100 Sermon Illustrations on Rescue

We've seen some very painful scenes at Ground Zero in the rubble of the World Trade Center - firemen, policemen, emergency personnel, combing through the wreckage for their fallen brothers and sisters. Later, pausing for a moment of silent tribute as the remains of one of them was carried out. But at a time when there was talk of reducing the number of workers at the site, we saw a scene that was painful in a different way. Tempers flared in the raw emotions of that moment, and some of those firefighters and police who had been fighting together to save or find people in the rescue and recovery effort were suddenly fighting with one another at Ground Zero.

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A WORD WITH YOU today about "Rescue Glue."

The moment was short-lived, but it still hurt - people who on September 11 and the days that followed had been so united in trying to rescue the dying, were now fighting with each other. That kind of heartache is something God has been all too familiar with for a long time. His people, who should be united in an all-out effort to rescue the spiritually dying, are instead battling one another.

Unfortunately, it's not a new issue. Way back in Philippians 4:2 and 3, our word for today from the Word of God, Paul was writing about some rescuers who had turned on each other. He said, "I plead with Euodia and I plead with Syntyche to agree with each other in the Lord. (These two women had been co-workers of his.) Yes, and I ask you, loyal yokefellow, help these women who have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel, along with Clement and my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life."

Now, notice, when these women were actively involved in "the cause of the gospel" - that's getting the life-or-death message of Jesus to people -they were together. But when they drifted away from the rescue mission of Christ, they stopped contending for the Gospel and started contending with each other. That's still happening today.

Rescue unites God's people. When believers, when a church, when a ministry is focused on rescuing the dying, whatever it takes, there's no time to battle with each other. They're too busy battling for the lives of lost people around them. There was no conflict between those New York police and firefighters when they were in that wreckage, desperately working together to bring some people out alive. Turf and ego and divisive issues just don't seem important when people are dying.

But so many of us, so many of our churches, are focused on ourselves rather than on those who are dying spiritually. And when we start focusing on our issues, our kingdoms, our likes and dislikes, our agendas, we start bickering, forming cliques and power blocs, criticizing our brothers and sisters, and elevating things that are relatively trivial to being way too important. Important enough even to fight over.

Remember this: rescue unites, self-focus divides. It's a sad scene when the people who are supposed to be rescuers start turning on each other. You see, while God's spiritual rescuers are battling with each other, we're losing the battle for people who will die if we don't get to them. We have to fight for them, not against each other!

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. 'Practical Answers to Real Life Issues'

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The storm had been chasing the destroyer all over the South Pacific and finally caught it. Now it was knocking the huge vessel around like a "ducky" in a child’s bathtub. Frank McDonald, one of our faithful deacons, was serving his country onboard this ship during the Korean War.

Frank, in one section of the ship, needed to return to his quarters following his duty shift; only one thing prevented this from being easy ... the storm. In order to get to where he was going, he was forced to go out on deck for a short distance to get to an aft hatch. Knowing he was about to get soaked, he rushed out with his head down ... suddenly the ship lurched, immediately his feet flew out from under him ... wham, his back hit the hard slopping surface and he shot feet first out over the side of the ship, nothing but air to support him. For some reason, which Frank can’t explain, he held his hands in the air, fingers cupped, thumbs down ... as if planned by the ship’s designer, both hands caught and grasped the ship’s lower lifeline, saving him from the sea's unappeasable gullet.

Commentary: God’s Son, Jesus, is designed to be a vessel (an ark) of salvation for those who believe. He is included in God’s plan of salvation as our lifeline; unseen as we slide down the slippery slope of life, at an ever-increasing rate. Rescue from eternal damnation awaits those who, by faith, would but reach up and grasp the line that is offered.

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Source/Attribution: John Gillmartin; SIEW

Jenny was a counselor with a student group we had taken to a Youth for Christ conference at the New Jersey Shore. She was walking along the Boardwalk, enjoying all the attractions, when suddenly she heard what she thought was a scream. It seemed to be coming from the ocean. But it was night and it was just too dark to see out there. So Jenny ran down the steps, across the beach, and to the water's edge. This time it was clear that the screams were coming from somewhere out there in the water. Jenny paused for a moment - there are few things more frightening than going into the ocean in pitch darkness. But Jenny's hesitation was only for a moment. She forgot about her own safety, she threw off her shoes, and she plunged in to save what turned out to be a drowning girl. Moments later, others jumped in to help too. Later, Jenny told me, “I had to do it. Someone was dying out there!”

Well, I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “No Rescue Without Risk.”

Now, a life was saved that night - because of the courageous, selfless choice of a young woman who was in a position to make a difference. She was scared, she knew it was risky, but she was the one who could do something. And she did. Someone's dying condition became more important to her than her own comfort and safety.

But that's how it always is when there's a rescue. A drowning person; a person trapped in a burning building or the unstable rubble of an earthquake. There's no such thing as rescuing someone from a comfortable spot. There's no rescue without risk. Including the most critical rescue of all - the rescue of someone who is dying spiritually because they don't know Jesus - the only One who can rescue a person from the death penalty of their sin.

Jesus knows there's no rescue without risk. He said it in Mark 10:45, that He came “to give His life as a ransom for many.” Later He said to His followers, “As the Father has sent Me, I am sending you” (John 20:21). Jesus was sent to lay down His life so others could live. And now He's sending you and me on the same rescue mission He died for - to do whatever it takes to try and bring some people you know to heaven with you. Jesus left His comfortable spot - heaven, the greatest comfort zone in the universe - to rescue you and me. He's asking you to leave your comfort zone to rescue someone you care about.

Your mission is graphically portrayed in our word for today from the Word of God in Proverbs 24:11 - “Rescue those being led away to death; hold back those staggering toward slaughter.” Telling people about the Savior is life-or-death business! Like Jenny on the beach that dark, dangerous night, you won't take the risks unless you realize that if you don't do it, that person may very well die without hope.

The Word of God says that the people you know who are without Christ will be “punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Not because Jesus wants it. He died so they don't have to, but because they haven't reached for the rescuer. And they need to hear about Him from you!

It's time you do what you need to do to build a relationship with a lost person you know, that you spend some time with them. Write a letter about Jesus to them. Pray for some natural opportunities to share life's most important relationship. Win the right to be heard and take them to the cross where God poured out His love for them.

Don't wait for a professional lifeguard to do it. Like that woman on the beach, God has put you in the position to be someone's rescuer. If you know it's life-or-death, and it is, you'll know what you have to do. You cannot stand on the beach and let them die.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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Throughout recent military history, the Army Rangers have been there in some of the most dramatic, most heroic combat events - like scaling the cliffs at Normandy Beach on D-Day, climbing right into the face of enemy fire. It's no surprise that the Rangers played a part, along with other Special Forces, in the amazing rescue of Iraqi prisoner of war, Jessica Lynch, during Operation Iraqi Freedom. When you're fighting in the heat of battle, it is important to know that your comrades are going to look out for you, no matter what. The POW rescue was one example of a commitment that is expressed in the Army Ranger creed - a commitment that's echoed in other branches of the military, as well. Here's what the creed says: “I shall never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy.”

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Fallen Comrades.”

Fighting for the fallen ones - going after the captured ones. I wonder if that's how we operate as God's army? His army is His Church, and if you belong to Jesus, you're part of it. And on any given day, there's a fellow soldier around us who's been wounded or who's been captured by the enemy. Are we ready to say, “I shall never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy”?

There's a powerful picture of this kind of loyal commitment to one another in our word for today from the Word of God. Abram's nephew, Lot, is living in the city of Sodom when a multinational alliance attacks the city. Genesis 14, beginning with verse 12, tells us “they also carried off Abram's nephew Lot and his possessions ... When Abram heard that his relative had been taken captive, he called out the 318 trained men born in his household and went in pursuit.” Well, Abram and company engage the enemy, and the Bible tells us, “He brought back his relative Lot and his possessions, together with the women and the other people.” By the way, the odds against those 318 were overwhelming.

Abram dropped everything, risked everything, to rescue a loved one who had fallen into the hands of the enemy. That's an example for all of us. You may very well know someone who's been spiritually wounded or who's going through a deep valley right now. That's where Proverbs 17:17 kicks in - “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” In other words, when everyone else is walking out them, we should be walking in.

You may know someone who really has messed up, who's blown it, who's wandered away spiritually - maybe someone who other believers are ignoring, marginalizing, even condemning. Don't you be one of them. They've never needed you more. You need to go to them, however awkward, however difficult it may be. You need to show them the unconditional love of Jesus Christ. As God gives opportunity, remind them of how good it felt when they were close to Jesus. Right now they know how lousy it feels to be away from Him. Remind them that the issue is Jesus, not Christians, not church. It's all about Jesus. And He is all about bringing them back, forgiving them and restoring them.

