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Rejection
Rejection of Salvation
Scene:
Big Thompson Flood on July 31
1976
in the 35-mile-long
mountain-rimmed
canyon linking Estes Park and Loveland
Colorado. A 19-foot wall of water
resulting from a furious thunderstorm
roared through the canyon and killed 129
people. This account is given by the wife of one of the victims. The name of
the husband has been altered to conceal identities:
Gary
was an engineer
and to his trained eye the narrowness of the canyon and the
rapidly rising river spelled trouble. Anyhow
he came over to tell me that he
was going to our friends’ cabin to warn them and the people in cabins across
the way to leave at once for higher ground.
Although
I asked to go with him
Gary insisted that I stay at the hotel. He said that he
would be back for me
but if he didn’t return in thirty minutes
I was to climb
to the top of the mountain without him. He said he’d catch up with me there. He
told the hotel owner and his wife (where we were staying) to be sure to get
their two youngsters
an eleven-year-old boy and eight-year-old girl
out of
bed and dressed right away. Then
In
exactly thirty minutes
I followed Gary’s instructions and started to climb up
the rough
rocky side of the mountain… in the canyon down below
now filled
with water
I saw the tops of cars bob by; even a Greyhound bus swept past. I
saw the hotel where we were to meet our friends breaks apart and float away. I
wondered it the hotel owner
his wife
and their children were safe. All four
I later learned
were killed.
The
warning of disaster and death was clear
the offer of an available salvation
understood
the rejection tragic. In retrospect
we can all see the foolishness
of those who rejected
Rejection of Salvation
A
certain atheistic barber was conversing with a minister as they rode through
the slums of a large city. Said the unbeliever
“If there is a loving God
how
can he permit all this poverty
suffering
and violence among these people? Why
doesn’t he save them from all this?”
Just
then a disheveled burn crossed the street. He was unshaven and filthy
with
long scraggly hair hanging down his neck. The minister pointed to him and said
“You are a barber and claim to be a good one
so why do you allow that man to
go unkempt and unshaven?”
“Why
why…” the barber stuttered
“he never gave me a chance to fix him up.”
“Exactly
”
said the minister. “Men are what they are because they reject God’s help.” ──
Michael P. Green《Illustrations for Biblical Preaching》
Rejection of Salvation
In
the year 1829
a Philadelphia man named George Wilson robbed the U.S. mails
killing someone in the process.
The
sheriff was unwilling to enact the sentence-for how could he hang a pardoned
man? An appeal was sent to President Jackson. The perplexed President turned to
the United States Supreme Court to decide the case. Chief Justice Marshall
ruled that a pardon is a piece of paper
the value of which depends on its
acceptance by the person implicated. It is hardly to be supposed that a person
under the sentence of death would refuse to accept a pardon
but if it is
refused
it is then not a pardon. George Wilson must be hanged. So George
Wilson was executed
although his pardon lay on the sheriff’s desk.
So
too
do some of us reject the gift of salvation by refusing the pardon thereby
offered. ── Michael P. Green《Illustrations for Biblical
Preaching》