What were these white vapors? Could they signify bacteriological warfare or nerve gas that could destroy multitudes of people in a few moments time? Then I heard the voice of God, as He spoke again:
“Behold, the Lord makes the earth empty, and makes it waste, and turns it upside down, and scatters abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people. So with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the buyer, so with the seller, as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him. The land shall be utterly emptied, and utterly spoiled, for the Lord has spoken this word. The earth mourns and fades away. The world languishes and fades away. The haughty people of the earth do languish. The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore has the curse devoured the earth and they that dwell therein are desolate; therefore the inhabitants of the earth are burned and few men are left” (Is. 24:1-6).
As I watched, the coughing grew worse. It sounded like a person was about to cough out his lungs. The statue was moaning and groaning. She was in mortal agony. The pain must have been terrific, as again and again, she tried to clear her lungs of those horrible white vapors. I watched her there in the Gulf, as she staggered, clutching her lungs and her breast with her hands. Then she fell to her knees.
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In a moment, she gave one final cough, and made a last desperate effort to rise from her knees, and then fell face forward into the waters of the Gulf and lay still as death.
Tears ran down my face as I realized that she was dead! Only the lapping of the waves, splashing over her body, which was partly under the water, and partly out of water, broke the silence. “A fire devours before them, and behind them a flame burns; the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them, a desolate wilderness” (Joel 2:3).
The Sirens
Suddenly the silence was shattered by the screaming of sirens. The sirens seemed to scream, “RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!”
Never before had I heard such shrill, screaming sirens. They seemed to be everywhere—to the North, South, the East and the West. There seemed to be multitudes of sirens. And as I looked, I saw people everywhere running. But it seemed none of them ran more than a few paces, and then they fell. And even as I had seen the statue struggling to regain her poise and balance, and finally falling to die on her face, I now saw millions of people falling in the streets, on the sidewalks, struggling.
I heard their screams for mercy and help. I heard their horrible coughing as though their lungs had been seared with fire. I heard the moanings and groanings of the doomed and the dying. As I watched, a few finally reached shelters, and above the moaning and groanings, I heard these words:
“A noise shall come even to the ends of the earth for the Lord has a controversy with the nations. He will plead with all flesh; He will give them that are wicked to the sword, says the Lord. Behold evil shall go forth from nation to nation, and a great whirlwind shall be raised up from the coasts of the earth. And the slain of the Lord shall be at that day from one end of the earth even onto the other end of the earth: they shall not be lamented neither gathered nor buried; they shall be dung upon the ground” (Jer. 25:31-33).
Joyce Meyer 
Stephen Strang 
Charisma Media Staff 
