Here are Jesus' words on the subject:
And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
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. Matthew 24: 6-8
We live in a fallen world. Disasters and wars are going to continue to happen until Jesus returns. Major disasters are nothing new as the following story will relate.
Anyone know about Mount Krakatoa? I will tell you its story. It was located in the Sundra Straight between the Islands of Java and Sumatra in Indonesia. It began to awaken in May of 1883. In the early phases it generated earthquakes felt as far away as Australia as it vented steam. explosions from the Volcano could be heard as far away as Jakarta. Then it died down. Around the 16th of June Krakatoa began to spew big black clouds of smoke that covered the islands for five days. On the 24th a brisk East wind blew the black cloud away, making visible two ash columns issuing from the volcano. The violence of the eruption made tides unusually high. The ships at anchor had to be moored with chains as a result. Earthquakes began to be felt in Java and large clouds of pumice started to be reported by ships in the Indian Ocean to the West.
On the 11th of August a man by the name of H. J. G Ferzenaar explored the islands. He took note of three major ash columns venting from the volcano and steam puffing from eleven other holes in the mountain. All the vegetation was gone. Only stumps were left. The following day a ship reported another steam vent.
By August 25th the eruptions continued to intensify. At 13:00 local time the eruptions peaked. An hour later the eruption was continuous and explosions could be heard every ten minutes. The ash scattered 12 miles out, littering the decks of ships with pieces of hot pumice nearly four inches in diameter. A small tsunami hit the shores of Java and Sumatra 25 miles away between 18:00 and 19:00. The worst was yet to come.
On the 27th of August four enormous explosions took place at 05:30, 06:44, 10:02, and 10:41 local time. They were so violent that they were heard clear to Perth, Australia, 2,200 miles away and the island of Rodrigues near Mauritius, 3,000 miles away. Each created very large tsunamis that were up to 100 feet in places.
The pressure wave generated by the colossal final explosion radiated from Krakatoa at 675 mph. It was so powerful that it shattered the eardrums of sailors on ships in the Sunda Strait. The pressure wave was recorded on barographs around the world. It continued to register for five days and the shock wave circled the globe 7 times. The explosion destroyed the Island of Krakatoa.
Around noon on August 27, a rain of hot ash fell around Ketimbang in Sumatra. The blast itself killed around 1000 people. That is not counting the deaths from the tsunamis. There were no survivors from 3,000 people located at the island of Sebesi. The official death toll recorded by the Dutch authorities was 36,417, although some sources put the estimate at 120,000 or more. Many villages were destroyed--Teluk Betung and Ketimbang located in Sumatra and Sirik and Semarang in Java. There are many documented reports of human skeletons floating across the Indian Ocean on rafts of pumice and washing up on the eastern shore of Africa up to a year after the eruption. Some land on Java was never rebuilt. It is now a Jungle --the Ujung Kulon National Park.
