Saving Stranded Souls
March 2022
On Saturday, March 10th, the average temperature across the Northeastern United States was a moderate 50 degrees. Since it was the weekend, there was most assuredly activity to be enjoyed among adults and children alike. I imagine cars being washed and laundry being hung out to dry; children playing marbles, hide-and-seek, and stick ball in the streets. Little did they know, nor was there the technology to predict that the descending artic Canadian air would collide with the Gulf air from the south causing plummeting temperatures, winds reaching hurricane strength, and rain turning to snow—the Great White Hurricane of 1888. By midnight, an upwards of 30-55 inches of snow had fallen across much of the Northeast with snow drifts reaching the second story of apartment building in New York City. Not only were thousands trapped in their homes, but many also were trapped in less favorable locations such as work, factories, and trains. Famous men such as Mark Twain and P.T. Barnum were amongthose who were snowed in. Of the 400+ who perished in the sudden and unpredictable change of weather, 200 were in New York City. Among some of the most terrifying deaths caused by the storm happened to those who were cut off when attempting to cross the East River running between Manhattan and Queens. Though the river had been frozen over, the changing tides broke up the ice, stranding the wanderers on ice floes where most of them finally perished either by the freezing weather or frigid waters.
Death is as unpredictable as the weather and those who don’t know Christ have no more hope than cut-off wanderers awaiting the stranglehold of their perils to simply overcome them. Now, in March 2022, 134 years after the Great White Hurricane hit, there is an estimated 7,300 people groups around the world who have no access to the Gospel of Christ to save their wandering stranded souls, not from the artic elements of this temporal life, but from hell’s eternal fires, “where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” (Mark 9:44) Pray with me that men would be gripped by both compassion and compulsion so that they dare to trek into tumultuous conditions as missionaries in search and rescue efforts for those who are caught in the stranglehold of the uttermost.
Only One Life to Offer,
Rodney Myers
GFF General Director