upon the world; for the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Luke 21:25-26). Jesus pointed out how severe the prophesied danger will be, “For then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will” (Matthew 24:21).
He also added just how high the stakes are for life surviving this coming catastrophe, “And unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short” (Matthew 24:22). Jesus did provide hope, for as the world faces its darkest hour, “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. But when these things begin to happen, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near” (Luke 21:27-28).
Paul the apostle predicted that when the world believes it has achieved peace, in truth, it will be completely unaware of the horrors about to befall it. He said, “While they are saying, ‘Peace and safety!’ then destruction will come upon them suddenly like labor pains upon a woman who is pregnant, and they will never escape” (1 Thessalonians 5:3).
The Bible prophesies that in the end times, the world will increasingly experience chaos, destruction, and death, culminating in a seven-year judgment period called the Tribulation. Especially before our Lord returns to defeat His enemies and establish His kingdom, the book of Revelation describes how the oceans and lakes will be poisoned, the grass and trees burned, and people scorched by the sun’s intense heat. At the same time, humanity will suffer from severe plagues, widespread wars and famines, and an atmosphere so polluted that visibility decreases by a third.
The first seven of the 21 judgments prophesied in the book of Revelation are known as the seal judgments. They initiate the Tribulation by pouring out God’s wrath on the world’s inhabitants as punishment for their sins.
The first five seal judgments will release a one-world ruler who will conquer through world war, and the aftermath will bring disease, famine, and death. A severe persecution of those who accept Jesus as Savior after the Rapture will break out; they are likely to be used as scapegoats for the world’s suffering. These judgments will kill a quarter of the world’s population, which is roughly 2 billion people today.
As shocking as these first five seal judgments are, they will be followed by an even worse one—the sixth. John the apostle recorded the future horror he was commanded to witness.
Then I looked when He [Jesus] opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth made of hair, and the whole moon became like blood; and the stars of the sky fell to the earth, as a fig tree casts its unripe figs when shaken by a great wind. And the sky was split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
Then the kings of the earth and the great men and the commanders and the rich and the strong and every slave and free man hid themselves in the caves and among the rocks of the mountains; and they said to the mountains and to the rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the presence of Him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb, for the great day of their wrath has come, and who is able to stand?” (Revelation 6:12-17)
We read here that to escape such unimaginable destruction, the earth’s population will fearfully flee underground to caves. Deep beneath the mountains, they will cry out in great distress for the rocks to fall and hide them from Christ’s wrath. Revelation 6 genuinely depicts a nightmare scene of such catastrophic global carnage that it closely resembles what we envision a nuclear holocaust to be like.
Author Nicholas Wade, in his book World Beyond Healing (1987), provides a graphic picture of the physics of an exploding nuclear bomb:
The explosion of a nuclear weapon is an event of immense power… Within a fraction of a millionth of a second, the nuclear materials and casing of a one megaton weapon are transformed into a packet of energy five times hotter than the center of the sun. Out of this mini-sun bursts a flash of X-rays so intense that the air for several feet around the weapon is heated into an incandescent ball. This little fireball, only a few millionths of a second old, contains the vaporized contents of the weapon, and a vast flux of energy created by the fission and fusion reactions of the nuclear explosion. So immense an amount of energy packed into a tiny space creates temperatures of 100 million degrees centigrade and pressures of millions of pounds per square inch. A violent expansion begins. In less than a thousandth of a second, the fireball of a one-megaton weapon has grown to 440 feet across. In ten seconds, the fireball is more than a mile in diameter.
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