Do you seriously believe the apocalypse is coming right no based on these news stories? I don´t think you really do.

The world is not the USA. The are evils happening in the world all the time: evils that are much worse than riots and vandalism.

Exhilarating.

Just for the sake of argument- can we name a time in the past millenium where violence didn't fill the earth to a significant extent? Or even earlier than that?

I don't believe there has been a point in recorded history where the world hasn't been a very violent place overall- which seriously dilutes the impact of 'violence will fill the earth' from a prophetic standpoint. I mean, you may as well say 'great storms will savage the shores' and point to hurricane season as evidence, but there are hurricanes and typhoons every year!

I predict the end of times 10 years from now- violence will fill the earth, and great storms will savage the shores. Just don't compare 2024 to any other years when it gets here, ok?

Meh, There always has been and will be violence in the world. But really we are better off now than in biblical times. The bible saying there will be violence is like saying water will be wet....duh.

Its been argued by people such as Steven Pinker, whose life's work is on the human history of violence, that there we are at a low ebb of violence compared to our history, even recent history. Things aren't getting worse they have been getting better.

At the century scale, it is hard to find quantitative studies of deaths in warfare spanning medieval and modern times. Several historians have suggested that there has been an increase in the number of recorded wars across the centuries to the present, but, as political scientist James Payne has noted, this may show only that "the Associated Press is a more comprehensive source of information about battles around the world than were sixteenth-century monks." Social histories of the West provide evidence of numerous barbaric practices that became obsolete in the last five centuries, such as slavery, amputation, blinding, branding, flaying, disembowelment, burning at the stake, breaking on the wheel, and so on. Meanwhile, for another kind of violence—homicide—the data are abundant and striking. The criminologist Manuel Eisner has assembled hundreds of homicide estimates from Western European localities that kept records at some point between 1200 and the mid-1990s. In every country he analyzed, murder rates declined steeply—for example, from 24 homicides per 100,000 Englishmen in the fourteenth century to 0.6 per 100,000 by the early 1960s.

On the scale of decades, comprehensive data again paint a shockingly happy picture: Global violence has fallen steadily since the middle of the twentieth century. According to the Human Security Brief 2006, the number of battle deaths in interstate wars has declined from more than 65,000 per year in the 1950s to less than 2,000 per year in this decade. In Western Europe and the Americas, the second half of the century saw a steep decline in the number of wars, military coups, and deadly ethnic riots.

http://edge.org/3rdculture/pinker07/pinker07index.html

As for the list of examples...I believe that relatively small localized incidents that can be put out of proportion due to widespread media. We have more opportunities to see localized violence with worldwide viewership skewing our perceptions, this doesn't mean there is more of violence. Look at the US ebola over reaction by some media outlets, fear inducing media for an incredibly low threat.

Our sense of what is violent has extended socially beyond ourselves even more so than previously. The fact that we as large populations condemn many violent acts toward things like animals, acts that were accepted and common place a few hundred years ago or less shows the shift in social morality for a better.

"As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man" Matthew 24:37

Jesus gave this warning to his disciples and all Christians that have lived over the last 2,000 years and up to today. It was a warning of a major sign that would be a prelude to Christ's coming to this earth. The general consensus interpretation of this prophecy usually suggests that Christ was talking about the Great Tribulation period and what would be taking place at that time.

So what were some of the things occurring at Noah's time that would cause God to render such a horrific judgement on millions, (perhaps billions), of people at that time? Violence was certainly one evil that caught the eye of God:

Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence. God saw how corrupt the earth had become, for all the people on earth had corrupted their ways. Genesis 6:11-12 NIV

So then, we should expect that at the time of the end, shortly before the return of Jesus Christ, the world would become and ever more violent place. Now the world has always been a very violent place, but we think what Jesus was referring to was the fact that we would see this violence for ourselves, occurring all over the globe. Never has there been a time such as the time we live in now where we can watch the TV news, read the online news sites, view recent Youtube videos or receive a Twitter news update, all reporting the violence filling the earth.

Holy shit there will be violence in the end times??? You mean like at any given time in human history? What a fucking useless prophecy. It was clearly written that way so it couldn't possibly ever be wrong. According to the prophecies in the bible it's been the end times for 2000 years.

Yeah, this isn't nearly enough evidence for the WORLD to be ending, much less that the bible is accurate or even partially correct.

It looks worse now due to the greater population of people/society having a greater quantity (although the amount of violence per person is lower), better communication, and news outlets relying on shock value to get views. Also, dadman, like most other people you probably viewed the world through rosier colored glasses than you do now.

EDIT: Muh Grammars