God's instructions to His “Rangers” is, “If someone is caught in a sin, you who are spiritual should restore him gently.” Look around the battlefield and you'll probably see a comrade - maybe even a family member - whom most people think of as the “problem child” or the “problem person” or the “prodigal.” But Jesus sees, and I pray you and I see, a fallen comrade. And we shall never leave a fallen comrade to fall into the hands of the enemy!

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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In 2001 Wanda Hudson, now 44, of Mobile, Alabama, lost her home to foreclosure and the creditor tossed her possessions “into the street,” according to her lawyer. Hudson rented a self-storage unit at Parkway Storage, just two miles from her house, to store her belongings.

On November 7, 2001, Hudson paid for another month's rent on her 300 square foot storage unit. Later that night she was inside. In making his rounds, Parkway Storage's manager noticed the door was unlocked and slightly open. He locked it up and moved on. Hudson was still inside.

Most people would yell and scream, pound on the door, and demand to be let out. But Hudson didn't do that. Incredibly, she made virtually no attempt to let anyone know she was trapped. She subsisted on juice and canned foods that she had stored in the unit.

Parkway Storage's attorney Bert Taylor said another storage customer whose unit was two spaces away went to her own storage space almost “every single day,” yet never heard a thing. “There was no yelling, no screaming, no beating on the doors, no nothing,” he said. “No one knew she was in there.” And she was there for a long, long time.

It wasn't until January 9, 2002, 63 days after she was locked inside, when someone heard noises -- not yelling or banging, just “noises” -- inside the locked unit and notified the storage company. The door was opened and Hudson, who is normally a “plump” 150 pounds, was in horrific condition: she weighed only 85 pounds and her doctor says she was in “advanced starvation, unusual to find in medical circumstances in America today.” Her fingernails, normally several inches long, were said to be a foot in length. The smell inside was so bad that fire department rescue personnel donned gas masks before going in. Hudson was so disoriented she hadn't realized she had missed Thanksgiving and Christmas.

She says she cried for help but no one visiting the storage facility heard anything. She says she had been living with her sister but her sister never filed a missing persons report.

Sad indeed, but someone must be held responsible, right? Well, someone else, anyway: Hudson and her lawyer says Parkway Storage is solely responsible for her plight and sued the company for $10 million in Mobile County Circuit Court, claiming negligence. The jury, however, was clearly bothered by Hudson not doing more to free herself: in addition to awarding her “only” one percent of the suit's begged-for amount, or $100,000, they asked the judge questions about a person's “own responsibility for his or her predicament” before they made their decision.

[Holwick:] Many who are trapped in sin are there because of their own decisions. In such a situation it is not up to others to rescue us if we don't want to be rescued. Deliverance requires a decision on our part.

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SOURCES:

1) “Woman Sues DIP Storage Facility over Bizarre Ordeal”, Mobile Register, 26 September 2003 http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect3.pl?41a

2) “Woman Seeks $10 Million in Storage Facility Ordeal”, Mobile Register, 27 September 2003 http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect3.pl?41b

3) “Locked-up Woman Awarded $100,000”, Mobile Register, 30 September 2003 http://StellaAwards.com/cgi-bin/redirect3.pl?41c

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On September 8, 1860, a terrible storm swept over Lake Michigan and threatened to sink the passenger steamer “Lady Elgin.” On shore, watching the tragedy unfold, were some students who had come from nearby Garrett Biblical Institute. As the ship began to break up, one of the students, Edward W. Spencer, noticed a woman clinging to a piece of wreckage. Unable just to stand by and watch her drown, Spencer threw off his coat, plunged into the raging surf, swam to the sinking vessel, and brought her safely to shore.

Again and again he swam out and brought back someone, until his strength was gone and he collapsed on the beach from exhaustion. As a result of his efforts, 17 lives were saved, but it almost cost Spencer his life. He never fully regained his health.

After his death some years later, someone wrote his wife and asked if it were true that not one of those who had been rescued thanked her husband. Here is her reply: “The statement is true. Mr. Spencer never received any thanks from anybody he succeeded in saving, nor any recognition from any one of them.” Then, in an admirable spirit of magnanimity, she went on to blame the seeming lack of gratitude on the general confusion and exhaustion of the rescued as well as the rescuer.

She closed the letter with these words: “My husband always took this view of the situation and never manifested any feeling of resentment, and I am sure he felt none. He did his best, with no thought of reward or appreciation.”

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Source: Sure As The Dawn, by Donald E. and Vesta W. Mansell, Copyright (c) 1993 by Review & Herald Publishing Association

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When I'm in a new city, I don't usually make visiting a local cemetery one of my sightseeing priorities. But I did during my recent ministry trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia. I visited the cemetery where 121 passengers of the doomed Titanic are buried; many with names still unknown. Not long after the midnight radio transmission, “Have struck iceberg,” three telegraph cable repair ships were dispatched from Halifax to make the 500-mile trip to the collision site to pick up the bodies of victims. In a way, the aftermath of the sinking of the Titanic is a tale of two ships. One was the Carpathia, the ship that rescued hundreds who had made it into lifeboats, later taking them into New York Harbor. The Carpathia carried a ship full of rescued people. But not the Mackay Bennett, the first funeral ship to arrive at the scene of the sinking. All they found was 328 people, floating in their lifejackets, frozen to death. The first one they found was a little two-year-old boy, floating face up. They were devastated. By the time they sailed into Halifax Harbor with every church bell in town tolling, there were three long rows of bodies on their deck - every one a person who did not have to die. Those lifeboats had been half empty. But as the people in the water cried out for help, the people in the lifeboats just kept rowing away. So one ship carried those who had been rescued. The other ship carried those no one cared enough to rescue.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Room in Your Lifeboat.”

Those people in the water died, not because the Titanic sank, but because the people who were already saved wouldn't go back for those who were dying. Dear God, is that us - the already saved, secure in our half-empty lifeboat, doing nothing about the spiritually dying people all around us? We're enjoying the fellowship of the folks already in the lifeboat, singing our lifeboat songs, maybe even making the lifeboat bigger or more comfortable for us. But our coworkers, our fellow students, our neighbors who don't have a relationship with Jesus - the only one who can forgive their sin - they just go on living and dying without Him.

Our word for today from the Word of God paints a portrait of stark contrast as it describes the destinations of those who were rescued and those who never were. It's in 2 Thessalonians 1:7-10. “When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with His powerful angels ... He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and the majesty of His power.” Think about it! Those are real people, condemned to pay for the sins Jesus already paid for on the cross - some because they didn't take what Jesus died to give them, and others because no one ever told them how.

The Bible goes on to describe this as the day when “He comes to be glorified in His holy people and to be marveled at among all those who have believed.” Don't you want the people you know, the people you love to be there? Then whatever has kept you from telling them about Jesus - your fears, your inadequacy, your hang-ups - can they possibly be as important as rescuing someone who's dying?

In a sense, eternity will be a place where the ones someone rescued will sail to one port where there will be celebration and reunion. While those no one rescued will go to another port where there is only death and sorrow. You've got room in your lifeboat and there's still time. Won't you spend the rest of your life pulling as many dying people into that lifeboat as you can?

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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My wife and her family were out for a swim in a nearby river. They had invited their pastor to go with them. He was pretty much a pool swimmer - a lake swimmer - and unfamiliar with the river currents that can make swimming a little more challenging than usual. Pastor wasn't aware of the whirlpool in the water near the bluffs that overlooked the river. He got too close and suddenly he got sucked into that swirling water. I'll tell you what, their pastor was in serious trouble. Since everyone was swimming, they didn't immediately see the danger he was in. He'd already gone down twice when he finally managed to yell for help. My father-in-law responded immediately and he went in for the rescue, and he saved a life that day.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Everyday Stuff, Never Everyday Again.”

My father-in-law was no professional lifeguard. Had he waited for one that day when his pastor's life was at stake, his pastor would have died. But this was a man who knew that he was the one that was there, and the responsibility for the rescue rests with the one who is where the dying person is. Especially when it comes to the people near us who are going down spiritually; dying spiritually because they don't know the Savior who alone can rescue them from the death penalty for their sins.

Once you realize the ultimate reason why you are where you are, your everyday activities will never be everyday again. Consider the example of the young woman in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Kings 5:2-3. It's the story of a young Jewish girl who has been taken captive by the Syrians and forced to become a servant girl in the home of a Syrian military commander. She's clearly a victim of unfair circumstances beyond her control. She's in a situation that had to be lonely, she's ripped from her home, forced to live in another country, and we can be pretty sure she's in a place she doesn't want to be. But none of that makes her forget why she is where she is. In the course of her everyday chores, she has the opportunity to save a life - and she does.

