Volcanic activity is a present threatening danger around the world.
Thousands have perished this year in fiery agony!
Here's what prophecy reveals — together with an eyewitness account of a presently erupting volcano!
THE "Ring of Fire" is aflame again! Over THREE HUNDRED presently active volcanoes hiss and steam in a smoking, belligerent watch on the circle of the Pacific Ocean! Other fire-belching giants around the earth bring the present total of ACTIVE volcanoes to a frightening four hundred plus!! The history of death and destruction meted out by volcanoes is exceeded only by the death-dealing record of earthquakes — and many times these twin giants of natural catastrophe strike hand in hand.
ONE Volcano's History
Mount Etna on the island of Sicily in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea has been observed by mankind ever since its first eruption — which is rare, since volcanoes are usually longer-lived than empires — two thousand four hundred years ago. During these years Mount Etna has erupted five hundred times or more and taken a death toll of ONE MILLION PERSONS!
Continuously active since its first recorded eruption in 475 B.C., it has been both a tourist attraction — as in 1955 when it even went so far as to blow smoke rings — and as a stark monster of death spewing out truck-sized, white-hot boulders into the air and sending panic-stricken peasants fleeing for their lives! This venerable volcano's worst eruption in thirty-two years occurred in 1960 when its atomic-style mushroom cloud of black smoke blotted out the noonday sun and rose to 30,000 feet — a beacon of death visible as far away as Reggio, Calabria, a town on the mainland of Italy!
Warning Goes Unheeded
Although Mt. Etna's accumulated record of death is astounding, no record of volcanoes can be written without the mention of Krakatau. This famous volcano lies in the shallow waters of the Sunda Strait between the islands of Sumatra and Java in the East Indies. It began to telegraph its danger with smoke signals and numerous earth tremors increasing in power and frequency about March of the year 1883. Since few people — even in that volcano-strewn section of the world — pay attention to forewarnings, nobody gave Krakatau any heed.
Early in the morning of August 27, 1883 the earth's crust was wrenched open near the base of this mountain — under water! Millions of gallons of cool ocean water poured into the white hot bowels of Krakatau. The resultant explosion was heard literally thousands of miles away as if cannons were going off just over the horizon. Nearly two cubic miles of earth were immediately vaporized in a natural catastrophe that dwarfs mankind's hydrogen weapons to insignificance.
A 100-foot tidal wave swept the shores of the nearby islands and destroyed thirty-six thousand lives! "The immediate fall-out from the explosion also was intense. At 7:00 A.M. the sky at Batavia [Djakarta] began to darken; by 10:15 it was a lurid yellow. At 11:20, the city was plunged into complete darkness; lamps were turned on at midday!" (Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1962). So much dust and ash were cast into the upper atmosphere — fifty miles high — that the sunsets around the world were red-hued for six months!
Just as nobody paid any attention to the warning Krakatau gave before its explosion in 1883, so it seems that today nobody pays heed. Nor is it reported, nor generally known that there is a present-day, active volcano located on what is left of the island of Krakatau called Anak-Krakatau, which means "child of Krakatau"! Anak erupted in 1928, 1950, 1953 — and there has been continuous and increasing activity reported from this volcano especially since 1960!
One-fifth of the entire population of Iceland perished in 1783 when an entire chain of volcanoes erupted. Mount Tomboro on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia erupted in 1808 and took fifty-six thousand lives! Mount Pelee on the island of Martinique in the Caribbean snuffed out forty thousand lives in 1902.
Nearly Twelve Thousand Perish This Year
In this day and age we are accustomed to death by violence. Yet it does seem unusual that the death of so many thousands would go almost unnoticed by most of our news media while an air crash bringing death to fifty or sixty persons finds front-page headlines!
On the lovely island of Bali — again in Indonesia — the volcano Mount Agung erupted in the latter part of March 1963 and took over eleven thousand lives (by International Red Cross count) and left more than two hundred thousand others homeless!
