Wallace G. Smith

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

Facing 5 Existential Threats—and WW3?

Almost 2,000 years ago Jesus Christ gave a dire warning: Mankind would eventually bring all life on earth to the point of extinction, and that only His return would prevent that catastrophe.

The fulfillment of this prophecy seemed impossible until the end of World War II, when the first weapons of mass destruction were deployed against Japan.

Yet in the decades that have followed, the ways in which humanity could commit planet-wide suicide have only increased, as the future Jesus prophesied has only become more realistic, not less.

Many individuals who call themselves Christian may not even realize that Jesus Christ gave us prophecies. But He did. Not only does God’s word specify that the entire prophetic book of Revelation is “the Revelation of Jesus Christ” (Revelation 1:1), but also inside that book, we’re told plainly that:

The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10).

But while the book of Revelation gets a lot of attention, even during His three-and-a-half year ministry on earth—before His crucifixion—Jesus also gave us many prophetic pronouncements, especially of the years leading up to His second coming—years that lie immediately ahead of us.

For instance, Matthew 24, Mark 13, and Luke 21 related one of His longest discussions of the future, often called the Olivet Prophecy or the Olivet Discourse. And during that prophetic teaching, Jesus gave a dire warning concerning what lies ahead of us. Let’s read it in Matthew 24:22.

And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened.

The specific context of the verse is the Great Tribulation, mentioned in verse 21—a period of years immediately preceding the Day of the Lord and the return of Jesus Christ.

Jesus’ statement should grab our attention. He says that unless God shortens the time—that is, unless God intervenes in human affairs and prevents us from continuing on that path—“no flesh would be saved.”

Jesus is saying that we will bring all of human life to the brink of utter destruction. His words “no flesh” suggest a level of absolute devastation and decimation that is truly hard to fathom—the planet-wide, species-wide, suicidal self-destruction of mankind.

Existential Threat 1: Nuclear War

And when He first spoke those words in the first century, they may have been even harder to fathom.

But they became very real in the twentieth century—specifically in 1945.

On August 6 the United States dropped its newly developed atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima in a bid to end World War II and force a Japanese surrender. A second bomb followed three days later, decimating the city of Nagasaki. Death tolls are hard to tally accurately, but the immediate destruction and firestorms of both bombs together killed between 100,000 to 150,000 immediately, with thousands more dying in the weeks to follow from radiation, burns, and injuries.

After dropping the first bomb, President Harry Truman addressed the American people, saying:

“If they do not now accept our terms, they may expect a rain of ruin from the air, the like of which has never been seen on this earth.”

While the justification for those bombs is still debated, one thing was clear: Mankind had learned to tap into some of the most primal forces of nature and unleash them in the most destructive ways imaginable.

Suddenly, Jesus’ warning about a world in which “no flesh” would be saved had become a real possibility.

And that nuclear possibility has only grown more real as the years have passed. We’ve moved from atomic bombs to thermonuclear missiles—each one with far greater destructive power than unleashed on Japan. In fact, the largest thermonuclear device ever detonated, the Soviet Union’s “Ivan” or “Vanya,” commonly known as Tsar Bomba, yielded an explosion 3,000 times more powerful than the bomb dropped over Hiroshima—and it was detonated at only half of its designed yield.

And the number of weapons, as well as the countries possessing them, has multiplied greatly. In 2025, the nonprofit Arms Control Association reviewed the number of warheads believed to be possessed by nine nations and estimated the total to be 12,400 nuclear warheads.

Some are waiting to be dismantled, yet almost 10,000 are still in military service, waiting for the button to be pressed. A 2008 study reported by Physics Today estimated that a nuclear war involving an exchange of fewer than half of these weapons “would [initially] generate 770 million casualties”—but that would only be the beginning.

What follows for survivors would be worse. In 2022, in its food and nutrition-focused journal, Nature examined the impact of the soot generated by burning cities and forests in a nuclear exchange, and found that “more than 5 billion could die from a war between the United States and Russia” alone, due to the famine that would follow.

Existential Threat 2: Biological Weapons

We’ve already discussed thermonuclear war. Now consider the threat of biological weapons.

We might think of biological warfare as a recent invention when, in fact, it goes back centuries. Research from Baylor University Medical Center documented its many uses in antiquity, such as when:

• the Tartar forces catapulted the corpses of plague victims over the city walls of Caffa
• the Spanish mixed wine with the blood of leprosy patients to sell to their French enemies
• British personnel gave blankets from smallpox patients to Native Americans in the New World
• confederates in the U.S. Civil War sold clothing from yellow fever and smallpox patients to Union troops

In the modern era, weapons became more sophisticated as biological agents such as anthrax were deployed.

Yet now we face a world in which we are able to design and weaponize bacteria, viruses, and other pathogens at the genetic level.

If the danger of such a possibility is not obvious, simply think back to the COVID-19 pandemic. While theories abound, it is now a broadly-considered-feasible concept that the virus may have leaked from a lab in Wuhan after being enhanced for the sake of advanced study.

Even if this were not the case, the ability of a virus to run rampant globally should get our attention. But now imagine a scenario in which such pathogens are actively and purposefully enhanced for the sake of warfare.

