I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. What a beautiful state, which is shaped somewhat rectangularly from east to west! Its mountainous Olympic Peninsula in the northwest is quite a treasure. The voluminous Columbia River is much of the state’s southern border with Oregon. And Washington has multiple mountain peaks that can be snow-covered year round. In sort of the middle of the state the Cascade mountain range runs north and south. It serves as a divider that makes Western Washington famously precipitous and Eastern Washington semi-arid. Yet the latter is great farm country with its canal system receiving snow melt from the Cascades. And the Pacific Ocean serves as Washington’s western border. The state’s northern border is a straight line, the 48th parallel, shared with British Columbia in Canada.
Very unlike anything in the rest of the U.S., the Strait of Juan de Fuca represents a vast inlet of seawater flowing in from the Pacific Ocean between Vancouver Island in British Columbia to the north and Washington State to the south. It extends eastward about 100 miles and then turns southward with several water bodies that include Puget Sound, upon which Seattle is located. I grew up seeing Puget Sound almost every day. How so? The West Seattle Golf Course, where I honed my skills at the greatest game on grass, overlooks Puget Sound less than a mile away.
Yet despite all this beauty and magnificence in greenest state in the union, there is an unseen danger that lurks off the coast of Western Washington in the deep, blue Pacific Ocean that threatens to become the worst catastrophe in all of U.S. history. It is two tectonic plates that struggle against each other under the sea bottom that could someday release their tension and cause an earthquake that could result in a tsunami the likes of which the U.S. has never, never seen before. Seismologists say this tsunami would travel about 600 miles per hour and hit the Washington coastline with waves 30-60 feet high and in some places be as much as 100 feet high. Such a tsunami would then travel eastward through the Straight of Juan de Fuca and southward to hit the coastlines of some of Washington’s largest cities, such as Seattle and Tacoma.
Seventy miles west of Washington State’s Pacific coastline are two tectonic plates under the seabed that locked in a power struggle that extends north-to-south about 700 miles, thus along the entire western coasts of the northern tip of Vancouver Island and the states of Washington, Oregon, and Northern California. The Juan de Fuca Plate slides underneath the larger North American Plate in an action called subduction in an area that is named The Cascadia Subduction Zone.
Authorities say Washington State is the least prepared for such an megaquake and tsunami caused in this zone and that its epicenter likely would be off the Washington coast. They explain that the Juan de Fuca Plate will someday suddenly release and push up the North American Plate up about 30 feet, causing the disaster to follow. They also explain that over the past 10,000 years, this has happened once about every 430 years. And they claim that last time this happened was in the year 1700, which is before the U.S. western coast became settled with more than just indigenous peoples. They say that megaquake, on January 26, 1700, occurred at 9 PM and registered about 9.0 on the Richter Scale. Of course, it has now been 323 years since the last one, which is about 100 years away from the average interval of 430 years.
Politico Magazine online reported about this yesterday. The article says such a tsunami “will sweep up buildings, trees, vehicles, people. Anyone along the shore who feels the shaking will need to head immediately for high ground, and they will need to do so on foot–roads will likely be damaged and even if they aren’t, traffic will quickly snarl. Those who dawdle, walk too slowly, or pause to collect keepsakes or help the injured will court disaster.” Washington’s Emergency Management Division says if it strikes the west coast of Washington State, as expected, it will be “the largest natural disaster ever in the United States.”
That “pause to collect keepsakes” reminds me of something Jesus of Nazareth taught about what is called in the Bible “the end times.” During Passion Week, Jesus taught his apostles about the end times in what is called his Olivet Discourse. They were sitting on Mount Olivet overlooking the beautiful temple of Jerusalem. Its buildings were considered one of the seven wonders of the world.
The disciples expressed to Jesus their marvel at the awesome-looking temple buildings below (Matthew 24.1). Jesus responded, “You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down” (v. 2, NRSV). That is exactly what happened about forty years later, in 70 AD, after the Jews revolted against the Roman Empire and Roman armies finally destroyed this temple.
Jesus then continued by saying, “when you see standing in the holy place the abomination that causes desolation, spoken of through the prophet Daniel–let the reader understand–then let those who are in Judea,” where Jerusalem was located, “flee to the mountains. Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house. Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak. How dreadful it will be in those days . . . For then will be great distress unequaled from the beginning of the world until now–and never to be equaled again” (Matthew 24.15-19, 21 NIV). So, this Jewish suffering seems it will be greater than that of the Holocaust of WWII.
This prophecy by Jesus is mentioned three times in the book of Daniel. And Daniel makes it clear that it will happen approximately 3.5 years before the end of the age, which is sometimes stated in English Bible translations as “the end of the world.” Thus, both Daniel and Jesus say that there will be a temple at Jerusalem on the present temple mount, indicating for us that the end cannot occur until the Jews rebuild their temple there and begin offering animals sacrifices there.
What is “the abomination that causes desolation”? It will be an idol of the final Antichrist set up on the sacrificial altar at the temple. The Antichrist will have the animal sacrifices to Israel’s God, Yahweh, removed and his idol either set on top of the altar or beside it, in which latter case sacrifices likely will be made to the Antichrist.
But my point in mentioning this is that Jesus’ warnings–“Let no one on the roof of his house go down to take anything out of the house,” and “Let no one in the field go back to get his cloak”–are like today’s seismologists warning of a megaquake and perhaps 100 foot tall tsunami waves that could someday hit the coast of the State of Washington, where I was born and reared. And most of that time I lived only two blocks from Puget Sound, although our house was on an elevation that probably exceeded 100 feet.
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