This volcano had been dormant for a century! The followers of the Balinese religion worship this 10,000-foot mountain as a home of the gods. They referred to it as "The Navel of the World," and have built a temple halfway up its slopes.
Mount Agung spewed out warning blasts of ash and mud on March 17, but hundreds of priests, gathered for a once-a-century festival to placate the gods of this inferno, and did not heed the warning.
While they ignorantly and innocently knelt in prayer of devotion and supplication to their unhearing god, his black mouth belched out monstrous clouds of ash and gas which destroyed his kneeling worshippers in a 230° HURRICANE OF STEAM!
Hundreds died instantly!
Great tongues of lava lashed down the mountain at fifty miles an hour, causing rivers to boil on contact — boulders the size of houses spewed forth by the thousands — one hundred thousand acres were buried feet-deep in volcanic ash — thirty-five thousand cattle died.
Take Warning!
"Such catastrophes needn't recur, Ault says, [Dr. Wayne Ault, a scientist with the United States Geologic Survey] if the world would cock an attentive ear to its volcanoes. A volcanic eruption is preceded by ample warnings of tremors or escaping steam" (San Diego Union, August 28, 1960).
This advice is well-founded, but history proves that it has never been followed! Human beings are an odd mixture of curiosity, independence and rebellion. In the case of Mount Pelee in Martinique where forty thousand perished — rather than take the long and early warnings the volcano gave and flee the island for safety — the island's inhabitants advertised it and conducted tours of thousands of tourists to the very lip of the crater! Even today, ignoring a history of one million deaths attributed to Mount Etna, there is a railroad to the very top of this mountain for the sole purpose of looking into the throat of death!
Everyone ignores the child of Krakatau. If anyone raises a voice of caution, he is labeled an alarmist!
Or perhaps it is that people think, in the ignorance of human vanity, that they themselves as individuals could never be the victims of such a catastrophe. Volcanoes erupting and thousands dying in faraway places such as the island of Bali do not trigger any concern in the minds of those living in the United States or Great Britain or Australia.
"Eruptions of volcanoes are not necessarily limited to exotic, faraway lands like the island of Bali in Indonesia where thousands of persons perished last month as quiet Mount Gunung Agung suddenly became active.
"Oregon's 'volcanorability' was spelled out by a pair of geologists . . . 'Renewal of volcanism in Oregon could well begin next month — this year — next year — or thousands of years hence,' wrote Norman V. Peterson and Edward A. Groh" (The Oregon Journal, April 5, 1963). Again these knowledgeable scientists pointed out the principle that there is no cause for alarm. They explained that in every case volcanic action was signaled by many earth tremors of moderate to great intensity long before there is an actual eruption. But remember the tragic record of history shows that none of these warnings are ever heeded.
Americans and Britons Don't Fear Volcanoes
To most Americans and Britons it seems as if volcanic destruction only comes on people in very faraway places. Mankind in his stumbling, "seventy years" feels very old and wise in his own eyes. Most people who have not seen a volcano feel safe and secure, assured that they themselves will never see such a disaster. Little do most Britons realize that there are ancient volcanoes by the score on their little island. Little do most Americans realize that great, vast regions of the entire continent were originally produced by volcanic activity — or that a volcano was last seen erupting in California as late as 1917!
Mount Lassen erupted on and off through the years 1914 to 1917. Mount Saint Helens in Washington, erupted as late as 1843 and there was volcanic action in Oregon in 1800!
This may seem like a long time ago, and that these volcanoes are now dead. But remember — the mountain that just destroyed nearly twelve thousand lives on the island of Bali had been silent for a century! A hundred years is like a week in the age of a volcano!
The volcanic "Ring of Fire" that surrounds the Pacific contains astonishing groupings
of active volcanoes: Kamchatka — 18; Japan — 33; Philippine Islands — 100;
Sumatra — 90; Aleutian Islands — 32; western coast of North and South America — 40.
Over THREE HUNDRED active volcanoes in all! (Information Please Almanac, 1963)
|