Sudden Destruction by L. A. S.

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 20, 1902

“Sudden Destruction”

By L. A. S.

THE catastrophe which has turned the eyes of the civilized world upon the island of Martinique, in the French West Indies, stands without a parallel in all the history of disasters for the suddenness with which nature’s concealed agencies of destruction overwhelmed an entire city filled with thousands of people, giving no opportunity for even the fleetest-footed inhabitant to escape. Other volcanic eruptions there have been which wrought memorable destruction of life and property, and earthquakes with even greater loss of life than is reported from this stricken island; but never before, since the Almighty rained fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, has there been anything to parallel the storm of fire which overwhelmed St. Pierre, the chief city of Martinique, from the neighboring volcano of Mount Pelée, on the morning of May 8.

When Vesuvius rained destruction upon Pompeii, many of the inhabitants found time to escape from the doomed city, and many who lost their lives had turned back after treasures which they believed they would have time to rescue from their homes. At St. Pierre there was no attempt to save anything but life, and eyewitnesses of the catastrophe

agree that for only two or three minutes was existence possible anywhere within the city after the eruption began. The swiftest horse, or even a railway train at full speed, could hardly have carried a human soul to safety from a death so swift.

We are somewhat accustomed in this country to an agency of destruction called the tornado, which levels houses and does general damage by the force of the air that we breathe. Suppose, then, that fire were substituted for air in the tornado; how much more fearful would be its destructive power! It was nothing less than a tornado of fire which swept the city of St. Pierre; its force was that of the blast which accompanies an explosion, for it was in truth a gigantic explosion which occurred on that fatal morning down in the bowels of the burning mountain, and the neighboring city, five miles distant, was the victim of its fiery force. Like a gigantic boiler which has become weakened in some place from excessive strain, the overlying crust of earth within the crater, subjected to the pressure of forces beyond the ability of human instruments to measure, suddenly gave way above them and “blew up,” liberating lava and burning gases and red-hot ashes, which rose into the air and swept over the surrounding territory almost in a moment of time.

In an earthquake shock there is comparative safety in the fields, away from the falling buildings of the city or town; but neither city nor field, nor yet the sea, afforded safety within a radius of miles from the spouting crater. The ships in the harbor of St. Pierre, of which there were many, were overwhelmed and destroyed almost as quickly as the houses on the land. One steamship which had steam up, escaped by cutting its anchor cable, and steaming at full speed out of the harbor, not without a deep coating of fiery ashes on its deck, and nearly half its crew dead or injured from the fiery hail. The day, which had dawned clear and bright, was turned to black darkness by the falling ashes, through which penetrated dimly the glare of the burning city, and the cries of perishing thousands on the shore. One survivor says, “It was like witnessing the end of the world.”

Profitably may we pause and reflect, with the picture of this terrible event before our minds, that as surely as the word of God is true, a destruction like that which has blotted St. Pierre from the earth awaits the whole wide world at no distant date. In that way will a righteous God punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity. “Upon the wicked he shall rain snares, fire and brimstone, and an horrible tempest: this shall be the portion of their cup.” Ps. 11:6. Of this destruction the world is to be warned ere the cup of its iniquity is full. The King’s business requires haste.

Why came this sudden destruction upon the inhabitants of St. Pierre? Not, certainly, because they were wicked above all others upon the earth. “Suppose ye that these . . . were sinners above all . . . because they suffered such things? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” Luke 13:1–4. L. A. S.