AP:  Joplin, MO - A massive tornado that blasted a four mile path across southwestern Missouri slammed into this city with cataclysmic force, ripping into a hospital, upending cars, and leaving only a forest of splintered tree trunks behind where entire neighborhoods once stood.  An unknown number were killed in Joplin on Sunday night, and officials struggling to communicate without power and cellphone service were leery of putting a hard figure on a death toll they feared would rise after daybreak.  Asked about a report that 24 people died, city spokeswoman Lynn Onstot said grimly that officials were afraid it may be more.  "Our fear is that's a low number," she said.  The Missouri National Guard planned to search for the injured throughout the night.  "You see pictures of World War II, the devastation and all that with the bombing.  That's really what it looked like," said Kerry Sachetta, the principal of a flattened Joplin High School.  "I couldn't even make out the side of the building.  It was total devastation in my view.  I just couldn't believe what I saw."  The same storm system that produced the Joplin tornado spawned twisters along a broad swath of the Midwest, from Oklahoma to Wisconsin.  At least one person was killed in Minneapolis.  But the devastation in Missouri appeared to be the worst of the day, eerily reminiscent of the tornadoes that killed more than 300 people across the South last month.  Onstot said the twister believed to be between one and a-half to three quarters of a mile wide was on the ground for nearly four miles.  It hit a hospital packed with patients and a commercial area, including a Home Depot construction store, numerous smaller businesses and restaurants and a grocery store.  Jasper County Emergency Management Director Keith Stammer said an estimated 2,000 buildings were damaged in this city of about 50,000 people some 160 miles south of Kansas City.  Details about fatalities and injuries were difficult to obtain even for emergency management officials because the tornado knocked out power, landline phones, and some cell phone towers, said Greg Hickman, Assistant Emergency Management Director in Newton County.  Among the worst-hit locations in Joplin was St John's Regional Medical Center.  The staff had just a few moments notice to hustle patients into hallways before the storm struck the nine story building, blowing out hundreds of windows and leaving the facility useless.  In the parking lot a helicopter lay crushed on its side, its rotors torn apart and windows smashed.  Nearby, a pile of cars lay crumpled into a single mass of twisted metal.  Matt Sheffer dodged downed power lines, trees and closed streets to make it to his dental office across from the hospital.  Rubble littered a flattened lot where a pharmacy, gas station and some doctor's offices once stood.  "My office is totally gone.  Probably for two to three blocks, it's just leveled," he said.  "The building that my office was in was not flimsy.  It was 30 years old and had two layers of brick.  It was very sturdy and well built."  Early Monday morning, lights from a temporary triage lit what remained of the hospital that  once held as many as 367 patients.  Police officers could be seen combing the surrounding area for bodies.  

My Comments:  Here it is again, "warning, warning, warning...."  This is the "beginning of sorrows" Matthew 24:8.  America needs to get on her knees before God and pray because we are hitting cataclysmic weather, earthquakes and national disasters in record numbers; but this is foretold in the scriptures for the last days.  God, believe it or not, in His mercy will shake everything that can be shaken in this world to get people to cry out to Him for salvation and mercy; because after He arrives to cast judgment on the nations, it will be too late then.  "Now is the day of salvation" II Corinthians 6:2.  Tomorrow may be too late!