The day of the Lord will come like a thief. The heavens will disappear with a roar; the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything done in it will be laid bare.
2 Peter 3:10
Words: Charles Wesley, Hymns Occasioned by the Earthquake, March 8, 1750, Part 2 (London: Strahan, 1750), number 2.
Music: Hilkiah Lowell Mason, The Modern Psalmist (Boston, Massachusetts: John H. Wilkins & Richard B. Carter, 1839), page 61 (🔊 pdf nwc).
Awake, ye guilty souls, awake,
Nor sleep, till Tophet takes you in!
The Lord of hosts is ris’n to shake
The earth polluted with your sin.
Enter into the Rock, and hide
Your trembling spirits in the dust;
Fly to the clefts, the riven side,
And in a dying Savior trust.
Before the Lord’s fierce anger come,
Before He bring the vengeful day,
And fix th’ irrevocable doom,
And earth’s foundations melt away.
Before its mouth it opens wide,
And gasps to feel the final blow;
Firmer support, ye worms, provide,
Or sink into eternal woe.