Whenever someone starts quoting end times Bible prophesy or reading the Book of Revelation out loud, everyone around kind of splits into three camps.  First there are those who don’t believe in the Bible at all and just plain don’t want to hear anything about it.  Some of those people are outright Atheists who don’t believe in God and some are Agnostics who don’t believe that the existence of God can be proven.  I consider myself a believer but I don’t know what Agnostics mean by “proof”.  If  they mean scientific proof, then I suppose they’re right, although one could argue that the infinite patterns seen in creation has proven to many scientists including Einstein that there had to be an intelligence behind it.

Then there are the believers who either don’t think the next life will be better than this one or aren’t sure they’ll make the cut.  And then there is the third group which so believes in a better afterlife that they are actually looking forward to the Apocalypse.  Some of the more gruesome plagues or the possible martyrdom of millions of folks may make them feel a bit squeamish, but once the bloodshed is over, they know they’re on the winning side and more than ready to enjoy the victory.

While the great sandstorm that hit Lybia a week ago, may not qualify as  a fulfillment of Revelation prophesies with all their references to blood-red this or that, it sure produced some Apocalyptical images.  The port city of Tobruk on Libya’s eastern Mediterranean coast near Egypt turned red, as the dust storm smothered the area.  Dust and sand storms are one of the most extreme weather phenomena that affect Libya.  Such storm are somewhat common in the Sahara desert and other arid and semi-arid regions around the world, but the size of the recent storm in Lybia was immense,

Such storms are produced when a strong and turbulent wind lifts large quantities of dust or sand into the atmosphere.  The storms are most frequent in January and June.   Red dust storms can increase air pollution to “very high levels” and aggravate breathing problems. Health professionals warn the dust may irritate lungs and cause flare ups in asthma.

Saharan dust, however, also can prove beneficial to the environment. Trees and plants in the Amazon Rainforest rely on the nutrient-rich dust, which helps keep the area fertile, according to the New Scientist..

You can expound on the science behind these storms all you want — they still look line a sign of the end times to me.  But, then again, I fit pretty snugly into that third group — the people looking forward to the next life.  It’s gotta be better than this world.  Gotta be.

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