...and there shall be famines, and pestilences...." (Matthew 24:7)      Pestilences or plagues! Modern science seems to have eliminated the fear of plague, but today we are on the verge of a deadly scourge that could kill more people then have ever been killed in all the pestilences yet known to man--it is the plague of AIDS.      The HIV virus, which causes AIDS, has currently infected at least 13 to 14 million people around the globe. In 1993 AIDS became the leading cause of death of U.S. males between the ages of 20 and 45.      Harvard University scientists estimate that by the year 2000 over 24 million people worldwide will have full-blown AIDS, and an additional 100 million people will be infected with the HIV virus.      However, AIDS is not the only modern plague to afflict mankind. Virtually unheard of among our ancestors, over 100 different kinds of cancer now kill over 5 million people every year. The depletion of the ozone layer, which blocks much of the sun's ultraviolet radiation, is thought to be responsible for a dramatic rise in melanoma, a deadly skin cancer.      The world recession, resulting in poverty and homelessness, has devastated the health care systems of many countries and diseases once thought banished by modern science have made an alarming comeback.      Epidemics of typhoid, diphtheria, and even the Black Death, have afflicted areas of India and the former Soviet Union. Deadly new strains of Malaria, Tuberculosis and Cholera are becoming resistant to all known anti-biotics and are killing millions of people.      Even the common bacteria that causes pneumonia, children's ear infections and many other every day diseases are evolving into forms untreatable by all known medicines, threatening a chilling post-antibiotic era where even the simplest infections could quickly escalate into fatal diseases.      Jesus said there would be an abundance of pestilences or diseases marking the time of His Return. Epidemics, like AIDS, will become widespread as we enter the final era of mankind on this planet.