Thanks to the news media, the world can now add chickens to the things we may fear might kill us. To date, 100 million birds with avian flu have been killed, and it is reported 60 of the 100 people infected with the human form of avian flu since 1997 have died.
Meanwhile, millions have died from HIV/AIDS, hundreds of thousands are dying, and millions more— men, women and children—are infected worldwide each year.
Officials in India are growing alarmed at the spread of infection because of "lonely" truckers using prostitutes at truck stops. Reports state that India's truck drivers are triggering a pandemic within their own families and with the child prostitutes who frequent truck stops across that nation.
Truckers there report an average of 150 to 200 sexual encounters a year with prostitutes. Authorities say 15 to 18 percent of the drivers tested are HIV-positive. The United Nations forecasts that within the next ten years, an estimated 10 million in India will be infected.
Chinese authorities estimate that about 840,000 of their nation's citizens are HIV-infected, 80,000 having actual AIDS. Illicit sexual contact and recreational drug use are blamed. World AIDS experts believe these estimates are understated. Figures for the rest of the world are equally grim. United Nations agencies report that sub-Saharan Africa has just over 10 percent of the world's population, but is home to more than 60 percent of all people living with HIV—an estimated 26 million. The UN reports that the number of people living with HIV in the world today has risen to 40 million, and that three million died of AIDS in 2004 while five million more were infected. Of the new infections, 4.3 million were adults, 700,000 were children.
In the United States, the epidemic has shifted demonstrably during the past decade. An estimated 40,000 people in the U.S. have been infected with HIV in each of the past ten years, and while the epidemic in the U.S. was once confined largely to white homosexual males, it now affects an increasing proportion of women and African-Americans. A potential bird flu pandemic is scary, but the AIDS pandemic has proven itself deadly. While bad farming practices and greed can be blamed for one, a cascading breakdown of global morals is the reason behind the other. Both could be avoided if man would simply obey the laws of the great God of the universe.
Jesus Christ warned that a time would come when pestilences would roam the earth. "For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences [disease epidemics of unprecedented proportions] and earthquakes in various places" (Matthew 24:7).
As Tomorrow's World Editor-in-Chief Roderick C. Meredith wrote, in his article "Seven Reasons Why Christ Must Return": "We are now at a turning point in human affairs! As traumatic world events begin to speed up and intensify their effects on each other, our Creator must and will intervene!"
God speed the day when He does return!
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The above is adapted from one of the many commentaries, discussing vital topics facing our world, available at the www.lcg.org and www.tomorrowsworld.org Web sites.