p. 105 | Special Mention

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 18, 1902

Special Mention.

Destructive Conflagrations.

Hardly has the new year gotten well under way before a conflagration of appalling magnitude carries ruin through the city of Paterson, N. J., the property loss being estimated at ten million dollars. The same day a number of lives are lost by a destructive fire in St. Louis, Mo., and other blazes of greater or less magnitude are reported. Only a few days previous a great fire devastated a large section of the city of Waterbury, Conn. These conflagrations are staggering blows to the insurance companies, which are perplexed to know how to grapple with the situation. The continued frequency of these disasters seems unaccountable. For several years the fire losses in this country and Canada have been abnormally great, and the loss grows greater year by year. Fire underwriters are declaring that higher rates of insurance will be necessary to enable the companies to survive. All the advancement that has been made in architectural science and in precautions taken to minimize the liability of loss from this agency of destruction, is powerless to stem the increasing tide of disaster. What is the matter? Where is the cause of this unnatural state of things? While others are speculating over these questions, we may know from the light which revelation sheds upon this time in human history, that these direful happenings are not by chance, but are signs of the times, tokens of the withdrawal of God’s protecting influence from the earth, and the loosening of the bounds which have held back Satan’s agencies of destruction. “The day of the Lord is near;” it is the night at hand. “Be ye therefore ready.” Not much longer will the angels hold the “four winds.”

“Babylon Is Fallen.”

A “hugging social” to raise money for the treasury in a Christian church! Such is the announcement made in a press dispatch from Springfield, Ohio, of recent date. “A well-advertised ‘hugging social’ held at the little church at North Greenfield for the purpose of raising money to pay off the church debt, attracted a large crowd last night,” says the dispatch. A list of the prices charged for participation in the affair follows, the highest figure being for “another man’s wife.” Old men as well as young participated; and “it was one of the most successful socials ever given by a church.” “Another meeting was fixed for February 1.”

We mention such things as signs of the times, fulfillments of the prophecies which speak of the characteristics of the “last days,” when men shall have the forms of godliness without the power thereof. “Babylon . . . is fallen, is fallen. . . . Come out of her, my people.” Rev. 18: 2-4.