A Call to Leave the Cities

28.04.2025

The Perils of the Cities
Few realize the importance of shunning, so far as possible, all
associations unfriendly to religious life. In choosing their surroundings, few make their spiritual prosperity the first consideration.
Parents flock with their families to the cities, because they fancy
it easier to obtain a livelihood there than in the country. The children,
having nothing to do when not in school, obtain a street education.
From evil associates, they acquire habits of vice and dissipation.
The parents see all this, but it will require a sacrifice to correct their
error, and they stay where they are, until Satan gains full control of
their children.
Better sacrifice any and every worldly consideration than to
imperil the precious souls committed to your care. They will be
assailed by temptations, and should be taught to meet them; but it
is your duty to cut off every influence, to break up every habit, to
sunder every tie, that keeps you from the most free, open, and hearty
committal of yourselves and your family to God.
Instead of the crowded city, seek some retired situation where
your children will be, so far as possible, shielded from temptation,
and there train and educate them for usefulness. The prophet Ezekiel
thus enumerates the causes that led to Sodom’s sin and destruction:
“Pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her
and in her daughters; neither did she strengthen the hands of the
poor and needy.” All who would escape the doom of Sodom, must
shun the course that brought God’s judgments upon that wicked
city.
City Living Not God’s Plan
The world over, cities are becoming hotbeds of vice. On every
hand are the sights and sounds of evil. Everywhere are enticements
to sensuality and dissipation. The tide of corruption and crime is.
Call to Leave the Cities
continually swelling. Every day brings the record of violence,—
robberies, murders, suicides, and crimes unnamable.
Life in the cities is false and artificial. The intense passion for
money getting, the whirl of excitement and pleasure seeking, the
thirst for display, the luxury and extravagance, all are forces that,
with the great masses of mankind, are turning the mind from life’s
true purpose. They are opening the door to a thousand evils. Upon
the youth they have almost irresistible power.
One of the most subtle and dangerous temptations that assails the
children and youth in the cities is the love of pleasure. Holidays are
numerous; games and horse racing draw thousands, and the whirl of
excitement and pleasure attracts them away from the sober duties of
life. Money that should have been saved for better uses is frittered
away for amusements.
Through the working of trusts, and the results of labor unions
and strikes the conditions of life in the city are constantly becoming
more and more difficult. Serious troubles are before us; and for
many families removal from the cities will become a necessity.
The physical surroundings in the cities are often a peril to health.
The constant liability to contact with disease, the prevalence of
foul air, impure water, impure food, the crowded, dark, unhealthful
dwellings, are some of the many evils to be met.
It was not God’s purpose that people should be crowded into
cities, huddled together in terraces and tenements. In the beginning
He placed our first parents amidst the beautiful sights and sounds
He desires us to rejoice in today. The more nearly we come into
harmony with God’s original plan, the more favorable will be our
position to secure health of body, and mind, and soul.
A Loitering Spirit
I could not sleep past two o’clock this morning. During the night
season I was in council. I was pleading with some families to avail
themselves of God’s appointed means, and get away from the cities
to save their children. Some were loitering, making no determined
efforts.
Country Living
The angels of mercy hurried Lot and his wife and daughters by
taking hold of their hands. Had Lot hastened as the Lord desired
him to, his wife would not have become a pillar of salt. Lot had too
much of a lingering spirit. Let us not be like him. The same voice
that warned Lot to leave Sodom bids us, “Come out from among
them, and be ye separate, … and touch not the unclean.” Those who
obey this warning will find a refuge. Let every man be wide awake
for himself, and try to save his family. Let him gird himself for the
work. God will reveal from point to point what to do next.
Hear the voice of God through the apostle Paul: “Work out your
own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh
in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” Lot trod the
plain with unwilling and tardy steps. He had so long associated with
evil workers that he could not see his peril until his wife stood on the
plain a pillar of salt forever.
