A Fearful Record by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 30, 1903

A Fearful Record

By Editor

Editorial

A Fearful Record

An eyewitness of the Kishinef massacre writes of “the blood thirst” which was on the people of the town, and which was quenched only by the indiscriminate slaughter of men, women, and children. But this massacre is only an intensified form of “the blood thirst” which is taking possession of great numbers of those who are casting off the restraint of the Spirit of God. Human life is lightly valued. In many cases a very slight provocation is sufficient to incite to murder. A small sum of money (only thirty-five dollars in a recent instance) arouses a spirit of covetousness which does not hesitate to sacrifice life in order to gratify itself. A young woman refuses to marry her professed lover, or decides for good reasons to break an engagement already formed, and she is deliberately murdered. A quarrel between neighbors over the ownership of some property is quickly settled by an appeal to the shotgun, and the earth again opens its mouth to receive a brother’s blood. The record of the present year is thus far a most terrible one. In addition to the fires, floods, and famines, which show plainly that God’s judgments are in the land, we are confronted with a daily record of crime which is sickening. The rising generation seems to be possessed with the same spirit, and even children are not over twelve or fourteen years of age have slain their young companions. And the worst of all is that the reports of these frequent crimes seem to harden the minds of the people generally to a real sense of the situation, and to incite others to the same or more frightful forms of sin. What will be the end of these things? Who will survive this day of slaughter upon which we have entered? This is the final outbreak of wickedness, and it will terminate in the great day of the Lord’s fierce wrath. “Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.”