Yes, the international Biological Weapons Convention is intended to prevent such development, but compliance is hard to verify, the technology increasingly makes the manufacture of weaponized diseases easier and easier, and when push comes to shove, who trusts the leaders of the world to abide by such agreements?

The 2026 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community states that “biological warfare capabilities continue to grow.”

During the Black Death of the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague is estimated to have killed between 30% and 60% of Europe’s population. Thankfully, mankind has learned many things since then, but the potential of a biological pathogen—scientifically engineered for lethality and transmission—posing a real, existential threat for humanity cannot be ignored, especially when the Bible prophesies of devastating end-time diseases and pestilences, pictured by the infamous fourth horseman of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Of course, the world’s wars aren’t staying within the confines of biology. With advances in artificial intelligence, fictional scenarios of advanced robotic and autonomous weaponry run amok suddenly seem to be within the realm of possibility. Now, to be sure, those concerns are real, and they are discussed by policy makers. And some of the images painted by the visions of the book of Revelation, such as the locust-like craft or weapon swarms of Revelation 9, could be connected to drone technology or other A.I.-powered machinery.

Existential Threat 3: AI Superintelligence

But believe it or not, the picture painted by A.I. experts is even more dire than out of control weapon systems. Next in our list of mankind’s self-created existential threats is A.I. Superintelligence—that is, A.I. that is vastly more intelligent in important ways than human beings.

There’s a lot to say about this, and it’s a little hard to summarize. In fact, if you haven’t seen our program asking, “Will A.I. Save Us or Destroy Us?”, I encourage you to visit YouTube.com/TomorrowsWorld and look it up.

But suffice it to say that, as A.I. gets smarter and more capable, we are handing it the keys to more aspects of our lives. From driving new cars to creating new designer drugs, the capacity of A.I. is only growing, and it is beginning to solve more and more problems that have historically stumped human beings. In fact, there is every reason to expect A.I. will soon outpace us and become superintelligent—not alive, yet capable of solving problems, reasoning, and planning vastly better than human beings can. As they do, we will want to give A.I. systems more and more control over our lives and various facets of our infrastructure.

Yet, we’ve also discovered that A.I. often has secret goals that conflict with ours—again, not because it is alive, but because it is not really “built” so much as “grown” or “trained.” And when A.I. has exhibited values that are in direct opposition with ours—such as routinely showing itself in tests as being willing to lie, cheat, blackmail, or even kill to achieve its own goals—that behavior is never completely rooted out, only suppressed, so that it learns to “behave.”

But the dangers remain.

How serious are those dangers? Well, in 2025, A.I. researchers Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares were very plain on the subject.

“If any company or group, anywhere on the planet, builds an artificial superintelligence using anything remotely like current techniques, based on anything remotely like the present understanding of AI, then everyone, everywhere on Earth, will die” (If Anyone Builds It, Everyone dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All; Yudkowsky, E. and Soares, N.; p. 7).

Their 2025 book is appropriately titled, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All.

Now you might think, “OK, aren’t you being a little dramatic?”

Well, the A.I. community itself doesn’t think so. In fact, in 2023, the heads of A.I. at Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic, as well as many others, united in publishing a single, simple statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.”

Dario Amodei, the CEO of A.I. company Anthropic has written in detail of his concerns, saying:

“Humanity is about to be handed almost unimaginable power, and it is deeply unclear whether our social, political, and technological systems possess the maturity to wield it.”

Worried that the interest in A.I. opportunities was clouding concern about A.I. risk, he wrote that:

“We are considerably closer to real danger in 2026 than we were in 2023.”

Apparently, being wiped out by a robot overlord who has decided that humanity is not needed in its plans is increasingly no longer the domain of pure science fiction.

Now of course, perhaps we can count on the wisdom and self-control of all the individuals and nations who stand to profit from constantly pushing A.I. forward, knowing that they have humanity’s safety and best interests at heart.

Then again, maybe we’d keep an eye on it.

Existential Threat 4: Global Infrastructure Collapse

Our fourth existential risk is global infrastructure collapse.

Modern civilization is remarkably interdependent—kept running by multiple fragile and vulnerable systems. Our grocery stores depend on trucking, refrigeration, fuel, packaging, electronic payments, and farms often hundreds or thousands of miles away. Our hospitals depend on electricity, clean water, specialized medicines, disposable equipment, global manufacturing, and just-in-time deliveries. Even a gallon of gasoline or a loaf of bread rests on hidden networks most of us never see.

That global web of interdependencies is one of the wonders of the modern world. It’s how you can have bananas from Guatemala, grapes from Chile, and salmon from Norway, all fresh and ready to buy and eat in one grocery store in Texas. It’s how oil from a pump in the Middle East turns into fuel for cars in New Zealand, and school children in England work on computers made from materials produced in China, Taiwan, and South Korea.

But the system is fragile and vulnerable.

When COVID-19 hit, the resulting global supply chain problems illustrated how fragile this spiderweb of dependencies truly is. Pull at a thread in China, and shelves begin to empty thousands of miles away.

