Kara's Online Journal

It was May 2nd, 2008.

Beep! Beep! Bee-- click.

I turned over casually and looked at my alarm clock I'd just turned off. 6:00. I listened for other signs of life in the house, but all I heard was my little sisters' normal breathing showing they were sleeping. I rolled over and fell back into the land of dreams.

I awoke with a start, and glanced around. It was still dark. What time is it? I wondered, looking up at my alarm clock. 

Where's the light? Maybe I turned it around...

An eerie feeling enveloped me as I looked at the blank clock. I turned it, but there was no light anywhere.

Everything was quiet, too quiet. I looked on the floor where Mom's laptop lay, and picked it up. The screen lit up, and I saw it was 6:15am. I slept for fifteen minutes.

Beep! Beep! Beep!

The loud noise made me jump a little as it echoed from the basement.  Suddenly, realization hit me as thunder boomed outside and a flash of lightning danced across my bed. "The electricity is out!"

A thrill of excitement coursed through me, and I heard the Beep! Beep! Beep! of the battery backups in the basement going again as I shut down Mom's laptop. I threw off my covers and tiptoed downstairs.

I entered the office and looked around. Everything was soo strange. No electricity. I heard Dad come down the stairs and turned to talk to him...

That was just the beginning of an unusual day :) 

 Well, before I go onto my article, I might as well give you an update about how everything's going around here :)

Passover was alot of fun! :) I really enjoyed the fellowship, and meeting some new people. Everythings going pretty well here; the only things that are really new is that we have 8 puppies that were born during Passover, and 4 kittens. :)

Well, on May 3rd, most of the day we didn't have electricity, because a twister had ripped through Ava at 6 am and just tore it up. That time period between my alarm going off, when I first woke up, and the second time I woke up--only fifteen minutes--the electricity had been wiped out. 

It was strange. We couldn't use the oven, the refrigerators, the freezers, the computers, vacuum, the faucet (no water)... nothing, basically! And only one phone worked, and that was one that was powered by the phone line in my mom's sewing room! We could do hardly anything. Yes, the vehicles and cell phone were working (as well as that one phone), and the stovetop (we have a gas stove, and had to use a match to light it), but that was all.

Just imagine, if one day, we woke up, just like I did on May 2nd, and there was no electricity, no phone, the batteries were all dead... what would you do?

Well, we'd have to live like our ancestors did like 100 years ago or so, I guess. :)

I think it's interesting that the Scriptures, when they talk about the end times, there's phrases like this:

Isaiah 2:4 "And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Joel 3:10 "Beat your plowshares into swords, and your pruninghooks into spears: let the weak say, I am strong."

Micah 4:3 "And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."

Notice that there's some interesting words in there. All three verses have the same words "swords" "plowshares" "spears" and "pruninghooks". Well, why didn't they say, "tanks into tractors, and machine guns into cultivators," ? Or vice-versa in Joel 3:10? Maybe there's a possibility that near the end times, there won't be any electricity? Just a suggestion. Seems so to me. 

In Revelation, there's no mention of light bulbs, nuclear bombs, guns, or even cars. 

There's an article written by Patrick Chisholm, where he says, "The saturation of society with modern electronics, while certainly a good thing overall, gives us an Achilles' heel. The more dependent we become on such electronics, the more vulnerable we are to societal chaos if a substantial portion of them fail simultaneously. It is said that an electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, could cause such a failure." 

What is EMP?

He continues, "An EMP is generated by a nuclear explosion, or by a smaller-scale "e-bomb." If a terrorist or rogue nation detonated a nuclear bomb a few hundred miles above the United States, the resulting shock wave could damage or disrupt electronic components throughout the country. The consequences could be catastrophic. Our life-sustaining critical infrastructure such as communications networks, energy networks, and food and water distribution networks could all break down."

Ok, think about that. It would take out all our electricity. We'd have no water, no lights, no phones...our life we live today would be extremely difficult. Here's another quote from a different article by :

"By many calculations, one properly placed nuclear bomb (possibly hidden in a satellite) detonated above the center of the United States could produce huge electrical fields. "The EMP from a single hydrogen bomb exploded 300 kilometers over the heart of the United States could set up an electrical field 50 kV/m strong over nearly all of North America". Since EMP is electromagnetic radiation traveling at the speed of light, all of the area could possibly be effected almost simultaneously. All communications, television, radio, cars, trucks, planes, etc could be effected resulting in an Electronic blanket where all electronics in our country could be neutralized including the knowledge of the Nuclear attack..."

"Today, Americans should fear a different kind of nuclear threat that can instantaneously destroy power grids, electronic systems, and communications along an entire coast but spare people.

“This destruction would result from the split-second release of a high-energy electromagnetic pulse (EMP) after a nuclear bomb is detonated miles above the Earth and outside the atmosphere. Within a week of the blast, although no one would be instantly killed, the disruption of food and water supplies and health care caused by the shutdown of transportation, computers, networks, electronic equipment, and communication systems would have serious consequences for millions of people. Recovering from such an attack could take years."

Now, there are some things that are protected from EMT, and it wouldn’t exactly knock out cars, airplanes, ect. But there is a possibility it might.

Here’s another quote from the same article by Patrick Chisholm:

“Unlike what was depicted in the 1983 movie ‘The Day After,’ automobiles may keep functioning after an EMP attack. The electronics within automobiles enjoy robust shielding because of the harsh electromagnetic environment on existing roadways. Aircraft have even stronger electromagnetic shielding, so they are unlikely to fall out of the sky. ‘Some of the [aircraft's] equipment may not work, but the propulsion and control system usually is pretty robust,’ said Dr. William A. Radasky, president of Metatech Corp, a consulting firm specializing in electromagnetic environment analysis.

“Radasky, one of the world's few experts on protecting electronics against an EMP, thinks that most electronics would undergo only a temporary disruption in the event of an EMP. ‘You may just have to restart the computer and everything would be fine,’ said Radasky. But a temporary shutdown of a control system for a critical infrastructure system, he said, would be ‘troublesome.’ And if just 1 percent of all electronics failed, havoc could ensue. ‘Just think about the power outage in August of '03 when a couple of wires hit a tree,’ observed Radasky. ‘That was a single failure, propagated over a huge area. Now imagine, at the speed of light every place in the United States, some portion of electronics failing. Now you have a very widespread problem.’”

Still, the possibility of it all going down is still there. And why does the Scriptures say, “beat your swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks”? I think there is a possibility of a lot of today’s conveniences to go, and us be left.

I mean, think about what happened to us last week. In only fifteen minutes, the electricity was completely knocked out. We could do almost nothing. It only takes a few minutes for something to happen like that.

It says that in the end times we won’t be able to buy or sell unless we take the mark of the beast. That means, if we have the same modern society we do now, we can’t buy gas for cars, tickets for bus, airplanes, or trains, so we have no transportation. We can’t pay our electric bill, probably can’t have banks either, nor can we pay for internet, so we don’t have water, refrigeration, oven, lights, freezers, ect.

Then, if we can’t buy food, clothing, or water, we have nothing in that regard either.

What will we do?

I think we need to know how to live without relying on the world. That may be having a self-sufficient lifestyle, growing our own food and knowing how to live without electricity; doing everything ourselves.

By the way, this is all my opinion :) If anyone has any other ideas, please let me know; I’m open for suggestions!

Yahweh Bless you all, and have a wonderful week J

A fellow servant, Kara

Revelation 13:17 “And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”