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Editorial
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Plagues of Biblical Proportions
by Ken Ryland
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On the minds of many people these days is the question: Are we
living in the end times? Aren't the end times full of plagues
that ravage the earth?
Just within the past six months we have seen unprecedented
destruction and death at the hands of Nature. It wasn't so long
ago that we were all talking about the horrible devastation
caused by not one, but three hurricanes that plowed through the
Caribbean and the state of Florida. Although the loss of life was
surprisingly small for the scope of the destruction from these
hurricanes, the dollar loss for many islands and for the state of
Florida was mind-boggling.
When I chose the picture for the cover of this issue of The
Sabbath Sentinel, I was stunned by the amount of crop damage done
by the locust plague to northern Africa from the Gulf of Aqaba to
the Atlantic. If there is anything that Africa cannot afford, it
is the loss of food supply. We have all been made painfully aware
of the level of malnutrition and famine that has visited the poor
people of East Africa. Of course, not all the food problems of
that area are the result of Nature turning against man. Much of
the misery results from the evil of governments that deliberately
deprive portions of their population the foodstuffs and
agricultural supplies they need.
What few people know is that as the swarms of locusts made their
way from east to west, ravaging crops as far as the Canary
Islands and many, riding the upper wind currents made it all the
way to Mexico. Whether their arrival to the gates of the Western
Hemisphere portends ill for the coming years remains to be seen.
Even though these swarming harbingers of famine died out on the
shores of Mexico, future problems for this hemisphere may depend
of whether eggs were laid in Mexican soil.
More destruction, more plagues are in the news as I write this
column. Off the southwest coast of Sumatra in Indonesia an
earthquake registered 9.0 on the Richter Scale, and the resulting
tsumanis (there were at least two major ones) pushing waves at
over 330 miles per hour washed over the coasts of countries as
far apart as Thialand and Somalia. Deaths are not being counted
in the hundreds, but in the tens of thousands.
When I see the massive proportions of these plagues, I can only
think of our Lord's warning in Matthew 24 that these things
must happen, but the end and His return are not yet (implying
that they are close).
We live in an untamed world that groans and travails as it waits
for the revealing of the the children of the True God. We all are
helpless before these earth-shaking events, but we are not
without hope. Our hope is what we must share with the world. It's
called "the gospel," and this heaving, dying world
needs what we have to give. It's time to put aside our
differences and feed the hopeless with the one thing that can
give them life beyond the miserable existence of world.
Kenneth Ryland
Notice Regarding S.E.E.
In the September-October 2004 edition of The Sabbath Sentinel we
published an article about The Sabbatarian Educational
Environment (S.E.E.) written by Norman Edwards, one of the
trustees of S.E.E. Since the publication of that article we have
been contacted by two other trustees of S.E.E., Homer Kizer and
Phil Frankford, disputing the claims made by Mr. Edwards about
services currently being offered at S.E.E. We strongly recommend
that you make no decisions regarding your participation in S.E.E.
until this current dispute among the trustees is resolved. We at
The Sabbath Sentinel and the BSA will keep you informed of any
change in our position.
TSS
January - February 2005 The Sabbath Sentinel
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