Her master, General Naaman, has developed leprosy. He'll die from it unless he can find a cure which, humanly, does not exist. But the Bible tells us, “She said to her mistress,' If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.'“ She realizes she is in a unique position to save this man's life because she knows the dying person and she knows the only one who can save him. If you belong to Jesus Christ, that is exactly the position God has put you in with the people you go to school with, the people you work with, the people you live close to, the people you recreate with, the people in your family.

When you go where you go each day to do what you do, you go on an eternal rescue mission! Jesus put you there so you can take some of those people to heaven with you. How are you doing? Every day, you're there to show by your life the difference Jesus makes and to capture every God-given opportunity to tell them how they can belong to Him. And suddenly your everyday takes on eternal significance.

That Syrian commander didn't die because someone who worked for him cared enough to tell him how he could live. Imagine if that girl had been too shy or too scared to speak up about the answer she knew. Her silence would have been his death sentence. And so it is for the people near you who don't know Jesus. Your silence could mean their death sentence, because you know the Jesus who is their only hope. They don't know Him, but they do know you. And, humanly speaking, you're their best chance - maybe their only chance - of ever belonging to Jesus, of ever being in heaven.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on

the child she has borne?” (Isaiah 49:15)

Homer Hailey places the above cry by God “among the most tender expressions to be found in the Old Testament” (Isaiah, Baker, 1985, p. 411). Isaiah's question is designed to elicit a negative answer. Certainly a mother could not forget about an infant child at her breast. At least it is very, very unlikely that she would forget. Only in the rarest of situations will one find a mother so unfit that she would treat her child in this way. Even if a mother could do that, God's love for his people is so much greater that forgetting about them is impossible. “His love is infinite, transcending that of mankind as far as the heavens are higher than the earth” (Ibid.). John T. Willis agrees: “It would be difficult to imagine a stronger affirmation of love and fidelity!” (Isaiah, ACU Press, 1980, 402).

And now from God's animal creation comes a story of motherly love and devotion. Scarlet is a cat known by that name due to her patches of red. In late March firefighters were fighting a blaze in Brooklyn, New York. Scarlet had five kittens inside a garage that was on fire. She brought her kittens out to safety one at a time. As the fire worsened, Scarlet the cat kept going back into the building until every one of her kittens was safe on the street outside. Her fur was singed. Her paws were burned. Her eyes were blistered shut, but she did not forget about her kittens. Within two days the animal shelter which was caring for Scarlet had received over 700 calls from people offering to adopt this homeless hero and her kittens. Marge Stein, the manager of the animal shelter, concluded: “It shows with all creatures, animals or people, there's no way of measuring a mother's love.”

The Bible uses many metaphors to teach us of the love of God. It uses the metaphor of a father (Luke 15:11-32). It uses the metaphor of a mother (Isaiah 49:15). Knowing the practical manner of our Lord's teaching, if Jesus had read a newspaper account of Scarlet the cat, I feel sure he could have preached a powerful sermon on God's love with that analogy.

One February, Wallace Powell spotted two horses hemmed in by snowdrifts on a 12,800-foot ridge in the Colorado Rockies, far above timber line. Flying back to his Gunnison base, he told his boss, Mr. Warren. They informed the mayor, who decided to feed the stranded horses.

“If you fly them the hay, I'll pay for it myself,” he said.

When Warren dropped the bale, only one horse was left, and it was in a pitiful condition. Warren and Powell took turns making two trips a week. Sometimes wind and weather were so bad it was difficult to drop the hay close, but often they could fly just twenty feet above the ground. The horse, hearing the motors, was waiting. They called him Elijah since he was fed from the sky like the prophet.

In April a news reporter featured the horse in the Denver Post, starting a fund called “Hay for Elijah.” The response was terrific. Even airline pilots flew over the ridge to point out the horse to their passengers. Once, while flying a TV crew over the site, Warren saw a pack of wolves stalking Elijah. They hurried back to Gunnison for a shotgun, and chased the wolves away.

Bill and Al Turner, who had lost two pack horses in November on a trip into those mountains, thought it might be “Bugs” who had disappeared. Using snowshoes they made the seven-mile climb to Elijah's windswept ridge. They called; he came. Yes, he was their lost horse. It was still impossible to take him across the snowdrifts, and seeing he was in good shape, they left him. Returning later when more snow had melted, they cut through twenty-foot drifts to get him through to the road.

When Elijah's trailer rolled into the town of Buena Vista, more than a thousand people watched the parade of floats and the high school band that welcomed him.

Such rejoicing over a rescued, lost horse reminds us of the joy in heaven when a sinner returns to God. You can know this greatest of all joys when you introduce a friend to Jesus or lead one who has lost his love for God back to real happiness in Jesus.

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Source: Stop, Look and Listen by Eileen E. and Jay H. Lantry, Copyright(c)1976 by Review and Herald Publishing Association

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Rick Rescorla directed security for Morgan Stanley, the largest employer in Tower Two at the World Trade Center. After the Trade Center bombing in 1993, Rick Rescorla urged authorities to prepare for another attack, including one from the air. Repeatedly, he trained the Morgan Stanley employees “how to be saved” from a disaster he felt was coming.

And come it did - the moment that jetliner crashed into Tower One. Even when there seemed to be “no real reason to get out,” Morgan Stanley employees began evacuating even before Tower Two was hit. As both towers were burning out of control, Rick Rescorla continued to go from floor to floor, looking for people who needed to be rescued. His final words to his wife on the phone - and his final words to a company executive - were, “I have to get everyone out.” Rick Rescorla died that day at Ground Zero. But he is credited with saving the lives of some 2,700 people!

On September 11, lives were saved - for another twenty, forty, maybe fifty years - because one man was willing to sacrifice his life so others could live. Two thousand years ago, another Man made that same choice - except His sacrifice means lives saved forever.

On that awful Friday on Skull Hill, heaven's Prince hung on a cross and was cut off from God so we would not have to be. Then, on that glorious Sunday, He exploded out of His grave and death itself died.

Surely, every person Jesus rescued would want to help as many others be rescued as possible - to “snatch others from the fire and save them” (Jude 23). But sadly, so many have simply settled back with the already rescued, seemingly oblivious to the dying people all around them.

Recently, a friend came across a directory of over 500 Christian organizations. To her amazement, only 8% of those ministries have evangelism as part of their stated mission! Perhaps that reflects how many of Jesus' followers have rescuing the lost as part of their PERSONAL mission.

The rescuer's cry on September 11, “I have to get everyone out” - that's the passion that drives evangelists. When lives are at stake, your mission is clear - RESCUE THE DYING, WHATEVER IT TAKES.

On August 29, 2005, just days before the fourth anniversary of 9-11, another attack came upon America -- not by terrorists, but by a powerful hurricane. Hurricane Katrina crippled the Gulf Coast with its potent winds and unrelenting surge. Katrina has taken the lives of more than 1,000 people, and in ways that we can’t even imagine, its survivors continue to struggle with the prospect of starting over, having lost everything they know and love.

In the aftermath, however, we have come to know the stories of both tragedy and heroism. One high school senior, Billy Rhoads, from Point, Texas, joined firefighters as a volunteer so that he could go to New Orleans and help. He joined, in part, for the excitement, and also to fulfill an obligation for a course he was taking in high school.

But what happened to Billy Rhoads in New Orleans changed his life forever. What he saw, heard and experienced was more than enough to change his perspective on life. He said he would never forget the hands of little children reaching through rooftops and begging for someone to rescue them, the bodies seen floating in the water, or the woman who handed him a bloody pillow that held a dying newborn baby.

Again and again, this young man was profoundly changed, saying, “I will never take my life for granted. Even now I still can’t sleep because I hear the screams of people crying out, ‘Help me! Help me!’ As long as I live I will never forget the screams.”

Katrina didn’t affect just the poor. A woman on the other end of the social economic scale survived the storm’s surge by climbing on her roof and hanging on to a tree. “I just want to get my life [back],” she would later say.

There is a desperate sense of urgency in these times. How many people do you know who feel as though they have been ripped apart by a storm in life? As believers, we know that there really is only one way to fix our brokenness. We must seek the one who specializes in helping people get their lives back, and His name is Jesus -- the Way, the Truth and the Life.

People can only do so much -- but God can heal all the hurt and pain of those who feel like they’ve lost it all. After the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina, it is important that we not forget the urgency of spreading the message of Christ to the lost, helpless and hopeless of humanity.

In Mark 2:1-12, we find the story of four men who sensed this urgency to bring others to Christ: “They came to Him, bringing a paralytic who was carried by four men. And when they could not come near Him because of the crowd, they uncovered the roof where He was. So when they had broken through, they let down the bed on which the paralytic was lying” (Mark 2:3-4).

It is here that we see a spiritual breakthrough. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son your sins are forgiven you’” (Mark 2:5). And when Jesus later commanded, the man “immediately ... arose, took up the bed, and went out in the presence of them all, so they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’” (Mark 2:12).