Cities to Be Visited by God’s Judgments
The time is near when the large cities will be visited by the
judgments of God. In a little while, these cities will be terribly
shaken. No matter how large or how strong their buildings, no
matter how many safeguards against fire may have been provided,
let God touch these buildings, and in a few minutes or a few hours
they are in ruins.
The ungodly cities of our world are to be swept away by the besom of destruction. In the calamities that are now befalling immense
buildings and large portions of cities, God is showing us what will
come upon the whole earth.
Results of Unheeded Warnings
I am bidden to declare the message that cities full of transgression, and sinful in the extreme, will be destroyed by earthquakes, by
fire, by flood. All the world will be warned that there is a God who
will display His authority as God. His unseen agencies will cause
Call to Leave the Cities
destruction, devastation, and death. All the accumulated riches will
be as nothingness….
Calamities will come—calamities most awful, most unexpected;
and these destructions will follow one after another. If there will be
a heeding of the warnings that God has given, and if churches will
repent, returning to their allegiance, then other cities may be spared
for a time. But if men who have been deceived continue in the same
way in which they have been walking, disregarding the law of God,
and presenting falsehoods before the people, God allows them to
suffer calamity, that their senses may be awakened.
The Lord will not suddenly cast off all transgressors, or destroy
entire nations; but He will punish cities and places where men have
given themselves up to the possession of Satanic agencies. Strictly
will the cities of the nations be dealt with, and yet they will not be
visited in the extreme of God’s indignation, because some souls will
yet break away from the delusions of the enemy, and will repent and
be converted, while the mass will be treasuring up wrath against the
day of wrath.
Imminence of God’s Judgments
There are reasons why we should not build in the cities. On these
cities, God’s judgments are soon to fall.
The time is near when large cities will be swept away, and all
should be warned of these coming judgments.
O that God’s people had a sense of the impending destruction of
thousands of cities, now almost given to idolatry.
A View of Great Destruction
Last Friday morning, just before I awoke, a very impressive
scene was presented before me. I seemed to awake from sleep, but
was not in my home. From the windows I could behold a terrible
conflagration. Great balls of fire were falling upon houses, and
from these balls fiery arrows were flying in every direction. It was
impossible to check the fires that were kindled, and many places
Country Living were being destroyed. The terror of the people was indescribable.
God’s Efforts to Arouse the People
While at Loma Linda, Calif., April 16, 1906, there passed before
me a most wonderful representation. During a vision of the night, I
stood on an eminence, from which I could see houses shaken like
a reed in the wind. Buildings, great and small, were falling to the
ground. Pleasure resorts, theaters, hotels, and the homes of the
wealthy were shaken and shattered. Many lives were blotted out of
existence, and the air was filled with the shrieks of the injured and
the terrified.
The destroying angels of God were at work. One touch, and
buildings so thoroughly constructed that men regarded them as secure against every danger, quickly became heaps of rubbish. There
was no assurance of safety in any place. I did not feel in any special
peril, but the awfulness of the scenes that passed before me I cannot
find words to describe. It seemed that the forbearance of God was
exhausted, and that the judgment day had come.
The angel that stood at my side then instructed me that but few
have any conception of the wickedness existing in our world today,
and especially the wickedness in the large cities. He declared that
the Lord has appointed a time when He will visit transgressors in
wrath for persistent disregard of His law.
Terrible as was the representation that passed before me, that
which impressed itself most vividly upon my mind was the instruction given in connection with it. The angel that stood by my side
declared that God’s supreme rulership, and the sacredness of His
law, must be revealed to those who persistently refuse to render
obedience to the King of kings. Those who choose to remain disloyal, must be visited in mercy with judgments, in order that, if
possible, they may be aroused to a realization of the sinfulness of
their course.
Call to Leave the Cities
Peril to Those Who Remain Unnecessarily
In harmony with the light given me, I am urging people to come
out from the great centers of population. Our cities are increasing
in wickedness, and it is becoming more and more evident that those
who remain in them unnecessarily do so at the peril of their soul’s
salvation.