By Jenni Campbell
Contributor
Nothing has captured Jamaica’s rapt attention in recent times, more than when God rocked the island with a 5.0 earthquake two Thursdays ago.
Even those who were fast asleep jumped up, terrified at the sound of rattling roofs, shifting furniture, and swirling rooms. Strong men trembled, dauntless women shuddered, and petrified children screamed in fear for the worst. Social media was flooded with testimonies of the frightful episode, and calls for prayers and mercy were rampant.
Jamaica is quite accustomed to shakings, but there was something different about the recent one.
Somehow, age-old memory rushed to recall 1692, when God plunged Port Royal, dubbed the world’s wickedest city, to the bottom of the sea floor.
According to official sources, God shakes Jamaica quite frequently. For His own purposes, He packed it on top of a faultline near the equator. Local seismologists claim that the island experiences up to two hundred (200) felt earthquakes in any given year.
Port Royal, leading up to 1692, was known as the unofficial capital of Jamaica and one of the busiest and wealthiest ports in the Americas. It was the storehouse and treasury of the West Indies and a common home port for many of the privateers and pirates operating in the Caribbean Sea. It was a place popular for prostitution, wanton murders, the promotion of paedophilia, witchcraft, and sorcery, and a raft of brutal, corrupt, and ungodly operations.
The wrath of God relocated most of that city below sea level and instantly exterminated about 2,000 people and in the tsunami that followed, another 3,000 people died, some due to injuries and disease.
The lessons of 1692 were forgotten two hundred years later, so by 1907, Kingston had grown to become the buzz of business activity in Jamaica, taking on the very complexion of the unrighteous hub that Port Royal was.
A massive 6.2 earthquake shook Kingston that year, dislocating it at its core.
The United States Geological Survey described the quake as one of the world’s deadliest recorded in history. Every building in Kingston was damaged, and subsequent fires culminated in the deaths of about 1,000 people.
Be sure, that many warnings were issued, leading up to both devastations. The Lord God will do nothing until He revealeth His secrets unto His servants the prophets, Amos says. Prophecies and repeated spiritual tremors are a dime a dozen in this season. But, as usual, warnings are ignored, and the fear of the unrighteous remains encapsulated in a few seconds of terror.
The precursor tremors are just blips in the general continuum of life. Everything quickly returns to its immoral abnormalcy once things settle down again.
For the righteous, the recent shaking is understood in the way we now understand God’s move against Port Royal and Kingston.
Last week, Pastor Harry Walcott, of Christian Life Fellowship Church, called the nation to consider the proliferation of gangs, the country’s high homicide rate, the continued rape and murder of our children, as well as fraud and corruption at the highest levels in our society, as the perfect pretext for a proper shaking. Jamaica needs to sit up and pay close attention.
Some may choose to dismiss Pastor Walcott, but it is harder to set aside Apostle Paul in Colossians. He makes it crystal clear that sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil, desires, greed and all forms of idolatry will certainly result in God’s wrath.
It is true that God’s mercy knows no bounds, but so too His judgement.
God is not confined to our understanding of the depth of His mercy or the excesses of His judgement. He is not limited to our vain imaginations of what may or may not befall us. His move against any nation can be in the physical, spiritual or both, at any time through any phenomenon known or unknown to mortal man.
While people are thinking peace and safety, destruction could come suddenly.
Jamaica is already being shaken in myriads of ways at various intensities, whether we choose to believe it or not.
The church has been placed in a powerful pulveriser, crushed as if in a winepress. Apostasy is rife, membership is dropping like hot potatoes, and the divisions among the various bodies are more pronounced now than ever before. Banks executives, several in any one day, are being uprooted from their lofty, long-held positions. Pestilence in the form of dengue outbreaks and other maladies are emerging. Gordon House, where members of Parliament congregate to conduct the people’s business, has been rocked with scandals after scandals, and the Speaker of the House shifted. The education system has been avalanched; violence even among our children is unprecedented. Even the Office of the Director of Public Prosecution has seen tremors. The very foundations of the nation—in public policies, programmes, financial structures, and social relationships are being shaken.
The prophets have warned that the shakings will hit the public sector and political parties hard and even private sector boardrooms will not be spared until God gets Jamaica’s full and undivided attention. It is going to hit every secret plans that the government has made with foreigners. What has been hidden in the privacy of boardrooms and bedrooms will be shouted from rooftops.
God is calling Jamaica to repentance and to turn away from wickedness. It is time to repent, before what is already at play in the spiritual is realised in devastating proportions in the natural.
It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the Living God.