When the man was brought before Jesus, Christ went right to the heart of the issue and forgave his sins. People are sick with sin. It paralyzes physically, spiritually and emotionally. And every person needs someone to help get him or her to Jesus to find hope and healing.

We watched the news as helicopters circled New Orleans and rescued many from their rooftops. God is now sending out rescue workers, in these times of emergency and urgency in the nation and around the world, to bring the broken to salvation in Christ.

The fact is that almost every believer came to salvation because someone introduced him or her to Christ. Any church that does not have a heart to bring people to Christ will die a thousand deaths. Christians lose their reason to exist when they resign from the business of helping men, women, boys and girls come to know the Lord.

On that day in Capernaum, the helpless man wasn’t the only one coming to visit the Lord. In the crowd there were also the critical -- those who wanted to prevent this man from coming to Christ; the curious -- those who wanted to be entertained; and the carnal -- those who selfishly blocked the way so as not to let the man into the building.

The critical, the curious and the carnal surround us today. But this is not the time for criticism; it is the time for compassion. This is not the time for anger; it is the time for action. And it is not the time for carnality; it is the time for caring Christians to press on in their passionate attempts to follow God’s agenda and bring others to Christ.

Oswald Chambers, the great devotional writer, said this: “Beware of worshipping Jesus as the Son of God and professing your faith in Him as the Savior of the world, while you blaspheme Him by the complete evidence in your life that He is powerless to do anything through you.”

Don’t blaspheme God by thinking or saying that Christ is powerless to change somebody’s life through you. Don’t be part of the curious, critical and carnal crowd. Instead, be a woman or man of faith -- just like the four men in the story.

When Jesus sees our faith, miracles happen. Faith releases the power of God and puts us in a position to receive from God what He desires to give. The four men believed that if they could get the paralytic man to Jesus, He could change everything.

Do you believe in Jesus like that? Or are you part of the curious, carnal and critical crowd? Do you have a passionate desire to bring those you love to Christ? Is your faith so strong that you know beyond a doubt that if you will just help bring those who are lost to Jesus, He can change their lives?

In the recent disaster, God is using caring Christians to minister compassion through good deeds which glorify God. Even more, let us work and pray that many will be brought to Jesus through our personal and intentional witness of the Gospel.

It takes the contagious, cooperative and creative faith of those who are willing to pay the price to make a difference. What our hurting world needs are followers of Jesus Christ who care enough, love enough and have faith enough to get hold of the stretcher, grab a piece of the rope, rescue them from hell and high water, and bring them to the healing and saving power of Jesus Christ.

*

He which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from, death, and … hide a multitude of sins. — James 5:20.

One night when storms were beating in full fury, a wreck was firing the minute guns, and a lifeboat was manned and sent out. Relay after relay rescued the whole crew but one; and the life-boat was being manned for the last trip. One young fellow, John Holden, stepped in. “John, don’t go,” said his mother. “Your father is dead, your brother William is lost at sea, and I have no one left but you. Surely you won’t risk your life for only one?” But John went. Slowly the lifeboat disappeared amidst mountains of foam. After anxious suspense the boat returned. “Is the man saved?” was shouted from the shore. “Yes,” rang back the voice of John, “and go and tell mother, it is William.”

Then let us seek the perishing.

We may yet lead them back,

With holy words and tones of love

from misery’s thorny track.

A staple of cartoons is the Mafia victim with his feet encased in concrete.[1] It is an image that registers immediately with everyone. What is fascinating is that there is only one confirmed case, and it happened in May 2016. Brooklyn gang member Peter “Petey Crack” Martinez’s head was wrapped in duct tape and his feet and shins were encased in concrete set inside a five-gallon bucket. It was a failure - his body floated to the shore due to air in the concrete because it was not given enough time to cure before being thrown into the ocean.

This has always been the drawback to “concrete shoes.” They take a lot of time to work correctly. But it is possible that they work better than we think - there have long been rumors of Mafia victims who had concrete used in their disposal and their bodies have never been recovered. A story from the 1930s has a victim’s entire body put in a box that was filled with concrete but that must have been extremely heavy. Concrete shoes are much more sensible. To be truly efficient, attach concrete blocks to various body parts (it has been done numerous times).

Perhaps “concrete shoes” grabs our imagination because it involves imminent, but not immediate, doom. You are watching it slowly cure and you know what is going to happen next. Many of our anxieties in life are like this. The problems accumulate and seem unsolvable. The dread of disaster grows.

The Psalms often portray this feeling. Psalm 69:2 is especially poignant: “I sink in the miry depths, where there is no foothold. I have come into the deep waters; the floods engulf me.” Verse 15 adds, “Do not let the floodwaters engulf me or the depths swallow me up or the pit close its mouth over me.” Notice the claustrophobia of catastrophe.

Inundation is not a foregone conclusion. The Psalmists always expected God to come to their rescue. Psalm 40:2 says, “He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.” Instead of feet in solidifying rock, he put our feet on top of solid rock.” I live in New Jersey so “concrete shoes” are often on my mind. If my feet are ever encased in a pair, Psalm 40:2 will be on my lips. There are no problems I can have that God cannot pull me out of. God doesn’t just rescue, he can give us a triumph. Hold on to his solid rock!

________

[1] Ten “Concrete Shoe” cartoons from the New Yorker magazine:

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/When-did-last-requests-take-over-our-lives-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8472494_.htm

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/It-s-easier-to-make-em-talk-when-you-just-cement-the-feet-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8472980_.htm

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/No-more-last-requests-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i12761022_.htm

http://www.radosh.net/archive/002693.html

http://www.radosh.net/archive/002582.html

http://newyorker.tumblr.com/post/18757152098/cartoon-of-the-day-for-more-httpnyrkrw9bgls

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Mobsters-wheel-out-a-clown-with-a-long-block-of-cement-around-his-shoes-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i14137729_.htm

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/A-man-at-the-ocean-floor-tied-up-wearing-cement-shoes-and-surrounded-by-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i12592463_.htm

http://attemptedbloggery.blogspot.com/2014/01/my-entry-in-new-yorker-cartoon-caption.html

http://www.condenaststore.com/-sp/Man-in-cement-shoes-underwater-thinking-If-I-had-known-I-could-hold-my-b-New-Yorker-Cartoon-Prints_i8540572_.htm

==================

More articles on “concrete shoes”:

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2824/were-concrete-shoes-a-favored-technique-of-mob-hitmen

Were “concrete shoes” a favored technique of mob hitmen?

November 14, 2008

Dear Cecil:

I’m sure you’ve heard the term “concrete shoes,” mobsters’ choice of swimwear for fellas with rodent traits and other individuals that ran afoul of them. Is there any truth to it?

— Ale, Bangkok

Cecil replies:

When your question came in, Ale, I thought: At last, a chance to have it out with E.L. Doctorow.

You remember the opening of Doctorow’s award-winning 1989 novel Billy Bathgate, right? (Play along here, slackers.) Evil crime lord Dutch Schultz motors across New York harbor in a tugboat while a henchman sticks the feet of doomed underling Bo Weinberg into a tub of concrete in preparation for shoving him overboard. Billy, the narrator, watches this and thinks: “I had of course seen ... how the tubbed cement made a slow-witted diagram of the sea outside, the slab of it shifting to and fro as the boat rose and fell on the waves.” Cool line, but a little voice in the back of your head, or anyway in the back of mine, is saying: Right, like some mob boss bent on murder is going to wait two hours for the concrete to dry.

However, that was before I assigned the case to my assistant Gfactor, Straight Dope gumshoe par excellence. Having seen the results of his investigation, I realize I’m going to have to cut Doctorow some slack. Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying the cement shoes thing actually happened. But it’s solidly grounded in rumor.

As evidence I present an Associated Press clipping from June 3, 1935, on the fate of Danny Walsh, a bootlegging kingpin from Providence, Rhode Island. Danny had disappeared in 1933. The AP now offered an explanation: Walsh “was stood in a tub of cement until it hardened about his feet, and then thrown alive into the sea.” But the body hadn’t been recovered, nor had witnesses to the crime come forward. Rather, the story was a “grisly underworld tale” that authorities were trying to confirm.

They didn’t, at least not exactly. The following month the Sunday-paper supplement American Weekly ran a sensational spread about a police raid on a Rhode Island “murder mansion” owned by a wealthy Walsh associate named Carl Rettich. The money detail was the cops’ discovery of a secret dungeon below the basement, accessible only via a hidden stairway revealed by cranking a phonograph handle in a concealed socket. According to unnamed “stool pigeons,” Walsh had been taken down there and clubbed on the head; his body (maybe dead, maybe not) was laid in a coffinlike box that was then filled with concrete and dumped in the ocean. When Walsh’s girlfriend later got too vocal with suspicions regarding her man’s disappearance, informants said, she was herself hustled down to the dungeon and given the feet-in-wet-cement treatment, the thugs having learned from experience with Walsh that head-to-toe encasement produced a needlessly heavy burden. But no bodies were found.

