96 years ago
The fate of many was decided . . .
It’s still remembered. It doesn’t seem to disappear from our Western consciousness. It’s even resurrected in TV shows and in film. And the name itself has become a part of our language. Titanic!
96 years ago as I write, on 15 April 1912, the Titanic sank. On that fateful day, 1,500 of the 2,200 on board were to die. Critical choices hours before, and during the time after the impact with the iceberg would decide their destinies.
With the benefit of hindsight, I often wonder how things might have been different. If only they had not gone so quickly. If they had only listened to the repeated ice warnings. If they’d hit the iceberg head on, and even, having hit, if they’d have been at pains to fill every lifeboat before it was lowered into the calm sea. If only the fate of many could have been different.
Then there were the choices of the moment. The failure to get those from the lower decks to the lifeboats so that the majority of people who were saved were from first and second class. The decision to hold back men from entering the boats, even when they were leaving more than half empty. And then those, who just chose to stay behind. Like Ida Strauss, who stayed with her husband and did not leave him even in death.
It’s chilling stuff to read— and to see on film. But what I find worse is that the fate of all of us is being decided right now. Things are in motion, repeated warnings are ignored, people reject the source of rescue—some even choose ‘death’.
Fact is, we are accountable to God and one day we’ll meet him. We’ll have all died by then, or God will have wound up this world through the return of Jesus Christ. But by then, our final destinies will have been decided. For every one of us will all be raised to meet God and explain for what we’ve done, and how we responded to Jesus Christ while we lived.
On that day, we’ll be divided—into ‘life’ and ‘death’. To be with God, or be separated from Him and everything that is good—and that’ll be hell! And that division will be forever, etched in history, fixed for all time.
How we respond to Jesus now will decide our fate. Jesus is the source of rescue that God has provided. His death—more than adequate to rescue all mankind. His resurrection—powerful enough to make all live. Yet the sadness of this current tragedy is this. Many choose not to come to this lifeboat. Others are locked away with religion, or prevented from coming because they are too attached to what they love. Yet, how we respond now will determine our destiny. If we accept Jesus now we will be forgiven now, and welcomed by him in the future. If we reject him now, we will be unforgiven now, and shut out from all that is good, forever.
Christianity is not a religion, it’s a rescue plan. A rescue engineered at great personal cost by God himself. He’s provided the life saver—he’s at work to bring people into the life boat—but, so many ignore his call too long. It’s a disaster that will be remembered forever.
(See Mark 8:38, 'If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of him when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels', NIV.)