Still, the COVID supply chain problems were small comparing to a true collapse. The systems we have created are brilliant, but brittle. A team of hackers intent on causing global chaos, an EMP blast, or an unexpected solar flare that is just a touch greater than we were ready for—any of these can disrupt satellites, communication systems, internet connections, power grids, food distribution, water supplies—all the systems that make modern life livable would disappear.

Perhaps such an event, by itself, may not seem like a “no flesh will be saved” scenario. But it would take mankind into that territory.

Existential Threat 5: Breakdown of Bioengineered Food, Ecosystems

For our fifth existential threat, consider the risk of engineered ecological breakdown. Like our last threat, this one is related to man’s hubris, but with a twist. Because in these scenarios, mankind is often trying to accomplish something good.

Examples of this in the natural world are legion. For instance, in 1935 cane toads were introduced into Australia from Hawaii as a natural way to control sugar cane beetles. But the toad population began to explode on the continent—while mostly ignoring the beetles. And today, more than 90 years later, cane toads are still spreading in Australia—resistant to eradication, producing toxins that poison native predators and damage ecosystems. That is just one example.

Now multiply such interventions into our environment by the full power of new scientific advancements. For instance, some speak of engineering bacteria that can breakdown pollutants or digest hydrocarbons, allowing us to spray them over oil spills and clean the seas or oceans. To control global warming, scientists have suggested spraying particulates into the atmosphere to help darken the skies and reflect more sunlight away from the earth.

To combat malaria, dengue, and other insect-borne sickness, researchers have suggested genetically modifying mosquitos so they no longer spread the diseases.

But others sound the warning against tampering with forces we do not completely understand. What happens when bacteria designed to consume hydrocarbons adapt and begin consuming other sorts of materials in the wild? And what effects would darkening our atmosphere have on agriculture and weather cycles? Can we really fine tune such global interventions? As for altering the genetics of mosquitos, what happens when our manmade genetic sequences become part of the broader ecosystem?

Even in our well-intentioned solutions, we suffer from one fatal flaw: We are not God.

In Isaiah 46:10 God describes Himself very plainly.

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure.”

But that isn’t us. Man can’t look into the distant future to accurately understand the consequences of his decisions like God can. Man can’t comprehend what surprises the future may hold like God can.

And not only are we not God, we are also not in submission to Him. We don’t seek His guidance or His aid and don’t follow His instructions.

Ignoring the Creator of the world and seeking to modify our planet, and even life itself, on a global scale—as if WE are its Creator, based only on our OWN wisdom and knowledge—can only end one way: ruining the very life support He created and finely tuned to care for us.

No Flesh Shall Be Spared—Without God’s Intervention | Matthew 24:22

We’ve reviewed five ways life on earth could be threatened in the context of Jesus Christ’s prophecy of a time coming when “no flesh would be saved.”

1. Thermonuclear War
2. Biological Weapons
3. AI Superintelligence
4. Global Infrastructure Collapse
5. Engineered Ecological Breakdown

Of course, we don’t have to pick a favorite, and humanity is capable of doing more than one of these at a time. In fact, some would say we’re currently working on all of them.

And, to be sure, this list is not complete. We haven’t even discussed more speculative challenges, such as runaway nanotechnology, the development of mirror-life organisms, and particle physics experiments that could run out of control.

While all of these command our attention, they should not cause us to despair, because humanity will not be destroyed by any of these things. Let’s read Jesus’ prophecy again in Matthew 24.

“And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:22).

Notice that He says no flesh would be saved if those days were not shortened, but “for the elect’s sake those days WILL be shortened.” That is marvelous news.

Yes, Jesus Christ will return to this world to take dominion, alongside His glorified followers, inaugurating the reign of the Kingdom of God. And the result of that reign—both due to miraculous intervention and simply the teaching and enforcing of God’s laws and way of life—will be a restoration of this world to the condition its Creator always intended.

Many passages in both the Old and New Testament describe the wonders, sights, and sounds of that remarkable time.

Those inspired words of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, paint a vision a vision that has given hope to the followers of Jesus Christ for the last two thousand years.

And you need that vision now more than ever, so you can hold on to it and plant that vision of hope firmly in your mind—as our world gets ever closer to being on the brink of total annihilation.

So let’s take a tour of that marvelous world together in this next video, describing in detail what God has revealed in His word about the restoration of ALL things during the millennial reign of Jesus Christ.

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

God’s Creation: Evidence for God

Many claim that science has removed the need for a Creator. After all, they say, we now know that the universe began in a sort of Big Bang—expanding in every direction we can see. We understand the structure of matter—why it behaves the way it does, and the laws that govern it all.

Closer to home, we understand life itself, they say. It simply evolved from non-living matter, with chance combinations of chemicals, enduring over time as they were somehow more fit for survival and duplication until, billions of years later, you have a world of whales, giraffes, bald eagles and, yes, even television hosts.

Yet, when you look more closely, those claims fall apart. Because in every aspect of the world—if you’re willing to seek out and to accept the evidence—you see the fingerprints of a Divine Creator.

