(Discern Report)—Is it possible that Jesus specifically warned us about the times that we are living in nearly 2,000 years ago? You may have noticed that global events have started to spiral out of control lately. Normally, the summer is a period when things are relatively quiet. As far as the news industry is concerned, August is supposed to be the quietest month of all because so much of the world is on vacation. But that definitely has not been the case in 2024. According to journalist Simon Tisdall, in recent weeks we have been experiencing a “peaking of volatility, instability and insecurity, unprecedented in recent times”…
August is the quietest month – to mangle TS Eliot’s verse – or so news editors used to think. Politicians go on holiday, governments shut down, people head for the hills or the beach. Not much happens. Not so this August. The world this month is experiencing an extraordinary peaking of volatility, instability and insecurity, unprecedented in recent times. It’s scary, it’s shocking, it’s a wild ride.
Sudden revolutions, wars current and imminent, terrible crimes, high-stakes feuding, famines, cost of living crunches, violent riots and unfathomable market panics come not as single spies but in battalions. In a world where mutual destruction, steeped in cruelty and despair, is a favoured human pastime, grim vistas of Eliot’s The Waste Land beckon anew.
He is right.
But just because things have been crazy lately does not mean that we are living in the end times.
If we really are living in the end times, there are certain very specific signs that we should be seeing.
In Matthew chapter 24, Jesus discussed some of those signs…
6 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.
7 For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
8 All these are the beginning of sorrows.
Of course there have been wars, famines, pestilences and natural disasters all throughout human history.
If we really are living in the end times, all of these elements should be occurring simultaneously, and the intensity of each element should be at a very high level.
Let’s talk about war first. According to the Institute for Economics & Peace, there were 56 active military conflicts in the world last year. That was the highest number that we have witnessed since World War II…
Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Colombia… and so on. There are up to 56 active conflicts in the world, the highest number since World War II. Moreover, these carry an increasingly international component, with 92 countries involved in wars outside their borders. These are data from the latest Global Peace Index produced annually by the Institute for Economics & Peace (IEP), a think tank that analyzes everything from military investment and the cost of violence to military laws and deaths in combat in 163 states and territories.
As I write this, there is a tremendous amount of speculation all over the globe about “World War III”. The conflict in the Middle East is on the verge of being transformed into an “all-out war”, it is probably only a matter of time before the U.S. is dragged into the war in Ukraine and we find ourselves directly fighting with Russia, and the moment that China invades Taiwan we will be at war with the Chinese.
We are most certainly living during a time of wars and rumors of wars, and the hot phase of “World War III” will truly be unlike anything we have ever seen before.
All throughout history, famine has accompanied war. Right now, we are facing a global food crisis of unprecedented magnitude. In Sudan, endless war has created a famine that is truly horrifying. At this moment, it is being projected that millions of Sudanese citizens will die in the months ahead…
After 15 months of fighting in that country between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), experts in food insecurity estimate that almost 26 million people (no, that is not a misprint!), or more than half of Sudan’s population, could suffer from malnutrition by September. Eight and a half million of those human beings could face acute malnutrition. Worse yet, if the war continues on its present path, millions will die of hunger and disease in just the coming months (and few people in our world may even notice).
How would you feel if you had to watch your family slowly die of starvation?
According to Timmo Gaasbeek of the Netherlands Institute of International Relations, 2.5 million people in Sudan could perish “by the time crops are harvested in September”…
Gaasbeek warned, however, that soup kitchens can fill only so many gaping holes in a system shattered by wartime destruction, displacement, and crop failure. His institute estimates that at current rates of food sharing, 2.5 million people could die of hunger and disease by the time crops are harvested in September. In other words, a shocking 10–20 percent of the Sudanese in the hardest-hit areas could die—mortality rates similar to ones suffered during horrendous famines in parts of Nigeria in 1969, Ethiopia in 1984, and Somalia in 1992.
September is next month!
But most Americans don’t even realize that this is happening because our big news networks only want to talk about Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Reuters has reported that hunger is so bad in some parts of Sudan that people are literally making meals out of balls of dirt just so that they will have something to fill their stomachs…
Garang Achien Akok is one of the thousands of new arrivals in the area. Akok, his wife and their five children abandoned their home in the southern region of Kordofan after Arab militiamen on camels stormed their village and torched their hut, he said.
Akok, 41, reached Al Lait in December, but has no work and can’t feed the family. At times, they go two or three days without eating. When that happens, Akok said, he watches helplessly as his wife and children dig holes in the ground with a stick, slide their hands in and grab some soil. Then they roll the soil into a ball, put it in their mouths and swallow it with water.
