Fatal rattlesnake bites were not so common in the decades prior to 2002. Steve Curry, director of medical toxicology at Banner Poison Control Center, Phoenix, Arizona, can only remember five bite fatalities during that period. That has all changed. Since 2002, there have been five deaths from rattlesnake bites in Arizona, and the symptoms from the bites have intensified dramatically. The symptoms include pain, nausea, diarrhea, dry mouth, swelling of mouth and throat, and difficulty in breathing. Victims go into shock and die within minutes.
So far, no one knows why the bites have become so lethal. All that Jeffery Brent, clinical professor of medicine, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, knows is that this “is a brand new phenomenon.”1 Perhaps this phenomenon is a foreshadowing of things to come.
The increasing ferocity of beasts is a phenomenon associated with end-time prophecy; particularly the period of seven years known as the Tribulation, or time of Jacob’s Trouble. It is during that time that the Four Horseman symbolically ride through the first half of the period dispensing death and destruction from wars, famine, and disease. And it is the fourth, and last, horseman that carries this extra lethal power of marshaling the beats of the earth:
And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. (Rev 6:8; emphasis added)
At a time when killer bees are on the rise, and the more docile European bee is vanishing, these rattlesnakes seem to be part of a developing trend. Are the beasts of the earth being prepared?
Notes:
1. Amanda Lee Myers, “Rattlesnake attacks spur severe reactions: Experts see a new phenomenon,” Dailynews.com, May 24, 2008. http://www.dailynews.com/search/
ci_9373276?IADID=Search-www.dailynews.com-www.dailynews.com
