Australia: Bushfires Wreaking Havoc, Again
Thousands of homes are threatened by huge wildfires sweeping across eastern Australia. Record temperatures and persistent winds have combined to make this the worst bushfire threat in 100 years in New South Wales, just months after the country’s most devastating wildfire disaster to date.
The record heat has kindled fears of a repeat of February’s cataclysmic fires in Victoria that killed 173 people and consumed more than 2,000 homes. The conditions have prompted authorities to issue the first “catastrophic” or “Code Red” alert—a new level of warning introduced since the deadly Black Saturday fires in February—for parts of New South Wales and South Australia.
“The very hot temperatures we’ve seen across New South Wales right throughout this last week are simply breaking hundred-year records,” said Rural Fire Service Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons.
In a Code Red warning, residents cannot be forcibly evacuated, but are strongly advised to leave their property because of the dire risk of death, injury and destruction.
Fire expert Kevin Tolhurst said, “What we saw on (Black Saturday) was an extraordinary day from a weather point of view. We are starting to see those sort of days more frequently.”
The extraordinary weather conditions in Australia are not limited to those that foster fires.
Earlier this month, authorities declared a natural disaster along parts of Australia’s east coast as severe floods stranded almost 5,000 people. It was the fifth major flooding incident to strike the region this year.
Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has often pointed to the imminent fulfillment of the prophecies of the book of Amos. Back in 1996, he declared both the source of and the reason for this devastation (April 1996):
The Prophet Amos prophesied about this problem in the end time …. “And also I have withholden the rain from you, when there were yet three months to the harvest: and I caused it to rain upon one city, and caused it not to rain upon another city: one piece was rained upon, and the piece whereupon it rained not withered” (Amos 4:7). God says, “I caused it”! God is the cause. We are being cursed by God! Do we really understand what that means? When we continue to have serious floods and droughts at the same time, it is a warning sign from God. And this is only the beginning.
Read our electronically published booklet Australia—Where to Now? and request your own copy, free of charge, of our booklet on Amos, The Lion Has Roared, for insight into the prophecies for these times and the future that awaits mankind.