An arid wilderness whose main denizens include rattlesnakes and mountain lions, New Mexico’s San Andres Mountains may seem an unusual place for the course of history to change. But it was there 80 years ago today—July 16, 1945—where man entered a new era. At 5:30 a.m., the morning peace shattered with the world’s inaugural nuclear detonation. The radioactive fireball instantly incinerated the bomb’s tower. Surrounding sand fused into green glass. Unexpected witnesses miles away reported a flash lighting up the sky like the sun. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the leader of the “Trinity test,” famously had a Hindu scripture echo in his mind as he saw the explosion: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.”

Nuclear weapons then were a pioneer technology. But now enough nations have nuclear weapons to give mankind as a whole the potential to be “death, the destroyer of worlds.” China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States all have their own nuclear stockpiles. Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey have joint control over U.S. weapons stationed on their soils. Russia has gifted Belarus with weapons as well. Iran, Saudi Arabia and South Korea are ambitious to join the nuclear club.

The world is much more dangerous than most realize. In less than a year, we have come worryingly close to nuclear weapons being used in war at least twice. This isn’t pleasant to think about. But every person on the planet needs to face this reality.

Nuclear War—From South Korea?

North Korea accomplished its first nuclear test in 2006. Today, it has an estimated 50 warheads, along with enough enriched uranium for a further 50 to 70. Its latest nuclear test in 2017 detonated a bomb with an estimated yield of 120 to 250 kilotons. (In comparison, the bomb the U.S. dropped on Nagasaki in World War ii had a yield of 21 kilotons.) It has intercontinental ballistic missiles (icbms) that can reach the U.S. mainland.

There are 28,500 U.S. soldiers currently stationed in South Korea, a U.S. treaty ally, to face off North Korea. If North Korea were to do anything to those troops, it would risk a nuclear exchange across the Pacific.

Last year, such an exchange was almost provoked—by South Korea.

On December 3, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law over the country. Hours later, South Korea’s National Assembly voted 190-0 to demand Yoon revoke the order. A few hours after that, Yoon complied. He claimed this was due to vague malevolent influence from the North. But it was most likely to stop parliament from impeaching him. (South Korea’s Constitutional Court removed Yoon from office earlier this year.)

The episode was crazy enough for one of East Asia’s most influential democracies. But it could have been far worse.

On December 9, opposition lawmaker Park Beom-kye alleged Yoon’s defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun, was planning to provoke a conflict with North Korea to justify the declaration of martial law. Citing a “credible military source,” Park claimed Kim ordered a drone deployment to Pyongyang in October to provoke retaliation. (In October, North Korea claimed drones were distributing anti-regime propaganda over Pyongyang.) Park’s Democratic Party made public a military document issued by an intelligence chief that South Korea’s Defense Counterintelligence Command, in the words of South Korean daily Hankyoreh, “reviewed the possibility of the simultaneous declaration of martial law and united defense to execute military responses and control public order and security in the event of a crisis, such as armed conflict with North Korea.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Party lawmaker Lee Ki-heon claimed knowledge of another staged provocation. Lee claimed a week before Yoon’s declaration, Kim ordered South Korea’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to “fire warning shots before striking launch sites of North Korea’s trash-filled balloons.” North Korea often sends balloons with garbage across the border to harass the South. Kim’s orders would have amounted to a South Korean direct strike on North Korean territory.

(At about the same time news broke of these reports, Kim had tried to kill himself while in police custody.)

The authorities have yet to verify these allegations. But if true, as commentator Simon Whistler stated, “that would mean that South Korea’s government seriously toyed with starting a war just to save its leader from sagging approval ratings—a war that, had it escalated, the United States would have been treaty-bound to get involved with.”

These actions could have escalated into full-scale war between North and South Korea. Even without nuclear weapons, both the Koreas have advanced militaries, and the loss of life would have been catastrophic. But this would have also put the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea in the direct line of fire. North Korea could have preempted an American counterattack with an icbm launch. This would have put the lives of anybody between Japan and Arizona at risk of nuclear annihilation.

This is not the only brush with nuclear war humanity has recently faced.

Nuclear War—for the Indus River?

Kashmir is a region in the northwestern Indian subcontinent near the Himalayas. In the late 1940s, the subcontinent’s various regions had to choose whether to join India or Pakistan once British rule ended. Kashmir hesitated. This prompted India and Pakistan to divide the territory in two. Both nations claim all of Kashmir as their own. Kashmir is majority Muslim, keeping strong certain cultural links with Pakistan.

On April 22, a terrorist attack launched from Pakistani soil killed 26 civilians in Indian Kashmir. Islamic militants were responsible, but India claimed they had assistance from the Pakistani government. On May 7, India launched strikes on nine targets within Pakistan.

The two exchanged heavy but limited fire until May 10. The immediate hostilities are over.

But before fighting started, India announced it was canceling the Indus Waters Treaty, a water-sharing agreement dating to 1960. India controls the headwaters of the Indus River, but most of it flows through Pakistan. The Indus Waters Treaty meant India guaranteed Pakistani access to the water.

