Man’s Unspeakable Suffering by Dr. Lloyd T . Anderson E ver since sin entered the world, and separation or alienation from
pressed on like corpses hypnotized into a semblance of motion. The snow fell until it seemed to be a solid wall, yet on and on they went. The barometer and the thermometer continued to fall. The very fluid of the eyes congealed with the bitter cold. It was at this time, in a single night, that 200,000 people froze to death around the city of Nikolayevsk. Then, by the end of February, the remnant of the living dead finally reached Lake Baikal. They decided to cross and endeavor to press'toward final safety. The 250,000 people left out of the original 1,250,000 began to cross the 50 mile expanse of gleaming ice which covered the lake. It seemed that nothing could exceed the sufferings of those last three months. Yet on Lake Baikal was the culminating horror of the whole journey. The ice on the lake was a gleaming, glittering floor, smooth and slippery. The cold attained its zenith as the temperature went to 70 degrees below zero. A howling snow storm, which froze the very marrow in their bones was added to the unspeak ably tragic scene. Not one soul •survived Lake Baikal, and the bodies were left right there until the following summer. Then as the surface ice melted, its entire horri ble cargo sank out of sight to the bot tom of the lake. A terrible scene to be sure. Man can approach understanding of physical suffering but will never fully comprehend Calvary for here Christ s agony was not only physical it was also spiritual. He was separated in those moments from Almighty God that we might forever be with Him in glo ry. No wonder we should sing, Halle lujah! What a Saviour!” May we say with Paul, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, anc} the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death (Philippians 3:10).
God thereby, human suffering has been the nemisis of man. Perhaps it has never been so poignantly illustrated, however, as when more than a million men, women and children were de stroyed by the intense Asiatic cold. No doubt it was the largest mass tragedy ever to be wrought by weather. On November 13, 1919 in the city of Omsk, Siberia, a Russian admiral by the name of Kolchak had gathered around him the last remnants of the once mighty Russian army and empire. He decided on that day to withdraw to the Pacific, a distance of almost 5,000 miles across Siberia. His retreating army numbered 500,- 000 men accompanied by 750,000 refu gees from Bolshevism. Among, this group were 25 bishops, 12,000 Ortho dox priests, 4,000 Monks, 45,000 police men, more than 200,000 ladies of Rus- sia’s aristocracy, and children of all ages Admiral Kolchak also had an armoured train of 28 cars, filled with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gold coins. The brave caravan began its unprecedented 5,000 miles trek even as the Siberian winter set in with a vengeance. The cold, which hovered around 40 degrees below zero, increased to 60 degrees. A howling wind and snow storm, cutting like a sharp saw at right angles, added greatly to the horror and suffering. The road soon became strewn with the bodies of frozen human beings, as well as horses. The falling snow enveloped the tragic corpses at the wayside until they looked like a giant serpentine wall along the Siberi an road. For three months this incredible cav alry continued until one day in Febru ary, 1920, they were forced to abandon the’valuable gold. Attempting to load it on sleighs their horses soon died off. In order to save themselves, that which was valued was forgotten. Still they
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