It did! It certainly did! And what a racket it made! The hotel desk clerk couldn’t turn it off fast enough. There it went again! How annoying it was; there must be a malfunction in the system somewhere. He firmly turned it off again, and at last the alarm was silent.
Upstairs in the great hotel the fire smoldered on, and the deadly smoke rolled on into room after room in thick, suffocating silence.
Ten hotel guests died that night of smoke inhalation—died quietly, without alarm and without warning.
Would they have said, “Turn the alarm off; let us sleep!” Would they have said, “Oh, that awful noise! It should not be allowed to scare us so?”
Not very likely! But a greater alarm is sounding, a greater disaster is ahead, and too many people would like to hang a DO NOT DISTURB sign on their door, cover their ears against the warning, and go peacefully back to sleep.
But God’s warning is sounding out: “AWAKE, thou that sleepest,” and, “ESCAPE for thy life!” The alarm has sounded. The day is coming-the terrible, terrible day-when “the elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
But an alarm would be useless if there could be no escape. The same writer (the Apostle Peter) tells us that “the Lord...is long-suffering... not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” In “long-suffering” and in love, God sent His Son into the world that “whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
There is the perfect way of escape from all the dark judgment ahead. There is no other way.
If we hide our heads, cover our ears, and try to sleep on in the midst of destruction, there can be no escape.