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Editorial

Plagues of Biblical Proportions

by Ken Ryland


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