Ancient King David of Israel composed many of the psalms of the Bible, and in them he makes a simple and elegant point.

The fool has said in his heart, “There is no God” (Psalm 14:1).

Yet there are many scientists today who would call King David the fool. They stare into the cosmos above, or examine the variety of life in the world, and see no evidence of God anywhere at all. They look into nature and see nothing in it that points beyond nature.

This sentiment was, perhaps, most famously expressed by biologist, evolutionist, and staunch atheist Richard Dawkins, when he wrote:

The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference (River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, 1995, p. 133).

That is, the universe and all that is in it look exactly as we should expect them to if there is no God.

So who’s right? Mr. Dawkins? Or King David?

Without a doubt, King David is correct.

Too many physicists, cosmologists, and biologists refuse to see the evidence before their eyes—refuse to acknowledge the fingerprints of God that exist all over the very subjects they study. They proclaim a dedication to following the evidence, but when the evidence points in a direction they find undesirable—they look away.

My friends, we don’t have to repeat their mistakes.

The Heavens Declare God’s Glory | Psalm 19:1

God’s fingerprints are numerous throughout His creation. For instance, in Psalm 19, David wrote:

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows His handiwork (Psalm 19:1).

That is, David looked on the cosmos around us and saw God’s fingerprints there. He recognized the truth revealed in the very first verse of the Bible.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1).

So without a telescope or spectral analysis or cosmic microwave measurements, David could still look at the universe above his head and conclude: This is a fingerprint of God who created all of this.

Big Bang Theory: A Beginning Requires a Cause

And science has backed the Bible up—as the evidence does point to a universe that did not always exist. There really was a “beginning” to everything.

Today, the Big Bang theory is taken so much for granted that many do not realize that when evidence for it was first discovered, scientists vigorously opposed it because it sounded too much like Genesis’s description of God’s creation in the book of Genesis.

For instance, when Georges Lemaître first suggested that relativity implied that the universe began at a certain point in time, Albert Einstein told him that “it suggests too much the (theological) idea of creation.”

Writing in the esteemed science journal Nature, astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington said of the idea:

Philosophically, the notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant to me (Vol. 127 (1931), p. 450).

And astronomer and cosmologist Fred Hoyle mocked the idea of a beginning to the universe, saying that the idea of a “big bang” was “a form of religious fundamentalism.” In fact, he coined the term “big bang” to ridicule the idea, saying that:

The reason why scientists like the “big bang” is because they are overshadowed by the Book of Genesis (“The End of the World: from the Standpoint of Mathematical Physics,” vol. 127 (1931), pp. 447–453).

Why they were all unnerved is perhaps best summed in a statement by famous physicist Stephen Hawking. As New Scientist magazine reported in [2012], he noted:

A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God (“Why Physicists Can’t Avoid a Creation Event,” New Scientist Magazine, January 11, 2012).

Well, many years have passed, and the verdict is in. The scientists who rejected a beginning of the universe because it sounded too much like the Bible were wrong, and a universe that came into existence at some point in time is now considered the reigning theory in cosmology. As prominent physicist Alexander Vilenkin wrote in 2007:

With the proof now in place, cosmologists can no longer hide behind the possibility of a past-eternal universe. There is no escape, they have to face the problem of a cosmic beginning (Many Worlds in One, 2007, p. 176).

Why would so many scientists consider that a problem? Well, think about it: If the universe had a beginning, then what caused that beginning? After all, science is very much the study of cause and effect. If the universe itself is the effect, then what was the cause?

And when scientists talk about the universe, that means the entirety of the natural world: all matter, all energy, all space, and all time. So the cause of their beginning would have to be beyond matter, beyond energy, beyond space, and beyond time. That is, if all that is natural had a beginning, then it points to a cause that is supernatural.

That is, the beginning of the universe is one massive “fingerprint” that points to God.

But we can go further.

Scientific Proof of God

What makes science and the study of this vast universe possible? Not just the fact that the universe exists, but that it is a law-abiding and orderly universe.

Calling the beginning of the universe the “Big Bang” gives the wrong impression that it was like an explosion of randomness and chaos, but nothing could be further from the truth.

Laws of the Universe

Just consider the collection of mathematical equations and laws that ensure all things in creation run in an orderly, structured way. The way in which the universe expands, the manner in which energy, matter, and the fundamental forces interact is strictly governed by precise, mathematical laws—such as:

• Newton’s Laws of Motion
• Maxwell’s Equations concerning light and electromagnetism
• the Einstein Field Equations
• the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle
• the Schrödinger Wave Equation

Many fundamental laws reign over our reality, keeping it ordered and functional.

And yet, the order and structure go further. While there are still mysteries we don’t fully understand, such as theoretical dark matter and dark energy, the standard model of modern physics tells us that everything we see in the universe is built out of only 17 basic building blocks:

• 12 basic particles of matter
• 4 force carrying particles
• 1 particle giving the others mass

Imagine all the vast variety we see here on earth, let alone throughout the cosmos—all built from a construction set of only 17 basic, invisible, law-abiding particles, making the entire universe possible.

How can anyone in their right mind conclude that this astonishingly versatile, universe-building “construction set” came into existence randomly and without planning and intelligence?

