Geophysical Research Letters is a serious international technical journal with a very specialized readership that has never been noted for sensationalism. It can hardly be considered a tabloid. All the more astonishing — and important — therefore is a sober article which presents incontrovertible evidence that the entire coastal belt of Guyana will be totally devastated by an event which is inevitable but the exact timing of which is uncertain. Moreover, Guyana’s entire population will be wiped out in a few seconds. In many other parts of the Caribbean, destruction will be catastrophic, and millions of West Indians are doomed to perish. All of this is documented with cold, clinical scientific objectivity and precision.
La Palma is the largest volcano of the western Canary Islands. It is potentially the most dangerous volcano on earth. On average it erupts every 40 years. It last erupted in 1949, so a big eruption is overdue. Over the centuries the erupting volcano has produced many destructive landslides. In the 1949 eruption the volcano cracked in two and a colossal chunk of land the size of Barbados became unstable, slipped several meters toward the Atlantic, and now is perilously poised, a disaster waiting to happen. Scientists have predicted that in the next eruption this huge chunk may fail altogether and plunge into the ocean, generating a dome of water a mile high. This will spread out, traveling at the speed of a jet plane. A series of waves 130 feet high will hit the Guyana coast, destroying everything miles inland of the sea wall. Barbados, Puerto Rico and some other West Indian islands will be battered by even mightier waves, up to 170 feet high. Islands without mountains such as Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, and St. Croix will, for a time, disappear entirely beneath the sea. In the U.S.A., most of the buildings in Washington, including the White House and the Pentagon will vanish. A conservative estimate of the death toll worldwide runs into hundreds of millions.
There is plenty of evidence that such events have happened in the past. Some scientists believe that the ten plagues recorded in Exodus, and the behavior of the Red Sea, followed and were the result of a smaller, but still massive, seismic wave generated by an explosive eruption of the island volcano of Thera in Greece. The same eruption destroyed many cities, the entire Greek army, and perhaps much of the high Minoan civilization. A mass of earth still smaller than the unstable mass on La Palma, which slid into the ocean in Hawaii, triggered waves of similar size on the east coast of Australia. If this prehistoric event should occur today, half the population of Australia would be drowned. Preparations for such a coming event are impossible.
The Lord Jesus predicted that before his return “on the earth nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea” (Luke 21:25).
“We will not fear, though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with the surging” (Psa. 46:2). Why? Because “God will be our refuge and strength” and there is a “city of God” and a “holy place where the Most High dwells”.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One