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world will be led away from "the truth." We believe that the deception will involve all three of these forms! Next Jesus told the disciples that the times preceding his coming would be characterized by "wars and rumours of wars . . . famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places." Interestingly, he stated, "but the end is not yet... . All these are the beginning of sorrows." Jesus wanted his disciples, then and now, to understand that the signs would not indicate his immediate return. Rather, the signs would be a precursor to the coming and would be the "beginning of sorrows." The term "beginning of sorrows" is a provocative illustration. The word translated "sorrows" in the Greek is odinos (o-deenos) and means the pain of childbirth, travail pain, or birth pangs. Jesus wanted us to understand that the signs preceding his coming would come upon Earth like the contractions of childbirth. CHILD The duration of a normal pregnancy is 280 days (40 weeks), or about nine months. When the female's ovum is fertilized, it begins a gradually accelerating process of cell division. The fertilized egg becomes two cells in a matter of minutes. The two become four, four become eight, and so on. Within the first 24 hours the fertilized egg has developed into a ball of hundreds of millions of cells. At about the beginning of the second trimester (between 12—15 weeks of gestation) the mother feels the first movement of the fetus—the "quickening." During the next several weeks the fetus grows rapidly, gaining about an ounce a day. To the mother the activity of the baby is steady, but uneventful. Toward the middle of the last trimester (32-40 weeks of gestation) the mother starts to feel false labor pangs, called Braxton-Hicks contractions. However, "the end is not yet... . All these are the beginning of sorrows." These false contractions are a warning sign that a birth is on the way, but a significant period of time is still left. During this time the mother's realization that "it really is going to happen" sets in. If she is a responsible mother, she will begin to prepare in advance for the real event—the birth of the child. In the last four weeks of the pregnancy, false contractions increase in frequency and intensity. They can occur every few minutes or hours. However, between events there is a relative calm. Finally, when the fateful day arrives, the false contractions are replaced by a gradual, but rapidly accelerating series of birth pangs. The birth pangs of "true labor" are indistinguishable from those of false labor. If the expectant mother has not studied a book on childbirth, or been properly mentored, then when true labor begins, the woman is often fooled because of the inadequate preparation. In the same way, the signs preceding the time of Christ's coming will be misinterpreted by those who are not prepared to recognize them. The Apostle Peter spoke of those who would scoff at the notion of the Second Coming of Christ: "Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, and saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell 107 THE GESTATION AND BIRTH OF THE MAN-