And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory.
The first angel sounded: And hail and fire followed, mingled with blood, and they were thrown to the earth. And a third of the trees were burned up, and all green grass was burned up.
The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many men died from the water, because it was made bitter.
And a third of the living creatures in the sea died, and a third of the ships were destroyed.
I will show wonders in heaven above And signs in the earth beneath: Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
“And there will be signs in the sun, in the moon, and in the stars; and on the earth distress of nations, with perplexity, the sea and the waves roaring;
And there will be great earthquakes in various places, and famines and pestilences; and there will be fearful sights and great signs from heaven.
Revelation 16:12 Then the sixth angel poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, so that the way of the kings from the east might be prepared.
Revelation 16:18 And there were noises and thunderings and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such a mighty and great earthquake as had not occurred since men were on the earth. 19 Now the great city was divided into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And great Babylon was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of the fierceness of His wrath. 20 Then every island fled away, and the mountains were not found. 21 And great hail from heaven fell upon men, each hailstone about the weight of a talent (100lbs). Men blasphemed God because of the plague of the hail, since that plague was exceedingly great.
Seismic Hazard Assessment for Tabuk Region, NW Saudi Arabia
Ziyad I. Al-Besher King Abdul-Aziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Tectonic Setting: The Tabuk is an area located in the northwestern part of the Arabian Plate. This Plate is surrounded by three tectonic regimes; divergent, convergent, and transform. The divergent boundaries in the west and south represent the recent spreading along the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden respectively. The active convergent margin lies to the northeast in the TurkishIranian Plateau, where continental collision has given rise to this Plateau.
The geology and tectonics of western Saudi Arabia is dominated by the Arabian Shield, the Red Sea, and the Gulf of Aden in the west-southwest.
‘Zombie’ Drug Tranq rots flesh and causes addicts to walk around in a dazed stupor. The wounds from rotting flesh left behind are killing people.
By Elle Reeve, Samantha Guff and Deborah Brunswick, CNN Updated 5:10 AM EST, Wed March 8, 2023
PhiladelphiaCNN —
What drug users and people who work with them in Philadelphia talk about is the smell. The smell of rotting flesh from open infected wounds.
Some users say they feel ashamed of the state of their bodies, but more feel a sense of urgency. They need help. The wounds are killing them.
“It is absolutely horrible. That’s the reality, though,” said James Sherman, known as Sherm around Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood, where he once used drugs and where he now tries to help those still on the streets.
The need for help has become more urgent over the last three years, as the animal tranquilizer xylazine, also called tranq, has become a bigger part of Philly’s street fentanyl supply. Xylazine can cause large wounds that won’t heal, no matter where you inject it and they can appear even if you snort it or smoke it. Infections are common and can even lead to amputations.
“Some people aren’t ready to see that yet,” Sherman said. “It’s literally people’s flesh rotting, and you can smell it.”
Kensington has seen the changing nature of America’s addiction crisis. It has been well known as a place to buy heroin under the elevated rail line, a short distance but a world away from the business and tourist centers of downtown.
Heroin was edged out by the more powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl. But fentanyl’s effects don’t last as long as heroin, and so xylazine was added to street fentanyl to “give it legs,” according to Sarah Laurel, who founded Savage Sisters, the harm-reduction group that employs Sherman.
Xylazine is not approved for humans, but it’s widely available for veterinarians to sedate large animals like horses. Like an opioid, it can kill pain but it cannot be reversed with Narcan, also known as naloxone, which is used to treat opioid overdoses, according to the US Drug Enforcement Agency. As xylazine is usually mixed in with fentanyl, naloxone can help an overdosed person by counteracting the opioid, though other measures may be needed. Workers at Savage Sisters now carry oxygen tanks with them.
The drug has side effects like “tranq walk,” where people seem unaware of their surroundings, along with sores and wounds.
A user, Maggie, told CNN what she’s seen. “You shoot up and you miss, you get a sore. You don’t take care of your sore, you’ll wind up in a hospital with a hole,” she said. It had happened to her. It started out like a pimple, and then it got bigger, and then the skin came off and she had a half-dollar-sized wound. “I could have lost my hand.”
Tranq made its mark on Philadelphia’s street drugs about three years ago. That’s when doctors, users and those who try to help them saw a difference.
Dr. Joseph D’Orazio, an emergency physician and addiction medicine specialist at Temple University Hospital, said patients started to have major wounds that were different from typical injection drug use. “These wounds were a lot deeper, a lot more severe, there were big necrotic areas,” he said. “They were deep down into tendons. Sometimes you can see the bones, and we were starting to see more patients that were requiring amputations.”
Synthetic opioids, like fentanyl, are fueling the rise in overdose deaths
Over the last several years, deaths by synthetic opioids have been on a sharp incline while overdose deaths by heroin have dropped off.
Initially, there was no demand for xylazine.
“Nobody was coming to Kensington to buy tranq, they were coming to get heroin,” said Laurel of the Savage Sisters group. “You don’t go to your drug dealer and say, ‘Do you have a nutrition label with this?’ … You get what you get, and you don’t get upset.” And whatever you get, you eventually feel a physical compulsion to do, she said.
D’Orazio, who also runs a streetside clinic in Kensington, said: “I’ve heard some people say, ‘Everything has fentanyl in it except the fentanyl.’” That’s the way fentanyl has been found as an adulterant in many other drugs, helping to drive US overdose deaths to record highs. But in Kensington, now the fentanyl supply has adulterants too. Xylazine is in 9 out of 10 samples of lab-tested dope in Philadelphia. “What we’re seeing is the bags of fentanyl sometimes don’t have fentanyl … it’s just xylazine,” he said.
