Bird Flu Takes A Firm Grip Across Europe

End Timers Looking Forward To A Bird Flu Pandemic?

This story about how the H5N1 virus is rapidly establishing itself in European countries reads mostly like a fact based, genuinely informative news story about the terrible reality that is the bird flu virus in Europe today, but....we'll get to the 'but' after this excerpt :

Bird flu may become entrenched throughout parts of Europe. Two months ago, German scientists discovered the fatal H5N1 strain of the avian influenza virus in seemingly healthy ducks and geese. The fact that German waterfowl are now acting as vectors of the disease without showing symptoms presents an increased threat to human health, the Food and Agriculture Organization (fao) of the United Nations reported last Thursday.

The spread of avian influenza by birds resistant to the disease has caused it to become entrenched in Southeast Asian nations. If the birds do not show symptoms of the disease, infected birds are almost impossible to isolate or eradicate. Because of this, the fao has warned that Europe should prepare for more outbreaks.

Ukraine has about 20 million domestic ducks. Another 8 million ducks populate the Danube River delta in Romania. “These figures compare easily with chicken and waterfowl densities in Asia, where the virus continues to circulate among chickens but has found a niche in countries with tens of millions of domestic ducks and geese,” commented Jan Slingenbergh, the fao’s senior animal health officer.

“After Asia and Africa, Europe may become the third continent where the H5N1 strain could become endemic,” the fao warned.

The H5N1 strain is the most deadly form of bird flu that infects humans. It has been fatal in 204 of the 332 recorded human cases and has killed millions of birds worldwide. In addition to the destruction that an avian flu epidemic would wreak on the European poultry industry, the risk to human health cannot be ignored.

The 1918 Spanish flu that killed 40 million people was a type of avian influenza. Health experts fear that the H5N1 strain will mutate to a form that can be transmitted human to human. Lee Jong-Wook, the late director general of the World Health Organization, stated that “It is only a matter of time before an avian-flu virus—most likely H5N1—acquires the ability to be transmitted from human to human, sparking the outbreak of human pandemic influenza. We don’t know when this will happen. But we do know that it will happen.”

But the story finishes in a very 'Oh Shit!' kind of way :

This silent spread of H5N1 avian influenza may be the start of a European epidemic. Time will tell, but we can be certain that biblical prophecies of severe pandemics in the end time will be fulfilled soon.

What the...?

The deeply troubling thing about that comment is, of course, that millions of Americans are waiting for the supposed End Times to become a reality. When they get End Times, they get the second coming of their Messiah.

It's absolutely shocking to think that there are American evangelicals telling their followers that a bird flu pandemic is going to be a good thing. If bird flu is one of the End Times plagues, then why would they want to stop it? Meaning that why then would these millions of End Times devotees do anything to protect themselves and their neighbours from halting the spread of the deadly virus if it was to show up in their towns or cities?

Will we see End Times evangelicals telling their millions of followers to, for example, not bother washing their hands, or reporting a shedful of dead poultry birds?

Sorry, but this kind of talk about one of the most deadly challenges facing humanity is the stuff of nightmares.

How do you defend a country as big as the United States when millions of its own people might actually be wanting the bird flu virus to become pandemic?

When this blog's American readers hear local evangelicals talking 'rapturously' about a bird flu pandemic, double check your stockpiles. One of them might be just mad enough to want to help the virus to spread and take hold in the United States.

The above excerpted story was taken from a news site called 'The Trumpet'. Here's how they describe themselves :

The Trumpet uses a single overarching criterion that sets it apart from other news sources and keeps it focused like a laser beam on what truly is important. That criterion is prophetic significance. The Trumpet seeks to show how current events are fulfilling the biblically prophesied description of the prevailing state of affairs just before the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

End Timers for the Pandemic?