p. 37 | The Plague of Hail by G. W. Amadon

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 16, 1872

The Plague of Hail.

By G. W. Amadon

In Rev. 16: 21, there is a prophecy of the most awful woe which will ever visit the ungodly of this doomed world—it is the seventh and last vial of Heaven's unmixed wrath. The Record says, “And there fell upon men (mark the language; it is upon men, not the ground) a GREAT HAIL out of heaven, every stone about the WEIGHT OF A TALENT!” Various computations have been made of the weight of a talent, all locating it somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred pounds. It is not the purpose of these paragraphs to determine the exact weight of a talent, for be it what it may, the image is a frightful one to contemplate.

Imagine a time when there is a commingling of “voices and thunders and lightnings,” and a “mighty earthquake,” so great as to sink islands and level the everlasting hills, and then, as if to add woe indescribable to woe unbearable, “a great hail” from heaven's arsenal is precipitated on “men,” every stone the weight of a talent! Well does the inspired penman add, “The plague thereof was EXCEEDING GREAT.”

Some faint idea of the effect of such a scene may be inferred from the following sketch of a hail storm on the Bosphorus, by our countryman, the late Commodore Porter, in his “Letters from Constantinople and its Environs,” vol. i, p. 44. He says:—

“We had got perhaps a mile and a half on our way, when a cloud, rising in the west, gave indications of approaching rain. In a few minutes we discovered something falling from the heavens with a heavy splash, and with a whitish appearance. I could not conceive what it was, but observing some gulls near, I supposed it to be them darting for fish; but soon after discovered that they were large balls of ice falling. Immediately we heard a sound like rumbling thunder, or ten thousand carriages rolling furiously over the pavement. The whole Bosphorus was in a foam, as though heaven's artillery had been charged upon us and our frail machine. Our fate seemed inevitable; our umbrellas were raised to protect us; the lumps of ice stripped them into ribbons. We fortunately had a bullock's hide in the boat, under which we crawled, and saved ourselves from further injury. One man of the three oarsmen had his hand literally smashed; another much injured in the shoulder; Mr. H. received a blow in the leg; my right hand was somewhat disabled, and all more or less injured.”

“It was the most awful and terrific scene I ever witnessed, and God forbid that I ever should be exposed to another! Balls of ice as large as my two fists fell into the boat, and some of them fell with such violence as certainly to have broken an arm or leg had they struck us in those parts. One of them struck the blade of an oar and split it. The scene lasted perhaps five minutes; but it was five minutes of the most awful feelings I ever experienced. When it passed over, we found the surrounding hills covered with masses of ice; I cannot call it hail; the trees stripped of their leaves and limbs; and everything looking desolate. The scene was awful, beyond all description!”

“I have witnessed repeated earthquakes; the lightning has played, as it were, about my head; the wind roared, and the waves at one moment have thrown me to the sky, and the next have sunk me into a deep abyss. I have been in action, and have seen death and destruction around me in every shape of horror; but I never before had the feeling of awe which seized me on this occasion, and still haunts, and I fear forever will haunt, me. My porter, the boldest of my family, who had ventured an instant from the door, had been knocked down by a hail-stone, and had they not dragged him in by the heels, would have been battered to death. Two boatmen were killed in the upper part of the village, and I have heard of broken bones in abundance. Imagine to yourself the heavens suddenly frozen over, and as suddenly broken to pieces in irregular masses of from half a pound to a pound weight, and precipitated to the earth.”

Reader, if such were the desolating effects of a hail storm of ice, which discharged stones the size of a man's fist, weighing at most a pound or so, who can depict the consequences of that coming storm in which “EVERY STONE” shall be of the weight of a talent? As sure as God's word is truth, he is thus seen to punish a guilty world. May it be ours, according to the promise, to have “sure dwellings” and “quiet resting places” in that terrible hour. Isa. 32: 18, 19.

G. W. AMADON.