September 28, 2005

I have been meditating on the reasons for increased hurricane activity. God quickened me to go to the source of hurricane formation. Hurricanes form as winds blow across the Sahara desert. They hit the Atlantic and begin to form depressions. I am struck by the lack of life that is in the Sahara desert. It is the largest desert in the world, equal with the Antarctic. It encompasses the countries of Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Chad, Niger and Mali. These countries are mostly Muslim and are in the 10/40 window. Furthermore, these are countries that are ruled by very strong demonic powers, powers of death, murder, rape and ecological destruction. Better stated, these countries are ruled by lawlessness. There is still:

1.        Slavery in Mauritania.[1]

2.        There is mass murder in Sudan.[2] It is estimated that over 2,000,000 people have been murdered there.

3.        The leader of Libya, Moammar Kadafi, is a terrorist and responsible for the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie,       Scotland, in 1988.

4.        Sahel and other areas have had mass starvations because of the growth of the Sahara.[3]

5.        Innumerable civil wars.

I could do more research but I think you get my point. North Africa is a spiritual and ecological desert. It has be noted that about 6,000 years ago that the Sahara was actually forest and green with life. Demonic spirits have taken over this area and have slowly but surely acquired more and more land. Every year the death of the Sahara gains 250,000 acres of land.[4] I bring all this up because I believe that the root of our increased hurricane activity is the desire of the principalities of Africa to jump to our continent and bring the same death, destruction and lawlessness that is now there.

The following scriptures come to my mind:

1.        2 Chronicles 7:14 if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.

2.        Genesis 1:28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."

3.        Job 38:24-28 What is the way to the place where the lightning is dispersed, or the place where the east winds are scattered over the earth? Who cuts a channel for the torrents of rain, and a path for the thunderstorm, to water a land where no man lives, a desert with no one in it, to satisfy a desolate wasteland and make it sprout with grass? Does the rain have a father? Who fathers the drops of dew?

I believe that praying against a hurricane such as Ivan, Dennis or Katrina is useless or at best a weak reply once it is formed and in the Gulf. If we, as the Christians of this land, are to stop the onslaught of hurricanes we must repent and turn from our wicked ways. We must begin to intercede and do warfare against the demonic powers of Northern Africa. We must begin to support Christian missionary activity in those areas. I have been interceding for Morocco and Mauritania lately and am sensing the reality of this problem.

This is just one more example of the end times and the spiritual battle that we are in.

Section I [5]

Before the system of assigning names to hurricanes was initiated during the early 1950s, tropical storms and hurricanes were often named with reference to the year of their occurrence and the area they devastated. Thus the name --The New England Hurricane of 1938 -- although some people still refer to this storm as the "Long Island Express," referring to its remarkable forward speed. For those who lived through the storm it remains the weather event of their lifetimes.

The first signs of the storm can be traced back to a wind shift noted by French observers at Bilma Oasis in the Sahara Desert on September 4th. As this disturbance passed off the West African coast it developed into a tropical storm near the Cape Verde Islands, probably about September 10th. With the storm picking up speed, moving westward across the Atlantic Ocean, a Brazilian freighter, the S.S. Alegrete, encountered the storm at hurricane strength, with winds of 74 miles per hour or faster, on September 16. The Jacksonville office of the U.S. Weather Bureau issued warnings for Florida, which had been impacted twice before in the previous decade by major hurricanes. Reports from ships at sea estimated the wind speeds at 160 miles an hour on September 19, just east of the Bahamas. Floridians were relieved when the storm slowed and began a curve to the north. At this point the storm came abreast of Jacksonville and forecast responsibility was passed to the Washington, D.C., Weather Bureau office. Forecasters assumed that the storm would follow the path other storms had for decades. As an old timers' "Line Storm" -- with the sun passing the line of the equator at the fall equinox -- it would pass out to sea and brush the coast with some wind.

Section II [6]

Working over a hot stove you can feel it. Open an oven standing above and it will burn you. Look across a parking lot of asphalt on a sunny day and you can see the effects: Warm air rises, hot air even more so. This simple thermal observation is a huge part of what drives our weather patterns and ocean currents; the planetary heat engine. Alter those dynamics and it might spell global suicide. 

Each summer periodic gales called tropical waves (Or Low pressure 'TROFS') race across the Sahara Desert in Africa and pour over the Atlantic ocean en masse next to the jutting western shoulder of the Dark Continent. By late summer and early fall, the direct heating of the oceans by the warm winds and intense summer sun creates tepid sea water in enormous quantities floating high in the tropical eastern Atlantic. That warm water moves west across the ocean fanned by the trade wind.  As the tropical waves of low pressure move westward over the warm water, the warm air starts to rise up off that water just like it rises off a hot parking lot; and that warm air is loaded with moisture that has evaporated from the warm ocean surface.  As the humid warm air rises like smoke into the cooler surrounding air to higher levels, water droplets condense and form clouds which give rise to showers and thunderstorms that routinely dot the tropical regions of the world. Meanwhile, air rushes in from all sides to fill the vacuum the rising air created when it rose up to form the showers. That new air then also heats up on contact with the ocean water and it rises chock full of water vapor, and the cycle keeps going. This process is called convection and the rain storm it produces, under the right conditions, is called a Tropical Depression or TD.