Among other things, New Revelation says: "The sword has already wrought much havoc (the two world wars and subsequent regional wars), but if men continue to drift on the floods of their lust for power (the big powers fighting to gain supremacy in the world, hegemony the aim of would-be people in many areas), I shall send yet another angel, the angel of hunger who is also the plague angel. Such lessons will surely teach men ideas quite different from those that motivate them now." (Wiederk. 67)
Lorber was told that when the technology of the present age has reached a high peak, so that "ships pass over the billows of the sea like whirlwinds, and indeed offer defiance to the sea and move across its enraged face," the time of adversity would be about to begin. The "great fire of retribution from the heavens" will not be far then, according to Lorber. This time of retribution is to be preceded by other plagues. "But soon after that time (referred to before) things will begin to look very bad for the life of man on earth. Wars, great scarcities and shall arise, for the earth will grow less fruitful." (Gr III 33, 4)
The earth is to become less fruitful? Surely chemistry has succeeded in achieving greater harvests than ever before. It has indeed done so, yet Lorber's prophesy is already coming true. The inestimable consequences of climactic changes affecting the harvests in the Northern Hemisphere have already been discussed. The soil is also under threat in other ways, though most people are not yet aware of this.
It has been shown above that soil erosion has increased enormously following forest clearance, so that huge areas were lost in dust storms and great floods, erosion is inexorably continuing. At the same time, Lorber says, soils must be expected to give poorer yields in the future. This is known to the experts, and they also know the reason.
It was Justus Liebig who put forward the theory that only inorganic nitrogen compounds played a role for plant growth, and this was for a long time taken for gospel. Meanwhile, however, the theory has long since been proved wrong. It is now known that soils not supplied with organic matter (stable dung, peat, etc.) will in time lose their proper condition, i.e., their healthy, crumbly consistency. The reason is that soil bacteria rapidly decrease in numbers in the absence of organic materials. Humus formation is utterly dependent on these small organisms: if they are not present, there will also soon be no earthworms, and once they are absent, soil health is a thing of the past. It has been shown that soil bacteria do not multiply adequately when mineral fertilizers are used on a long-term basis so that their numbers soon go down. A Nobel Prize Winner, Vertanen (Helsinki) has been able to show that bacteria immediately reduce physiological activity or even stop it altogether when nitrogenous fertilizers are applied to the soil. 190 Soils containing little organic material will let infection rise much more easily. 191
Monoculture also has harmful effects, as it makes the soil flora one-sided. Pests will only come up in serious numbers if things have gone out of order in nature.
Nitrogenous fertilizers have yet another side effect that is causing concern. The Director of the Federal Institute of Quality Studies, Professor W. Schuphan in Geisenheim on Rhine, indisputably demonstrated the vicious circle set up (1971): "Excessive nitrogenous fertilizers (nitrates) make our food plants highly susceptible to disease and infestation. This calls for increased use of plant protectives. The high proportion of nitrates also reduces the vitamin and mineral content of plants, yet this is essential to the health of man." At present, diseases due to nutrition in highly developed countries are primarily due to the absence of essential vitamins and minerals rather than to harmful constituents. 192 Mice fed on a diet lacking in minerals will die within a short time, according to Professor Heupke. Cattle are more susceptible to disease, and this is "to be ascribed to their being fed on plants grown with artificial fertilizers and treated with pesticides." 193
Mineral fertilizers have caused the magnesium content of any fodder plants to be reduced to such an extent that cows died from tetanus. 194 Mineral fertilizers have no less undesirable consequences also for milk quality and cheese production, as stated at the Swiss Milk Conference. 195
According to the Report "On the Position of Mankind", from the Club of Rome, 196 the amount of toxic insecticide used had to be increased by about 300 percent to increase world food production by 34 percent between 1951 and 1966. Pests have grown resistant to these toxins to a quite unexpected degree, with the result that even more poison will have to be sprayed in future. Professor Friedrich Dittmar has stated that about 1,300 pesticides are currently in use.197 The consequences of this for the foreseeable future are demonstrated by the following example: In Massachusetts, the soil was so badly poisoned with insecticides that a major canning factory, which also produces baby foods, had to stop buying fruit and vegetables grown on that soil. Analyses made when objections had been raised to the taste of foods, had shown quite considerable residues of DDT and other insecticides.198
In the U.S.A., the courts have already had to intervene because the situation had grown so serious. The highest U.S. court made the decision that American food manufacturers will have to indicate the presence of DDT and dieldrin on their packets. 199 Dieldrin is four or five times as toxic as DDT. 200 In 1983, American agriculturalists stated most emphatically that the soil in the main wheat-growing areas of the U.S.A. was about to be completely ruined. 201