The treaty has survived other border wars between India and Pakistan. Canceling it now is a huge escalation. The Indus River drying up is an existential issue for Pakistan. If India were to cut off Pakistan’s access to water, that would be grounds for a nuclear war. Pakistani Minister Hanif Abbasi stated Pakistan’s nuclear weapons were “targeted” at India should this happen. He said the weapons were “not for display” and hidden around the country.

Both India and Pakistan have an estimated 170 warheads. Unlike the Korean scenario, these weapons wouldn’t be crossing continents. But India at almost 1.5 billion people is the world’s most populous country. Pakistan is the fifth most populous at over 255 million. A nuclear war between these two powers could soon claim a death toll in the hundreds of millions. And it could suck in China, the other nuclear power that claims part of Kashmir.

The May war is over. But India has since said it will never again abide by the Indus Waters Treaty. Tensions between the two nuclear powers are still very high. The conflict’s underlying causes still simmer.

Nuclear war is still a real possibility—over the fate of one river.

Face the Truth About Nuclear War

These are only two volatile but easily overlooked cases from the last 12 months. If one decision-maker took a different course of action, we could have seen nuclear world war. We could have had hundreds of millions dead almost instantly. We could have had large sections of our planet too radioactive for human habitation.

But these aren’t the only nuclear trouble spots on Earth. They’re not even the most high-profile.

Iran was apparently on the cusp of developing its own nuclear weapons—so close that Israel decided attacking Iran’s nuclear sites was worth the risk. Israel meanwhile has its own nuclear weapons. If Israel’s leaders felt circumstances necessitated using the weapons to ensure the survival of the Jewish state, they would. And if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, it wouldn’t worry only Israel. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has confirmed Saudi Arabia will follow suit. There are even discussions the Trump administration may help Saudi Arabia get there.

Turkey meanwhile has joint control of U.S. nuclear weapons at Incirlik Air Base. Questions remain as to how much control the U.S. has over those bombs. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an Islamist who recently sponsored Islamists to seize power in Syria. He for a short while allowed Istanbul to be the headquarters of Hamas. This means the U.S. is loaning the world’s most powerful weapons to a terrorist sponsor.

Russia has the world’s largest nuclear stockpile. Russian officials often toy with using nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine. Because of the Russian threat, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pushing for some level of control over France’s nuclear weapons.

What started 80 years ago in the New Mexican desert as a pioneering, unprecedented experiment has become the world’s new normal. Yet despite—or maybe because of—this new normal, mankind in general doesn’t realize what serious danger he is in. “Those deadly tools [nuclear weapons] are here,” Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote in “Face the Truth About Nuclear War,” “yet mankind is incredibly casual about it! We have been so desensitized to this topic that we fail to comprehend the stakes.”

He continued:

Nations today have the power to deliver nuclear weapons in mere minutes. We are heading into the worst crisis the world has ever known. Only people drowning in illusion can fail to see the great dangers. If we make the same mistake Britain and America made in World War ii, our nations will not survive! What a terrifying tragedy if we fail to heed this warning.


That is the biggest challenge each one of us must always face: Do we really want to hear the truth? And will we act on it?

Jesus Christ said it is the truth that makes us free (John 8:32). And the truth is Christ had very strong words about our nuclear age. In Matthew 24, Christ prophesied of events leading up to what the King James Version renders “the end of the world” (verse 3), before His Second Coming. One sign Christ gave is in verse 6: “And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” Thayer’s Greek Lexicon defines the word rendered “troubled” as “make a noise by outcry” or “frighten.” This means even before the world gets to the cusp of Christ’s return, there would be wars and rumors of wars so frightening that people would think the world has reach the time.

Christ details an even worse catastrophe following these wars: “For then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time, no, nor ever shall be. And except those days should be shortened, there should no flesh be saved: but for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened” (verses 21-22). The James Moffatt translation renders verse 22 as “not a soul would be saved alive.”

Christ gave this prophecy during the time of the Roman Empire. Mankind exterminating himself back then was a technological improbability. Crises in the centuries since, even catastrophic ones like the Black Death, never came close to threatening every single person in existence. This wasn’t really possible until the invention of weapons of mass destruction. This is speaking of nuclear war.

Today, we are in the time when Matthew 24:22 could easily be fulfilled—and it wouldn’t take much. We already had at least two close brushes with this in the last 12 months.

Bible prophecy shows mankind blowing itself up is not the end. Matthew 24:22 concludes, “[B]ut for the elect’s sake those days shall be shortened.” And even before this happens, God promises protection for those who respond to His warning message today. Christ said in Luke 21:36: “Watch ye therefore, and pray always, that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.”

Mr. Flurry concluded his article:

We are living in the time of the lion’s roar: “Surely the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets. The lion hath roared, who will not fear? the Lord God hath spoken, who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:7-8). Jesus Christ warned us about a coming nuclear holocaust (Matthew 24:21-22). He is going to intervene to prevent us from annihilating humanity entirely.


We can heed this warning and avoid the worst suffering in history. Each of us must choose. The consequences of that choice are truly monumental!


Do you believe God? Do you have the courage to face the truth?