Whipped Ocean

Yesterday I got an email from a friend with pictures of an event in Yamba in New South Wales, north of Sydney, Australia, where foam waves washed upon an entire beach and extended 30 miles out into the ocean. This event had not been seen at the beach for more than 30 years.

"Scientists explain that the foam is created by impurities in the ocean, such as salts, chemicals, dead plants, decomposed fish and excretions from seaweed. All are churned up together by powerful currents which cause the water to form bubbles. These bubbles stick to each other as they are carried below the surface of the current toward the shore. As a wave starts to form on the surface, the motion of the water causes the bubbles to swirl upwards and, massed together, they become foam. The foam 'surfs' towards shore until the wave 'crashes', tossing the foam into the air."

A 12 year old surfer said this: "Me and my mates just spent the afternoon leaping about in that stuff." he said. "It was quite cool to touch, it was really weird. It was like clouds of air, you could hardly feel it." (quoted from the email received)

I have been doing a little Bible study on the book of Jude. Actually I have been spending weeks reading, rereading, and pondering the verses in Jude while also reading a couple of commentaries on Jude. The entire book of Jude is warning of apostates which would infiltrate the church in the last days. Jude warns us very explicity and graphically describes what these apostates are like. I couldn't help but think of these verses in Jude when I saw the pictures:

These are men who are hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves; clouds without water, carried along by winds; autumn trees without fruit, doubly dead, uprooted; wild waves of the sea, casting up their own shame like foam; wandering stars, for whom the black darkness has been reserved forever. Jude 12,13

What a graphic depiction of apostates these pictures gave me! The composition of the foam and the words of the young boy as he describes the delight he had "playing" in the foam and what it felt like were serious words of warning to me.

How easy it is to not think about what is happening around us and to just "play" with something that is different, a unique event, or an incredible phenomena which could actually be very unhealthy for us. Something that is such fun can, in actuality, be that which is hollow and empty and be "clouds of air". If we "hardly feel" it, we will not be alert to its dangers. Apostasy, or false doctrine, is formed in much the same way as this cappuccino ocean was formed: impurities that are tossed together, impurities, which when churned together, stick together.

Such an incredible word picture of what we are to be forewarned, and thus forearmed about.