In Germany, the biologist, Professor Schuphan, at Mainz, has said that toxicological studies for toxins from the environment "failed to take into account the biological facts." 202 At the same time, Professor G. H. M. Gottschewski at the Max Planck Institute of Imminology at Freiburg i. Br. (G.), refuted the statement that the use of pesticides and herbicides was completely safe, saying that it was "unproven and grossly negligent." 203
In Germany, 7 percent of agricultural land is already so badly polluted by chemicals that the expert view (1983) is that they "are hardly fit for use". 204
Two Americans working in cancer research, Dr. Th. Slage and Dr. R. Shearer at the Hutchinson Research Center in Seattle, Washington, reported at a Congress of American Scientists in March 1976, that carcinogenic chemicals had become so common in the environment and in foods that it would not be possible to abolish all risks. Eighty percent of human cancers are due to environmental chemicals, according to them, 20 percent
to chemicals in the food. 205
WHO has also reported that the number of cases of serious poisoning due to misuse of pesticides has grown to 500,000 per annum worldwide.206
The official figures given in the annual reports of government analysts in G. make interesting reading. They state that about 40 percent of home grown produce grown in the usual way (i.e., non-biologically) contained residues of plant protectives. 207 In February 1976 a German consumer organization, Stiftung Warentest, carried out analyses of biologically grown produce. With regard to residual pesticides, their report states: "The major groups of plan protectives - chlorinated hydrocarbons and phosphoric esters - were not demonstrable in any produce grown by biological methods." 207 With regard to the many toxic residues found, Professor Schuphan has commented: "We do not know if the constant intake of residues of toxic pesticides and their metabolites, even in very small quantities, will not in the long run lead to low-level chronic damage or the increasing number of inexplicable allergies, particularly also in conjunction with much used drugs." 208 Here, a remarkable fact should be considered. In G. , paragraph 14 (1) two of the Food and Essential Goods Law, relating to plant protectives, did come into force on January 1, 1978, to the effect that foods should no longer contain residues of particularly toxic compounds deriving from pesticides. Yet an amendment states that the law applies only to home-grown produce. Imported foods are allowed to contain these toxic residues up to the maximum level. German factories provide foreign producers with the poisons, and they then reach German kitchens from abroad in fruit, vegetables, lettuces, rice, citrus fruits, cheese, etc." 209
In April 1983, Professor J. E Diehls at the Federal Institute of Nutrition in Karlsruhe (G. ) admitted that 43 percent of vegetables and 30 percent of fruit still contain chemical residues. 210 will, however, also have other serious consequences as time goes on. According to Professor Wilhelm Drescher in Bonn, the number of bee colonies has been reduced by almost 200 thousand million in recent years, or 11 percent mainly due to pesticides. Our greatest helpers in dealing with pests, the birds, are also being reduced in numbers because of insecticides.
Whole species have practically died out because of chemicals. What is more, innumerable birds are wantonly killed to be consumed as delicacies. The Italian paper La Stampa estimates that 150 million birds are shot or trapped each year in Italy." 211 And Italy is not the only country where the slaughter of birds is commonplace.
Soil fertility is reduced not only by the factors described so far, for new reports are coming out which demonstrate the whole spectrum of dangers. Year by year, millions of tons of sulphur dioxide are released into the atmosphere. In the soil, sulphur dioxide combines with moisture to form sulphuric acid. A Swedish study has led to the conclusion that the acid dissolves calcium and other basic elements from the surface layers, so that they are easily washed out, with the result that soil fertility will be reduced in the future." 212 A calcium deficiency in plants can have untoward consequences for the human organism. The developments leading to reduced soil fertility all over the world are only in their beginnings, yet they continue inexorably.
Experts in nutrition like Lester R. Brown refer to the disastrous long-term consequences of artificial fertilizers used on a massive scale. This is stated to mask the fundamental deterioration of the soil. H. 0. Baeumer, Minister of Agriculture in North-Rhine Westphalia, has said that in the opinion of very many scientists, most of the soils put to agricultural use will be totally poisoned with heavy metals within just a few decades." 213
The authorities are aware of the many dangers that are threatening. In an expert opinion commissioned by the government in Baden-Wuerttemberg, G. , it is said straight out that "present-day production methods ... in agriculture are destroying cultivated soil." 214 The Federal Ministry of Food in Bonn also says quite openly (Bericht der Landwirtschaft Bd. 50/ 1972, Heft 1-3) what the consequences of impoverishing and poisoning the soil will be. Thus it says: "The increasing economic need to intensify agriculture is making dangers appear that must not be minimized."
