It has been four months since the widespread destruction of vegetation by the first Trumpet Judgment. The world is in a state of starvation and global depression. Misery has increased exponentially and the world is in chaos. Life is at subsistence levels.
Jill Steiner goes on with the daily news. She knows there are many more disasters and much more suffering to come. Things will get far worse, if that can even be imagined.
Before she begins her daily news show, Producer Jack Ford tells her "Jill, your news is now the number one news show in the world for reporting on the disasters. Can you believe that?" Jill replies "I knew a lot of people were watching, but number one in the entire world? I had no idea." Jill thinks it odd that she has become the one person the world turns to for disaster coverage, and her coverage was being sent to news rooms internationally. And people who saw breaking disaster news from around the world would send their video to LANX news just to have Jill air it first.
Just as her daily broadcast begins, a report comes into the news room sent from a commercial airplane pilot over the Pacific. The pilot reported seeing a blazing mountain of fire crash into the Pacific Ocean, and the resulting splash was about 300 miles wide. The report said the ocean immediately turned a sickly red as a concentric tsunami unlike any ever seen went out in all directions. The pilot added that the tsunami wave was "enormous" and "it will be a killer." Video from another airplane arrives within minutes showing a red fireball the size of a mountain coming out of the sky and landing in the Pacific Ocean an estimated 750 miles west of Hawaii. Jill sees it when the rest of her audience sees it. It is a sight which the world has never seen.
Producer Jack Ford hurries to find any live video feed, which he knew would be coming in shortly. As several videos arrive at the news room, he decides to put up a live video feed from Hawaii. Jack sends it straight to the on-air news feed as Jill is in mid-sentence reading reports coming in from other airline pilots.
Local Hawaiian HWTV News reporter Oko Nogomi was reporting on severe beach erosion on the western shore of Oahu when the fireball came into view of his camera. At that point Oko shifted to live reporting about the fireball he had seen approximately 750 miles west of Oahu. Oko first replays the video of the mountain of fire, then relays to the world what he is seeing as it is happening: "The fireball suddenly appeared in the western sky, and was not seen until it was relatively close to the earth. You would think it could have been seen coming from space, but that was not the case. I would have seen that. When it appeared it was the shape of an inverted mountain, like a huge cone of bright red fire about the height of Mauna Loa, our largest Hawaiian mountain. Due to the curvature of the earth I could not see the splash but it had to be gigantic. But we did feel the earth move as it hit, and it caused smoke to rise out of several local volcanoes, including some dormant ones here on Oahu. The resulting noise broke the sound barrier even this far away, and that sound took probably an hour to reach us. The energy is unbelievable. I just looked up the speed of sound vs the speed of a tsunami, and sound travels 750 MPH while a tsunami can reach up to 500 MPH. That means...let me calculate....that the tsunami should reach us in about 15 minutes." After several minutes of reporting, Oko's cameraman points his camera to the west as he motions to Oko to look out to sea. Oko turns to see what the world is seeing through the camera, a tsunami over 300 feet tall. Oko returns to reporting: "As you can see, the tsunami is almost here. It will surely swamp the entire island chain. So this is the end of our little paradise. If my wife and kids are watching, I love you. This is Oko Nogomi, HWTV news, reporting...." Oko turns to face the tsunami just as it reaches shore. The video feed goes dark as the giant wave crashes over Oahu.
Jill continues to stare at the blank video feed for several seconds. Producer Jack Ford puts up another video which had just come in from a ship out on the Pacific closer to Japan. The Captain of a supertanker is seen yelling into his video that a 300 foot wave is headed straight for his ship. Within a few seconds the huge wave is seen coming over his vessel as the video feed is lost.
Jack Ford then airs the last video report from the Tsunami Warning Center in Hawaii as the tsunami races across Maui, wiping out that monitoring location. Jill says to her producer "Enough video, Jack -- let's just read the reports." Jill covers the facts as best she can. But the videos told the story. Within 30 minutes reports come in saying the Hawaiian Islands had been swamped by a giant red tsunami. It is a certainty that all on the islands are lost. Aerial footage soon arrives confirming that there are no remaining buildings on any of the Hawaiian Islands. An aircraft carrier and numerous other Navy ships from Pearl Harbor are seen resting on their side or upside down where Honolulu used to be.