Meanwhile, supplies of food all over the world just keep getting tighter and tighter.
CNN has admitted that we are facing “the worst food crisis in modern history”, but the truth is that this is just the beginning.
Once nuclear weapons are used, everything will change.
One study that was conducted a few years ago determined that three to four years after an all-out nuclear war global food production would have dropped by about 90 percent…
Using climate, crop and fishery models, researchers found that the climatic impacts of soot from nuclear war would peak in the first few years but last for about a decade.
In the worst-case scenario, when 150 Tg of soot is unleashed, the global average calorie production from crops would decline by about 90% just three to four years after the nuclear war, the study found.
That same study concluded that approximately 360 million people would be directly killed during an all-out nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, and over 5 billion people would die from starvation in the aftermath…
The largest scenario examined, a week-long war involving 4,400 weapons and 150 Tg, or 330.6 billion pounds, of soot – such as one that would occur between the U.S., its allies and Russia – would kill 360 million people directly – and more than 5 billion from starvation, the study said. The density of the soot would reduce global temperatures by more than 58ºF.
What would our world look like if 5 billion people were simultaneously dying from starvation? That is something to think about.
If we really are living in the end times, we should also be experiencing major pestilences.
Needless to say, the COVID crisis killed millions of people and it is still with us. Over the past few years, the bird flu has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of millions of chickens and turkeys all over the globe, and now the bird flu has jumped into mammals. Are we next?
We better hope not, because the World Health Organization says that over 50 percent of the humans that have caught H5N1 since 2003 have ended up dead. In 2022, a Monkeypox plague rapidly spread all over the planet, and it created a lot of fear.
Now a far deadlier version that reportedly spreads more easily among humans is spreading in central Africa, and the World Health Organization is extremely concerned about this.
And I certainly don’t want to leave out dengue fever. So far this year, there have been more than 10 million cases in North America and South America combined…
In the Americas alone, almost 10.4 million suspected cases of dengue, a mosquito-borne viral disease, were reported to the World Health Organization in 2024 as of the first week of July, an increase of 232% compared with the same period the year before.
Peru is a case in point. When torrential rains started to fall there in 2023, a record-breaking dengue epidemic exploded shortly afterward. The case count is estimated at well over 100,000 so far this year.
If you have ever had a severe case of dengue fever, you will never forget it.
It is known as “breakbone fever”, because many of those that develop severe cases literally feel like their bones are breaking…
Because some patients feel as if their bones are breaking, the virus has an ominous nickname: “breakbone fever.”
What about natural disasters?
Are we seeing a lot of those?
It is being reported that last year the number of “billion dollar disasters” established a brand new all-time record high…
The planet was besieged by a record 63 billion-dollar weather disasters in 2023, surpassing the previous record of 57 set in 2020, said insurance broker Gallagher Re in its annual report issued January 17. The total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2023 was $301 billion, with an unusually high 57% of that total being insured damages.
Meanwhile, the ground under our feet is shaking with alarming regularity.
Last week, I wrote an article about the strange seismic activity that we have been witnessing on the west coast, on the east coast, under the Great Lakes and down in Texas.
On the other side of the world, all of the recent shaking in Japan has created a tremendous amount of panic. People are feverishly hoarding food because they are so concerned about the possibility of a “megaquake”…
Authorities in Japan urged people to avoid hoarding as anxiety over a possible megaquake triggered a spike Saturday in demand for disaster kits and daily necessities.
In its first such advisory, the weather agency said a huge earthquake was more likely in the aftermath of a magnitude 7.1 jolt in the south on Thursday which left 14 people injured.
At a Tokyo supermarket on Saturday, a sign was put up apologising to customers for shortages of certain products it attributed to “quake-related media reports”.
I am entirely convinced that everything that we have been through so far is just the beginning.
We are still only in the very early chapters of this “perfect storm”, and if I am right there is a tremendous amount of death and destruction ahead of us.
Most people don’t want to hear that.
Most people just want to hear that everything is going to be wonderful.
But if we really are living in the end times, global events will play out just as the Bible says that they will.
Michael’s new book entitled “Chaos” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
Yup!
Rockefeller Foundation and “Reset the Table” and ……..
https://youtu.be/v2H0PQRq7pw?si=fb7kAysfeREcNryR
Jesus is pretty clearly talking about the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70 in Matt. 24. That was predicted by Christ “within this generation.” Which is exactly what happened.
Verse 1 was fulfilled, yes, but not the events described in his answer to the disciple’s question given in verse 3 …
“As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, ‘Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?'” – Matt 24:3