Marylin Harvey and her twenty-six-year-old son, Brent, were sound asleep in their house in Pullman, Washington. They were alone. Mr. Harvey was working late at a local restaurant he owned. A little flame began to glow in the house. Authorities later guessed a candle had been left burning, which probably started the fire. No one can say for certain how the little flame spread to the house. Like a silent invader, the fire grew and passed from one thing to another, filling the living room and kitchen with leaping orange flames and smoke.
Still, the two slept on peacefully in their bedrooms upstairs, unaware of the deadly danger that was about to confront them. More and more smoke and superheated air billowed through the house. The smoke and heat set off alarms, but the two heavy sleepers never heard the warning devices.
The family had two dogs. One was a seventeen-year-old Australian Shepherd named Lewis. This dog had creaky joints, moved with difficulty, and was losing its ability to hear, see and smell. The other, Sandler, was a six-year-old border collie in the prime of his life. Border collies are a breed of dog used to herd sheep. Seldom do they bark, but they have a strong instinct to take care of others.
Many dogs would have hidden under a couch or a bed to protect themselves; not Sandler. When the fire woke him, he made his way through the burning house to Marylin’s bedroom. He pushed open the door, entered the room, and jumped on the bed with a crash, waking her up. Immediately she knew something was desperately wrong because of the intense heat and smoke. She ran down the hall to her son’s room and woke him up too. The way through the front door was blocked with flames, so they made their way to the basement and out through that door. Soon the entire house would be enveloped in flames.
As they opened the door, the cool night air hit them with a rush. Sandler, the Border collie, stopped in his tracks and turned back into the burning house. Later, Marylin looked back on the night and thought that the dog’s protective instincts had kicked in again. She firmly believes that Sandler remembered the other family dog, Lewis, and ran back into the house in order to save it.
Sandler did not come out of the house alive. The smoke and the heat overcame him. After firefighters extinguished the blaze, they found the two dogs in the fire-gutted house. Sandler was in the room next to where the older dog had been sleeping; he had almost reached Lewis.
Sandler risked his life to save his owners, and then gave his life in an effort to rescue the other dog. His courage and faithfulness were truly heroic.
Hopefully, you will never experience the tragedy of a house fire either for yourself or those you love. But many people in the world are in the middle of a deep sleep about another imminent danger. This danger is real and drawing relentlessly closer. With every tick of the clock souls are brought closer to the time when they will face the terrible wrath of a sin-hating God. Sinners who die apart from Christ will be sent away to the everlasting punishment of hell, and many people in this unbelieving, unawakened world are in a deep sleep about it. Peacefully they pass their time on earth as if they will never come into judgment for what they have committed...as if they don’t have a care in the world.
The tragedy of hell is that souls don’t have to go there. No matter how far they have fallen into sin, there is a way of escape. The Lord Jesus came to earth and went all the way to death to make a way that sinners might be delivered. On the cross He bore sin’s awful load for those who would later believe on Him. The wrath that should have fallen on them instead fell on Him in awful stroke after stroke. Because Christ suffered on the cross, He can offer salvation to all who will believe on Him. “Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)).
Won’t you wake up and realize the danger you are in because of sin? Won’t you hear the alarm warnings found in the Bible? Or will you sleep on with your head on a pillow of careless indifference until death and judgment overtake you and it is forever too late to escape?