“Those Who Delayed Their Flight Too Long”

WHEN Mt. Vesuvius erupted in August, 79 C.E., many people in Pompeii lost their lives because they delayed their flight to safety too long. Archaeologists, digging in the ruins of this city, found that many tried to prolong the enjoyment of what they were doing when the volcanic disaster occurred. Others were too engrossed in their daily routine of life. And there were those whose selfishness prevented their escape because of trying to take their valuables with them.

The archaeological proof of this is described by C. W. Ceram in his book Gods, Graves, and Scholars. He writes: “The excavators’ shovels revealed all manner of family tragedies, scenes of mothers, fathers, and children caught in absolute extremity. Mothers were found still holding their children in their arms, protecting them with the last bit of veil as they both suffocated. Men and women were dug up who had gathered their valuables together, got as far as the city gate, and there collapsed under the stony hail, still clinging to their gold and precious things. At the threshold of one house two young women were found who had hesitated until it was too late, intending to go back into the house and salvage some of their treasures.

“Body after body was found at the Gate of Hercules, bodies all heaped together, and still encumbered with the household gear that had grown too heavy to drag any farther.” Ceram notes that the first body that was uncovered was “stretched out full-length on the floor . . . with gold and silver coins that had rolled out of bony hands still seeking, it seemed, to clutch them fast.”

In one house “funeral rites had been in progress when cataclysm fell. There they were, the funeral guests, after seventeen hundred years still sprawled on their benches about the table bearing the funeral feast, mourners at their own obsequies.

“In an adjacent building seven children had been surprised by death while innocently playing in a room. In still another structure thirty-four bodies were found, with them the remains of a goat that, in his fright, had rushed indoors to find safety among humankind. Neither courage nor a cool head nor brute strength helped those who delayed their flight too long.”

So, too, in these “last days” of the present system of things. Many people, too busy with materialistic pursuits and “anxieties of life,” put off studying God’s Word. Unwisely they delay flight from this doomed system of things. Do not be one of them.​—Luke 21:34-36.