Listening to prophets and paying heed to their counsels can save us physically as well as spiritually.  Prophets know things others don’t.  Their counsel may sometimes seem illogical, but safety can only be found in following it.

This principle is perfectly illustrated by two stories:

In 1962 two American scientists were in Peru observing the glaciers on Mount Huascarán (pronounced wasca’ ran), a 22,000-foot-high mountain.  They realized that a glacier was undermining a vertical face of the mountain.  It was plain to them that sooner or later this massive slab would come down, and that the resulting avalanche would bury the town of Yungay, over nine miles away down a steep valley.

The scientists, David Bernays and Charles Sawyer, made their discovery known to the town.  To their surprise and consternation their announcement was greeted not with deep gratitude, but with contempt.  They were disturbers of the peace.  They had caused a panic.  They were told to recant their warning or face imprisonment.

They fled the country.

Eight years later, on 31 May 1970, an earthquake hit the area.  The vertical wall of rock peeled off the face of Mount Huascarán , and at an average speed of 175-210 MPH, tumbled over 11 miles down the valley and buried the town.  Over 20,000 people lost their lives.

An even larger disaster was the earthquake-caused tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004.  It is estimated that over 200,000 people lost their lives within minutes.  Entire towns and villages up and down the coasts of several countries were wiped out.

The earthquake occurred under the sea, and caused  the sudden subsidence, or sinking, of a section of the ocean floor.  Water rushed in to fill the sudden void.  This water movement actually drained bays up and down the coast.  Newscasts at the time showed people walking out into the bays to explore the exposed sea bottom and to pick up sea shells and fish.  Of course the water came back.  It returned in a towering wave that buried and obliterated everything on the seacoast.

In Myanmar (Burma), however, there was one village where there was not a single casualty.  It was a fishing village where for centuries the people had spent their lives living from and studying the sea.  The elders of the village had been told by their predecessors about the “laboon,” a man-eating wave.  If ever they saw the ocean recede, they were to run for high ground.

On 26 December 2004, the ocean receded.  An old man told everyone to run for high ground:  a “laboon” was coming.  His own daughter called him a liar, but he wouldn’t rest until everyone had gotten to high ground where they watched in safety as their village was destroyed.

When prophets speak, it pays to listen.