When it was all over, one person had died, sixty-five were injured, and sunrise on the prairie showed the wreck of a passenger train with crumpled train cars strewn every which way.
For many of the passengers, this was to have been the trip of a lifetime. They had boarded the train in Vancouver and were taking a scenic train trip across Canada. So far they had traveled through the Fraser Valley, over the Rocky Mountains, and were now into the Great Plains. Suddenly, in the middle of the night, the passengers were jolted awake and thrown from their seats as the train derailed. Twelve train cars jumped the tracks and landed in a crumpled wreck in a wheat field. It was the end of a dream vacation.
It took less than fifteen minutes for the rescue crews to arrive from the nearest town. While the injured were rushed to the nearest hospital, officials arrived to determine the cause of the wreck. Dawn was creeping over the tragic scene when it was announced that the derailment was caused by a broken front axle on one of the locomotives. But the axle had not broken without warning.
Only two hours after the train had left on its cross-country trip, a warning device, called a hot-bearing detection system, had signaled a warning that an axle bearing on one of the locomotives was overheating. When the crew saw it, they simply disconnected the warning device. The train had also passed an inspection station where no one checked carefully enough to see that the axle was giving out.
Why would a train crew disconnect a warning device? That warning could have saved the life of one person and prevented many others from being injured.
What about you? Are you ignoring a warning signal in your life right now? God tells us in the Bible, “There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death” (Proverbs 14:12). Don’t just disconnect His warning message. The end of a life without Christ as Saviour leads to a tragic eternity. It can be avoided if you will pay attention to God’s warning: “It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many” (Hebrews 9:27-28). Because of His love for sinners, Jesus Christ died on the cross to take the punishment for sin. If you will come to Him in prayer, admitting that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness for your sins, He will remove them forever. You will not face an eternity of punishment for your sins. Instead, you will live with Him in the joy and happiness of heaven forever.
Will you listen to the warning and accept Jesus as your Saviour right now, before it is too late?
“Today if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts” (Hebrews 4:7).
ML-02/13/2005