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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3
numerous and terrible just before the coming of Christ and the end of
the world, as signs of its speedy destruction.
Coal and oil are generally to be found where there are no burning
mountains or fiery issues. When fire and water under the surface
of the earth meet, the fiery issues cannot give sufficient vent to the
heated elements beneath. The earth is convulsed—the ground trembles,
heaves, and rises into swells or waves, and there are heavy sounds like
thunder underground. The air is heated and suffocating. The earth
quickly opens, and I saw villages, cities and burning mountains carried
down together into the earth.
God controls all these elements; they are his instruments to do his
will; he calls them into action to serve his purpose. These fiery issues
have been, and will be his agents to blot out from the earth very wicked
cities. Like Korah, Dathan and Abiram they go down alive into the pit.
These are evidences of God’s power. Those who have beheld these
burning mountains have been struck with terror at the grandeur of the
scene—pouring forth fire, and flame, and a vast amount of melted ore,
drying up rivers and causing them to disappear. They have been filled
with awe as though they were beholding the infinite power of God.
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These manifestations bear the special marks of God’s power, and
are designed to cause the people of the earth to tremble before him,
and to silence those, who like Pharaoh would proudly say, “Who is the
Lord that I should obey his voice?” Isaiah refers to these exhibitions
of God’s power where he exclaims, “Oh that thou wouldest rend the
heavens, that thou wouldest come down, that the mountains might flow
down at thy presence as when the melting fire burneth. The fire causeth
the waters to boil, to make thy name known to thine adversaries, that
the nations may tremble at thy presence. When thou didst terrible
things which we looked not for, thou camest down, the mountains
flowed down at thy presence.
“The Lord is slow to anger, and great in power, and will not at
all acquit the wicked. The Lord hath his way in the whirlwind and
in the storm, and the clouds are the dust of his feet. He rebuketh the
sea, and maketh it dry and drieth up all the rivers. Bashan languisheth,
and Carmel, and the flower of Lebanon languisheth. The mountains
quake at him, and the hills melt, and the earth is burned at his presence,
yea, the world, and all that dwell therein. Who can stand before his