Shall I shake it again?
How many times is God going to have to resort to natural disasters to get our attention? We all know of God’s great displeasure with the towns Sodom and Gomorrah, in as much as He rained down fire and brimstone, and destroyed it utterly, along with the surrounding cities. It is believed by Graham Harris, a geologist who loved to unravel Bible history that the area of which Sodom and Gomorrah would have existed is now the Dead Sea. He believes that the area suffered a epic earthquake causing a massive land slide, wiping those cities off the map.
It would seem that God was trying to get the attention of the world, saying enough is enough! This is what I am going to do if you don’t clean up your act!
He got the attention of one of the vilest parts of the United States in 1906, when he sent a great earth quake to the Barbary Coast, better known as San Francisco. At the time of the earthquake, gangs, drugs and prostitution were running rampant. The town grew as a result of the 1849 gold rush. The town was a shipping mecca of the country but didn’t just bring in merchandise, it also brought in convicts from Australia, who formed a gang called the Sydney Ducks who were connected with the gambling, robbing and boarding houses of ill repute. The men of the gold rush era, 49ers, had more money than sense, and were easy targets to all the wiles San Francisco had to offer.
Then the earth shook on this day in 1906! God got their attention! 3000 people died, 30,000 buildings were destroyed, and 20,000 people were refugees. Things changed after that day, when the rebuilt the city, the red-light district was gone along with many other deviant places.
What will it take for God to get your attention? Flood, famine, earthquake, or maybe a fire, or car accident. When that happens will you change, and build new, wiping out the sinful nature of the old you and trading it in for a second chance of a better life? Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
As parents it is our job to train up a child in the way he should go, so God doesn’t have to shake him till his teeth rattle! It is hard in this day and age to keep a kid on the straight and narrow, so begin when they are small and when they are old they will not depart from it!
We as writers can only try to capture on paper the devastation of some of the natural disasters we see and hear about. Not only while it is occurring, but the aftermath of cleaning up and trying to put lives back together. Let’s try to give it the intensity it deserves.
And great earthquakes shall be in divers places, and famines, and pestilences; and fearful sights and great signs shall there be from heaven.
Luke 21:11
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.
Mark 13:8
Thou hast made the earth to tremble; thou hast broken it: heal the breaches thereof; for it shaketh.
Psalms 60:2
And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it.
Matthew 28:2
And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.
Revelations 28:2