The story is told about a group called themselves
fishermen. There were many fish in the water all around this group. In fact,
the whole area was surrounded by streams and lakes filled with fish. And the
fish were hungry.
General Booth told of a man leaving Australia
who had been working in the gold fields, and had acquired a fortune. He was on
a ship, when a leak was sprung. The life-boats were lost, and the people were
without hope. This strong man thought he could fight through the waves to the
island, and he was about to spring into the water when a little girl, whose
mother had been lost in the storm, asked him, “Sir, can you save me?” He
looked at his belt of gold, and then at the child, and then at the belt, and
then at the child again.
On a dangerous sea
coast where shipwrecks often occur, there was once a crude little life-saving
station. The building was just a hut, and there was only one boat, but the few
devoted members kept a constant watch over the sea and with no thought for themselves
went out day and night tirelessly searching for the lost. Some of those who
were saved, and various others in the surrounding area, wanted to become
associated with the station and give of their time and money and effort for the
support of its work. New boats were bought and new crews trained.
I heard once of a man who dreamed
that he was swept into Heaven, and oh, he was so delighted to think that he had
at last got there. All at once one came and said: “Come, I want to show you something.”
He took him to the battlements, and he said, “Look down yonder; what do you see?”
“I see a very dark world.”
“Look and see if you know it.”
“Why, yes,” he said, “that is the
world I have come from.”
“What do you see?”
“Men are blindfolded there; many of
them are going over a precipice.”
In 1997 Chinese
firefighters succeeded in putting out a 400 year old fire. The fire in the Baiyanghe
coalfield started in 1560. The fire consumed over 127 million tons of coal
before it was extinguished.
Four hundred years is a long time, but it is nothing in view of
eternity. The fires of Hell will never end or be put out.
Source: Reuters News Agency, 11/29/1997
Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College
In 1990 newspapers reported that city workers in
Newport Beach, California, were sifting through two and
one-half tons of trash, looking for $42,500 mistakenly discarded at the Great
American Bank and hauled away by garbage trucks. That’s a significant loss of
money, but it is only money. The loss of human lives and souls is infinitely
more significant. Soulwinning deserves our best effort.
Source: 1000 Windows, Robert C. Shannon
Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College
In 1992, a Los Angeles County
parking control officer saw a Cadillac that was illegally parked. The officer ignored the man sitting in the driver's seat and after writing the ticket, reached through the open window, and placed the ticket on the dashboard.
What was even more remarkable was that the driver was dead. He had been shot in the head hours before and had his head slumped down with blood on his face. The officer was so so preoccupied that he did not notice this and drove away.
Golfer Payne Stewart’s jet crashed
in 1999. It appears that the pilot and copilot went unconscious during the
flight. Air traffic controllers were unable to communicate with the pilots, and
two Air Force jets were sent to investigate.
As they pulled alongside Stewart’s
jet they could not see any movement in the cockpit, but they could see that the
windows were fogged up. It appears that somehow the cabin lost pressure
allowing cold air from the stratosphere in the plane. After the plane ran out
of fuel it plunged to the earth below.
When G. Campbell
Morgan was a young man he visited two elderly ladies each week to read the Bible to them. When he read Matthew 28:20, “Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world.” He said, “Isn’t that a wonderful promise?” One of the ladies quickly replied, “Young
man, that is not a promise. It is a fact!”
All of God’s promises are fact.
Source: The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: The Complete New Testament, Warren Wiersbe
Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College
Every
year in Alaska a 1,000-mile dogsled race, run for prize money and prestige,
commemorates an original “race” run to save lives. In January of 1925,
a six-year-old boy showed symptoms of diphtheria, signaling the
possibility of an outbreak in the small town of Nome. When the boy passed away
a day later, Dr. Curtis Welch began immunizing children and adults with an
experimental but effective anti-diphtheria serum. It wasn’t long before Dr.
