In his vision of the end times, the Prophet Joel said during the days leading up to the return of Christ, the earth would be rocked by a series of volcanic eruptions.

He saw ‘columns of smoke’, the telltale signs of volcanic eruptions, that would pour so much ash into the atmosphere that it would turn the sun dark and the moon blood-red (Joel 2:30).

The recent eruption of an undersea volcano on Saturday, Jan 15, 2022, near the south seas Pacific island of Tonga may be a foretaste of what is to come.

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano is located 650 feet (ca. 198 m) below the surface of the sea and has been active for about a month.

According to Fox News, it was the largest volcanic eruption in the past thirty years, with some estimating it was 650 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima during World War II.

The blast from the eruption, which produced a “giant mushroom cloud over the Pacific”, was heard in New Zealand and Alaska, which are thousands of miles away.

Though the resulting tsunamis caused extensive damage on the island of Tonga, so far there have only been three reported deaths. Waves from the Tsunami also reached the shores of California.

READ: Tonga volcano erupted with force of more than 600 Hiroshima bombs