Another sign?

It's been one week since the big waves hit parts of South-East Asia. I've done my small little pathetic bit to help those people by getting my dad to buy some food and collecting old clothes and stuff from my friends to donate to the tsunami victims. It seems like every major organization that can afford is pitching in. The Malaysian Public Bank gave a whopping RM1 million. Some anonymous individuals donated Rm10,000 and RM1,000 to the Star newspaper. Ads on tv are emploring viewers to donate to organizations like UNICEF and Red Cross. And my good ol' church is also collecting offerings for them. It's like the whole world is uniting for one cause, which is a rare thing and a good thing. Just makes you wanna go "Awwww....". Of course there are some greedy farts like the American government, which was slow to donate anything. And when it did, it was a relatively pathetic 35 million. Compared to the 8 BILLION PER DAY the US apparently spends on the occupation of Iraq, well, that's just plain embarassing. And after much complaining, the US gov decided to raise the figure ten-fold to 350 million. Whoop de doo, go Mr. Bush. I'm so convinced that you meant to give that money from the bottom of your heart....:Þ
Anyway, one thing that no doubt this whole super tsunami business has resulted in is reinforce the belief within the bible-believing Christian community that the last days are coming pretty soon. And for any non-Christians going "Huh? What? Got last day wan ah?", I'd have to give the super quick run through of what this big book called the Bible sez before I can explain:
1) 2004 years ago, this guy called Jesus was born.
2) This guy called Jesus went around telling everyone that He's the Son of God and that anybody who truly believes that He is their Lord and Saviour will have everlasting life. Which means they go to heaven independant of whatever sh*t they did during their life.
3) This guy called Jesus convinced a lot of people He was telling the truth, so they hung around Him a lot
4) This guy called Jesus also pissed off a bunch of religious guys who refused to believe Him even though He did a lot of cool stuff like walk on water and heal sick people and bring dead guys back to life in front of many witnesses.
5) This bunch of religious guys got so pissed off, they eventually caught Jesus, beat Him up a lot and nailed Him to this huge cross thingy stuck in the ground so He could die a slow and superbly painful death.
6) A guy called Joseph stuck Jesus' battered and bloodied body in a tomb.
7) Three days later, the body disappeared, which freaked out His followers, who later got even more freaked out when they actually Jesus alive and well, looking pretty good or someone who got beaten the crap out of.
8) The Jesus told His followers to tell everyone else about what they saw, and then He went up into the sky with a whole lotta bright lights around Him
9) The followers went out and told everyone how this dead guy called Jesus become not-so-dead and so what He said about being God's son and all must be true, and tada... Christianity was born!

Now this guy called Jesus said a lot of weird things in His life, and one of those weird things was that He would come back again some day to bring all His believers back to heaven with Him and leave everyone else standing around kinda like going "Huh?". He wouldn't tell when exactly He would come back, for some annoying reason....But before that happens, a few big signs would happen to indicate that the time for His return is getting near. Some of those signs are described in Matthew 24:7 - "Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in various places". Which I'm guess means that there will be some countries at war with each other (WWI, WWII, US and Iraq...CHECK), some countries will be suffering from food shortage (Africa...CHECK), and the earth will be shaking a bit (big waves from earthquake...CHECK).

Luke 21:25 says something a bit more interesting...."There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and preplexity at the roaring and the tossing of the sea". I think a lot of people were pretty shocked at the magnitude of the waves...I being one of them, although I guess I shouldn't have been. Even to me as a bible-believing Christian, the fact that these predictions in the Bible are actually happening now is pretty unreal. And though I am looking forward to Jesus' return, it's still a bit scary. Scary because if what the Bible says is true, and Jesus will return soon to take His believers with Him, there will be many people I care about who will be left behind. And what makes it even more annoying is that if the Bible is true, all it takes to save them from that is for them to spend a minute or two saying a heartfelt prayer, asking for forgiveness of sins and acknowledging Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

Yeah yeah, I know any skeptic reading this will think it's all just one big coincidence. And sure, Christians have been going around saying the end is nigh after every major natural disaster or war in history, and no one's been taken up to the sky yet. I have plenty of my own doubts as well and could go on and on debating about the 'last days'... but I'm just telling what that big book says, and well, just something to think about, I suppose. God bless. :Þ