WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 2, 1869

WHAT DOES IT MEAN?

“THERE shall be earthquakes in divers places.” Matt. xxiv, 7.

“The sea and the waves roaring.” Luke xxi, 25.

“Fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.” Luke xxi, 11.

The attention of the world is being forced to the contemplation of very startling phenomena, of late, in the shape of earthquakes, tidal waves, etc. Disturbances of the earth, and of the tides of the sea, and of the course of nature, on an unprecedented scale, have been the subject of excited tidings from all quarters of the globe. Editors and scientific men have been led to pronounce upon them as among the most remarkable and extensive of which there is any written record. They have been experienced at short intervals during the past two years, and especially the last four or five months. It is also believed, by those most

knowing on the subject, that the last of this cluster of gigantic commotions has not yet been felt. Later and fuller details are continually increasing, and command an unusual degree of interest among scientific men.

A secular paper remarks:

“In both hemispheres, but especially on this continent, and among the adjacent islands, these visitations of tornadoes, floods, and earthquakes, with their tidal waves, and fissures emitting gas, fire, smoke, steam, and boiling water, are becoming alarmingly frequent. Last autumn they had them all in high revelry at St. Thomas and the neighboring islands, and such terrific hurricanes of rattling hail along the southern frontier of Texas as was never known there before, back to the first occupation of the country by the Spaniards. This year the line of operations of these celestial and subterranean phenomena appears to be (with the recurrence of the meteors) along the Pacific side of the continent, and may be traced to the late disastrous convulsions of the dry land and the sea along the western coast of South America. Violent storms follow in the track of earthquakes, and such storms doubtless result from the derangement of the atmospheric equilibrium by the disturbing gases and electrical forces arising from subterranean outbreaks.”

The first of this great, and most recent, series of convulsions, so far as our intelligence now extends, occurred in the Sandwich Island, eleven days before the terrible disaster in Peru. Violent shocks were felt in different parts of the group from the 2d to the 9th of August, accompanied with heavy storms of thunder and lightning. The western coast of South America was devastated by awful earthquakes from the 10th to the 15th of August, and at the same time the shocks were felt again in the Sandwich Island, though less severely than before. On the 17th there were shocks in New Zealand. About the middle of September shocks were felt by vessels in the Eastern Pacific. On or about the 1st of October they were experienced again in the Sandwich Islands. In California they were felt from the 21st to the 25th, with considerable severity, and were repeated slightly up to the 6th of November. On the 23d of October we hear of earthquakes in Ireland. On the 6th of November there was one at Vancouver Island.

The shocks have followed no particular direction, and been confined to no particular quarter of the earth. Beginning in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, they seem to have affected all its eastern shores and its southern and western islands, and, skipping the whole breadth of the North American Continent and the Atlantic Ocean, to have broken out in Ireland. We may yet learn that the remoter countries of Asia have likewise been shaken.

The tidal waves, which have accompanied all the most serious of these convulsions, are peculiarly interesting subjects of study. It has been remarked, as an evidence of the rapidity with which they travel, that they reached the California coast as early as the morning of the 14th of August, having moved over the distance of four thousand miles in a little more than fourteen hours. But it now appears that their speed is even greater than this, for they were felt in the Sandwich Islands, nearly an equal distance, on the evening of the 13th, only four hours after the earthquake in Peru, lasting through the night, and obtaining their greater force the next morning, almost simultaneously with their appearance on the opposite California coast. This would give them the velocity of about a thousand miles an hour.

A great tidal wave fell upon Hawaii, one of the Sandwich Islands, on the 15th of October, destroying a great many houses and other property.

Some of the terribleness of these tidal disturbances may be better understood from the letters of eyewitnesses and sufferers. The British Vice-Consul at Arica, exclaims:

“Gracious God, what a sight! I saw all the vessels in the bay carried out irresistibly to sea (anchors and chains were as packthread), probably with a speed of ten miles an hour. In a few minutes the great outward current stopped, stemmed by a mighty rising wave, I should judge about fifty feet high, which came in with an awful rush, carrying all before it in its terrible majesty, bringing the whole of the shipping with it, sometimes turning in circles, as if striving to elude their fate.”

A writer from Lima, says:

“I saw the whole surface of the sea rise, as if a mountain side, actually standing up. Another shock, accompanied with a fearful roar, now took place. I called to my companions to run for their lives on to the Pampa. Too late! With a horrid crash the sea was on us, and at one sweep—one terrible sweep—dashed what was Iquique on to the Pampa. I lost my companions, and in an instant was fighting with the dark water. The mighty wave surged, and roared, and leaped. The cries of human beings and animals were dreadful.”

The New York Sun, of November 19, expresses itself thus:

“Such a universal pother in the bowels of the planet was never known before in human experience. Wicked men of science have, it is true, been profane enough to say that the primeval hell beneath earth’s ribs was fast cooling, when it wasn’t; and this may have led to the late demonstrations, although one is sorry to attribute vindictive feelings to so august, wise, and venerable a body astronomic.