After that, stories about underworld cementwear became common, and terms like “cement shoes,” “cement boots,” and “cement overcoat” took their place in the crime writer’s lexicon. A news story from later in 1935 cited “underworld report” to the effect that the body of Bo Weinberg (he and Dutch Schultz, I should clarify, were real people fictionalized in Doctorow’s book) had been sealed in a barrel of concrete; in another article police speculated that he’d been given concrete shoes and dumped in the East River. Weinberg’s corpse was never found either. The body of gambler Charles Morris was found encased in concrete beside the Connecticut River in 1938 — but the guy that killed him wasn’t, it happens, a gangland type. A 1940 AP story about Murder, Inc., the famed mob hit squad, claimed gangster Harry Westone had been tossed into a cement mixer; his unrecovered remains allegedly lay somewhere beneath an upstate New York highway. In cases where bodies did emerge, concrete has functioned more as accessory than garment: the corpse of Philadelphia racketeer Johnnie “Chink” Goodman was discovered in a New Jersey creek in 1941, weighted down with a 40-pound block of concrete; hit man Ernest “the Hawk” Rupolo was fished out of Jamaica Bay in New York in 1964, also weighted down with concrete blocks.

So let’s review what we know: (1) Underworld gossips have repeatedly insisted that mob hit men sometimes encase a victim partially or completely in concrete. (2) However, the one confirmed instance of a concretized corpse we’ve been able to turn up wasn’t a mob hit. (3) In cases of mob hits definitively known to involve concrete, we’re not talking concrete shoes so much as concrete anchors, in the form of blocks used to keep the body submerged. We have no evidence of a mob hit in which the killer mixed up concrete, planted a victim in it, and (not to fixate on this, but one has to consider the practical aspects) waited for the stuff to dry. Conclusion: Either custom concretewear is 100 percent effective, and the victim invariably vanishes forever from the ken of man, or the whole thing’s a myth.

— Cecil Adams

=================

http://northerncobblestone.blogspot.com/2013/09/did-mafia-ever-use-concrete-shoes.html

23 September 2013

Did the Mafia ever use Concrete Shoes?

Or concrete wellies, boots or overcoats for that matter? It is an image we’re all familiar with from TV, films and books, but is there any truth in it?

The Last Shoes You’ll Ever Need

In episode 295 of The Simpsons, Fat Tony, the resident Mafia boss, is seen pouring cement into a bucket around the feet of a nervous looking man while a pair of goons observe.

Above Fat Tony’s head, a sign informs us that he is selling cement shoes, touted to be ‘the last shoes you’ll ever need’.

Season two, episode 17 of Star Trek: The Original Series, has an irate (when wasn’t he irate?) Scotty threatening a 1930s mobster with a pair of ‘concrete galoshes’.

Meanwhile, the 2006 short film featuring Dylan Moran, Tell it to the Fishes, involves a pair of gangsters, whose feet are encased in concrete, arguing on the beach at low tide.

Sleeping With the Fishes

If there’s a link between these depictions of the infamous ‘concrete wellies’, it’s the use of the image for entertainment purposes.

Nobody in The Sopranos was thrown off a bridge with their feet encased in concrete.

Likewise, The Godfather might have featured the line ‘sleeping with the fishes’ but Don Corleone never poured cement around his enemies’ feet, waiting a day for the mix to cure before taking a leisurely drive to the nearest pier and dumping them over the edge.

Mafia godfathers are business men (albeit with guns). He’d never have allowed that sort of slack in the system!

Cement Overcoat

The entire premise of concrete shoes, or cement overcoats, arose after a couple of sensationalist stories printed in America in 1935.

There was talk of hits involving encasement in cement or, as in the Simpsons parody, someone standing in a tub of cement while it hardened so that they could be thrown into the sea.

No evidence of these murders was ever found, but that didn’t stop the idea spreading into popular culture, and in particular to the minds of writers of crime spoofs and parodies.

A Glimmer of Truth

Historically, there has long been a tradition of weighting down bodies, alive or dead, to ensure death or disposal.

In the age of sail, cannonballs were tied to the feet of deceased crew to ensure their bodies sank to the seabed.

During the Reformation, Anabaptists were sewn into sacks with bricks and thrown into rivers or lakes.

Over the years, many bodies have been discovered weighted down in some way, with heavy chains or concrete blocks attached to them, including some Mafia hits, but never where the victim’s body was in any way encased in the concrete itself.

Unless, of course, they do it so efficiently that the evidence has never surfaced (no pun intended!).

Nuisance Footprints

So, concrete wellies remain the stuff of fiction, for the most part. But shoes and wet concrete are two things better kept apart as separating footwear and concrete can require specialist tools.

=================

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cement_shoes

It has long been unclear whether such a cumbersome and time-consuming method of execution was practicable outside of Hollywood movies and books like E. L. Doctorow’s Billy Bathgate. Cement takes hours to harden and, until 2016, there was never a documented case — although crime historian Thomas Reppetto said there have probably been real-life examples that have never been found.

In May 2016, the first and only documented case of “cement shoes” was reported. The body of Brooklyn gang member Peter Martinez, aged 28, better known on the streets as Petey Crack, washed up near Manhattan Beach in Brooklyn. His head was wrapped in duct tape. His feet and shins were encased in concrete set inside a five-gallon bucket. His body floated to the shore due to air in the concrete because it was not given enough time to cure before being thrown into the ocean.

Concrete has been used as a weight to dispose of a body. In 1941, the body of Philadelphia racketeer Johnnie Goodman was found by crab fisherman in a New Jersey creek, weighed down with a 40-pound block of concrete. On 24 August 1964, the body of Ernest Rupolo, aged 52, a triggerman and informer on Vito Genovese in 1944, was found in Jamaica Bay, New York, with concrete blocks tied to his legs.

=================

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/nyregion/mans-body-feet-encased-in-concrete-washes-ashore-in-brooklyn.html

“Man’s Body, Feet Encased in Concrete, Washes Ashore in Brooklyn”

By Ashley Southall, May 3, 2016

In August 1964, the body of Ernest Rupolo, a 52-year-old triggerman turned informant, was found in Jamaica Bay with two concrete blocks tied to his legs.

Before Mr. Rupolo, several mobsters and gamblers and at least one rumrunner were believed to have been encased in or weighed down with concrete. Some of them have never been found.

It was near Christmas, 1978. The nation of Iran was in turmoil with religious revolutionaries fighting the Shah’s forces. In the midst of all this, two American employees of the Electronic Data Systems (EDS) were arrested. They were charged with attempted bribery and payment of $12.7 million was demanded for their release.

The company negotiated with the government but got nowhere. So Ross Perot, the chief executive officer of EDS, made a fateful decision. He hired a former special operations officer, Col. Bull Simons, to organize a rescue. With the help of some Vietnam veterans and a few Iranian employees, they came up with a plan.

An Iranian employee code-named “Rashid” began associating with the religious revolutionary groups to gain their trust. Then he bribed a police chief with $100 to leave the police weapons room unlocked. Amazingly, he agreed. Rashid hauled all those weapons to the next revolutionary meeting and handed them out.

Rashid then announced with great excitement, “It is our responsibility to free the thousands of political prisoners!” One hour later, 30,000 revolutionaries stormed the prison and the guards were stripped down to their long underwear. No one had to fire a shot. 12,000 prisoners escaped - including two grateful Americans.

Jesus is even better than Ross Perot. Perot might be able to bust you out of Iran, but Jesus can bust you out of hell. The little baby in a manger has freed tens of millions from sin, fear and despair. Has he broken you out?

________

Adapted from “Ross Perot’s Private Rescue Of EDS Employees In Iran, 1978” at and the Wikipedia.org article “On Wings of Eagles.”

Is there anything worse than being lost? If your answer is a hasty, reflexive, theologically pre-prescribed “no,” then perhaps it has been awhile since you felt the full, visceral desperation of being utterly without hope.

But what could possibly be worse than being lost?

When we are talking about spiritual lostness, we are describing the reality of an eternal separation from the sheltering presence of a holy and loving God — a terrible state so horrifying that few want to ponder it for long. And knowing that the very same holy and loving God went to heroic lengths to personally pay the price for our sin and separation makes the continued persistence in lostness all the more lamentable.

So then, what could be worse than being lost? What is worse than the unnecessary ache and hopelessness of being disconnected from a pursuing Creator who lovingly fashioned us incomplete without him?

This: being lost when no one on earth is looking for you.

The despair of lostness is always intensified when someone believes that there is no remedy, no hope, and no lifeline on its way. The terrible throbbing of aloneness is accentuated knowing it will likely never end. Lostness leaves us derelict, disoriented, and despairing.

