A recent study suggested that a major earthquake off the coast of the Northwest US is overdue and will drop large areas below sea level. One rabbi emphasized that this is a part of the Final Redemption in which God uses nature, fire, and water to purify Man for the Messianic Era.

The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by Tina Dura, assistant professor of geosciences at Virginia Tech, highlighted the potential for a major earthquake in the Cascadia subduction zone that could cause coastal land to sink by as much as 6.5 feet. Dura’s team generated numerous earthquake models to estimate the range of potential land sinking from a future Cascadia earthquake. They then used geospatial analysis to quantify the expansion of the floodplain at 24 estuaries and communities along the subduction zone. 

The models considered the impacts of an earthquake today and in the year 2100. The study noted that most earthquakes that strike the Cascadia subduction zone go unnoticed because it is 70 to 100 miles offshore. But the zone is capable of generating monstrous tremors. According to Oregon State University, there is a 37% chance of an earthquake with a magnitude of 8.0 or larger in the next 50 years. Tremors of at least magnitude 8.0 are sometimes called “megaquakes.”

The research indicates that the earthquake would dramatically expand the 1% coastal floodplain, which has a 1-in-100 chance of flooding annually, by 35 to 116 square miles.

The research indicates that the most severe effects would be felt in densely populated areas of southern Washington, northern Oregon, and northern California. The study estimates that an earthquake today would place an additional 14,350 residents, 22,500 structures, and 777 miles of roadway within the post-earthquake floodplain, effectively doubling flood exposure. Critical infrastructure, including airports, schools, hospitals, and wastewater treatment plants, would also be at risk.

Scientists believe climate change is also raising the sea levels, amplifying the potential effects of a major earthquake. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that sea levels along the Cascadia subduction zone could rise by up to 3 feet by 2100.

Dura theorized that subsidence’s immediate effect, especially rising sea levels, would delay earthquake response and recovery efforts. In the long term, many coastal communities could become uninhabitable.

The Cascadia subduction zone is a fault in the tectonic plates that runs 700 miles from Vancouver Island in Canada to California’s Cape Mendocino. It is a part of the Ring of Fire, a 25,000-mile-long horseshoe-shaped region encompassing the Pacific Ocean, the most seismically active area on the planet.  It includes most of California, Washington State, and Alaska. The Ring of Fire consists of 452 volcanoes, more than 75 percent of active volcanoes in the world today. About 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes and 81 percent of the world’s largest earthquakes occur along the Ring of Fire. All but three of the world’s 25 largest volcanic eruptions of the last 11,700 years occurred at the Ring of Fire volcanoes.

If a cataclysmic earthquake hits the West Coast, the Cascadia subduction zone will likely be the culprit. The largest earthquake in the continental U.S. was caused by a shift in the subduction zone on January 26, 1700, generating a tsunami so large it damaged villages in Japan. In recent years, Oregon and Washington, adjacent to the subduction zone, have been heavily built up with little regard to potential seismic catastrophe. California, in comparison, has a much higher awareness of the dangers of earthquakes and has built accordingly in areas near the San Andreas Fault.

“Since over 300 years have passed, we worry about the next big event being imminent, and we expect something like the Japan 2011 and Sumatra 2004 earthquakes and tsunamis to occur there,” said Dura.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has stated that it’s not a matter of if but when the next great earthquake with a magnitude greater than eight will hit the Pacific Northwest. 

Other subduction zones are off Alaska, Russia, Japan, Indonesia, New Zealand, and South America. Earthquakes of magnitude 8 or 9 shook the coastlines of Indonesia in 2004 and Japan in 2011.

Yuval Ovadia, whose videos on Nibiru have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, agreed with Hoogerbeets that astronomical phenomena influence seismic activity, but Ovadia bases his theories on classical Jewish sources.

“We know that ancient wisdom connected what happened in the heavens to what happened in the earth,” Ovadia told Israel365 News. “The Talmud says that God sent the flood to the world in the generation of Noah by way of two stars that he added to the Pleiades constellation. The midrash (Torah commentary) explains that the addition of these stars caused water to come up from the ground and the mountains to spew out steam and fire. This is absolutely acceptable to science since the moon’s revolution around the Earth is known to determine the tides.”

“Earthquakes and volcanoes are increasing, but rather than look for the cause under the earth, scientists should also look to the stars,” Ovadia said. “Scientists try to convince the public that they know everything and what they don’t know is unknowable. But the truth is that every year, they are surprised by new planets and unexpected close passes by comets. They don’t even know what is under the oceans.”

Rabbi Nir Ben Artzi, an Israeli mystic with a substantial following, has been warning of an increase in volcanic eruptions as part of the end-of-days process preceding the Messiah, who the rabbi maintains is present but waiting to reveal himself.

“The Creator is purifying the world from the filth of the snake to prepare the way for the Messiah to be revealed in the world,” Rabbi Ben Artzi said in his weekly sermon. “The Redemption will come mercifully, so our Father in Heaven uses nature against us: through storms, fires, earthquakes, and volcanoes…Slowly, the Holy One, Blessed be He, is destroying all the evil in the world while at the same time preparing the light of the Messiah. The world is experiencing destruction and rebirth at the same time.

Rabbi Yosef Berger of King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion noted that natural phenomena always accompany redemption.

“Most of the time, nature appears to act according to a set of rules,” Rabbi Berger told Israel365 News. “People who do not see God in the world mistakenly believe that this is how nature must act and will always act. They believe that through these laws of nature, they have made up that they rule over God’s creation.”

Rabbi Berger noted the blessing that a Jew says after witnessing an awe-inspiring act of nature:

Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, whose power and might fill the world.

“Just as we saw in Egypt, when Hashem (God, literally ‘the name’) is about to act, to bring the Redemption, he takes the reins of nature and the rules that have seemed unchanging and unchangeable, no longer apply,” Rabbi Berger said. He pointed to a chapter in Psalms, which he asserted describes this process in the end-of-days and seems to describe the potential for destruction in the Pacific Ring of Fire.

Therefore, we are not afraid though the earth reels, though mountains topple into the sea—its waters rage and foam; in its swell, mountains quake. Selah. Psalms 46:3-4

The chapter goes on to assure that wars will disappear from the earth and that the Redemption will arrive after the period of natural upheaval.