Hiroshima in 1985
Four decades later, on March 31, 1985, I visited Hiroshima to conduct meetings for ministers and members in the local Seventh-day Adventist church. During a break, I was escorted downtown to an exceptionally large grassy park, “Ground Zero.” All that stood there were the ruins of one building (the “atomic dome”), in a fenced enclosure over on one edge of the park. Its grotesquely twisted steel girders angrily stabbed the sky; in the center of the park was a large rectangular Peace Memorial Museum, raised up perhaps 30 feet above the pavement on concrete “stilts.”GVEGW 126.3
Inside I learned that the first A-bomb killed and destroyed in three ways: (1) the heat from the fireball literally vaporized steel and concrete within a radius of several miles (the apostle Peter spoke of last-day elements melting from “fervent heat”); (2) the concussion from the detonation flattened thousands of reinforced steel structures (again, Peter said the heavens would pass away “with a great noise”); and (3) deadly radiation burned and contaminated everything for miles around.GVEGW 126.4
I felt as if I were standing where the end of the world began!GVEGW 126.5
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were not, however, the first cities in history to be destroyed by “balls of fire.”GVEGW 126.6
Writing from Europe in the Review and Herald in 1886, Mrs. White described the destruction of Sodom and the cities of the plain (see Genesis 19:29), about 1900 B.C., in this graphic depiction:GVEGW 126.7
“As the sun arose for the last time upon the cities of the plain, the people thought to commence another day of godless riot. All were eagerly planning their business or their pleasure, and the messenger of God was derided for his fears and his warnings. Suddenly as the thunder peal from an unclouded sky fell balls of fire on the doomed capital.”GVEGW 126.8
Then immediately Ellen White made this stunning application to the end of the world:” ‘So shall also the coming of the Son of man be.’ The people will be eating and drinking, planting and building, marrying and giving in marriage, until the wrath of God shall be poured out without mixture of mercy. The world will be rocked to sleep in the cradle of carnal security.” 10The Review and Herald, October 26, 1886; cited in The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 5:1122.GVEGW 127.1
If, indeed, I had stood where “the end of the world began,” and if nuclear destruction is to be a part and parcel of the climax of events just preceding the Second Coming, then Mrs. White’s assurances for Christians, in this context, must be especially appreciated and encouraging.GVEGW 127.2
For, she declares, while the ninety-first psalm (“a thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee”) has been the refuge of God’s people in every age during the 3,000 years since David first reduced it to writing, yet it has a special application to those who live just before the close of probation: 11The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 3:843.GVEGW 127.3
“In the ninety-first psalm is a most wonderful description of the coming of the Lord to bring the wickedness of the wicked to an end, and to give to those who have chosen Him as their Redeemer the assurance of His love and protecting care.” 12Ms 151 1901, p. 3; cited in The S.D.A. Bible Commentary 3:1150. (Italics supplied.)GVEGW 127.4
How interested and excited I was, then, while eating my last meal in Hiroshima at our church (built after the atomic devastation of August 6, 1945), when the local church elder responded to our question “How many Seventh-day Adventists died in that first atomic blast in 1945?” As this Japanese Christian leader looked at us, his eyes began to brim with tears and he answered softly through an interpreter, “Not one!”GVEGW 127.5
Yes, some experienced radiation burns; most lost their houses and all earthly possessions. But not one Seventh-day Adventist lost his or her life! The promise was sure: “It shall not come nigh thee. Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see.... There shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone” (Psalm 91:7-12).GVEGW 127.6