“Certain it is that a great rebellion has taken place for some cause or other, and that the earth has been shaken from center to circumference. So far from there being any decrease of vigor in the igneous energies, they are more active than ever. Ætna, and Vesuvius, and Hecla—that petty toy of the Icelanders—are henceforth to be set down as among the prettiest fireworks of the creation, and have been completely shorn of what used to be considered their grandeur and sublimity, by the tremendous rock-rendings, and oceanic fires, which have made the Pacific islands so famous and so terrible. All over the globe, as by a general conspiracy and premeditated simultaneous movement, there has been a regular Walpurgis hellabaloo, and fiery dance of destruction and death. Vesuvius and the Tahitian volcanoes roared to each other at the same moment in voices of primeval thunder, across the immeasurable brine, which writhed with a new and unheard-of agony, wreaking great ships in its wrath, and swallowing their ruins like so many grains of sand.”

On the 8th of December a fresh eruption of Ætna broke out. The mountain became enveloped in smoke, and exploded at times with deafening detonations. The streams of lava swept over the surrounding country, and the ashes from the crater were blown into the streets of Messina.

On the 12th of December, the ship Isaac Jans, from Port Townsend, when a few days out from Acapulco, encountered three fearful tidal waves, filling all aboard with consternation. If the ship had not been with her head on, she would undoubtedly have foundered. Like accounts are multiplying upon us with almost every foreign mail.

Now, it is but natural, right, and wise, for intelligent and thinking men to inquire into the meaning of all these commotions in earth, air, and sea. They furnish a vast subject for science, and also for the theologian, and Christian. There is particularly one relation of these things which no man, with the Bible in his hand, should overlook; and that is, that THEY HAVE BEEN PREDICTED by the inspired writers, and by the Lord Jesus himself, again and again, as THE FORERUNNERS OF THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. People may laugh and sneer as they please, but God hath spoken on the subject; spoken plainly, spoken repeatedly, and given the assurance that these are the signs by which we are to know that the end of this age is near at hand.

“Earthquakes in divers places,” “the sea and the waves roaring,” along with other marvelous coincidences, are unmistakably described in the Scriptures as God’s warnings of the nearing day of his coming to judge the earth. Nothing can well be more positive and definite than that fearful irregularities in the realm of nature are to herald the “day of the Lord;” and that Christ’s coming will transpire in a time specially marked by startling occurrences. Nor does it alter the nature of the case, to allege that there have been earthquakes, storms and commotions of the sea and sky in other ages, or that they may be accounted for on natural principles. God knew what Nature is, and by what laws she is governed, when he pointed to manifestations in her economy for indications of the fulfillment of his purposes. And when, as now, the most intelligent investigators and observers, by figures and dates of history, prove to us that “these upheavings of the earth are greatly increasing in number and violence,” and assuming a character of universality and terribleness never known to have been heretofore, there certainly is just reason to begin to conclude, that he who made these predictions knew something about them, and that the great events with which he has connected them as the harbingers, are really not far off.

The day, the month, the year, we may not know; but the signs we may know, and see, and feel. And “when these things begin to come to pass,” the commandment of the Saviour to his people is, that they draw from them certain conclusions, and “know that the kingdom of God is nigh at hand.” Luke xxi, 31.

“And yet,” writes one of our correspondents, “the great mass of mankind are utterly regardless of all the solemn warnings which these upheavings of the earth are thundering into our ears. There are scoffers who mockingly exclaim, ‘Where is the promise of his coming, for all things continue as they were from the beginning?’ The church abounds with evil servants, who say in their hearts, My Lord delayeth his coming, and are smiting their fellow-servants, and are eating and drinking with the drunken. Learned doctors acknowledge the frequency and terribleness of these visitations of God, yet refer to them as capital jokes, and fit subjects for witticism. Many mockingly allude to ‘the shaky condition of the globe,’ and make light of these awfully solemn things. Though the Saviour has given it as a sign of his advent, that ‘there shall be earthquakes in divers places,’ and even secular men, caring but little for what Christ in his word has said, are being moved by what is occurring, yet there are those who call themselves Christians, who can close their eyes, and pass it all as a matter of unmeaning merriment. Alas! Alas!

“But whatever careless and worldly-minded Christians may say, and do, in regard to these mysterious doings of God, if we love the Lord Jesus Christ, and desire his coming, and believe that he has given us any sign by which to know that his coming is near, these late terrible ‘earthquakes in divers places,’ must be viewed as signs that the day is at hand. Blessed also is he that will regard them as the noise of the chariot wheels of the coming King. Our duty is, to watch and pray, knowing that soon he that has promised to come, will come, and will not tarry. For he will surely come. He has promised to come. God has said that he will come. Angels have come from Heaven to give assurance that he will come. The Holy Ghost in the hearts of prophets and apostles has taught that he will come. And everything in and around us augurs that his coming is near. Let men take warning, and be prepared to meet their God.”—Prophetic Times.