Maxine ( my wife) and I have just taken a cruise from NZ to Australia.
We met up with our son and his family, who live in LA, as they were attending a family wedding in Rotorua and we caught a ship back to Sydney from Auckland.
Our ship, the Norwegian Spirit, was cyclone affected so that we had to be rerouted to avoid the worst of the seas.
However we did face 4 days in the Tasman sea and though my forebears were seamen I did not inherit their sea legs.
Being on a cruise ship in the middle of rough seas is a bit like hell; there is no escape; there is nowhere to go that is not rocking and rolling.
Our ship stopped in Melbourne on a Sunday so we caught a tram from the wharf into the city.
What a beautiful city it is, from the tree lined Collins St, to the cafes draped along the Yarra, the best sporting arenas in Australia, to the best art collection of any gallery in Australia.
The city was alive with people and, I am told, unusually, there were no demonstrations going on.
It is a city well served by church buildings, from the Anglican Cathedral, strategically placed opposite the Flinders Street station, to Collins St Baptist offering free coffees and Scots’ Presbyterian with its outstanding organ and choral introits and anthems, and yet, the most dominant sign to passers by was at the Cathedral urging climate action, no new fossil fuels!
Do we believe that the road to damnation is wide and there are many on that road?
Do we believe that outside of Christ our fellow humans face a wretched eternity?
Love compels us to warn of impending danger!
In fact the Apostle Paul was ‘Innocent of the blood of all of you for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God’ (Acts 20:26-27).
Many years ago Bishop Stephen Bradley visited his homeland, Australia, for the last time.
Bp Bradley had gone to Africa as a missionary to the Zulus in the 1930’s and had become the Bishop of the Church of England in South Africa.
After hearing me preach at SMBC and before leaving after his 6 week visit, he wrote and thanked me for my sermon, however, he also said, he had heard many fine sermons in his visit but he had not heard one word of warning in any of them!
Paul’s words to Timothy were, reprove, rebuke, admonish and exhort.
Paul knew the reality of condemnation and placed a zero value on everything else but ‘Jesus Christ and him crucified’.
In Luke 12 and 13 our Lord Jesus urged the crowd to ‘fear him who has authority to cast into hell,’ and twice he says, repent or likewise perish!
Urgent, clear gospel proclamation, warning people, in love, that the eternal reality of hell, of which we have a brief taste in this life, is to be avoided at all costs as an eternal diet.
At Moore College in the 1970’s the sign facing down City Road said it all;
God has fixed the judgement day.
Flee to Jesus; he will save you!
David Cook.