History shows us that sometimes churches explode. Things seem fine for a time, then, Boom! Everything gets lit up and people get hurt.

You may think I’m talking about church splits, but I’m not. I’m talking about literal churches blowing up.

Back in the day, primarily during the 17^th and 18^th centuries, churches were the most solid building in town. This was also during the time when lots of gunpowder was used.

The best place to store gunpowder was in vaults underneath those solid churches. Sounds reasonable.

However, not only were churches the most solid structures in town, they were typically the tallest, making them prime targets for lightning strikes.

Uh-oh.

Put those two things together and you get exploding churches.

The biggest church explosion of this kind was in Brescia, Italy, the Church of San Nazaro was struck by lightning on August 18, 1769 exploding around 200,000 pounds of gunpowder. The explosion destroyed a sixth of the city and threw large stones a kilometer away from the epicenter. It is estimated that around 3,000 people were killed.

This event helped the adoption of Benjamin Franklin’s lightning rods. However, it also kicked off a huge debate about whether Franklin’s pointed lightning rods were better than blunt lightning rods. A huge argument ensued.

This sounds way more like modern day church explosions—people who don’t know what they are talking about arguing about stupid things. Experiments later showed that there is no discernible difference in performance between pointy and blunt lightning rods. All the arguing was for naught once again.

Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it. Thanks to this incident, your church doesn’t have large stockpiles of gunpowder in the basement. Or something.

This story is definitely an illustration just waiting for a sermon.