24 Mar My Favourite Stories #24
Freight Train to Eternity Part 2
Time is history in motion. Like a giant freight train it creeps ever so slowly out of the past and into the future. How could time ever run out? How could the slow freight train ever catch up with us. One day soon it will pass us by and the future will become the past. There are important signs that should indicate to us that things will not continue much longer the way they are.
As stated yesterday, Einstein was 30 in 1909 and a rising star. Let’s return to 1909. The place is now the Pratt Valley which is a narrow strip of land enclosed by California’s coastal mountains. The time was again spring. In a large home lived an aging Grandmother with dark blue eyes and a wry sense of humor, appearing younger than her 82 years. Each morning after breakfast she could be seen tromping around her 60-acre farm inspecting orchards and looking after livestock.
Neighbors noticed that she drew a constant stream of visitors, as though it might be worth the price of a train ticket to come and hear what this elderly woman had to say. That year Ellen White was nearing completion of her new book Testimonies for the Church Vol 9. The opening pages are full of talk of future trouble. Chapter one is called ‘The Last Crisis.’ Based on Bible passages like Matthew 24 and the books of Daniel and Revelation she would write: “We are living in the time of the end. The fast-fulfilling signs of the times declare that the coming of Christ is near at hand. The days in which we live are solemn and important. The Spirit of God is gradually but surely being withdrawn from the earth. Plagues and judgments are already falling upon the despisers of the grace of God. The calamities by land and sea, the unsettled state of society, the alarms of war, are portentous. They forecast approaching events of the greatest magnitude. The agencies of evil are combining their forces and consolidating. They are strengthening for the last great crisis. Great changes are soon to take place in our world, and the final movements will be rapid ones. The condition of things in the world shows that troublous times are right upon us.” This was all written before the Titanic, the First World War or the Great Depression.
Those changes were probably greater than most readers dreamed of. She spoke of a “Terrible conflict in the near future”, of social injustice, labour strife, increasing crime endangering everyone, and frequent strikes. She talked about decay in the social world, trouble in the economy, but that is not the worst. She predicted that the world’s cities would face a destructive force so powerful that man’s defenses would be meaningless. In vision she saw an immense fire ball that caused instant destruction. “The scene that next passed before me was an alarm of fire. Men looked at the lofty and supposedly fire-proof buildings and said: “They are perfectly safe.” But these buildings were consumed as if made of pitch. The fire engines could do nothing to stay the destruction. The firemen were unable to operate the engines.”
For 36 years the predictions waited in the pages of Volume 9 of Testimonies. Ellen White passed on, but what she had said seemed so gloomy, so negative, so overstated, that to believe it all, you had to accept the writings of Ellen White on a pretty large measure of faith. As she had said, buildings went up all over the world, made of brick and steel and the best of what money could buy. Then on August 6, 1945 Hiroshima burned to death. Concrete and steel disappeared beneath a fire that no human effort could stop. In the suburbs, blazing structures could not be attended to because, as she stated, the fire fighting equipment would become inoperable.
Beyond the safety of 1909, where a veil hid tomorrow, the future was already written by Him “who knows the end from the beginning.” Today the world’s safety lies in fear. It’s called the balance of terror. We are only safe if the other side is as frightened as we are.
In the 1840’s God raised a movement whose sole purpose was to herald the last warning message to the world that would culminate in the Second Coming of Jesus. This movement was guided in its early years by the Gift of prophecy as manifest in the visions of Ellen White. Under her early influence and guidance this movement has become the most international protestant denomination in the world, with the second largest schooling system in the world, and the second largest international medical system. (The Catholic sytem having the number 1 spots) This missionary movement has an international chain of publishing houses and operates the 6th largest releif agency in the world. The miracle of all this was due to God’s grace as manifest in the Spirit of prophecy, through the ministry of Ellen White. In the 1860’s this movement took on the name of the Seventh-day Adventist church.
If you would like to look at Vol 9 of the Testimonies here is the link: https://m.egwwritings.org/pl/book/115.51
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