Welch’s supply ran out, and the nearest serum was in Nenana, Alaska—674 miles
of frozen wilderness away.
In
1830 George Wilson was convicted of robbing the U.S. Mail and was sentenced to
be hanged. President Andrew Jackson issued a pardon for Wilson, but he refused
to accept it. The matter went to Chief Justice John Marshall, who concluded that
Wilson would have to be executed. “A pardon is a slip of paper,” wrote
Marshall, “the value of which is determined by the acceptance of the person to
be pardoned. If it is refused, it is no pardon. George Wilson must be hanged.” For
some, news of the pardon comes too late. For others, the pardon is not accepted.
The
devil and his cohorts were devising plans to get people to reject the Gospel. “Let’s
go to them and say there is no God,” proposed one. Silence prevailed. Every
devil knew that most people believe in a supreme being. “Let’s tell them there
is no hell, no future punishment for the wicked,” offered another. That was
turned down, because men obviously have consciences which tell them that sin
must be punished. The concave was going to end in failure when there came a
voice from the rear: “Tell them there is a God, there is a hell and that the
Bible is the Word of God.
Fritz Kreisler (1875-1962), the world-famous violinist, earned a fortune with his concerts and compositions, but he generously gave most of it away. So, when he discovered an exquisite violin on one of his trips, he wasn’t able to buy it.
I was reading the story of a railway
switchman who testified that he swung his lantern at the crossing as an
automobile sped toward a fast train. In spite of the warning, the car sped on,
and the driver was killed. The switchman was exonerated. He later confided to a
friend that he had no light in his lantern. What an awful guilt would be upon
me if I didn’t give you a fair warning of three things.
I had just finished preaching four times to several hundred teenagers
at a harvest rally in Norfolk, Virginia. The youth pastor drove me to
the airport where I was to catch a plane to Baltimore, Maryland. I was
scheduled on US Airways, Flight 4476, to Philadelphia and then on to
Baltimore. The airport in Norfolk was easy to find. When I arrived,
there were no lines at the ticket counter, whatsoever. I proceeded to
the kiosk where I checked in without a problem, and then I headed for
Gate A-11. The terminal was amazingly desolate.
Strawberries are my favorite fruit. I even love strawberry plants, for
once they preached a powerful sermon to me which I've never
forgotten. I was on my hands and knees in my garden pulling weeds, when
suddenly I noticed something I had seen hundreds of times before but
never caught the lesson. It was the "runners" on the berry
plants. From the main vine a number of slender shoots extend like
arms in all directions. They are thin, green stems creeping along the
ground, being pushed out by that mysterious power in the mother
plant.
Reflect on compounding interest, the repoductive cycles of nature, and
the world's biological population explosion. Soon it will be clear why
the multiplication is God's primary method for replenishing the
earth. One unspayed female dog and her descendants can produce 4,372
puppies in just seven generations, and one unspayed cat and her
offspring can produce 80 million kittens in ten years. This same
fundamental concept of multiplication applies directly to the great
commission.
John Harper was a Scottish preacher aboard the Titanic. When the ship hit an iceberg and sank, Harper
was clinging to a piece of drift wood. As he was out in the darkness a
man drifted close to him crying, and Harper shouted to him, "Are you
saved?" the man replied, "No." Harper said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ and thou shalt be saved." The man drifted away, but shortly
came back into sight.
Some time ago an 18-year-old girl from Washington state attended a worship service. For the first time in her life she heard the gospel message. The following Tuesday the members of the church received a letter from her. It read:
A man in one of D.L. Moody’s meetings once testified that he had lived “on the Mount of Transfiguration” for five years. “How many souls did you lead to Christ last year?” Moody bluntly asked him. “Well,” the man hesitated, “I don’t know.”
“Have you saved any?” Moody persisted. “I don’t know that I have,” the man admitted.
“Well,” said Moody, “We don’t want that kind of mountaintop experience. When a man gets up so high that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong.”
