On
the night of April 14, 1912, one day's sailing time from New York Harbor, the
RMS Titanic, the world's largest ocean liner and pride of the White Star Line,
was fatally grazed by an iceberg.
In less than four hours, a ship which had been touted as “unsinkable” by overzealous maritime writers disappeared into the cold dark waters several hundred miles away from the Grand Banks in the North Atlantic, taking 1514 passengers and crew with her to the bottom, two miles down. While the Titanic was sinking, the passengers did not know that the ship would sink because it had been called “unsinkable.”
The china had never been used. The sheets
had never been slept in. Titanic was called the Ship of Dreams, and it
was. It had the first on-board swimming pools installed and a gymnasium
that included an electric horse and an electric camel. It also had a
squash court, a number of rowing machines, and stationary bicycles, all
supervised by a staff of professional instructors.
The public rooms for
the first-class passengers were large and elegantly furnished with wood
paneling, stained-glass windows, comfortable lounge furniture, and expensive
carpets. The decor of the first class cabins, in addition to being luxurious,
differed in style from cabin to cabin. As an extra feature on the
Titanic, the Café Parisienne offered superb cuisine. Yes, the
Titanic had everything... accept life boats!
If you have ever been in cold water, you know how shocking it is to the body. I think about those poor 1,800 people on the Titanic as it sunk into the icy Atlantic ocean in the darkness of the night. The temperature of the water in which the Titanic sank was only 31 degrees Fahrenheit.[1] The ship struck an iceberg, which can only form at temperatures at or below freezing (which is 32 degrees Fahrenheit, or 0 Celsius). What a horrible way to die! So when you feel discouraged, think about how blessed you are not to have been aboard the Titanic when it sunk 12,000 feet to the bottom of the icy ocean. I do often. God is good!
Perhaps
you ask... “What does the Titanic have to do with me?” In a word,
everything! You see friend, the Titanic disaster contains so many
lessons (practical, moral, and spiritual) for us to learn from. One
great lesson is simply that we never know when we are going to die.
Proverb 27:1 states, “Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.” Death often comes without warning. Unbeknownst to those 2,200 people, most of them were about to drown in the icy waters of the ocean, in the middle of nowhere, in the darkness of the night.
An even bigger lesson is that of being prepared. It's hard to imagine that a ship carrying so many lives didn't have enough
life boats. Believe it or not, The
Estonia ship went
down on September 29, 1994 in the Mediterranean sea and 850 of it's passengers
drowned. Again, they didn't have enough life boats. What is wrong
with people's heads? The only thing that men ever learn from history is
that men never learn from history.
1,800 deaths sounds like a lot, but did you know that hundreds-of-thousands of people die every day on average?
The Word of God declares in Proverb 14:12 and then again in Proverb 16:25, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.” Did you know that most people today are on a spiritual Titanic, headed for complete destruction? The Bible teaches that only those who are “born again” by the Spirit of God in Christ Jesus can go to Heaven (John 3:3-7). So many religious people THINK they are safe, just as the passengers upon the Titanic did that fateful night back in 1912; but they are not. They are on a voyage to eternal damnation!
Do you have a lifeboat to take you to Heaven when your earthly vessel sinks into the grave? The ONLY Lifeboat is Jesus Christ, the Son of God! Death came upon the Titanic passengers without warning, just as those who died in the flood of Noah's time, there was no escape! It's still not too late for you to escape the wrath of God friend. You can still be saved, but time is running out. Ye Must Be Born Again. You need GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS!
Titanic Facts:
Length: 882.9 ft
Width: 92.6 ft
Weight: 46,329 tons
Passengers it could hold: 3320
Passengers on the ship: 2200
Actual newspapers from April 16th, 1912:
They said God couldn't sink the Titanic. What they failed to realize was that it was God Who was holding the ship up the entire time. God didn't have to sink the Titanic, all He had to do was remove His hand from underneath it. Without God we can do NOTHING (John 15:5). Proverb 16:18, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
This photo of the Titanic was taken on April 2, 1912... just days before it would rest 12,000 feet under the icy Atlantic ocean at water pressures of 7,000 pounds per square inch.
Listen to, “Jesus is the Sweetest Name I know.”