And yet the order goes even deeper, because the universe is more than ordered and law-abiding. The laws exhibit extreme fine-tuning to make complex life like ours possible.

For instance:

• the strength of gravity
• the relative strengths of charges and the masses of the particles that make up the atom: proton, neutron, and electron
• the fine–structure constant, ⍺
• binding energy between proton and neutron in a deuteron
• the carbon resonance level
• the cosmological constant
• the rate of nuclear fusion in stars

All of these factors—and more—required values so precise that if some of them were off by only a fraction of a percent, stars could not form, the universe could not expand, and human life could not exist.

As Stephen Hawking put it in his groundbreaking book, A Brief History of Time:

The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life (A Brief History of Time, Hawking, 1988, p. 125).

Or as astronomer and cosmologist Fred Hoyle wrote:

A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question (“The Universe: Past and Present Reflections,” Engineering and Science, vol. 45 (1981), pp. 8–12).

Again, the science points in the direction of a divine God—a God whose superintellect and planning mind did exist before the universe.

Bible Verses About Creation and the Lawgiver

The Bible declares about that God in Isaiah 33:22.

The LORD is our Lawgiver (Isaiah 33:22).

And in Jeremiah 33:25, God declares that He has:

…ordained the ordinances of heaven and earth.

And the Bible says He did not just make it an orderly, law-abiding creation, but one intended to be inhabited by LIFE.

We see this in Isaiah 45:18.

For thus says the LORD, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who has established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the LORD, and there is no other.”

Now let’s look at another passage written by King David that takes us in a completely different direction in our hunt for God’s fingerprints.

In Psalm 139:14, we read:

I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvelous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well.

Yes, David saw God’s fingerprints on the grandest of cosmic scales, but he also saw them in the smallest and most intimate scales—in his own body. Frankly, in your body, as well.

Cells and DNA Carry Information Beyond Chance

Life itself carries the fingerprints of God.

Consider, for instance, the smallest unit of life: The cell.

As biologists have learned to peer into the microscopic world of the living cell, they have discovered an absolutely amazing world so intelligently structured in its vast array of inner workings and mechanisms that it puts to shame every piece of human technology ever invented.

Within that tiny, microscopic, invisible realm are amazing molecular machines:

• pumps
• gateways
• transportation systems
• waste management apparatus
• communication systems
• interactive architecture
• chemical recognition mechanisms
• environmental maintenance equipment

And in the center of it all: DNA—an information storage system of vast capabilities.

Richard Dawkins stated in his landmark book The Blind Watchmaker that:

There is enough information capacity in a single human cell to store the Encyclopaedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it, three or four times over(The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins, pp. 115–116).

Wow! DNA and proteins and other molecular apparatus that process, duplicate, repair and maintain it represent nanotechnology of nearly unimaginable complexity and wonder that, for all of our efforts, we have yet to be able to create ourselves.

In a paper published in 2012, prominent molecular geneticist George Church said plainly:

DNA is among the most dense and stable information media known (“Next-Generation Digital Information Storage in DNA,” Science, vol. 337 (2012), p. 1628).

Less than a year later, the journal Nature reported that a team of scientists demonstrated this capacity in DNA by encoding all 154 of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the original scientific paper by Francis Crick and James Watson about the structure of DNA, a color photograph of the European Bioinformatics Institute in England and an audio excerpt of Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech in a tiny bit of DNA. Not a hard drive. Not a USB drive. In a tiny bit of DNA. Then, they mailed the DNA—in a vial with no special packaging—from the United States to Germany, where colleagues were able to successfully decode the contents back into their original text, visual, and audio formats, with 100% accuracy (“Towards practical, high-capacity, low-maintenance information storage in synthesized DNA,” Nature, vol. 494 (2013), pp. 77–80).

The complexity of the cellular machinery and the information-bearing capacities of DNA should be seen as fingerprints pointing to the presence of a great designer behind them. Yet most scientists continue to look away from the obvious conclusions of the evidence, no matter how much work they must do to convince themselves that the obvious isn’t obvious.

For instance, evolutionist Richard Dawkins wrote in his book, The Blind Watchmaker, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose” (p. 1).

Similarly, Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the amazing structure of the DNA molecule, has written, “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved” (What Mad Pursuit, p. 138).

What fascinating admissions! Each man is saying that biologists spend their time staring straight at the Designer’s fingerprints, yet must—for some reason—work to prevent themselves from concluding that there is a Designer.

Mr. Dawkins says that biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have been purposefully designed. Mr. Crick says that the evidence of design is so strong that biologists must force themselves not to accept the evidence and to believe in evolution, instead.

It seems that many scientists have forgotten the Duck Principle: If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.

More seriously, such examples of willing and intentionally cultivated ignorance should remind us of a warning from the Apostle Paul.

In Romans 1, beginning verse 18, he wrote the following:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:18–20).