Xylazine is most concentrated in Philadelphia, according to Dr. Rahul Gupta, director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy. But it’s in all 50 states, he told CNN.
The White House is looking at xylazine as a potential “emerging threat,” which would trigger the development of a federal plan to address it, he said.
And last week the US Food and Drug Administration announced it had taken action to stop unlawful imports of xylazine.
That might slow the spread of xylazine, first noted in Puerto Rico in the 2000s, across the nation. But in Kensington, there could be more unintended consequences.
Xylazine withdrawal can cause intense anxiety and dysphoria, D’Orazio said, and the medications used to treat opioid withdrawal don’t work well for xylazine. That’s making the public health crisis worse. “People are avoiding the hospital because they feel like withdrawal can’t be well managed,” he said. “They go longer, and the disease gets worse before they come in.”
Dana, who came to Savage Sisters to get her wounds treated, said she was violently ill when in withdrawal from xylazine. “I’d rather come off fentanyl and heroin put together than xylazine,” she said.
There is also a fear that something even worse could replace the currently cheap and widespread xylazine if it becomes harder to get.
Neither D’Orazio nor Laurel think cutting supply will do much for people who are addicted and without homes in Kensington.
D’Orazio said there needed to be more affordable housing, more access to health care, fewer restrictions on drugs that treat addiction, and less stigma on what he says is a chronic disease, like diabetes. But he added there also needs to be more focus on prevention of drug use disorder, which means looking at mental health care. His patients tended to have suffered childhood trauma, like abuse and neglect. There needs to be more “early intervention for people with trauma in their life,” he said.
Maurice, whose voice has been hoarse since he was injected in the neck with tranq and fentanyl a couple of months ago, said: “A lot of people have pain from their past they’re dealing with, and they try to numb themselves.”
In conversations with CNN about why they’d come to Savage Sisters, several people brought up painful past experiences like rape or abuse almost immediately, as though those memories were simmering just below the surface. Maggie said that, at 66, “It’s been a long life, believe me, doing this sh*t … things I’ve got to face. I’ve got to get some kind of therapy. This thing happened to me when I was five years old that shouldn’t have happened to me.”
Laurel, herself a recovering heroin addict, calls everyone she meets and tries to help in Kensington her “friend.”
“The people that are out here numbing their pain with substances, whether it’s heroin, alcohol, cocaine, we need to address the pain, we need to stop isolating the substance and look beyond it,” she said.
Savage Sisters offers several mental health programs for people in its recovery houses, and Laurel says it’s very expensive, but worth it. She’s had to work hard to raise money. “Until it directly affects them, nobody cares. It’s ugly. It’s not a cute, fun thing to donate your money or time to, right? It’s hard. It’s rough. It’s sad. It’s painful. … I had to come up with ways to convince people that we’re worth saving.”
Some news organizations have called xylazine “the zombie drug.” Laurel hates that term. “The only way that you can get rid of a zombie is by killing their brain,” she said. “Why would you say that about my friends? Why would you say that about a human? It’s already hard enough trying to get people to care about us.”
But how can they call on him (Jesus Christ) to save them unless they believe in him (Jesus Christ)? And how can they believe in him (Jesus Christ) if they have never heard about him (Jesus Christ)? And how can they hear about him (Jesus Christ) unless someone tells them?” —Romans 10:14
In His Service,
Night Watchman
Paul Rolland
Night Watchman Ministries
Make Your Decision for Christ NOW!!!!!!! Time is Up!!!!!!!
Jesus Christ’s Offer of Salvation:
The ABCs of Salvation through Jesus Christ (the Lamb)
A. Admit/Acknowledge/Accept that you are sinner. Ask God’s forgiveness and repent of your sins.
. . . “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
. . . “As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one.” (Romans 3:10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8).
B. Believe Jesus is Lord. Believe that Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be; that He was both fully God and fully man and that we are saved through His death, burial, and resurrection. Put your trust in Him as your only hope of salvation. Become a son or daughter of God by receiving Christ.
. . . “That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. (John 3:15-17). For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:13).
C. Call upon His name, Confess with your heart and with your lips that Jesus is your Lord and Savior.
. . . “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” (Romans 10:9-10).
. . . “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (John 1:8-10).
. . . “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (John 2:2).
. . . “In this was manifested the love of god toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God.” (1 John 4:9, 14-15).
. . . “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:8-10).
. . . “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” (Romans 6:23).
. . . “Jesus saith unto them, I am the way, the truth, and the life, no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6).
. . . “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” (Romans 1:16).
. . . “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” (Acts: 4:12).
. . . “Who will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth for there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.” (1 Timothy 2:4-6).
. . . “For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (1 Thessalonians 5:9).
. . . “But as many as received him, to them gave the power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name.” (John 1:12).
True Church / Bride of Christ Spared from God’s Wrath:
Romans 5:8-10. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”
Romans 12:19. Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.
1 Thessalonians 1:10. And to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come.
1 Thessalonians 5:9. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ,
Romans 8:35. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?
Jeremiah 30:7. Alas! for that day is great, so that none is like it: it is even the time of Jacob’s trouble, but he shall be saved out of it.
Revelation 3:10 Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth.
Categories: Pestilence Update