WONDERS IN THE EARTH

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal. · Jan 6, 1904

WONDERS IN THE EARTH.

THE prophet Joel, looking forward to the great day of Jehovah, sees certain events which will occur as heralds of the day. Among these is "wonders in the . . . earth." Joel 2:30.

This would, as a matter of course, be more clearly evident as the earth nears her end. During the reign and burden of sin, the earth has "waxed old as doth a garment," and unexpected outbursting may occur anywhere.

Our readers have not forgotten the awful news which flashed over the wires in the early May of 1902, saying that the thriving town of St. Pierre on the Island of Martinique had, on May 8, been utterly destroyed with 30,000 inhabitants in a few moments of time, by an explosive eruption of the adjacent volcano, Mount Pelée, which blew off the top of the mountain. Some scientists declared that the news must be false; but later reports confirmed the awful tidings.

Great stone and iron buildings were overthrown, and the iron frames bent and twisted in all manner of distorted shapes, and many of the people seem to have been instantly struck with death.

A few days afterward another explosion followed more powerful than the first. By it the great steel frames of the wrecked buildings were reduced, so one report tells us, to an impalpable powder, as the charred and ground and pulverized. That fair city, in its wickedness, became a vast charnel-house.

Seismologists and scientists in general never saw anything like the strange and peculiar phenomena then manifest.

Now another strange thing has occurred, indicated in our illustration which we reproduce from the Scientific American of the fifth ultimo.

Scientists have been studying the volcano since the fearful eruptions of 1902, and they have noticed a peculiar tooth-like obelisk projecting above the crater of the volcano. It was not a regular volcanic cone formed by cooling erupted lava, for the sides were quite smooth and nearly perpendicular. It looks like a "solid shaft of stone," the Scientific American informs us, and is called the "obelisk of Pelée." It was 295 feet above the rim of the crater before it was discovered, and in March, 1903, it was estimated to be 5,143 feet above sea level, or 1,109 feet above Morne Lacroix. But it has reached a greater height than this.

The peculiar phenomena of the obelisk [we quote from the above named paper] have awakened great interest. How such a huge monument, taller than the Eiffel Tower, could be formed on the top of a violently active volcano is a problem that is not easy of solution. As far as we can ascertain, only one plausible theory has been advanced, and that does not seem very credible; namely, that the needle was formed of molten lava during some previous period of activity, that this lava solidified and formed a plug which closed one of the passages of the crater, and that now it has been worked loose, and forced up by the recent renewed activity. The obelisk has the appearance of having been forced up in a solid piece like a stopper in a bottle, and held by friction to the sides of the opening. The northeast side of the obelisk is very smooth, almost polished in appearance.

All of which, with many other things, emphasizes the great fact of man's ignorance of this earth even, to say nothing of worlds beyond. What a lesson it is of the mighty potencies of God when we see His perverted laws working out such mighty changes!

All these things are mercifully foretold warnings of that time when earth can bear the burden of sin no longer, when God's restraining hand will cease to restrain, when the earth will have waxed old even to change, and amid the great convulsion of a perverted nature, a world in rebellion against God, every mountain and island shall be moved out of their places; and men of earth who never prayed to the God of nature, will pray for the rocks and mountains to fall on them and hide them "from the face of Him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb; for the great day of His wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?"—Only the individual souls who are hid in God.