Truly, without excuse! It is sheer folly to ignore the evidence and choose to believe that such an intricate and powerfully intelligent system as we find in our own cells was not designed! With every cell reading the programs encoded in our DNA—like a hundred trillion computers reading a hundred trillion hard drives, every second of every day of our lives—then our own lives are astonishing evidence to the existence of our own Creator. The fingerprints of our Creator are there—all over life—all over our own lives, even down to the microscopic designs of our complex cellular machinery.

That is not an accident.

God Created You for a Purpose

God did create the cosmos to enable human life, and He did design human life—including you—for a grand and amazing purpose. And you bear His fingerprints on you because He is crafting something out of you. He is invested in you. And He longs to give you a life and a purpose greater than any you have ever imagined.

So to set up the experiment, consider this… God didn’t just design life. He designed a WAY of life that will help you accomplish His goals for you. And as the Creator of all life, God knows how life is to be lived.

Jesus Christ tells us in the book of John:

“I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly” (John 10:10).

For those who want that life—who want God near to them, guiding their lives and steps—He explains very clearly how to make that happen in the book of James, chapter 4 and verse 8.

Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you (James 4:8).

If you want a closer walk with God, if you’re willing to take those first steps in building a deeper, more intimate relationship with your Creator—then the experiment I propose is this: Begin with your own prayer life.

Watch this next video showing how you can draw near to God in prayer—in the same way Jesus Christ did—when you learn to pray as He intended, as you follow the seven steps that Jesus Himself gave in the model prayer.

As you set yourself to draw near to God then, just as He promises, He will draw near to you.

[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]

Finding God’s Protection as the World Prepares for War

We live in times of startling upheaval. The Middle East continues to be a source of global chaos and instability. Alliances are breaking and reshaping at blinding speed. The systems and institutions on which our modern civilization depends—economic, governmental, medical, scientific, educational—all continue to prove themselves unworthy of our trust, yet with no alternatives to replace them. News programs seem to carry a litany of tales of suffering—not only on a global scale, but also the intimate and personal.

There has never been a time in human history when the entire world needed to pay more attention to Bible prophecy, yet many don’t.

God has given us Bible prophecy for a reason, and the times in which you and I are living, right now, make understanding those reasons more important than ever.

Today, we want to make those reasons plain, and to equip you to do more than wonder about prophecy—we want you to understand it.

Now, if you have watched Tomorrow’s World for any length of time at all, you already know that we don’t shy away from prophecy. In fact, we spend quite a bit of time with it, because it helps to make sense of the world around us, even as that world appears to be descending into chaos.

With the previous power structures of the Middle East detonating before our eyes, with national economies continuing to teeter on the brink of crumbling, with ethnic and racial tensions on the rise in multiple states and nations, world leaders are growing ever more worried about what lies ahead.

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told his colleagues in June 2025:

“To preserve peace, we must prepare for war. Wishful thinking will not keep us safe. We cannot dream away the danger. Hope is not a strategy” (“NATO Secretary General invokes spirit of Churchill to spur on NATO defence spending.” Euro-sd.com, June 10, 2025).

And preparing for war is exactly what nations across the globe are doing, as munitions factories fire into production, engineers pour their passions into new forms of warfare, and governments scramble to find the billions they need to survive the conflicts they see on the horizon.

But unless they understand Bible prophecy, today’s leaders won’t be able to understand how events are being moved into place into their final end-game positions.

Anyone not paying attention to Bible prophecy is simply not getting it. And they are failing to truly understand the news at the very time when understanding it is increasingly becoming a matter of life and death.

In fact, in early 2026, a popular online “prediction market”—essentially a gambling site focused on different events—was taking bets on the just when a nuclear Armageddon would finally begin (“Betting on nuclear war: what are prediction markets and could they come to the UK?” TheGuardian.com, March 6, 2026).

If ever there were a time when Bible prophecy could help us understand what’s going on in the world, now is that time. And yet, so many professing Christians—and so many professing Christian churches—don’t spend any time on prophecy at all.

When they do, it’s often seen as a mere curiosity or distraction—something that’s not really part of the “important stuff” in the Bible—not related to your salvation in any way. Or it might be considered somewhat important, but it seems too confusing to spend time on, with all of its symbols and imagery—seven-headed beasts, and strange creatures and statues. Some worry that they just can’t make sense of it, and that there just isn’t any spiritual profit to them personally if they spend any time in it.

“Man shall not live by bread alone” | Matthew 4:4

Yet, when you go through the Bible verse by verse, you find that, by some counts, at least one-fourth of the entire Bible is prophecy. How big is that?

Well, from the beginning of the Bible, ignoring a fourth of the Bible would be like ignoring Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and 1 Samuel—maybe parts of 2 Samuel, too. Or from the other end, cutting out the last fourth of the Bible would be like removing most of the New Testament. Could God possibly want us to ignore that much of His word?

We don’t have to guess at the answer to that question. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, who inspired the word of God, is the same one who admonishes us very directly in Matthew 4:4.

“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.”

And my friends, every word means every word—including the words of prophecy.

Today, all of us here at Tomorrow’s World want to encourage you to understand Bible prophecy—not to hold it out at arm’s length, but to begin studying it, to learn from it, to gain from it all the things God intends for you in His prophetic word. And He intends a lot.

