Who will feed us?

That message is beginning to make more sense than it did before the September 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in 2001. Since then, our world has entered a time of ongoing war and rapid change. In the U.S., many are avoiding the pain – for the time being – but everyone will feel it before too long. Let's look at just two of the threats that even now endanger our heath and survival.

Most city-dwellers give little thought to the relationship between the weather and food production. Without enough rain, crops will not mature. Without grains, humans cannot bake bread or feed the animals that will provide them the protein they need for strength and energy.

The Australian continent is well into a multi-year drought that has virtually destroyed the farming and ranching industries in several states. This is not a localized concern, since Australia is one of the greatest granaries on the planet. World grain reserves are rapidly declining, at the very time our global population is rising. Drought is also affecting many key wheat and corn-producing areas of the United States. Some scientists now fear that destructive "dust bowl" conditions could again be developing in the great plains of America's heartland.

Factory fishing has diminished sea life. Fleets of trawlers scoured the oceans for decades, but many are now permanently tied up in port, because not enough fish are left in formerly rich fishing grounds, such as the Gulf of Mexico and the Grand Banks off Canada. Fish-farming has also created a genetically weaker product, which damages free fish when they mix with factory farmed stocks.

When mankind's years of misrule come to a climactic end, all sea life will cease to exist. "Then the second angel poured out his bowl on the sea, and it became blood as of a dead man; and every living creature in the sea died" (Revelation 16:3). Many oceanographers understand that the world's oceans are dying, and that the protein-rich food they produce is speedily declining, just when the coastal human populations which depend on the sea for survival are increasing.

Past experience shows that when food shortages occur, the hungry do not starve quietly. Civil unrest and even violence can erupt, as mobs roam in search of a meal. This also occurs on a national level. When a nation's people are short on food, its armies will invade other lands to take dwindling supplies from their neighbors' mouths. Through His word, God warns us that human beings will even resort to cannibalism in the not-too-distant future! "They shall besiege you at all your gates until your high and fortified walls, in which you trust, come down throughout all your land; and they shall besiege you at all your gates throughout all your land which the Lord your God has given you. You shall eat the fruit of your own body, the flesh of your sons and your daughters whom the Lord your God has given you, in the siege and desperate straits in which your enemy shall distress you" (Deuteronomy 28:52-53).

You may find it hard to believe that such horrors could occur in our lands of plenty. But we need to be aware of what is going on in our world, and to realize that the end of mankind's mismanagement of God's creation is very near. When the lean times come, who will feed us? Looking to God is a good place to start. "I have been young, and now am old; yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor his descendants begging bread" (Psalm 37:25).

To learn more about the deteriorating conditions in our world, and what they mean for end-time prophecy, please read our booklet, Fourteen Signs Announcing Christ's Return!, in the Booklets section of this website.