OpinionJournal - Contemplating Catastrophe

Walter Lacquer, formerly of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, thinks about true-life mad scientists placing their advanced knowledge in the hands of terrorists or rogue states. Actually, Mr. Lacquer suffers from a lack of imagination--and understanding of biblical prophecy. Daniel (chapter 12) warned of the Last Battle and said that it would take place when travel and knowledge would be vastly increased over what it was in his day. And John the Revelator (chapter 13, verses 16-18) tells of a pair of dictators passing a law to stamp everyone like cattle and permitting no one to buy nor sell who does not submit to such stamping.

Contemplating catastrophe? I'd ask him to contemplate cataclysm, a word the Greeks coined to mean something orders of magnitude worse.