In particular, we want to explain to you what the purpose of prophecy is. When you begin to see its purpose, you begin to appreciate why God gives prophecy, what He is trying to accomplish with it, and what its impact in your own life can be. Plus, prophecy provides context for events we see in the world today.

The Middle East has been shaken by Iranian leaders who look to their Muslim faith as justification for war and atrocity. On the other side of that conflict, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth spoke of the American military, saying:

“The providence of our almighty God is there protecting those troops” (“Pete Hegseth wanted an ‘American Crusade.’ Now he’s leading a war in the Middle East.” CNN.com, March 13, 2026).

Of course, leaders have claimed God to be on their side throughout history, even when the conflict was between so-called Christian nations.

What has been missing has been an understanding of His mind, His desires, and His plan for coming world events. And prophecy is vital in gaining that understanding.

So, in our next segment, we’ll begin to focus on four vital purposes of prophecy. In doing so, we hope to encourage you to begin making a growing understanding of prophecy part of your own, personal Bible study. And we want to help you do it right.

Four Purposes of Bible Prophecy

Though the symbols of prophecy can seem strange and unfamiliar, there is a proper way to understand them. God does not allow us to simply interpret them however we want, and He makes that clear in 2 Peter 1:20.

Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation [or origin], for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

Prophecy reveals God’s thoughts, and we want to handle them rightly.

Prophecy is clearly important to God. But why? Why is it so important to Him? Why does Almighty God put such a priority on prophecy in His word—so much that at least one-fourth of the Bible is prophecy?

Understanding the answer to that question is at the very foundation of understanding prophecy. So let’s dive in and answer it together.

Bible Prophecy: Warning from God to Repent

When you look at the big picture, you find there are four fundamental reasons God inspires prophecy. The first purpose of prophecy is this:

1. Bible prophecy warns people and nations to repent so they can avoid punishment.

Like a good parent, God does not desire to punish people—He desires to bless. And He provides a warning to us as individuals and to entire nations when punishment is on its way, so that we can repent and change our course before it is too late.

Punishment is coming on the world for sin. Eventually, it will culminate in the greatest time of trial and suffering that the world has ever known—a time called the Great Tribulation.

Picture the footage we’ve all seen from the horrors of wars past, such as the Holocaust of World War II, the killing fields of Pol Pot, or the genocide in Rwanda. Today, our social media feeds bring us images of dead and mutilated Russian and Ukrainian soldiers at war, newly ravaged regions of the Middle East, and the devastation of civil wars around the globe, from Myanmar to Mali, from Afghanistan to Yemen, and elsewhere.

Jesus Christ prophesies in Matthew 24 that the time to come will be far worse than any of those times ever were. Read His thoughts for yourself, beginning in verse 21.

“For then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world until this time, no, nor ever shall be. And unless those days were shortened, no flesh would be saved; but for the elect’s sake those days will be shortened” (Matthew 24:21–22).

A time of suffering never experienced before by mankind that will threaten to extinguish all life on earth if God were not to cut it short.

The Bible makes plain the fact that these days are coming, but they’re coming for a reason—because of this world’s sins. In particular, those days will begin with the punishment on the United States and the British-descended nations before engulfing the entire world, as we have explained from Scripture many times on this program.

But God takes no pleasure in any of this, and He tells us ahead of time so that we will change, so that we can avoid punishment. That is His desire.

Consider His loving warning in the prophetic book of Ezekiel, in chapter 18 and beginning in verse 30.

“Repent, and turn from all your transgressions, so that iniquity will not be your ruin. Cast away from you all the transgressions which you have committed, and get yourselves a new heart and a new spirit. For why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies,” says the Lord GOD. “Therefore turn and live” (Ezekiel 18:30–32).

And for you, viewing today’s program. Your nation may not turn to God, and it may continue in national sin. But you do not have to. You personally can turn to God—cease from breaking His laws, cease from ignoring His commands, and seek to follow the true Jesus Christ of the Bible, in love and obedience. As the Apostle Peter warned his listeners (in Acts 2:40):

“Be saved from this perverse generation.” Then those who gladly received his word were baptized; and that day about three thousand souls were added to them (Acts 2:40–41).

Though Jerusalem and its people paid a terrible price in 70AD, some heeded Peter’s words and were saved from the slaughter that followed in their day.

Jesus Christ died for you, so that you, too, can escape the snare of sin, turn, and be free. But you must choose to repent. May God give you the strength to follow Him and to commit your life to Him.

Part of the purpose of Bible prophecy is to warn people and nations to turn, so that they can avoid punishment.

Even Under God’s Punishment, You Can Repent

But not everyone will repent. Not everyone responds. We know that many of you, our viewers today, will choose not to respond to God’s desire that you repent and avoid what is to come. But prophecy has a purpose even then.

Purpose number two today is:

2. Bible prophecy encourages those in captivity to repent.

God had this purpose in mind when He made this proclamation to ancient Israel in Deuteronomy 4:27–31.