If you’ve ever had the misfortune of being physically lost, the knowledge of possible searchers has a buoying affect — it inspires hope and heightens our expectation for help. This glimmer of light allows you to continue to dream of home and emotionally prepare yourself for rescue. The probability of a search party, of heroic people doing heroic things to return you to safety, will rouse your own desire to seek out your courageous rescuers.

Being lost and yet valued enough to be sought after tends to inspire spiritual expectation. Yet, the sad reality is that most of the population of North America is spiritually lost, with absolutely no one looking for them.

Own Our Responsibility

So, as God-called leaders in Jesus’ pursuing mission, what are we to do?

First, we must own the responsibility of allowing our ecclesiology to become so insular, so circumspect, and so self-preserving that it no longer calls its own into the dangerous mission of its Savior. Like spineless firefighters huddled in a cozy firehouse while the city burns, we have cloistered and entertained ourselves in an alternate and artificial reality, all the while calling our religious activity “spiritual.” We have made heroes of deserting generals and villains of the bewildered wounded who only frantically crave some good news (Ezek. 33:6). And our feeble theological predisposition to blame victims only adds evidence to our spiritual detachment.

Have Compassion

It quickly becomes obvious that we need different eyes. The grotesque caricatures of the “enemy” that we showcase in our cultural battles against liberalism, secularism, and pluralism does little to cultivate a heart of compassion for our broken and skeptical neighbors.

Not unlike the original Pharisees, the disingenuous leaders of our culture wars, in an effort to achieve the moral high ground, have drawn the battle lines between both the right and the left. Darkness wages against darkness, and the kingdom of God gains no ground.

True spiritual transformation means that we must accept a set of Jesus’ eyes. We have the opportunity of seeing people not as man sees them, but through the perfect sight of untarnished eyes (1 Sam. 16:7). And with Jesus’ eyes, we have “compassion for them, because they [are] harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36).

Christianity without compassion for the object of its Founder’s sacrifice is simply a dark religion without Jesus — even if “church” is painted in gold above its door.

Form a Search Party

Jesus posed a kingdom question: “Suppose one of you has a hundred sheep and loses one of them. Doesn’t he leave the ninety-nine in the open country and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” (Luke 15:4) The answer was implied in the question. Of course we would go! People have a natural inclination to leave the secure in order to rescue the vulnerable.

But if this impulse is so natural, why does the endeavor seem so rare? Perhaps because we expect to find our Shepherd in the safe place — instead of looking for him in the perilous places where lost sheep ache for a Savior (Luke 5:30–32). Laboring among lost sheep is the very place that we can expect to see the Shepherd.

Multiply the Search Party

If Jesus’ instructions were to leave the 99 safe sheep to heroically search for a single stray, what would he say when the numbers are reversed? If the sheep in our safe pens are few, and those that are in harm’s way are many, shouldn’t our instinct to rescue become amplified?

This becomes the clarion call to disciple-making. As Jesus left the comforts of heaven to put on skin and live among those who were far from his Father, he laid a path and pattern for his disciples. The church of Jesus Christ is never more like her Founder as when she sacrificially sends out search parties designed and equipped to bring Good News to frantic sheep in distant fields.

So, what is worse than being lost? Being lost and knowing that nobody is looking for you. What should be the response of Jesus’ church? Own our responsibility, have compassion, form a search party, and multiply the church party.

That is where we will see our Shepherd.

A man purchased a white mouse to use as food for his pet snake. He dropped the unsuspecting mouse into the snake’s glass cage, where the snake was sleeping in a bed of sawdust.

The tiny mouse has a serious problem on his hands. At any moment he could be swallowed alive. Obviously, the mouse needed to come up with a brilliant plan.

What did the terrified creature do? He quickly set to work covering the snake with sawdust chips until it was completely buried. With that, the mouse apparently thought he had solved his problem.

The solution, however, came from outside. The man took pity on the silly little mouse and removed him from the cage.

No matter how hard we try to cover or deny our sinful nature, it’s fool’s work. Sin will eventually awake from sleep and shake off its cover. Were it not for the saving grace of the Master’s hand, sin would eat us alive.

1. I was sinking deep in sin,

Far from the peaceful shore,

Very deeply stained within,

Sinking to rise no more;

But the Master of the sea

Heard my despairing cry,

From the waters lifted me —

Now safe am I.

Chorus:

Love lifted me, Love lifted me;

When nothing else could help

Love lifted me.

Love lifted me, Love lifted me;

When nothing else could help

Love lifted me.

2. All my heart to Him I give,

Ever to Him I’ll cling,

In His blessed presence live,

Ever His praises sing.

Love so mighty and so true

Merits my soul’s best songs,

Faithful, loving service too

To Him belongs.

3. Souls in danger, look above,

Jesus completely saves;

He will lift you by His love

Out of the angry waves,

He’s the Master of the See,

Billows His will obey;

He your Saviour wants to be —

Be saved today.

[Tune “Savety”]

*

Years ago, in a small fishing village in Holland, a young boy taught the world about the rewards of unselfish service. Because the entire village revolved around the fishing industry, a volunteer rescue team was needed in cases of emergency. One night the winds raged, the clouds burst and a gale force storm capsized a fishing boat at sea. Stranded and in trouble, the crew sent out the S.O.S. The captain of the rescue rowboat team sounded the alarm and the villagers assembled in the town square overlooking the bay. While the team launched their rowboat and fought their way through the wild waves, the villagers waited restlessly on the beach, holding lanterns to light the way back.

An hour later, the rescue boat reappeared through the fog and the cheering villagers ran to greet them. Falling exhausted on the sand, the volunteers reported that the rescue boat could not hold any more passengers and they had to leave one man behind. Even one more passenger would have surely capsized the rescue boat and all would have been lost.

Frantically, the captain called for another volunteer team to go after the lone survivor. Sixteen-year-old Hans stepped forward. His mother grabbed his arm, pleading, “Please don’t go. Your father died in a shipwreck 10 years ago and your older brother, Paul, has been lost at sea for three weeks. Hans, you are all I have left.”

Hans replied, “Mother, I have to go. What if everyone said, ‘I can’t go, let someone else do it?’ Mother, this time I have to do my duty. When the call for service comes, we all need to take our turn and do our part.” Hans kissed his mother, joined the team and disappeared into the night.

Another hour passed, which seemed to Hans’ mother like an eternity. Finally, the rescue boat darted through the fog with Hans standing up in the bow. Cupping his hands, the captain called, “Did you find the lost man?” Barely able to contain himself, Hans excitedly yelled back, “Yes, we found him. Tell my mother it’s my older brother, Paul!”

________

By Dan Clark from A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Copyright 1995 by Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen

“How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” — Romans 10:14 (NIV)

Writing in “Church Worship,” Joe Sandven pointed out how, “At the time the Titanic hit an iceberg in the North Atlantic, a ship by the name of the Californian was only ten miles away. Unfortunately, the Californian had tuned out, and had turned off its ship’s radio.

“The Carpathia was a greater distance away, but its radio was on. This ship heard the distress signal of the Titanic and came to the rescue as quickly as possible, but many lives were lost by the time she arrived. Once she arrived she was able to save hundreds of lives. But it was the Californian that could have been instrumental in saving many, many more lives had she only been listening.”

The late Vance Havner pointed out, God’s goal isn’t to save the world. The world as we know it is a goner. It’s a sinking ship. God’s goal and our responsibility is to go to the rescue of those who are lost and dying without hope, and throw out the lifeline of God’s message of salvation.

May our connection to God never be switched off so we will always hear his call to “rescue the perishing and care for the dying.”

“And this is the testimony: that God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.” 1 John 5:11-12

My wife and her family were out for a swim in a nearby river. They had invited their pastor to go with them. He was pretty much a pool swimmer - a lake swimmer - and unfamiliar with the river currents that can make swimming a little more challenging than usual. Pastor wasn't aware of the whirlpool in the water near the bluffs that overlooked the river. He got too close and suddenly he got sucked into that swirling water. I'll tell you what, their pastor was in serious trouble. Since everyone was swimming, they didn't immediately see the danger he was in. He'd already gone down twice when he finally managed to yell for help. My father-in-law responded immediately and he went in for the rescue, and he saved a life that day.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft and I want to have A Word With You today about “Everyday Stuff, Never Everyday Again.”

My father-in-law was no professional lifeguard. Had he waited for one that day when his pastor's life was at stake, his pastor would have died. But this was a man who knew that he was the one that was there, and the responsibility for the rescue rests with the one who is where the dying person is. Especially when it comes to the people near us who are going down spiritually; dying spiritually because they don't know the Savior who alone can rescue them from the death penalty for their sins.

