GOD'S JUDGMENTS by H. C. MILLER

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 25, 1868

GOD'S JUDGMENTS.

By H. C. MILLER

In “Facts of Faith,” in the description of the causes of volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, &c., Spiritual Gifts, Vol. iii, p. 80, we read, “The earth quickly opens, and I saw villages, cities, and burning mountains carried down together into the earth. God controls all these elements; they are his instruments to do his will; he calls them into action, to serve his purpose. These fiery issues have been, and will be his agents to blot out from this earth very wicked cities.”

History gives account of many cities being destroyed in this way. Men attribute it, generally, to chance, fate, or a mysterious Providence. But sometimes the course of events demonstrates the fact of a direct visitation of God’s judgments upon them. The cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius, many years ago were covered in a fiery grave by an eruption of that volcano. The following may be taken as convincing proof of the justness of their fate.

H. C. MILLER.

OBSCENITY IN THE RUINS OF POMPEII

There is one matter in relation to Pompeii that is seldom touched on by writers, and which I dare not approach too closely, to-wit: the horrible depravity of the Pompeians, as illustrated by the frescoes, mosaics, sculptures, and bronze statues that are found. Hundreds of these vile objects have been carried away to the museum in Naples, and put in a room which no woman is allowed to visit; but there are still houses in Pompeii that are kept locked, and others that have such sculptures over the doors on the outsides that the guides hurry past them when there are women in the party. Even in private houses there are many scores of frescoes magnificently executed, too, which no one would dare to visit only in company with his nearest and dearest friends, if ladies, and in other houses pictures and statues than which none can imagine any thing worse. I cannot understand why writers on these subjects have been so anxious to conceal the faults of the ancients. It is a fact that deserves to be generally known. Great God! what a picture of corruption in imperial Rome is revealed to one who looks into Pompeii with anything like thoroughness. The very stone of the door-posts tells a tale more damnable than ever was invented by modern thought. Sodom was clean and Gomorrah was pure, compared with Pompeii. Where was there ever a people on earth, before or since Pompeii, that advertised “the ways that lead down to hell” by sculptures placed in the open light of the street! “Out, damned spot!” cried the still infant genius of modern civilization and Christianity, as it looked in upon Pompeii, and Vesuvius responded to the command, and sent his consuming fires to do the work.