An early-summer heatwave is sweeping Europe, the Middle East and parts of North America. This has directly resulted in over 1,300 heat related deaths in Europe according to the BBC.

But France added that there have been 1,000 ‘more deaths’ this year compared to this time last year. Many are 65 years and older and nearly half died at home. Since French homes do not generally have air conditioning, the heat may have been a contributing factor.

Both Germany and Poland broke previous heat records recording 41.7 C temperatures (107 F). The heat even warped rail tracks in Sweden, causing a train to derail.

This is particularly concerning since it’s not even summer yet. It’s estimated that over 62,000 people died in the heatwaves that hit Europe in the summer of 2024.

In his vision of the end times, recorded in the Book of Revelation, the Apostle John saw heatwaves associated with the seven bowls of wrath judgement in chapter 16.

John writes that as a result of the pouring out of the fourth bowl of wrath, “people were scorched with fierce heat” (verse 9). But it did not cause people to repent, instead “they blasphemed the name of God who has the power over these plagues.”

This heat will play a role in the sixth bowl of wrath that results in the drying up of the great Euphrates River (Revelation 16:12). We are seeing warnings that this is already starting to happen.

But Israel365 News recently had a story on the heatwave hitting Europe. The site is operated by Orthodox Jews based in Israel. Though, they reject Jesus as the Jewish Messiah, they still believe that a Jewish Messiah is coming.

The extreme high temperatures caught their attention, because they believe the Old Testament prophets spoke of heatwaves leading up to the Messiah’s arrival.

In his article, Adam Berkowitz starts off with this explanation of the Hebrew word, Elohim, translated as God in English.

“In Jewish thought, the divine name Elohim designates God as being revealed through the natural order — the God of creation, of seasons, of climate,” writes Berkowitz. “That same name designates the God of judgment. Weather is not a mechanical process operating in indifference to human behavior. It is a channel through which the Almighty communicates with nations, with history, with mankind as a whole.”

God often judges through natural means. Berkowitz then cites biblical examples of God’s communication through natural phenomena, such as Noah’s Flood and the ten plagues in Egypt.

Moving on from that, he then cites several Old Testament passages which describe God judging the world through heat.

In the Bible’s last Old Testament book, the prophet Malachi warns that, “the day is coming, burning like a furnace; and all the arrogant and every evildoer will be chaff; and the day that is coming will set them ablaze,” says the Lord of armies, “so that it will leave them neither root nor branches (Malachi 4:1)

The Prophet Isaiah also speaks of sun’s heat intensifying in the end times.

And the light of the full moon will be like the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven days…. (Isaiah 30:26 NASV)

But it was Berkowitz’ third Biblical reference that caught my attention, as he ties the current heatwave to Israel’s failure to construct the third Jewish temple in Jerusalem.

He cites a passage from the Book of Haggai. He was the prophet who God raised up to encourage the Jews who had returned from their Babylonian captivity to rebuild what would become the second Jewish Temple.

The people were busy building their homes and showed little interest in constructing the Temple that had been destroyed by the Babylonians in 586 BC.

Haggai warned these Jews because of their failure to rebuild the temple, “… the sky has withheld its dew, and the earth has withheld its produce. And I called for a drought on the land, on the mountains, on the grain, on the new wine, on the oil, on what the ground produces, on mankind, on cattle, and on all the products of the labor of your hands” (Haggai 1:10-11 NASV).

Berkowitz believes this apocalyptic warning given 2,500 years ago, may be applicable today.

Israel was restored as a nation in 1948. This means that they have been in the Promised Land for nearly 80 years. Similar to the Jews in Haggai’s day, they have not bothered to build the Temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.

Because Haggai’s warning reflected “the cost of delay”, Berkowitz believes Israel’s failure to rebuild the Temple is behind the current heatwave.

Since I question whether God will even allow a third temple to be built in Israel, I do not agree with Berkowitz’s position on why this heatwave is occurring.

But, I do wonder if God is behind it. From a Christian perspective, the extreme high temperatures suggest we may have entered the period of judgments mentioned in the Book of Revelation.