In the mid-eighteenth century, Lisbon was the fourth largest city in Europe. Benefiting from gold coming from the Portuguese colony of Brazil, the city was filled with churches (around 500) and home to colonies of English Protestant traders, Huguenots, and Irish. Its destruction on All Saints Day, November 1, 1755, by the largest earthquake ever recorded—8.75–9 on the Richter scale—was “and still remains the most notable earthquake in history.” It has been described in its effect as “comparable to the explosion of the Atomic Bomb at Hiroshima.” Yet despite its contemporary impact upon the world of the eighteenth century, it has largely been just a footnote in the history books. This fascinating volume corrects this omission, showing what a terrible and fearful event the earthquake was and the profound effect it had upon the philosophical and theological thinking of the period.
The extent of the quake was massive; its effects were well felt from Ireland to the West Indies, from England to Africa. It lasted ten minutes, followed by two large aftershocks. The Spanish port of Cadiz experienced a tidal wave that threw ten-ton rocks fifty feet into the air.
It was Lisbon itself that experienced the direct horror. A tidal wave 40 feet high, traveling at 400 miles per hour, virtually destroyed the city, killing approximately 40,000 people and starting a fire that burned for a week. The nature of the disaster led to an examination of its cause. The prevailing view of a God who punished evil by direct intervention in nature could not be sustained. A God who would act like this would be a monster.
Rational explanations were sought and the science of seismology was born. These were natural explanations for national disasters.
Perhaps more significant was the attack upon the philosophy of optimism and religion. How could a good God allow or even cause such a terrible disaster? In France, Voltaire wrote his infamous book Candide. In England, Samuel Johnson produced Rasselas. Both books marked the end of a worldview dominated by a God who caused disasters as punishments for evil. The earthquake contributed to a new way of thinking about God and the world. Modernism was born.
The book is worth reading for the consequences of the actual earthquake, the aftershocks, the fire in the city, and how the disaster affected the consciences of men and women all over Europe. This absorbing story adds new meaning to the opening of the sixth seal and the seventh plague in the book of Revelation. The story also illustrates why Bible students saw it as a fulfillment of the earthquake of Revelation 6:12.
