Guatemala's Big Earthquake

Guatemala was shaken awake and most of its adobe hovels shaken down in the early still dark hours of Feb. 4, 1976. I was jarred awake with a cascade of Bibles crashing all about me from their shelves, along with other books, tracts, pots and pans and dishes. I groped for the light switch in the darkness but no light came on. Then the bed began to skitter across the floor and another book case fell across pinning me to the bed for a minute until I could extricate myself, find the flashlight and study the situation.

The building showed no destruction, not even a crack. We had recently built it and moved in. Finding nothing dangerous about the building, I concluded the earthquake was minor causing only the inconvenience of having to set everything in order. Then I took my flashlight and went out to see how the neighborhood was faring. It was soon apparent there were scored of buildings partially or fully wrecked. People were getting out from the rubble, coming out into the streets in their night clothes, bringing along blankets to stay in the streets. Even those from buildings that seem undamaged prepared to sleep in the street instead of returning inside. Some of us with flashlights went to the more serious cave-ins to help dig out any in need of help.

Over in another neighborhood where we had done so much mission work, the little hovels were mostly adobe, which had collapsed in a mound of dirt and dust, smothering to death the infants, or aged or infirm, but not crushing many to death.

The electric lines being down, there were few radio stations on the air, and those that were on had no good communications or news from outside areas, so that day there seemed little to do except watch those who wanted to set up housekeeping in the streets whether their house was seriously damaged or not.

The next day there began to be a little traffic of cars through the streets and, got out the station wagon, took out the back seats which we generally used to take people to church, and then went down to the big market, buying up everything available to take the poorer and harder hit places, beans, corn, tomatoes, anything.

Later the reports began to come in that the outlying indian villages were much more severely wrecked. So we loaded up the car again leaving the city, going up the mountain roads, plowing up and over landslides to visit our Christian friends in the places where we had so many good meetings. We had had a circuit of about twenty areas, mostly indian villages, there we made the rounds helping with meetings, inside as well as open air meetings. Now we found most of those villages just about levelled . The typical indian house was made of adobe, that is, sun-dried mud bricks. When whitewashed and then roofed with home made red tile, they are quaint, artistic, photogenic, but when a good hard shake comes along, the walls just collapse into dry dirt and that extremely heavy roof crashes down. The death toll was catastrophic, estimates rising steadily settled around 33,000

But we Christians there to help others, soon became aware of a miracle repeated to us by local friends in every village: namely, that while their neighbors had been killed on all sides of them, the believers were spared. The accounts of their miraculous escape was repeated numerous times in different details but the basics were the same, the unbelievers had perished while the saved were saved, one might say.

A pastor in San Lucas was sleeping with his wife in one room and his children in another. When they were shaken awake, they jumped for the outside door, but found it already jammed tight, then they went for the door to the other room, yanked that door open and the children piled in just as that part of the roof crashed down right behind the children, they stood stunned nearly by the crash so close and deadly, and they all ran through the same door, running over the fallen roof tiles, just as the roof of their own room caved in. Result: nearly fatal close shaves, but actually no one had a scratch or bruise. They last only their little house, while there were multiple deaths in nearly all the houses around them.

We left the load of foodstuffs with them to distribute to the most needy and went back to the city for more, and then on to another village.

Gradually the army got under way to distribute the larger quantities, but there were ever increasing rumors that the loads of imported things flown in as donations from many other countries, were usually kept by the officers and soldiers for themselves, the canned foods and fruits, condensed milk, dried dates and figs, and the like, while the army then distributed the common staples of beans and corn. However the reputations of the evangelical missions was just the opposite, that they were really serving their constituents out of devotion to God and humanity, often making considerable sacrifices personally when the donations from the U.S. were not enough.

After a few days of distributing food necessities, we began to go over the same circuit to give out roofing, that is, corrugated tin roof, we often term it, but it is not tin, of course, but galvanized iron sheets, giving a family enough to make up a roof for a small place.

All of you Christian friends heard the earthquake news every day on the TV reports and sent in extra donations promptly without any special appeal. Some of you had your own church join in with larger amounts so that the total received and distributed at this time was about $14,000. That may not seem much to Americans, but back then that could buy a lot of roofing, food, blankets and also some sacks of concrete, cement and reinforcing rods.

I had written and had printed a brief paper on making adobe safe. Many old timers said they used more straw or reeds and rushes in their old bricks, which gave much greater strength, but that gradually over the years the people had gotten careless using plain mud. Their fathers had learned the hard way from previous earthquakes, but after a generation passes without a major tremor, they build again without due care.

In the city also. it cane to light that many nice looking modern buildings had had some corrupt builder or politician using material below specifications which went some years without being detected but then comes a quake that reveals all. The Bible tells of a man who builds on the sand, it goes up easily and rapidly, no sweat or sacrifice, like easy faith religion, but then come the storms, the house falls and great is the crash thereof. Some testimonies sound very joyful and use the right phrases, but if Christ is really our Rock, we come to know both aspects of the cross, that which He bears for us, and that of shame and reproach which we bear for His Namesake.

I do not wish to imply there were no deaths at all among Christian families. There were a few, but actually by my estimates, there were only about one in s hundred, as compared to the unbelievers. This was so markedly noticeable that it was commonly spoken of among the unsaved survivors who began to come to the evangelical meetings in great numbers. The Bible says when God's judgments are on the earth, the people will turn to Him.

Sometimes in hearing of the successes of Communism in Nicaragua, and previously in Viet Nam, Cuba and Poland et al we might feel depressed. But then we recall in all those places, the people had generally rejected the Gospel, had clung to their sins, vices and false religion, so the God could see that the only way to break off the shackles of their idolatry would be by some force, such as communism. The Bible speaks repeatedly of the increase of earthquakes in the last days, so we are not surprised to hear that since the Guatemala quake, many other countries also have experienced major ones leaving many dead. Many preachers have said they have had visions of California having another major shake-up. It is certainly the center for most of the un-scriptural sects and false religion of the U.S., but the influence of these cults has spread all over the country.

We pray that every earthquake in every place it comes, will turn out as spiritually beneficial as that of Guatemala. The percentage of testifying believers was about 3% when I came here 25 years ago, while now it is about 10%.

Let us keep spiritually awake, watching and waiting, separate from Babylon, so that as judgments increase on the earth, we shall feel secure.