We just passed the twentieth anniversary of the 2004 Christmas Day Tsunami in the Indian Ocean. I developed a fascination for what happened that day....and maybe not regularly but often return to the same YouTube videos that I've watched over and over....and occasionally as I did yesterday find some new ones.
That earthquake was the third largest ever recorded and the first tsunami of that size since the late 1800s....and was followed a little less than seven years later by the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
In the videos that I found yesterday....a German tourist was recording at the beginning of the beach in Khao Lak, Thailand....when the water receded almost 500 yards. I have often wondered what I would have done on our many beach vacations had the water receded suddenly...and so far? I can't say....but I know what I would do today....and I see the same warning in God's Word.
The loss of life in that tsunami is estimated at 250,000! In the first video that I came across yesterday....with the German tourist....there is laughter all around them....but the man taking the video notices something strange on the horizon. His focus comes in to some children playing in the surf....and then to two people paddling out on surf boards. It takes two or three minutes but the giant wave comes in....and the people now are walking away fast....then running....then screaming. The only thing discernable on the video is an occasional shot of a running foot....or a tree limb....as it is all a blur.
In the second video it is a French couple filming. The woman wades out and climbs in a boat....the man takes a video of it....and then the water disappears. The woman gets out of the boat in the mud....the man senses something is wrong....they begin to walk away fast.....then run....then comes the screaming. This couple survived as they entered the hotel and climbed to the highest level.
We were on the road yesterday....and I'm one of the slower drivers....as I actually enjoy the scenery. So at least a thousand cars passed us on the trip. My website bumper stickers are always on the back of the vehicle as we take a trip of any distance....and they were on yesterday. I always add another sticker to get the attention of those who are behind....and we were pressed for time so the sticker that I put on was not a great choice. It simply said.....WARNING. I can tell when an iPhone or a mobile device visits this website....and on that four hour trip there was not one of the thousand cars that passed by where the passenger was intrigued by the word....WARNING. I would have thought that even a laughable curiosity would have drawn some to see what the warning was.
I really wasn't surprised that no one was curious....because I have encountered this same false feeling of safety for years now. It is the exact same false feeling of security that the both Israel and Judah.....and Jerusalem had....before the judgments that God had been giving them through his prophets...sometimes 40 years of warning....before the judgments arrived....first as an odd wave in the distance....then something to be concerned about....then everyone coming inside the walls of the city....and then the slow catastrophe. That Catastrophe is just ahead of us....and we have had dozens upon dozens of warnings
All of the surrounding countries in the Indian Ocean commemorated the 2004 tsunami. One man....British I believe....was holding his teenage son to a tree until the water ripped them apart. Only the father survived. In another a young boy was tending his elephant....when the animal took off for the hills. This before the wave even came ashore. The boy ran after him....and that saved his life. In another a woman on a boat commented that all the fish were suddenly swimming out to sea. Even the animals can discern the warnings!
Today they have tsunami alert sirens installed. With us it is the opposite....as we once had our sirens....in men like Billy Graham and Sproul and many others who....their job of warning over....they were called home to their Lord and Savior and King. The surf today has receded....and in the mud we can see Trump and Biden and Obama and all of the other sordid crustaceans that always lie below the surface. The giant white wave is visible on the horizon....and we are at this time simply staring at it sayings things like...."Look at that....that's odd."
Jesus to the Pharisees and Sadducees from Mathew 16: 2,3
"When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'It will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.' You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times."
