With the Fires, We Wonder at Joel 2

  With the news story about how the sun didn't visibly come up in San Francisco one day this past week, and then with the darkness also happening in Oregon, many people's thoughts turned to Joel 2:30-31, which says, "I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. the sun also shall be turned into darkness." 

  Earlier in that same chapter in Joel, it says, "A day of darkness and gloominess. . . . A fire burneth before them; and behind them a flame burneth."

  And, hidden in that passage, Joel 2:2-3, this: "The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a flame burneth." When California first opened up, it was as if it were the Garden of Eden, people flocking to get there. When people set out on the Oregon Trail, Oregon beckoned before them as if it were the Garden of Eden. 

   And now? This is not the first year fires have ravaged the land, destroying cities. There are parts, indeed, being turned into desolate wilderness. "The land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind a desolate wilderness." Whether it is fulfillment of prophecy might be hard to say, but there certainly is a likeness.