Dead Sea Disappearing?

The following appeared in a press release yesterday.

‘Dead Sea Gone in Fifty Years’

AMMAN — The Jordanian government sounded the alarm Tuesday over the Dead Sea. If the water level continues to fall at its current rate, there will be no Dead Sea left in fifty years, according to Jordanian Water Minister Hazem Nasser.

Speaking at a water-management forum, the minister advocated the construction of a canal between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea. Plans for a 200-kilometer canal have been in the pipeline for years. Saving the Dead Sea by constructing the waterway would cost approximately $1 billion.

The use of water from the Jordan River for irrigation means that insufficient water reaches the Dead Sea. As a result, the water level has fallen by one-third since the 1960s.

According to this press release, there will still be a great deal happening around the Dead Sea over the next fifty years. I think that could very well be true. What is certain is that the region of the Dead Sea (Moab and Edom) will play a major role in the coming “time of the end.” After all, this is the region where the final judgments over the nations will take place (see, among others, Isaiah 63:1). Presumably, “the lake of fire and sulfur” in Revelation 19:20 is also a reference to the Dead Sea. Thousands of years earlier, this region had already once been overwhelmed by fire and sulfur (Genesis 19:24,28).

From the Bible we know that the Dead Sea will disappear after these devastating events. Not because the sea itself will disappear, but because the Dead Sea will become a living sea! Ezekiel 47 tells how the sea will be filled with living water. So much so that fishing grounds will be found along its shore.
Concerning the sea in that time it is written: “…its fish shall be according to their kinds, like the fish of the Great Sea, very many.”
What is going to happen to the Dead Sea, incidentally, is illustrative of what God is going to do with death in general. He swallows up death in life!

Anyway, the next fifty years and beyond promise to be fascinating…!

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