p. 117 | Passing Calamities

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 29, 1874

Passing Calamities.

THE past three years have been marked with frequent and distressing calamities in this country, and throughout the world. The great Chicago fire of 1871 was preceded by the desolating forest fires in the North-west, and followed by the conflagration in Boston. An unusual number of villages and towns, have been burned during the same period. The Mill River disaster in Massachusetts, the floods of last spring in the lower Mississippi, and the terrible inundation at Allegheny are fresh in all memories. Storms of unwonted severity have swept other parts of the land. Drought has joined with fire and flood to blast the hopes and diminish the possessions of men. Distressing and prolonged financial embarrassment paralyzes industry and trade. Several appalling “ocean horrors,” have added to the burden of public and private distress. The ravages of the grass-hoppers in the Western States have occasioned wide-spread suffering, as well as disappointment and loss. Still heavier judgments have fallen on other countries. Persia, India, and Asia Minor, have been smitten with famine, and thousands have died of starvation. Earthquakes, unprecedented in number, and many of them of great severity, have occurred in various parts of the world. Even the secular press and scientific authorities have remarked the unusual number and severity of these calamities.

The Bible assumes, without argument, that the hand of God is in all these dispensations. It speaks of the thunder as “the voice of the Lord;” of the clouds as his chariot, and the winds as his messengers; of the locusts as his “army,” and of drought as his “staying the bottles of heaven.” It connects all these dispensations with the sins of men, assuring us that “the curse causeless does not come.” It records the occurrence of similar calamities in the past in connection with great events in the history of redemption. “Earthquakes and famines and pestilences” preceded the destruction of Jerusalem, and are to precede similar manifestations of the kingdom of God, until Christ’s final coming at the end of the world.

The voice of these calamities to this nation is a solemn call to repentance. “The Lord has a controversy with the inhabitants of the land.” We look for much and it comes to little, because, according to the expressive image of the Hebrew prophet, God “blows upon it.” It is the duty of ministers of religion and the conductors of the religious press to interpret to the people these “signs of the times.” Lovers of Christ and their country should remember that such times, above all others, are the auspicious seasons for lifting up a testimony for truth, and pressing forward every movement of reform.

“When God’s judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.” When after years of failure, the earth and heavens promise once more to reward his labors, the prudent husbandman stints his household and denies himself, that he may have seed to sow in hope of harvest. When business is paralyzed, when “the fields yield no meat,” when riches “fly away as an eagle toward heaven,” it is the very time to “sow beside all waters.” That the church in America is not wholly insensible to the opportunity and the duty which it imposes, appears in the fact that her offerings last year were hardly, if at all, affected by the unprosperous condition of the country.—Christian Statesman.