For decades now, modern-day prophecy writers have been claiming that the increase and severity of earthquakes are sure indicators that the rapture is near. Carl G. Johnson wrote in 1972 that “the greatest earthquakes that have ever shaken this world have all come since the close of World War I. Several of them shook the whole earth.” Peter LaLonde claims that the number of earthquakes per decade “has roughly doubled since the 1950’s.” David Allen Lewis offers a similar statistic: “There have been more earthquakes in the last 50 years than in the pervious 1,500 years.” Michael D. Evans, whose book The American Prophecies is touted as an end-time tour de force by a number of dispensational advocates, wrote in an earlier prophecy work that “[T]he magnitude and frequency of earthquakes sets apart from any other time in spiritual history.” Jack Van Impe argued in a similar way: “History shows that the number of killer quakes remained fairly constant until the 1950s—averaging between two to four per decade. In the 1950s, there were nine. In the 1960s, there were 13. In the 1970s, there were 51. In the 1980s, there were 86. From 1990 through 1996, there have been more than 150.”