SIGNS OF THE END by G. W. A.

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 26, 1868

SIGNS OF THE END.

By G. W. A.

There are two articles in the news department of this issue, which will doubtless be read with thrilling interest. They are the pieces entitled, “Mauna Loa,” and “Appalling Floods of Fire, Water, and Earth.” We believe the words of Jesus in Luke xxi, 11, have an application to the times in immediate proximity with his second coming. Said he, “And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights shall there be from heaven.” Mark his language: “GREAT earthquakes,” “FEARFUL sights,” and “GREAT signs.” It is something more than ordinary occurrences here referred to. And we think that the terrible eruption of Mauna Loa, is one of the events pointed out in the Saviour’s prediction. Says a secular paper, the Chicago Tribune, “No such demonstration has occurred within the knowledge of human history.” Says another paper, “The sight was one of the grandest, but most appalling ever witnessed, and almost defies description.” And that “the entire topographical appearance of the country has been so completely changed that even those who have lived in the desolated district all their lives, cannot recognize it, or point out locations with which they were formerly familiar.” The same account farther states, that “immense precipices, that have hitherto been a terror to all who have seen them, have been leveled to the earth, and where the ground was formerly smooth and unbroken for miles around, the earth has been rent asunder and upheaved, forming gigantic chasms and precipices.”

Such statements are worthy of something more than a passing notice. They also shed light on such texts as Rev. vi, 16, and Rev. xvi, 20.

The author of “Spiritual Gifts,” Vol. III, pp. 82, 83, has some very interesting statements which we believe refer to just such commotions as the recent eruption of Mauna Loa. She says: “In the day of the Lord, just before the coming of Christ, God will send lightnings from heaven in his wrath, which will unite with fire in the earth. The mountains will burn like a furnace, and will pour forth terrible streams of lava, destroying gardens and fields, villages and cities; and as they pour their heated ore, rocks, and heated mud, into the rivers, will cause them to boil like a pot, and send forth massive rocks, and scatter their broken fragments upon the land with indescribable violence. Whole rivers will be dried up. The earth will be convulsed, and there will be dreadful eruptions and earthquakes everywhere. God will plague the wicked inhabitants of the earth until they are destroyed from off it.”

Let the trembling child of God behold these terrible tokens of coming deliverance with joy, for as the Psalmist says, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”

G. W. A.