DEAD AND DRYING. The Dead Sea is drying up. The water level has dropped 80 feet or so and the surface area has declined by at least one third over the last 50 years. The water level now drops about 3 feet per year. The reason is that the Jordan River has gone dry.

There are several reasons the river is dry. First, much of it is diverted for drinking water. Second, industries capture the water and let it evaporate to harvest minerals from the water.

The Dead Sea is the saltiest large body of water in the world. The good news about that is that the water will eventually become supersaturated with salt and evaporation will stop. When this happens the surface of the Dead Sea will be one-third smaller and about 434 feet lower than today. But it will never completely dry up.

The other problem is sewage. At the northernmost source of water for the lower river, a drain pumps out 720,000 gallons of raw sewage every day. From there down to the Dead Sea, the Jordan River is basically a sewage canal.

Don't look for many baptisms. But, if everything continues as it is, we may all be able to cross over Jordan on foot.