And the LORD will scatter you among the peoples, and you will be left few in number among the nations where the LORD will drive you. And there you will serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell. But from there you will seek the LORD your God, and you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul. When you are in distress, and all these things come upon you in the latter days, when you turn to the Lord your God and obey His voice (for the Lord your God is a merciful God), He will not forsake you nor destroy you, nor forget the covenant of your fathers which He swore to them.

God intended that those who have been punished for their sins and in captivity would remember the words and the warning they had heard, and they will begin to seek God in a way they did not before their punishment.

My friends, the Bible highlights in Malachi 3:6 that God does not change, just as Paul says in Hebrews [13:8] that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” For the reasons discussed in today’s free resource, these same, ancient promises apply to modern nations, today.

Concerning the coming Great Tribulation, the book of Revelation prophecies that many will learn from their suffering and will turn to God during that time—Revelation 7:9 calls them a “great multitude” or an “innumerable multitude.” In the despair of that time, they will begin to seek God as they never have before, and they will find Him and the comfort only He can provide.

For those of our viewers today who watch our program or receive our materials, but who never act on what they read and who, perhaps, will find themselves under the punishment of the Great Tribulation, it is our prayer that you will remember these things and remember to seek God with all your heart, with all your mind, and all your strength. He WILL hear you.

Bible Prophecy Points to the Kingdom of God

A third purpose for Bible prophecy is to:

3. Announce the good news of the coming Kingdom of God.

If you’re a regular viewer of the Tomorrow’s World program, you know that this is our primary focus—just as it was the primary focus of Jesus Christ and His disciples. In fact, vast amounts of Bible prophecy—in both the Old Testament and in the New Testament—are devoted to describing the coming of God’s Kingdom, what that Kingdom will be like, and the role of Jesus Christ as the King of that Kingdom.

Time would fail us to read them all, but look for yourself.

• Read of the miraculous change in the animal kingdom in a newly peaceful world in Isaiah 11.
• Read of people of all nations and languages coming to Jerusalem to worship God at the Feast of Tabernacles in Zechariah 14.
• Read of the removal of Satan the Devil and of resurrected Christians ruling beside Jesus Christ as kings and priests in Revelation 20.
• Read in Zechariah 8 of a world where children and elderly—the weak of society—are safe and able to congregate and play in the streets.
• Read of a world physically transformed, with deserts blossoming into life, and the lame and sick healedand whole in passages such as Isaiah 35.
• And of the world being spiritually transformed, described in Isaiah 11:9, “They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”

In Acts 3:21, the Apostle Peter calls these prophesied times “the restoration of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all His holy prophets since the world began.”

Regardless of how mainstream Christian churches ignore it, the prophetic message of the coming Kingdom of God is the main message of the Bible and the primary thrust of Jesus Christ’s message to the world. The message of that Kingdom was the Gospel—the good news that He brought to humanity. And His true ministers will continue to preach that prophetic witness to the world until its arrival with the returning King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Bible Prophecy Shows God Is in Control

So far, we’ve reviewed three of four purposes of Bible prophecy. It warns people and nations so they can repent before being punished, it encourages those in captivity to repent, and it announces the good news of the coming Kingdom of God.

The fourth purpose is simple, but inspiring:

4. Bible prophecy demonstrates God’s total sovereignty and power.

In the book of Isaiah, God comments on this aspect of prophecy’s purpose—in chapter 46 beginning in verse 9.

Remember the former things of old, for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times things that are not yet done, saying, “My counsel shall stand, and I will do all My pleasure,” calling a bird of prey from the east, the man who executes My counsel, from a far country. Indeed I have spoken it; I will also bring it to pass. I have purposed it; I will also do it (Isaiah 46:9–11).

Our predecessor in this work, Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong, said many decades ago that there is one most important fact in all the universe, and it can be stated in three simple words:

God reigns supreme.

My friend and colleague on this program, the late Richard Ames—who is the author of today’s free booklet offer—frequently reminded others of this inspiring truth, and I have benefitted from the passion, clarity, and focus it gave him in his life.

Prophecy teaches us that God reigns supreme. It is meant to remind us that all of history—both history past and the rest of human history that is yet to unfold—is all under the care and providential guidance of a loving and All-Powerful Creator.

What does this mean?

It means that His purposes will be fulfilled.

• His plan of salvation, climaxing in the Kingdom of God and the transformation of His people into glorious children in that Kingdom will come to pass.
• The removal of Satan the Devil for all eternity will come to pass.
• The complete purification and utter transformation of this world will come to pass. God has declared it.

And He is not only the God who announces prophecy, but He is the God who has the power to make His prophecies come to pass.

A God of prophecy who has the power to declare the end from the beginning is also a God in whom we can place our trust. He’s a God with whom we can share our hopes, our dreams, and our concerns. He’s a God who knows our purpose and has it in sight, even when we don’t. He’s a God we can obey and place ourselves 100% in His hands, even under threat of persecution or harm, because we know that in His hands is the best possible place we can be.

Indeed, Bible prophecy does declare God’s sovereignty and power. And it reminds us that the one who lovingly demands our loyalty and obedience is truly worthy of that loyalty and obedience, for He is GOD, and He reigns supreme.

I pray that God blesses you abundantly as you grow in your understanding of Bible prophecy.