Understanding Ellen White

Statement 8: Causes of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions

Ellen White wrote in 1864 that “immense forests,” “buried in the earth” have since “become coal” and oil. When the subterranean coal and oil “ignite, . . . [r]ocks are intensely heated, limestone is burned, and iron ore melted. Water and fire under the surface of the earth meet. The action of water upon the limestone adds fury to the intense heat, and causes earthquakes, volcanoes and fiery issues.” ⁴² The context of this remark is an aside about the after effects of the Flood (Gen. 6-8). The complex post-Flood developments are not clearly understood. Although no current theories of volcanism support the geological mechanisms she describes, there is support for several of her assertions. For instance, O. Stutzer’s Geology of Coal agrees that “subterranean fires in coal beds” have been “ignited through spontaneous combustion, resulting in the melting of nearby rocks that are classed as pseudo volcanic deposits” Stutzer documents several historical examples, including “a burning mountain,” an outcrop that “lasted over 150 years,” and that “the heat from one burning coal bed was used for heating greenhouses in that area from 1837 to 1868”⁴³ More recently, an entire volume of Reviews in Engineering Geology was dedicated to the relatively common global phenomenon of coal fires. ⁴⁴ UEGW 187.1