The Most amazing events of all earth's history are now occurring, just as prophesied in the Bible, in a swift moving panorama before our very eyes!
Startling fulfillment of prophecies occurred last year. Now see what is prophesied for this present year, 1935!
This Year, 1935, is destined to witness a startling event, foretold two thousand four hundred years ago! It will occur, and fill thousands of columns of newspaper and magazine space, in all probability within the next three or four months! It may prove as disastrous as the depression. It will affect directly nearly all our farmers, and indirectly the whole nation — probably the whole world. It may mean STARVATION to many of our people. This fulfilled prophecy will be of such significant nature that it should bring every person in the United States to his knees before Almighty God!
To Follow a Most Significant Fulfillment of Last Year!
This impending occurrence will follow on the heels of a most significant fulfillment of 1934 — indeed it will be but the outgrowth and continuation of it. So let us, first, consider this event that occurred last year — one which very few, even among students of prophecy, have recognized or understood. Very Few realize the serious, solemn warning God intends it to give us. This event was the great drought. Few seem to know its real seriousness, and its WORLD-WIDE extent. We quote from pages 66 and 67, The World Almanac for 1935: "The Department of Agriculture reported on Aug. 15 that the entire Northern Hemisphere was in varying degrees in the grip of the worst drought in history. Across Europe, Asia, and North America the arid path stretched, as wide as the distance from North Mexico to Central Manitoba." Central European countries, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Austria reported great loss of grain thru the drought. Also the Danubian countries, including Hungary, Roumania, Yugo-Slavia and Bulgaria. Russia and China fell within the path of the drought. The annual report of Secretary of Agriculture Wallace stated the drought extended over 75% of the area of the United States. The Government had to rush emergency relief to the drought-stricken areas, buying starving cattle, and shipping food. The drought directly affected 27,000,000 people in the United States alone. It caused an aggregate loss of five billion dollars. Relief had to be sent to between 300,000 and 400,000 families. "Sections of fifteen states burned slowly under a merciless sun, "says the Literary Digest of Dec. 29th. "Tens of thousands of tons of top soil were swept away by the furnace-like winds that licked the prairies, while men and animals suffocated. ... Approximately 1,150,000 head of cattle were slaughtered before they died of thirst." "Livestock throughout the Central West suffered intensely," stated an Associated Press dispatch in daily newspapers last July 24th. People from the stricken areas have said that the cattle and live stock literally groaned, as they starved from lack of pasture and water. Pictures of rivers in the Middle-West, good sized rivers, showed them completely dried up, and only a empty river bed left.
God Knew This Would Happen!
Now bearing in mind that this tragic catastrophe was not local, but WORLD-WIDE — and that never so far as the records of man can tell us has there ever been anything like it before, consider how accurately God Almighty described this very event TWENTY-FOUR HUNDRED YEARS BEFORE IT HAPPENED! It forms the real message of the entire Book of Joel. According to the first three verses of the first chapter, the prophecy is for our day. Here it is: "The field is wasted, the land mourneth; for the corn is wasted: the new wine is dried up, the oil languisheth... The harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and... the apple tree, and all the trees of the field are withered... The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered. "How do the beasts groan! The herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate... The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire" (the sun's torrid rays) "hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness." (Joel 1:10-12, 15-20). This prophetic description needs no comment. It sounds like a news dispatch written last August!
The Solemn Warning For Us
But what is the SIGNIFICANCE of this prophecy, and its terrible fulfillment? It is a last-minute SOLEMN WARNING to all who are willing to see and to heed — that the TIME OF GOD'S WRATH — THE LAST PLAGUES — IS AT HAND! For, when this happens, we ae told in this prophecy to DO SOMETHING! "Sanctify ye a FAST, call a SOLEMN ASSEMBLY, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and CRY UNTO THE LORD, 'Alas for the day!' for the DAY OF THE LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come." (Vs. 14, 15). When this world-wide drought appears this prophecy commands us to: "Blow ye the trumpet in Zion, and sound an alarm in my holy mountain, LET ALL THE INHABITANTS OF THE LAND TREMBLE: for the day of the Lord cometh, for it is nigh at hand; a day of darkness and of gloominess, a day of clouds and of thick darkness." (Joel 2:1-2). The "DAY OF THE LORD" is the time of God's WRATH against the sins of this present world — the LAST PLAGUES. The facts regarding it have been set forth in previous issues of the PLAIN TRUTH, and are partially explained on page 8, this issue. It will be the most terrible time the people of the world have ever lived through. God is going to show just HOW MUCH He hates SIN! Men will seek death, and be unable to find it! (Rev. 9:6). People will be scorched with terrific heat from the sun, and will gnaw their tongues in pain (Rev. 16:8-10). This time will culminate in the second coming of Christ.
What Will Happen This Year!
But there is another aspect of this terrible drought, that accompanied it slightly last year! Listen: "That which the palmerworm hath left hath the locust eaten; and that which the locust hath left hath the cankerworm eaten; and that which the cankerworm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten...For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are as the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek-teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree: he hath made it clean bare, and cast it away; the branches thereof are made white." (Joel 1:4, 6-7). Last summer, accompanying the drought, vast areas had visitations of grasshoppers, worms, and bugs. We quote one example, from a United Press dispatch of January 8, 1935: "One central Illinois farmer last year saw an army of bugs on an 80-acre field in a wave that covered the earth. Helpless, he watched his corn disappear, row by row. At night-fall the entire 80 acres was a tangle of stripped stalks!" And this year, 1935, is destined to see the final and REAL fulfillment of this prophecy of God's great army of a "nation" of bugs! — and probably a recurrence of the drought even worse than last year! This year, as Joel's prophecy foretells, the bark will be taken, the branches will be left white, the vines, stalks, etc., will be CLEAN BARE. Last year this host of insects destroyed and estimated half billion dollars' worth of crops. Thru the past winter scientists have discovered billion of bugs sleeping in snow-covered hedgerows. Last summer's drought, they say, is responsible. This coming summer these bugs will have multiplied into such an army of destruction that scientists already are predicting they will cause devastation and waste exceeding the whole industrial depression! The Weather Bureau at Washington says the subsoil moisture is so depleted that nothing short of unusually heavy rains will prevent drought this summer. We face the probability of a food shortage such as has never been known in American history!
Only ONE Escape!
We have been trying to tell our readers that THE PRESENT ORDER IN DOOMED! It's final destruction — politically, economically, socially, religiously — is now but a matter of months off! Your only hope of escape lies in following the instruction of the prophecy. Listen to it: "Therefore also now, saith the Lord, turn ye even to me with ALL YOUR HEART, and with FASTING, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart...and TURN UNTO THE LORD YOUR GOD." (Joel 2:12, 13). Have YOU done it? — with ALL YOUR HEART? Have you been FASTING AND PRAYING recently? Have you turned to God with WEEPING, rending your heart? Have you acknowledged your luke-warm careless condition? Be honest! WILL you do it? RIGHT NOW?
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