Within the next several hours reports of over 2500 large ships being lost at sea in the Pacific are received. Many more were destroyed while docked in ports. Hundreds of Pacific islands have been destroyed, including most of Micronesia and Polynesia. Japan, Taiwan, New Guinea, the Philippines, and northeastern Australia were hit hard along their coastal cities, even though the tsunami height had decreased somewhat by the time it reached those locations. The casualties are estimated to be over 75 million people.
Several days later Jill is reporting the follow-up from the burning red mountain:
"News of the oceans and seas turning red is not nearly the worst issue here. The more significant issue is that nearly all sea life in the Pacific has been killed. That means one-third of all sea life world-wide has died. One third of all fish, whales, shrimp, lobster, krill and so on have died. The rotting of these creatures is already causing a stench which is creeping across the land masses. Island nations such as Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, Taiwan and others are hit hardest by the loss of sea creatures. And the loss of so much sea life means less food from the sea. An already starving world is about to have even less food.
Jill reaches for her Bible study notes which she keeps on her desk in the studio. She begins to read to her audience:
"This event was predicted well over 2000 years ago in Revelation Chapter 8:
Revelation 8:8 “The second angel sounded his trumpet, and something like a huge mountain, all ablaze, was thrown into the sea. A third of the sea turned into blood, 9 a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.”
Jill then tells her viewers: "I have been reading a book called "The Future Times" which was written a long time ago. Oddly, I played the author's online video the day the Rapture, or Vanishment as it has been called, happened. I would suggest it is good reading about what has been happening, and what is yet to come. Let me read some from that book:
"The second Trumpet Judgment is against the oceans and seas (salt water) of the earth. God takes away a large portion of another major food source, which is seafood. A third of all sea life is destroyed. The oceans are polluted with the rotting sea creatures mixed with blood thrown down, once again reminding that this is judgment for killing God's believers. But even the image of a mountain of fire and blood coming down from heaven into the ocean will not change the minds of the hardened unbelieving world.
This second Trumpet Judgment targets the oceans and salt water seas which together cover about 70% of the earth's surface and account for about 96% of the earth's water. There must be no attempt to try to explain these judgments as an accident such as a random meteor or asteroid. An angel will literally throw a huge burning mass the size of a large mountain into the earth's oceans. Remember this is divinely caused, literal and real -- not allegory, not symbolic, but real. Psalm 105:29 says: “He turned their waters into blood, causing their fish to die.” A third of the oceans and seas are turned to blood, and all creatures in those affected regions die. Overall a third of all sea creatures die. A third of all shipping is destroyed. This destruction of so much sea life and many ocean-going vessels, on top of the destruction of a third of all vegetation on earth including 100% of grain plants, quickly squeezes the food supply to the brink, and starvation accelerates. The rotting flesh of sea creatures and blood will create a worldwide stench and will further accelerate diseases. The earth does not have time to react to one disaster before the next one hits. The cumulative build-up of disaster upon disaster maximizes the intensity of the suffering.
It is worth comparing what is happening on earth at this time during the Tribulation to what happened when Moses warned the Pharaoh of Egypt to set the people of Israel free from slavery. Moses warned and warned, then a terrible judgment would occur, but Pharaoh refused to change his mind. Then the process repeated. There were 10 plagues against Egypt, and Pharaoh showed a degree of hardness of heart which will now be equaled by unbelievers during the Tribulation. Also note the correlation of the actual Trumpet Judgments to the judgments against the Pharaoh of Egypt. The Egyptian judgments included blood, hail and fire, darkness, killing livestock, rotting flesh of wildlife, pain, unusual things falling from the atmosphere, and so on. The judgments are also similar since they caused intense suffering on a grand scale for the Egyptians, but not for the Jews, and in the same way God will take care of His own during the Tribulation. Even though the entire world will suffer hardship, the unbelievers are specifically targeted and the believers are generally delivered even though the times will be extremely difficult for all."
By this time her producer Jack Ford has his head in his hands. Jill just read on-air from a banned book. He knows he will be visited by the "Citizen's Police" soon.
The next morning, right on cue, three Citizen's Police thugs appear at the news room to arrest him and Jill. They are taken into custody and put into the maximum security prison. As she enters her cell she sees that her producer Jack Ford is already there in a nearby cell. Jill sits and wonders what the future holds for her and Jack. Maybe she should be more careful. But maybe this is my mission since I have a voice heard around the world. If I do not use my opportunity, might more people be lost for all eternity? The questions swirl in Jill's head as a small bowl of left-over broccoli stalk soup is brought to her cell as her only meal for the day. "Great" she thinks to herself. "Maybe they intend to starve me in here."