A Destroying Blast

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 1, 1902

A Destroying Blast

WHAT is probably the most accurate description that has been given of the volcanic outbreak which so suddenly and completely destroyed St. Pierre, so far as such an event could be described by an eyewitness, is the following which is printed in The Independent of June 19. It is furnished by a Catholic priest who lived a short distance inland from St. Pierre, and partly around the mountain from the city, just outside the range of the destroying blast which shot from the volcano. He says:—

At about half-past seven in the morning of May 8, a dense, black mass of smoke rising rapidly, rolling, twirling, and twisting upward to a prodigious height, was seen coming from Pelée’s crater. Suddenly the upper portion dilated like a huge sunflower on its stalk, and the lower part became wrapped in a snow-white wreath of vapor, which encircled the column, and then intermingled with it, and appeared as black cloud and silvery masses. Through the pitchy awning above, lightning played incessantly; and below on the side of the mountain, monster jets started upward until the whole mountain appeared to be a submerged, smoking, burning mass. There was a blinding flash, and it appeared as if some keen-edged knife had cut the stalk of the flower, and with a loud report, like the guns of the navies of the world simultaneously exploding, the black cloud swept down the mountain upon the little city. Lightning flashed and crackled, and the surrounding world became as dark as the darkest night. As the cloud reached the city, there was another blinding flash and a loud report, and from north to south St. Pierre burst into flames. The only fire from the volcano was that of lightning. Flames do not come from the crater.

Science cannot account for the tragic phenomenon which is here described. The titanic forces of nature acted in a new way, which no man had been able to anticipate. And there are yet other events to take place which are equally unconceived of by the world’s system of science, one of which is described in the words, “And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together.” Rev. 6:14. Modern worldly science declares this to be impossible; but the word of the Lord will surely be fulfilled, while those who have despised it will behold and wonder and perish.