Your ShelfYour Projects

The Gift of Prophecy

13%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D. C. · May 17, 1906

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 83, No. 20.

Read the full edition

The Gift of Prophecy

By GEO. O. STATES

GEO. O. STATES
It seems to me that our own people who passed through the terrible experience of the morning of April 18, 1906, ought to appreciate the gift of prophecy as never before. When we awoke and felt our bed heaving in such a frightful fashion, and found that the earth was rocking from north to south, we thought of those words in Isa. 2:19, “when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.”
As I read the various speculations as to the cause of earthquakes, my mind went back to what was published in Volume I of “Great Controversy” in 1870; and as it gives such a vivid picture, I will give a few extracts which ought to be read with great interest at this particular time: “Before the flood there were immense forests. The trees were many times larger than any trees which we now see. They were of great durability. They would know nothing of decay for hundreds of years. At the time of the flood, these forests were torn up or broken down and buried in the earth. In some places large quantities of these immense trees were thrown together and covered with stones and earth by the commotion of the flood. They have since petrified and become coal, which accounts for the large coal beds which are now found. This coal has produced oil. God causes large quantities of coal and oil to ignite and burn. Rocks are intensely heated, limestone is burned, and iron ore melted. Water and fire under the surface of the earth meet. The action of fire and water upon the limestone adds fury to the intense heat, and causes earthquakes, volcanoes, and fiery issues. The action of fire and water upon the ledges of rocks and ore causes loud explosions which sound like muffled thunder. These wonderful exhibitions will be more numerous and terrible just before the second coming of Christ and the end of the world, as signs of its speedy destruction. “Coal and oil are generally to be found where there are no burning mountains or fiery issues. When fire and water under the surface of the earth meet, the fiery issues can not give sufficient vent to the heated elements beneath. The earth is convulsed, the ground heaves, and rises into swells or waves, and there are heavy sounds like thunder under ground. The air is heated, and suffocating. The earth quickly opens, and I saw villages, cities, and burning mountains carried down together into the earth. God controls all these elements; they are his instruments to do his will; he calls them into action to serve his purpose. These fiery issues have been, and will be, his agents to blot out from the earth very wicked cities. . . . These manifestations bear the special marks of God’s power, and are designed to cause the people of the earth to tremble before him, and to silence those who, like Pharaoh, would proudly say, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?’”
While our city is forty miles fromSan Francisco, yet for three nights we could plainly see the fires lighting up the heavens, and I thought of these things that the Lord told us so long ago were coming. On page 85 of the same work we read: “The mountains will burn like a furnace, and will pour forth streams of lava, destroying gardens and fields, villages and cities; and as they pour their melted ore, rocks, and heated mud, into 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. The saints are preserved in the earth in the midst of these dreadful commotions, as Noah was preserved in the ark at the time of the flood.” Any person who has read the accounts of the late eruption of Mount Vesuvius can not fail to see how this is now literally being fulfilled. Towns and villages have been depopulated, and thousands of lives have been lost by the terrible eruptions.
After breakfast on the morning of the eighteenth, as I looked over our beautiful city and saw so many fires, I went down into the main part, and as I passed along the streets and saw houses torn from their foundations, chimneys fallen through roofs, people with their household goods piled up in the yards, the thought came to me of how the Lord had preserved my family and myself amid all this devastation; and tears came to my eyes as I recalled the promise in his Word that he would give his angels charge over his people.
As soon as we could get copies of the special Signs, I started out selling them, and have sold them to nearly every one to whom I have shown them. Now, dear brethren and sisters, we ought to take these Earthquake Specials and go to our neighbors and tell them what these things mean, and what is just before us. The Lord has given us light above any people on the earth, and will hold us responsible for the right use of this light.
San Jose, Cal.