Once you realize the ultimate reason why you are where you are, your everyday activities will never be everyday again. Consider the example of the young woman in our word for today from the Word of God in 2 Kings 5:2-3. It's the story of a young Jewish girl who has been taken captive by the Syrians and forced to become a servant girl in the home of a Syrian military commander. She's clearly a victim of unfair circumstances beyond her control. She's in a situation that had to be lonely, she's ripped from her home, forced to live in another country, and we can be pretty sure she's in a place she doesn't want to be. But none of that makes her forget why she is where she is. In the course of her everyday chores, she has the opportunity to save a life - and she does.

Her master, General Naaman, has developed leprosy. He'll die from it unless he can find a cure which, humanly, does not exist. But the Bible tells us, “She said to her mistress,' If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.'“ She realizes she is in a unique position to save this man's life because she knows the dying person and she knows the only one who can save him. If you belong to Jesus Christ, that is exactly the position God has put you in with the people you go to school with, the people you work with, the people you live close to, the people you recreate with, the people in your family.

When you go where you go each day to do what you do, you go on an eternal rescue mission! Jesus put you there so you can take some of those people to heaven with you. How are you doing? Every day, you're there to show by your life the difference Jesus makes and to capture every God-given opportunity to tell them how they can belong to Him. And suddenly your everyday takes on eternal significance.

That Syrian commander didn't die because someone who worked for him cared enough to tell him how he could live. Imagine if that girl had been too shy or too scared to speak up about the answer she knew. Her silence would have been his death sentence. And so it is for the people near you who don't know Jesus. Your silence could mean their death sentence, because you know the Jesus who is their only hope. They don't know Him, but they do know you. And, humanly speaking, you're their best chance - maybe their only chance - of ever belonging to Jesus, of ever being in heaven.

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Copyright © Ron Hutchcraft Ministries, Inc., PO Box 400, Harrison, AR 72602. Used by permission. Written by Ron Hutchcraft. "Practical Answers to Real Life Issues"

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Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer and six other western aid workers were rescued Nov. 15 in pre-dawn Afghanistan after being freed amid an anti-Taliban uprising in the city of Ghazni.

The workers had been taken to the city, about 50 miles south of Kabul, by Taliban forces retreating from the nation's capital as U.S.-backed Northern Alliance forces were advancing.

Sixteen Afghan aid workers who also had been held by Taliban authorities also were freed, when Northern Alliance forces entered Kabul, according to news reports.

The aid workers, affiliated with the German-based Shelter Now ministry, were arrested Aug. 3 on Taliban charges of spreading their Christian faith.

"Even the timing of it is not surprising," Danny Mulkey, assistant pastor of Curry and Mercer's home church, told Baptist Press the morning of Nov. 15, referencing the prayers of supporters that the workers would be released by Thanksgiving.

The nighttime rescue of the aid workers was accomplished by U.S. troops aboard three Special Forces helicopters who flew across 100 miles of hostile territory to make the pickup, ABC News reported.

Curry and Mercer were seen briefly on an ABC News report the morning of Nov. 15 with joyous smiles and voicing quick words of excitement over their freedom as they were entering a van in Islamabad. The Associated Press reported that the eight workers "appeared to be in good health" after their three-month captivity.

Curry and Mercer were reunited Nov. 15 with family members who had been holding vigil in Islamabad, Pakistan, since the workers' arrest.

One of the freed western aid workers, Georg Taubmann of Germany, told reporters the six women and two men spent a cold night Tuesday, Nov. 13, locked in a steel container then were transferred to a jail in Ghazni, from which they were freed in an local uprising against the Taliban.

Taubmann, in recounting their ordeal to reporters, said the steel container where they spent the night was "terribly cold. ... We had no blankets. We were freezing the whole night through."

The next morning they were taken to a jail -- the fifth jail where they had been held since Aug. 3, Taubmann told reporters at the German embassy in Islamabad. Before long, bombing by American forces began, followed in about an hour by a local uprising against the Taliban. Northern Alliance troops broke into the prison, Taubmann continued, and "we actually were afraid the Taliban were coming and taking us to Kandahar. We were really scared." But Taubmann and three fellow German aid workers, Curry and Mercer and two Australians received a hero's welcome in Ghazni. "We walked into the city and the people came out of the houses and they hugged us and they greeted," Taubmann said. "They were all clapping. They didn't know there were foreigners in the prison. It was like a big celebration for all those people."

Northern Alliance forces guarded the eight aid workers until they were picked up that night in an open field.

Curry's stepfather, Jim Cassell in Franklin, Tenn., told the local ABC affiliate that the release of the aid workers was squarely an answer to prayer.

Whenever people asked him what they could do to help his stepdaughter and the others, Cassell said he regularly told them that prayer was the best thing and the only thing they could do.

Curry and Mercer are members of Antioch Community Church in Waco, Texas, a congregation founded by Waco's Highland Baptist Church.

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In 1981, a Minnesota radio station reported a story about a stolen car in California. Police were staging an intense search for the vehicle and the driver, even to the point of placing announcements on local radio stations to contact the thief.

On the front seat of the stolen car sat a box of crackers that, unknown to the thief, were laced with poison. The car owner had intended to use the crackers as rat bait. Now the police and the car owner of the VW bug were more interested in apprehending the thief to save his life than to recover the car.

So often when we run from God, we feel it is to escape his punishment. But what we are actually doing is eluding his rescue.

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Illustrations For Preaching & Teaching, Editor Craig Brian Larson, Baker, p. 207.

When we hear stories of murder on the high seas, we usually think of pirates or drug smuggling. But if a Dutch abortionist has her way, we’ll soon be thinking of dead babies, instead. It’s an illustration of the titanic lengths to which abortion activists will go — by land or by sea — to promote their deadly agenda.

It seems Dr. Rebecca Gompers is raising money to equip a 150-foot ship as a sea-going abortion clinic. Her goal? To sail the seven seas, offering free abortions off the coast of any country that prohibits abortion. Pregnant women will be ferried out to the ship, their babies aborted, and then they’re ferried back home in time for supper.

You have to wonder what kind of flag the abortion ship will hoist: Will it feature a fetus in a circle with a red slash through it, or perhaps a tiny skull and crossbones?

Not surprisingly, leaders of targeted countries are outraged at this challenge to their laws. In Catholic Malta, Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi called the plan “horrendous” and threatened to prosecute any Maltese citizen who colludes with Gompers.

Richard Welch, president of Human Life International, compares the abortion ship to “the most bloodthirsty days of piracy. What happens,” he asked, “when a woman dies on this Ship of Death?”

The president of the American Life League, Judie Brown, has an answer: They’ll “end up being shark bait along with the mortal remains of their babies.”

If Gompers really wants to help women, Brown adds, she’ll provide basic health care instead of abortions, and Brown is absolutely right. Most of the world’s strongest pro-life countries are in Asia, Africa, and South America — home to some of the poorest women in the world. Gompers claims her traveling abortuary will reduce the number of women who die from illegal abortions — about 100,000 a year worldwide. That’s a gross exaggeration. But even if it were true, it’s a drop in the global bucket compared to those who die from other causes.

For example, anemia causes at least a fourth of all post-partum maternal deaths in Africa and Asia. What is Gompers going to do for these women?

And then there’s the matter of their children. Nearly 12 million kids under age five die every year, mainly from preventable causes like diarrhea and measles. A maritime abortion mill isn’t going to help them, either.

For a picture of true compassion, we need look no further than the Scriptures. Jesus, who lived among the poor, spent much of His time healing the sick. And Christian doctors follow His example today on board a fleet of floating hospitals called Mercy Ships. Instead of aborting babies, these doctors heal them. They travel the world, restoring sight to the blind, helping the lame to walk, and sharing the Gospel.

By contrast, Gompers the misguided feminist will be bobbing around in her anti-natal warship, plundering the wombs of the poor.

Let the world witness two world-views in stark contrast on the high seas. And the lesson is clear: true compassion is not imposing a social agenda on the world’s poor. It’s becoming vessels of mercy, imitating the One whose mercy endures forever.

For some critics, the term “holiness movement” has conjured images of navel-gazing holy rollers too interested in getting a spiritual thrill or (at most) saving souls to care about alleviating social distress. This caricature is simply not accurate. The movement’s most enduring legacy is a nationwide network of missions to the socially and economically disadvantaged-primarily in inner-city neighborhoods.

Holiness leaders, like their eighteenth-century Methodist forebears, taught that sanctification does not stop in the individual heart, but must overflow into “social holiness.” Just as cleansing from all sin could occur in this life (against the traditional view that it occurred after the soul left the body, to prepare the believer to stand before a holy God), the ideal of the perfect community was also for today-not to be pushed off into the hereafter.

To its critics, the reform-minded Christian perfectionism that emanated from such places as Oberlin College and the Free Will Baptist churches of the Northeastern states threatened the social fabric. For example, in Western New York, radicalized churches not only circulated anti-slavery petitions, but even hired African-American pastors and, in a few extreme cases, women.