"The soils are washed out and incrusted, worn out by monoculture . . . " 215This applies not only to the U.S.A. and Europe, for the production capacity of South African soils is also showing a continual decrease." 216 In view of the above, it comes as no surprise when G. Hartkopf, Secretary for State in the Federal Department of the Interior, publicly declares: "Chemistry offers far worse potential dangers than the use of nuclear energy. 217
In developing countries, the population increase continues at a rapid pace. This has brought to nought all the earlier optimistic estimates as to feeding the peoples in those regions. Cereal production per head of the world population has been going down since 1971. The majority of third world countries lost the race between population growth and agricultural production levels as early as the '70s. In some countries, huge crowds of refugees have created insoluble problems, on a scale not previously known in the history of mankind. 218
In 1980, almost 800 million people were living in "absolute poverty," according to the World Food Conference. Starvation has many causes in this world. Th. R. Malthus (d. 1834) said that one day the world population would grow faster than agricultural production, and he has been proved right at this late date. Third world countries are themselves partly responsible for their plight. Governments have neglected agriculture, paying farmers too little for their produce. As a result, farmers migrated more and more to the towns, becoming dependent on food aid from industrial nations. Many peoples, particularly in Africa, who were formerly able to feed themselves, are today increasingly dependent on imported grain. In consequence, 24 countries in Africa alone have increased their foreign debts by a factor of six within a period of ten years, and are unlikely ever to be able to repay them. Only few people have begun to realize the consequences. Added to this is the fact that the enormous increase in oil prices made artificial fertilizers much more expensive, because large quantities of oil are needed to produce them. This means that it is getting more and more difficult to use these fertilizers in developing countries.
Yields are also increasingly affected by periods of drought, by overgrazing, and by soils being washed out and eroded. In India and other countries, 400 million tons of cow and buffalo dung as well as straw are used each year to heat cooking stoves, wood no longer being available since the forests have been destroyed. Because of this, it is impossible to maintain the soil in good condition, a precondition for good yields. The consequence is that vast areas have been blown away by stormy winds and washed away by the rain; they are lost to agricultural production. UNO experts have estimated that in the next 15-20 years, a third of potential agricultural soil in the world will become unuseable. 219
Loss of land has caused a rural exodus of tremendous proportions everywhere, with the population increasing at the same time. The city slums are growing at three times the pace of other parts of towns. This development continues inexorably in all parts of the third world. UNO investigations have yielded results to suggest that because of this explosive "townification", 12 of the largest 15 cities in the world will in the future be in developing countries. Such development is programmed for chaos, the experts are agreed on this. The results of a three-year study produced by the American Council for Environmental Protection therefore presents a true picture of horror. lt states that the number of people who are starving and underfed, 800,000 at present, will over the next twenty years grow to 3 thousand million. 220
The authors of the second report to the Club of Rome, Professor Eduard Pestel and Mihailo Mesarovic, had arrived at a realistic picture as early as 1974. In an interview published in the German magazine Stern, they said that they estimated the number of deaths from starvation to reach a thousand million. "In ten or twenty years time, it will probably be too late." Professor Pestel forecast: "... by that time, there will be such a degree of disorder in the regions that were the first to be affected, India for instance, and thousands of millions of deaths, so that political chaos must inevitably spread to other regions that may still be intact, like ours." 221
The CIA also does not exclude the possibility of a nation equipped with nuclear weapons whose population is suffering intolerable starvation, going to war. In their view, nuclear blackmail is a factor to be considered. With temperatures continuing to go down, Canada, northern Russia and northern China will have shorter growth periods for their crops, and in India, Southern China and West Africa, harvest will be reduced
as the monsoon increasingly fails to arrive. 223 It is the view of American experts that the drought which has developed in the High Plains region of the U.S.A., and may well continue, presents the major risk for the land turning into steppes. The water shortage, they say, is presenting more and more of a dark future also for the U.S.A. 224
Even industrial nations may find themselves on short commons. According to the Gesellschaft fuer Ernaehrung (Society for Nutrition) in Frankfurt, G. , about 10 percent of goods purchased end up as rubbish. The monetary value of this comes to many thousand millions of Deutschmark. Commenting on this, it has been said that pennies and pounds are burning holes in people's pockets." 225 Even school children in the G. are daily throwing away something like 30,000 kg of sandwiches, because they have enough pocket money to buy sweets etc. 226 The Italians are throwing 28,000 kg of bread into their dustbins each day. The President of the National Baker's Association puts the amount of money wasted at about 250 million pounds Sterling per annum." 227
The writing is on the wall. Jakob Lorber's prophesy is going to come true, to disastrous effect, if the facts now apparent are anything to go by. Here, it has been said that vast arable and pasture lands on the earth have been made unfruitful or completely destroyed with poisons, reaching, over-grazing and through erosion. To this, we must add a specific statement made by Jakob Lorber. Lorber wrote that a major disaster would be provoked "because men are badly mismanaging their own soil." (Wiederk. p. 112)