WHAT DO THESE THINGS MEAN?
This question is asked by many concerning the tornadoes, cloudbursts, cyclones, electric storms, earthquakes, deluges, fires, accidents, etc. Especially in the matter of cyclones the season has been unprecedented. Never have there come so many, so early in the summer, attended by such fearful loss of life and property. Almost every day has registered one or more of these dreadful visitants, so full of destruction, so erratic in movement and result, so full of terror to the inhabitants, so seemingly terribly partial, but always in their own way. This season has greatly extended the cyclone area. Michigan was considered practically exempt, but some of the worst storms this year swept over the southern peninsula. Doubtless there were others as great as the one that struck St. Louis, but none were so destructive. Generally the dread destroyer moves rapidly over the country; a place is hardly stricken ere the agony is over and death and destruction are left behind. But at St. Louis it seems as tho the cyclone demon met his greatest opportunity hitherto, and there he stayed and waltzed and gyrated in the dance of death and destruction for a half hour, that seemed a lifetime, gloating in his work of agony, and shrieking his glee over his diabolical work. He crushed and burned and buried humanity, with no respect for station, age, or sex. He tore and tossed granite structures as though they had been feathers. With these things we have the deplorable loss of life in the breaking of the car bridge in British Columbia, at the coronation of the czar in Moscow, and the deluge in Ohio. The ruthless march of the black plague continues in China; war in two parts of Africa and in Cuba, besides the financial stress, and the perplexity which sits upon all the nations as an incubus. Truly we are living in the last days, and all these omens are harbingers of the great facts that the earth is waxed old, and Christ is coming. See Luke 21:25-27 and many other scriptures. Men endeavor to prevent and explain these things by scientific means and methods and theories, but in spite of all that science can do, the evils grow apace, the omens multiply. Christ is coming. Men may be scoffingly indifferent on the one hand, or fanatical on the other, fixing definite dates for the Lord to come, etc., but neither indifference nor fanaticism will stay the voices of his heralds or stay the wheels of his chariot. Christ is coming, coming to redeem his own, and gather to himself those who have yielded to him, and in whom his presence dwells. In that coming, then, are life, hope, home for all who love God and righteousness. Now Christ is inviting the world to come to him. And through all earth’s commotions may be heard by the humble ear the fourfold voice from the living throne of God, crying; “Come,” “come,” “come,” “come.” “Come to me now,” Christ would say to us, “that you may in a ‘little while’ rejoice in my coming.”