A
STEEL WORKER'S STORY
IT WAS A COLD FEBRUARY NIGHT, but less than seventy feet away was a molten,
boiling, lake of fire! Behind fire-brick walls and heavy water-cooled steel doors,
a 500 ton mass of seething molten steel bubbled at 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit, being
fed by a tremendous flame that required 700 gallons of oil per hour. This roaring
inferno was an open hearth furnace - the very heart of steel making.
A few moments before walking over to the furnace, I had experienced a brush with
death. For years, God had spoken to me about my soul in a variety of ways. Two
motorcycle wrecks, three near-disasters while piloting a plane, and a near-drowning
in the Atlantic Ocean. But like many brought up in a Christian home, I desired
not the knowledge of God's ways (Job 21:14).
Mother had objected to me going to the mills for work, but it was "big money,"
and that's what counted! During my first month, I witnessed a poor fellow, his
head and shoulder cut off by an overhead crane. It was a gory sight as his bloody
flesh was gathered up and put into a wire basket by my father, the melter foreman.
A voice seemed to say, "If that were you, Bob, where would your soul be?"
I pushed the thought immediately out of my mind.
A BRUSH WITH DEATH
In the course of twenty years, three men had fallen into the pits - a fifteen-foot
drop in back of the furnaces. Two were burned alive, but I survived. Mother cried,
and pleaded with me to quit, but money, sin, and pleasure were my gods. Now God
was speaking once again. A brush with death was nothing to laugh at, or take lightly.
A swinging overhead crane hook had just narrowly missed my head and I was shaken!
Fellow workers on the scene shouted in jest, "Hey, Surgenor, if that thing
had hit your head, you'd be shoveling coal in hell right now!" Their laughter
pierced my heart! I had heard the Bible enough to know that there's no shoveling
coal in hell - just a flame that torments its victims. A steady, piercing flame
on the soul! A place of no comfort, no water, and no hope! But their words of
jest were like the arrows of the Almighty. They stuck, and I couldn't get rid
of them.
Looking into the furnace through a wicket hole, I was preparing to draw out a
sample of the molten steel for testing. As my eyes beheld the white hot roaring
flame and the steel lake of fire, my soul trembled. A voice said, "He,
that being often reproved hardeneth his neck, shall suddenly be destroyed, and
that without remedy." It was a Bible verse I'd learned in Sunday School
many years before, and now God was bringing it to my remembrance to awaken me
(Proverbs 29:1).
After the shift, I went home from that steel mill as a young man convicted of
sin, scared of going to hell, and wanting to be saved. A few days later, humbled
and broken, and crying and trembling for fear of meeting God in my sins, I trusted
the Lord Jesus Christ who died for me on the cross. It was my dear wife, who had
been saved for only six days, who pointed me to the Saviour.
STARTLING FACTS
Friend, I'm sure that in your lifetime, you, too, have heard the voice of God
in numerous ways. What about your soul? Do you ever consider eternity? As man
to man, let me mention some startling, God-given facts. Do you know, "All
have sinned" (Romans 3:23), and heaven's door is closed? Do you know
death does not end all; that there is a conscious hereafter? (Luke
16:19-31). The undertaker buries the body in the grave, but God buries the lost
soul in hell, to reserve it "unto the day of judgment to be punished"
(II Peter 2:9). Do you know there are two resurrections:
one for the saved; one for the lost (John 5:29)? Death (the body's abode) and
hell (the soul's abode) shall deliver up the dead that are in them (Revelation
20:13). With body and soul reunited, the sinner shall stand before God to be judged
for his sins, to determine the severity of his punishment. Do you know
God has prepared a lake of fire and brimstone where this punishment will be poured
out upon the sinner forever? The smoke of their torment will ascend up for ever
and ever, they will have no rest day nor night (Revelation 14:11; 20:10). It will
be a place "where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched"
(Mark 9:44).
Do you know God has made a way of escape through the precious blood of
Christ? Oh, fellow traveler to eternity, be honest! Be fair to yourself and face
the facts! Flee to Christ, receive Him now as your Saviour and be saved from the
lake of fire.
"Being now justified by His
blood, we shall be saved from
wrath through Him" (Romans 5:9).
Born September 2, 1928. Born again February 10, 1952
"Except a man be born again, he cannot see the
kingdom of God." (John 3:3)
ROBERT E. SURGENOR, Evangelist
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