“BIBLICAL DISASTER” screamed the headline in Monday’s Courier Mail newspaper, the leading daily of Brisbane, capital of the Australian state of Queensland.

Billed the “sunshine state” by Queensland’s Tourist Commission, Australia’s second-largest state is awash with massive floods as torrential rains plus king tide surges bring peak flooding to the state’s rivers, threatening damage to an extent far exceeding the state’s previous record flood year in 1974.

I remember the summer of 1973-74 in Queensland. Residing on North Stradbroke Island in Moreton Bay at the time, my family remained safe from the flooding sweeping through Brisbane in early January 1974. Nevertheless, we experienced the impact, being cut off from contact with the mainland city with no air or water transport operable for days and supplies running low. Even the usually free-flowing beer that most of the 2,000 island residents shared as part of their daily diet ran low, much to the average islander’s consternation.

But 2011 is set to break the 1974 record in terms of flood peaks, extent of damage to property, infrastructure, losses to Queensland’s mining industry and loss of life.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported Tuesday that “Authorities say the flood threat facing Brisbane and Ipswich is worse than the 1974 disaster. Heavy rain, releases from Wivenhoe Dam and high tides will be a damaging combination. The Brisbane City Council predicts 6,500 homes and businesses across 80 suburbs will be inundated over the next few days, and about 16,000 properties will be partially affected by floodwaters.”

The Queensland floods are set to become the worst in Australia’s history. This, as Dorothea McKellar noted in her famous poem “My Country,” is a vast, open land prone to droughts and flooding rains. Yet the extent of the current floods and their impact not only on the people of that state but also on its mining industry is set to have drastic effect on Australia’s resource-based economy such as few such disasters have before. In fact, with these floods affecting such a large part of the coal-producing areas of Australia, commodity prices worldwide are going to suffer.

The extent of the disaster is being measured in superlatives that increase by the day. On Monday, the Courier Mail article reported that a “a body of floodwater larger than Sydney Harbor” threatens Brisbane. The crisis is far from over. “The combination of heavy rain, dam releases and higher than usual tides meant the river could rise significantly. The biggest impacts could be felt tomorrow and particularly Friday week (January 21) due to a king tide,” the article stated. “This is currently the projected worst-case scenario for the next few days, and I hope it doesn’t happen,” Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman stated Monday.

But it is happening!

The Australian Associated Press reported Tuesday that “at least eight people have died in the flash flooding that hit Queensland’s southeast and 11 more are missing.” Others are stranded on rooftops waiting to be rescued. And the worst could still be coming. Even now, Brisbane’s central business district is shutting down in preparation for imminent flooding!

Brisbane’s Courier Mail is not alone in describing this massive inundation of vast tracts of northeastern Australia—described as an area larger than France and Germany combined—as a disaster of biblical proportions. For indeed it is, not so much in historic terms but, in reality, in clearly prophetic terms—part of the progressive fulfillment of the latter-day prophecies of disaster forecast in your Bible for our time!

Many Aussie skeptics who may have read thus far would be inclined to declare, “Don’t come the raw prawn with me, sunshine!” Which translates loosely into, “I don’t believe a word of it, mate.”

Well, that was largely the reaction of the skeptics in Jesus Christ’s day. In fact, so incensed were the “experts” of His day that they saw to it that He was crucified for His declarations of prophetic reality.

This terrible tragedy in Australia’s “sunshine state” will not be the last to hit this country in the near term. Nor will Australia be the only Anglo-Saxon nation to be continually hit by progressive disasters during the current decade. In fact, your Bible clearly prophesies the reality of the unfolding events we are witnessing.

No nations have been blessed to the extent of the Anglo-Saxons over the past two centuries. Yet no nations have spurned the Giver of every good and perfect gift to the extent that the Anglo-Saxon nations have, especially since their deliverance from tyranny 65 years ago. As a result, we are about to reap the whirlwind. Queensland’s floods are but a token of what is to come upon the nations of the United States, Britain and its dominions.

In Deuteronomy 32:18 God declares, “Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.” Yes, our nations have forgotten—even spurned—their God! The Eternal Father of the universe does not take that lightly!

Queensland’s floods are but one in a series of penalties being paid by just one Anglo-Saxon nation for its rebellion against the Most High! If you can see this, then it’s time to batten down your spiritual hatches. God says of the rebellious house of Israel—and specifically to Australia, a country that hosts one of the world’s most infamous annual homosexual Mardi Gras—“For their vine is worse than the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah—to me belongs vengeance and recompense … for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that come upon them make haste” (verses 32-35).

Yet it is not God’s desire to see a nation suffer, to see a people suffer such as so many in Queensland are suffering at the present time. No! A thousand times, NO!

God is a God of mercy to those who repent! He declares of the rebellious, “O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end!”

It is your God’s desire that none perish! That all might live and enjoy the abundant way of life He predestined man to live. He is “longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).

If you can see the spiritual logic in all of this, then you need to come to understand current events in the context of the biblical prophecies for our time, today! What’s more, you need to understand what you can do to avoid the full impact of the further disasters destined to befall the nations, as prophesied in your Bible.

Our book The United States and Britain in Prophecy reveals the origin of the English-speaking, Anglo-Saxon peoples, the reason for their past blessed state, and for the increasing extent of catastrophe that they currently face. If you are an Aussie—in particular a Queenslander, given the current disaster befalling your state—you also need to read our booklet Australia—Where to Now?

Then if you truly see the reality portrayed in those publications, you need to understand just what this life is all about. Herbert Armstrong’s book The Incredible Human Potential will open your eyes to a wonderful future that awaits all who will choose today to obey their God. It’s available, like all of our literature, free of charge for the asking, with no follow-up.

The choice is yours. But, as the Eternal Creator declares, “Choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live”!