What catastrophes have fallen upon this poor sinful world within these last twenty years! The mere recalling of the principal ones appals the mind and causes the heart to sink. There was the city of Saint Pierre, in Martinique, at the base of the "Soufriere"-a supposedly harmless old volcano-whose side suddenly burst open, sending out such a blast of super-heated gases that the whole city and its thirty thousand inhabitants were utterly destroyed in a few seconds!
Not long after, the whole coast of the United States bordering on the Pacific Ocean was rocked and tossed, destroying the city of San Francisco and smaller towns, opening deep fissures in the earth in different parts, moving lands out of their original places, with fearful noises from the grinding and bursting rocks deep in the earth.
Then southern Italy and eastern Sicily were visited with earthquake, and tidal wave following; the city of Messina and adjacent towns were destroyed, in which about one hundred thousand perished.
On the opposite side of the earth, somewhere near the island of Java, a vast submarine eruption must have occurred; it covered the ocean's surface with pumice for many miles, and a vast tidal wave reached to, and over, the foothills of Java, 70 feet high, carrying back into the ocean some sixty thousand bodies as it receded.
Then, while many congratulated themselves and deluded others with the vain talk that science and civilization had so advanced that wars would henceforth be impossible, that all differences between nations would be adjusted by a world court, for which a great temple was built at The Hague, national treaty was suddenly trodden under foot as a "scrap of paper," the world-war broke out with fury on land, and sea, and skies, and diabolical use was made of all the resources of science to destroy and mutilate multitudes! Famines and pestilences followed in the wake, taking heavy toll in different parts of the earth.
Only three years ago, a large territory in northern China was so tossed and shaken by an earthquake that hills were moved out of their places, some transported a mile from their original place with the trees upon them, parts of the territory were unrecognizable, and a great multitude crushed or entombed!
Now comes from Japan tidings of the greatest calamity on record in all history-a large territory was up-heaved, rocked and terribly shaken; large cities are in ruin, an estimated two hundred thousand souls have perished, twice that number wounded, and a vast multitude are homeless and in want!
What shall we say to all this? Are these calamities precursors to that dread period described, in symbols, in chapters 6 to 18 of Revelation?-the yet unfulfilled 70th week of Daniel's prophecy-when not only the seed of Jacob, but "the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness" through the judgments of the Lord (Isa. 26:9, 10). Our Lord's words in Matt. 24:6-8 seem to indicate a premonitory period to that "great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world to this time- no, nor ever shall be [after]" (Matt. 24:21).
In view of this unprecedented time of sorrow, when man's ungodly will, energized by the devil, will be met by judgment upon judgment from Heaven, what mercy, O Christian reader, is expressed to those addressed in Rev. 3:8-11, "I will keep thee from (Greek, ek-out of) the hour of trial which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth"-1:e., upon those whose aims or desires are set on that which is of the earth. "For our citizenship is in heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:who shall change the body of our humiliation into the likeness of his glorious body, according to the working whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself "(Phil. 3:20, 21).
"THOU ART MY REFUGE AND STRENGTH"