Lessons From The Sago Mine

It was late in the evening when my wife woke me to tell the amazing news that all thirteen coal miners trapped for two days in a deep underground explosion in West Virginia were alive and well. To the hundreds of workers, friends and family members this was the news they had been anxiously and patiently waiting for. The authorities had given little if any hope of finding them alive. Now came the news that they had beaten the odds. It was indeed the miracle they had been praying for. As the church bells rang out, the community began to celebrate this incredible and almost unbelievable good news.

The following morning, anxious to learn more of what had happened, I turned on the morning news. I was stunned to learn that only one had survived and the other twelve had not made it. Three hours after the initial news that all were alive, came the devastating word that there had been a terrible mistake. The community was shocked and angry, demanding to know who was responsible for such a terrible oversight. How much better it would have been to be told they had all perished and then to find out they had made it than to be told the very opposite. They had believed a lie.

Although the circumstances are vastly different there is an eerie similarity between this tragedy and the message that many believers are trusting in. Multitudes have been told that all is well with their souls - what if like the mining incident it all turns out to be the very opposite?

I’m convinced that this lie began in paradise itself when the enemy of men’s soul perpetrated the belief that disobedience to God’s word would not result in death. “You shall not surely die” was the Devils response to God’s word that stated the very opposite. Since then the Church has picked up the same refrain telling us that we are secure regardless of how we live.

Robert Govett was considered by Charles Spurgeon to be one of the greatest expositors he had ever read. In Govett’s exposition of the Passover he identifies two ways in which an Israelite cut be ‘cut off’. The first was if he failed to apply the blood to the doorpost of his home. The second reason Govett gives is, if after applying the blood he failed to obey God’s word and ate of unleaven bread - this also resulted in being ‘cut off’. This powerful typology clearly reveals that it was God’s intended purpose for His people to refrain from sin after conversion rather than continue in it. The New Testament  states “Let him that nameth the name of the Lord depart from iniquity”.

 What if in eternity we discover that the majority of those we thought were alive never made it. I for one don’t want to be held accountable for such a lie and the resulting loss of souls. It’s just not worth it.

 David Ravenhill