p. 7 | The Earthquake’s Message

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 11, 1909

The Earthquake’s Message

A CORRESPONDENT of the Washington Post sent to that paper a vivid account of the recent earthquake, which was printed under the significant title, “Like End of World.” This title indicates that the event to the ordinary observer conveys a message of warning concerning the day of destruction now near at hand. The correspondent of the Post designates the earthquake as “the most stupendous tragedy in the history of mankind,” and declares that “neither pen nor camera can give a faintly adequate impression of even the residue of utter desolation which nature has left.” After reciting with much detail the story of this greatest catastrophe, the correspondent of the Post thus closes his letter:—

So Messina died, and was buried. Leave her to her fate. Let her dead bury the dead. Now I am leaving the accursed city, this white inferno. Never may I look upon its like again. Her name must stand hereafter in the vocabulary of all tongues as the synonym of transcendent horror and human suffering. I have given but a fragmentary and inadequate translation of the greatest of human documents written by God or the devil with a single stroke of his pen.

This is but one of the latter-day documents, illustrated with scenes of ruin, and punctuated with cries of terror and groans of suffering, which proclaim to all the dwellers on the face of the earth that the hour of God’s judgment is come, and that soon the world will be brought face to face with its Maker. At the same time there is going forth to the world the final proclamation of the gospel, to prepare a people for translation when “the earth is utterly broken down, the earth is clean dissolved, the earth is moved exceedingly.” In this message of deliverance is found the only hope for the people of this generation.