As the Days of Noah

“The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.” [Genesis 6:11]

The American Civil War was over, and the S.S. Sultana was heading home, overloaded with recently liberated prisoners of war anxious to see their families. Even though the Sultana had a legal capacity to carry only 376 passengers, there were more than 2,300 people crammed on the sagging decks. With six times more passengers than she had been designed to carry, there was barely room for standing. To make matters worse, the Sultana had been neglecting proper maintenance.

These ominous factors came together during the homeward journey. At 2:00 a.m., three of the ship’s four boilers exploded, destroying a good portion of the ship and sending hundreds of soldiers flying into the icy water. Some of the dazed men were able to cling to floating wreckage until other boats arrived to rescue them, but most were not so fortunate. Hot coals scattered by the blast caught the rest of the ship on fire, forcing many to choose between burning on the ship and drowning in the cold water.

When it was over, an estimated 1,600 of the 2,300 passengers perished, and many others were badly wounded. In fact, more people died in the Sultana disaster than the infamous Titanic. The Sultana might be listed as one of the greatest ocean disasters, except the Sultana never went to sea. It sank in the Mississippi River – only 150 yards from land. Moreover, news of this terrible steamboat tragedy was relegated to the newspapers’ back pages: it was April 27, 1865, and the War Between the States was just ending. The recent assassination of Abraham Lincoln, the killing of John Wilkes Booth, and the deaths of more than 600,000 soldiers in America’s bloodiest war filled the papers. Surrounded by violence, the nation had become desensitized to death. The deaths of 1,600 Union soldiers on their way home from Confederate prisons did not seem like front-page news.

Could we become numb to violence again? Jesus predicted that the end of time would be “as the days of Noah were” (Matthew 24:37). Though the earth will be filled with wickedness and violence, mankind will be preoccupied. But God’s people will not be numb to the wickedness: they will “sigh and cry over all the abominations” (Ezekiel 9:4). May God grant us Christ’s tender heart so that the wickedness and violence of the world will never become our normal!