For some, this holiness activism had its limits. Phoebe Palmer, for example, was closely associated with the anti-abolitionist faction of New York City Methodists. In spite of her friendship with Oberlin College president Charles G. Finney, she refused to permit the expression of abolitionist sentiments during her weekly holiness meetings.

The very model of a modern urban mission

But in other respects, Palmer followed through on the social implications of holiness. For example, she was greatly moved by the poverty she encountered in New York. Believing that with wealth came social responsibility, Palmer dedicated a portion of her considerable family fortune to relief work. In the early 1840s, she began visiting and distributing tracts among the city’s poor and ministering to the prisoners at the notorious jail known as the Tombs. From 1847 to 1858, Palmer served as corresponding secretary of the New York Female Assistance Society for the Relief and Instruction of the Sick Poor.

Palmer’s crowning social achievement was the key role she played in the transformation of an old brewery located in one of the city’s most notorious areas into the Five Points Mission (p. 20). No isolated initiative, the Five Points work became the model for later Protestant institutional missions in American cities. Complete with a chapel, parsonage, classrooms, baths, and 20 apartments, the new facility opened in 1850. Next door was the Five Points House of Industry, which provided employment, food, clothing, and temporary housing for as many as 500 poor women and their children.

During the last half of the 19th century, holiness bodies operating in nearly all urban areas in North America, Northern Europe, and even Australia established hundreds of urban missions with the intention of providing such emergency services as food, housing, and job training. While other religious bodies established similar missions, few seriously rivaled holiness missions in size or pervasiveness. As late as 1924 a study of the “homeless man problem” in San Francisco found that nearly all emergency food and housing services were being provided by holiness-inspired urban ministries, such as the Peniel Mission, the Volunteers of America, and the Salvation Army.

Sanctification’s best fruit

B. T. Roberts, founder of the Free Methodist Church (p. 32), believed that the two most pressing reasons for making the mission to the poor central to the mission of the church were the teaching of Scripture and the example of Jesus. As Roberts noted, when John the Baptist inquired if Jesus were the Messiah, the Savior responded, “The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.”

If Roberts turned to the example of Jesus to justify ministry to the poor, others looked to the logic of the Wesleyan doctrine of “holiness” or “perfect love.” As Phoebe Palmer insisted, holiness made one a servant. A servant was one who was “entirely unselfish” and shared in Jesus’ great work of suffering service to humanity. Catherine Booth, who shared Palmer’s views, argued that the question of holiness-”how much like God can we can be?”-was the central question facing the church.

In contrast to the cynicism that would later pervade Christianity, the 19th-century holiness revival was profoundly optimistic. As holiness missionaries saw individual lives transformed, they believed social transformation was a distinct possibility. The chief fruit of sanctification was love toward God and humanity. No wonder such holiness luminaries as Charles Finney and Phoebe Palmer often seemed as concerned with temporal human needs as they were with individual eternal destiny.

The mood of the movement was positive. As Daniel Steele, a holiness advocate and professor at Boston University, insisted in his preface to Catherine Booth’s widely read Aggressive Christianity, Booth was “no gloomy pessimist, wailing the decay of Christianity.” Indeed, a holiness pessimist was an oxymoron.

The Free Methodist Church, a mostly rural denomination, provides one of the best illustrations of the extent of holiness efforts to meet human needs. B. T. Roberts made preaching the gospel to the poor a founding aim of his church. He bequeathed, and subsequent leaders elaborated, a clear and sophisticated rationale for Free Methodists’ ministry among the poor.

Beginning in the early 1860s, Free Methodist laywoman Jane Dunning established Providence Mission in the heart of New York City’s African-American ghetto. Dunning and her co-workers fed, bathed, and attempted to minister to the needs of a community that was under constant legal and extralegal harassment dating from the bloody anti-African-American riots of the late 1830s. Over the next 60 years Free Methodists actively fought for the extension of civil liberties not only to African-Americans but also to Asian immigrants.

By the end of the 19th century this denomination of fewer than 30,000 members was operating rescue missions and homes for unwed mothers in dozens of American cities.

Industrial homes and slum sisters

While the work of holiness missions began with providing food and shelter for men, women, and families, mission workers quickly realized that such needs demanded more systemic solutions. The Salvation Army established “industrial homes” that usually included work rooms for the renovation of secondhand furniture and the sorting of used articles, a retail store, a relief department that met the needs of the most impoverished, and a residence for the homeless. Emma Whittmore’s Door of Hope Mission in New York City, one of the many missions ministering to so-called “fallen women,” taught basic skills in gardening, poultry care, and dressmaking to its residents, who shared the profits earned from their work.

Perhaps the most successful social program of the Salvation Army was the employment bureau, an American Salvation Army response to the depression of the 1890s that had immediate results. In 1893, the San Francisco Corps found work for 165 men. By 1897, when General Frederick Booth-Tucker established a national employment bureau, 2,600 applications were received for work. Although it took nearly two years to find employment for many of the first 1,975 applicants, the Army was able to report that its success rate approached 100 percent.

One of the most common sources of employment for rescue mission converts was in the missions themselves. As the Christian Herald said of the first annual convention of the Union of Gospel Missions in 1896, the gathering was “remarkable for the number of superintendents who were themselves converted in gospel missions.”

From its origins in the 1830s and 1840s, the holiness movement was largely a movement of middle-class women. These women generously and fearlessly staffed the rescue missions of the Free Methodist Church, the West Coast-based Peniel Missions, Salvation Army centers, and other city missions. For example, in 1890, Salvation Army Captain Emma Bown sent the first “slum sisters” in pairs into the streets of New York City. Scrubbing floors, cooking meals, washing stroke victims, and simply living among the poor, Bown and her co-workers earned the respect of the people they served. In an age offering few opportunities to women, the Salvation Army and other holiness denominations provided meaningful roles outside the home and avenues of service to the bright, young, idealistic women who were its primary operatives.

Uplifting fallen women

Because Christian concern for the female victims of prostitution was as old as the Gospel, it appropriately emerged as the focus of one of the primary holiness social ministries. As urbanization spread, “red-light districts” became common features of nearly all major urban areas by the late 19th century.

While attempting to minister to prostitutes in New York City, the wealthy New York City druggist and evangelical convert Charles N. Crittenton realized that unless women were provided with career alternatives to prostitution, preaching would be useless. Consequently, in 1883, Crittenton founded the Florence Crittenton Mission, named in honor of Crittenton’s recently deceased daughter, on New York’s Bleecker Street. In 1890, a second mission was established in San Francisco. With the assistance of Kate Waller Barrett, the widow of an Episcopal priest who had entered the experience of full salvation under Crittenton’s preaching, the number of Florence Crittenton Missions grew to over 70 by the time of Crittenton’s death in 1909.

Meanwhile, others were duplicating Crittenton’s efforts. In 1883, the Salvation Army opened its first rest cottage for “fallen women” in Glasgow, Scotland. Others followed, and within 10 years, 1,500 women had been received into the United Kingdom’s 14 rest cottages. Half of these had earned their living from prostitution.

The Salvation Army opened its first American “rescue home” in Brooklyn in 1886 and within a decade was operating five homes in the United States. In 1896, not wanting to duplicate Christian social services, Crittenton worked closely with such holiness bodies as the Salvation Army and the Christian and Missionary Alliance to organize the National Gospel Mission Union. This body was dedicated to coordinating evangelical social ministries.

One notable holiness assault on prostitution occurred in Japan under the leadership of Salvation Army writer Gunpei Yamamuro. The author of one of the most widely read Japanese books of the last century, Heimin no Fukuin (Common People’s Gospel, 1899), Yamamuro initiated a full-scale struggle against legalized prostitution. Promising women safety and training, the Salvation Army “rescue cottage” was quickly overcrowded by women seeking a new start in life. Other religious bodies soon followed the Army’s lead, and the number of prostitutes in Tokyo fell by nearly one-fourth.

Most holiness social ministries were more modest. When the British press reported that many working class children went to school hungry, Salvation Army corps responded by providing nutritious inexpensive breakfasts. Especially notable were the movement’s ministries among prisoners. The employment bureaus sponsored by the Salvation Army and especially the Volunteers of America found jobs for literally thousands of ex-offenders.

As the numbers of holiness camp meetings dotting the rural landscape decline, holiness missions continue to flourish and meet real human needs. The Salvation Army, more self-consciously holiness than ever, remains the most trusted national service agency, while in Chicago, the Free Methodist Church continues to sponsor the Olive Branch Mission, the city’s oldest rescue mission. And holiness leaders persevere in reawakening the evangelical social conscience in the early 21st century, while calling on Christians to take responsibility for the needs of their brothers and sisters in Christ.